8 ms·

I find it remarkable that when Obama did something similar in 2012, it was hailed as a major strength of his campaign and nobody had any problems with FB.

cjsawyer 9y ago
Their work was upfront and they weren’t trying to buy info or hide behind an unrelated app. This feels scummy in comparison.
- throwaway84742 9y ago
  Their work was so “upfront” that FB internal monitoring alerts have fired from the spike in load, and FB assured them that this is OK and they are “on the same side”: https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-for-obama-is-scandal-when-it-comes-to-trump%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/opinion/technology/37... Bad optics, no matter how you slice it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- rdtsc 9y ago
  As sibling comment pointed they were about just as scummy on average but everyone decided to look away and pretend to not notice, even FB after they caught them siphoning all social graph data. Well actually that's not quite accurate, some didn't look away, they were singing praises. His campaign won a major marketing award in 2008, beating Coke, Nike and Apple: http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marketer-year/131810/ http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-market... --- I honestly look at Obama's campaign and I look at it as something that we can all learn from as marketers [...] to see what he's done, to be able to create a social network ... Jon Fine, marketing and media columnist for BusinessWeek, pointed to Mr. Obama's facility with engaging voters in social-media channels. "It's the fuckin' Web 2.0 thing," he said. --- (Sorry for repeated link, I know it has been posted many times but I think it perfectly illustrates the point well).
  - michaelchisari 9y ago
    > His campaign won a major marketing award in 2008, beating Coke, Nike and Apple: People are referencing 2012, not 2008. The data operations of both campaigns were very different.
krapp 9y ago
I wonder... were one to check every story about this posted to HN, what percentage would contain a comment claiming that Obama did the same or worse?
- curious_fella1 9y ago
  But he did though...and there was no scandal then. Why now?
  - krapp 9y ago
    Go read the responses in the other threads. Not that it's actually going to matter.
  - yellow_postit 9y ago
    Whataboutism isn't a defense. Folks can legitimately be outraged and push for change based on CA. Reflection on past or ongoing abuses should absolutely happen.
    - throwaway84742 9y ago
      It’s not whataboutism in the sense that both campaigns have done things that I would like to see outlawed. I was merely pointing out a peculiar selectivity in reporting and outrage.
      - Armisael16 9y ago
        That's definitional whataboutism.
        throwaway84742 9y ago
        The definition of whataboutism is excusing someone’s actions because someone else has done the same. What I’m pointing out here is the opposite.
adventured 9y ago
The data & privacy abuse by the Obama campaign was in fact dramatically worse. As an opinion piece at TheHill.com noted today: > The former Obama director of integration and media analytics stated that, during the 2012 campaign, Facebook allowed the Obama team to “suck out the whole social graph”; Facebook “was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.” She added, “They came to [the] office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.” It's universally understood why the media wasn't interested in turning that story into a scandal. When it's your team, you look the other way for the perceived greater good.
- rhizome 9y ago
  The Trump case complicates "dramatically worse," since the issue is that the data was sold to third parties who ultimately affected the election with it.
  - vkou 9y ago
    The whole point of gathering data on voters is so that you can affect the election with it. The whole point of campaigning is affecting elections. Elections are not some input-free, side-effect free process performed in a vacuum. If they were, campaigning would be illegal. This leak was not the biggest, or even the most detailed source of voter information controlled by the Republican party. What Facebook did is a disservice to it's users - not to the democratic process. Framing it is as such is nothing but sour grapes.
  - downandout 9y ago
    the issue is that the data was sold to third parties Afaik, there has been no allegation that Facebook sold this data. Rather, someone created an innocuous looking quiz app that then used its access tokens to gather data on people through the Facebook Graph API. The app was called "thisisyourdigitallife". who ultimately affected the election with it. I've seen zero evidence that any of the psychobabble being touted by CA had any effect on the election (and I've been scouring the internet for such proof). As much as it may pain Democrats to hear, it's possible that Hillary just lost because she was unpalatable to a large percentage of voters, and not because of Russian conspiracies/Facebook/CA. She had more than her share of baggage.
