5 ms·

"[Facebook] came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone el

"[Facebook] came to 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." - Carol Davidsen, Former Obama Campign Director [1] [1] https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975568208886484997 https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975568208886484997

portofcall 9y ago
Basing your claim on what someone said to stroke the ego of a political operative, as communicated via a Tweet? I’m totally convinced, no further evidence required! (/s)
makomk 9y ago
The NYT magazine article about this also mentions that the scale of the Obama campaign's data extraction tripped internal Facebook alerts which had to be overridden: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaig... (Back in 2013, they of course spun this as a demonstration of just how impressive and well-done it was.)
- daenz 9y ago
  This all should serve as another reminder to not yield certain leniencies to "our" guys just because we want them to have an advantage. Because it sets a precedent, and then future organizations, like CA, can do the same thing for people we don't like.
- artursapek 9y ago
  Nice. So they intentionally helped Obama, but indirectly helping Trump has caused international outrage.
  - ineedasername 9y ago
    I'd say its that the intervening years have shed the bloom from the rose that was Facebook, and a lot more people have become a lot more savvy to the topic since then. That makes CA the tipping point for public sentiment in the US, but Europe has been ahead of us for these types of concerns. Worth noting that i haven't seen many people placing blame on the Trump campaign either, it seems to be going swuarely where it belongs: CA and Facebook. It would be nice if more splashed on to other big players for this type of data too, like google. Google hasn't yet betrayed their trust to as great an extent though.
    - avree 9y ago
      I disagree. Its undoubtedly a political issue. When it was used by Obama, the media lauded it as a genius use of tech and proof that his campaign was 'hooked in' to modern tools. Trump is obviously less popular in certain circles, which is the only reason why this is now a huge issue.
      - fatbird 9y ago
        The Obama campaign took all that data and did normal political campaigning with it: targeting likely voters and bombarding them with campaign messaging. Cambridge Analytica ran Facebook-powered ratfucking operations: for example, organizing Black Lives Matter rallies with violent messaging, then highlighting the violent BLM rallies to scared white rural voters. Facebook should never have facilitated this level of data collection for any campaign, but characterizing the current anger at Facebook as media-driven favoritism is Internet Research Agency level trolling.
      - skocznymroczny 9y ago
        Yep, liberals are so full of themselves and surround themselves with other liberals only, so the thought of someone actually voting differently is hard to fathom for them, be it Trump, Brexit, Le Pen. They are trying to rationalize it somehow that the poor people are being manipulated by Russia/fake news/Facebook/CA/insert the next week's boogeyman.
        9y ago
IAmEveryone 9y ago
I believe it's quite obvious that the campaign director either remembers this wrong, or the person they talked to gave them the wrong reason. Why? Because four years later, Facebook would let Cambridge Analytica do something similar without having a reason to particularly like them. And even after learning about CA's breach of trust, they chose to mostly remain inactive, even when they learnt that the company was working for Ted Cruz and Trump, two candidates you probably wouldn't want to help if you're making business decisions based on political sympathy.
- downandout 9y ago
  First, Facebook didn’t allow CA to do anything. That’s because CA didn’t ever have an app on Facebook. The app in question was a personality quiz created by an independent developer. It accessed a small fraction of the number of profiles that OFA did, and it was only able to do so over a much longer period of time. The data from the app was then sold to CA years after the fact. It was a normal app that operated within the normal parameters imposed by Facebook on all other applications. That’s far different than the Obama situation. They accessed ~4 times