jriley 9y ago
IANAL but believe one key difference is if work is done by US citizens or green card holders.
- stu432 9y ago
  Ha, the United States who forces globalisation for everyone else but can't handle it themselves!
swang 9y ago
If you're talking about how much data siphoned through Facebook and how much help they got from Facebook. Yes I agree pretty much the same thing (although I guess CA hid it somehow(?) and Facebook just refused to block them even after discovering it) The differences I see between CA and the Obama's own campaign. CA was accused of, "Setting up proxy organisations to feed untraceable messages onto social media" There's also the issue of whether they went around campaign finance laws. "So, campaigns are normally subject to limits about how much money they can raise. Whereas outside groups can raise an unlimited amount. So the campaign will use their finite resources for things like persuasion and mobilisation and then they leave the ‘air war’ they call it, like the negative attack ads to other affiliated groups" https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-donald-trump-data-firm-cambridge-analytica https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-...
LukaAl 9y ago
I find it remarkable that people don't understand there's a non-subtle difference between signing up voluntarily on the Obama website using Facebook and consenting to the information collection vs. signing up for a quiz from an unrelated company and having that data used by the Trump campaign. If you don't understand the difference, it is the same difference between having consensual sex with your girlfriend and raping your neighbor girlfriend because she consented to have sex with him... Now, this metaphor is imperfect, but from what we could see the Obama campaign was within the boundary allowed by Facebook TOS and what disclosed to the user. Did they push this to the limit? Yes. To the point that FB didn't think it was feasible. But legit according to the rule. Maybe having consensual extreme BSDM sex with your girlfriend vs. raping your neighbor's GF? Quiz, which one is legal and which one is not?
- dominotw 9y ago
  horrible metaphors.
- mistermann 9y ago
  The world would be a much better place if people weren't so utterly ignorant of their personal bias.
  - vanilla_nut 9y ago
    I fail to see how this comment is at all constructive to the situation at hand. What personal bias are you talking about here? Would it really be that hard to elaborate? Instead of acting like you're better than the grandparent poster, it would be far better to either a) engage him in a conversation or b) not comment at all.
    - mistermann 9y ago
      Constructive conversation on certain topics is sometimes not possible when in a forum that leans too far to the right or the left. There is a common mentality among many people where they know they are right, such that no response to differing opinions is even necessary, a downvote will do (which is doubly useful, because it censors the downvoted person for some period of time). And if you do not support the narrative, you will be downvoted. Respect is a two way street, or at least it used to be. I'm happy to engage in a debate any time, finding someone else willing to participate is a problem when everyone is only interested in discussing the nuances of how they agree with each other. I'll also disagree that it's not better to comment at all - voices of dissent are valuable in a democracy, silencing them is the actually dangerous path to take, but that seems to be the path that's been chosen, so we'll see how it works out.
Gatsky 9y ago
Obama didn't make a fake app, pay people to use it, then steal their data, so what exactly is your point? This is, to be frank, the height of stupid whataboutism.
- Larrikin 9y ago
  Seems more like targeted smart whataboutism
oldsklgdfth 9y ago
Your comment points out something very interesting about modern marketing. I think it is still ethically questionable even if you voluntarily hand over your data and not in a sketchy let-me-mine-your-friends-data-through-this-quiz way. I feel like you used to be able to avoid getting swindled by ignoring the swindler, ex. close the door to the saleman, or ignore the gypsy pear salesmen at the market. Today, marketing is engineered at such a level that it is difficult to awknowledge it's influence. That, and you are constantly bombarded by ads, either explicitly or implicitly. I don't think I am saying anything novel. I guess I am curious what this mean about society and our political systems. People with power and wealth could still be toppled when you exposed them to the truth. How in the fuck does that even come close to happening today? How do you overcome marketing that is engineered to exploit the psychological vulnerabilities you are not even aware of? How do we patch our society and governing systems from being pwned? This isn't meant as a rant. I am curious, because to the best i can tell we don't live in a society where voting matters and we have a say in our governance.

cjsawyer 9y ago

Their work was upfront and they weren’t trying to buy info or hide behind an unrelated app. This feels scummy in comparison.

throwaway84742 9y ago
Their work was so “upfront” that FB internal monitoring alerts have fired from the spike in load, and FB assured them that this is OK and they are “on the same side”: https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-for-obama-is-scandal-when-it-comes-to-trump%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/opinion/technology/37... Bad optics, no matter how you slice it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
rdtsc 9y ago
As sibling comment pointed they were about just as scummy on average but everyone decided to look away and pretend to not notice, even FB after they caught them siphoning all social graph data. Well actually that's not quite accurate, some didn't look away, they were singing praises. His campaign won a major marketing award in 2008, beating Coke, Nike and Apple: http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marketer-year/131810/ http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-market... --- I honestly look at Obama's campaign and I look at it as something that we can all learn from as marketers [...] to see what he's done, to be able to create a social network ... Jon Fine, marketing and media columnist for BusinessWeek, pointed to Mr. Obama's facility with engaging voters in social-media channels. "It's the fuckin' Web 2.0 thing," he said. --- (Sorry for repeated link, I know it has been posted many times but I think it perfectly illustrates the point well).
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  > His campaign won a major marketing award in 2008, beating Coke, Nike and Apple: People are referencing 2012, not 2008. The data operations of both campaigns were very different.

krapp 9y ago

I wonder... were one to check every story about this posted to HN, what percentage would contain a comment claiming that Obama did the same or worse?

curious_fella1 9y ago
But he did though...and there was no scandal then. Why now?
- krapp 9y ago
  Go read the responses in the other threads. Not that it's actually going to matter.
- yellow_postit 9y ago
  Whataboutism isn't a defense. Folks can legitimately be outraged and push for change based on CA. Reflection on past or ongoing abuses should absolutely happen.
  - throwaway84742 9y ago
    It’s not whataboutism in the sense that both campaigns have done things that I would like to see outlawed. I was merely pointing out a peculiar selectivity in reporting and outrage.
    - Armisael16 9y ago
      That's definitional whataboutism.
      - throwaway84742 9y ago
        The definition of whataboutism is excusing someone’s actions because someone else has done the same. What I’m pointing out here is the opposite.

adventured 9y ago

The data & privacy abuse by the Obama campaign was in fact dramatically worse. As an opinion piece at TheHill.com noted today: > The former Obama director of integration and media analytics stated that, during the 2012 campaign, Facebook allowed the Obama team to “suck out the whole social graph”; Facebook “was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.” She added, “They came to [the] office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.” It's universally understood why the media wasn't interested in turning that story into a scandal. When it's your team, you look the other way for the perceived greater good.

rhizome 9y ago
The Trump case complicates "dramatically worse," since the issue is that the data was sold to third parties who ultimately affected the election with it.
- vkou 9y ago
  The whole point of gathering data on voters is so that you can affect the election with it. The whole point of campaigning is affecting elections. Elections are not some input-free, side-effect free process performed in a vacuum. If they were, campaigning would be illegal. This leak was not the biggest, or even the most detailed source of voter information controlled by the Republican party. What Facebook did is a disservice to it's users - not to the democratic process. Framing it is as such is nothing but sour grapes.
- downandout 9y ago
  the issue is that the data was sold to third parties Afaik, there has been no allegation that Facebook sold this data. Rather, someone created an innocuous looking quiz app that then used its access tokens to gather data on people through the Facebook Graph API. The app was called "thisisyourdigitallife". who ultimately affected the election with it. I've seen zero evidence that any of the psychobabble being touted by CA had any effect on the election (and I've been scouring the internet for such proof). As much as it may pain Democrats to hear, it's possible that Hillary just lost because she was unpalatable to a large percentage of voters, and not because of Russian conspiracies/Facebook/CA. She had more than her share of baggage.

jriley 9y ago

IANAL but believe one key difference is if work is done by US citizens or green card holders.

stu432 9y ago
Ha, the United States who forces globalisation for everyone else but can't handle it themselves!

swang 9y ago

If you're talking about how much data siphoned through Facebook and how much help they got from Facebook. Yes I agree pretty much the same thing (although I guess CA hid it somehow(?) and Facebook just refused to block them even after discovering it) The differences I see between CA and the Obama's own campaign. CA was accused of, "Setting up proxy organisations to feed untraceable messages onto social media" There's also the issue of whether they went around campaign finance laws. "So, campaigns are normally subject to limits about how much money they can raise. Whereas outside groups can raise an unlimited amount. So the campaign will use their finite resources for things like persuasion and mobilisation and then they leave the ‘air war’ they call it, like the negative attack ads to other affiliated groups" https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-donald-trump-data-firm-cambridge-analytica https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-...

LukaAl 9y ago

I find it remarkable that people don't understand there's a non-subtle difference between signing up voluntarily on the Obama website using Facebook and consenting to the information collection vs. signing up for a quiz from an unrelated company and having that data used by the Trump campaign. If you don't understand the difference, it is the same difference between having consensual sex with your girlfriend and raping your neighbor girlfriend because she consented to have sex with him... Now, this metaphor is imperfect, but from what we could see the Obama campaign was within the boundary allowed by Facebook TOS and what disclosed to the user. Did they push this to the limit? Yes. To the point that FB didn't think it was feasible. But legit according to the rule. Maybe having consensual extreme BSDM sex with your girlfriend vs. raping your neighbor's GF? Quiz, which one is legal and which one is not?

dominotw 9y ago
horrible metaphors.
mistermann 9y ago
The world would be a much better place if people weren't so utterly ignorant of their personal bias.
- vanilla_nut 9y ago
  I fail to see how this comment is at all constructive to the situation at hand. What personal bias are you talking about here? Would it really be that hard to elaborate? Instead of acting like you're better than the grandparent poster, it would be far better to either a) engage him in a conversation or b) not comment at all.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Constructive conversation on certain topics is sometimes not possible when in a forum that leans too far to the right or the left. There is a common mentality among many people where they know they are right, such that no response to differing opinions is even necessary, a downvote will do (which is doubly useful, because it censors the downvoted person for some period of time). And if you do not support the narrative, you will be downvoted. Respect is a two way street, or at least it used to be. I'm happy to engage in a debate any time, finding someone else willing to participate is a problem when everyone is only interested in discussing the nuances of how they agree with each other. I'll also disagree that it's not better to comment at all - voices of dissent are valuable in a democracy, silencing them is the actually dangerous path to take, but that seems to be the path that's been chosen, so we'll see how it works out.

Gatsky 9y ago

Obama didn't make a fake app, pay people to use it, then steal their data, so what exactly is your point? This is, to be frank, the height of stupid whataboutism.

Larrikin 9y ago
Seems more like targeted smart whataboutism

oldsklgdfth 9y ago

Your comment points out something very interesting about modern marketing. I think it is still ethically questionable even if you voluntarily hand over your data and not in a sketchy let-me-mine-your-friends-data-through-this-quiz way. I feel like you used to be able to avoid getting swindled by ignoring the swindler, ex. close the door to the saleman, or ignore the gypsy pear salesmen at the market. Today, marketing is engineered at such a level that it is difficult to awknowledge it's influence. That, and you are constantly bombarded by ads, either explicitly or implicitly. I don't think I am saying anything novel. I guess I am curious what this mean about society and our political systems. People with power and wealth could still be toppled when you exposed them to the truth. How in the fuck does that even come close to happening today? How do you overcome marketing that is engineered to exploit the psychological vulnerabilities you are not even aware of? How do we patch our society and governing systems from being pwned? This isn't meant as a rant. I am curious, because to the best i can tell we don't live in a society where voting matters and we have a say in our governance.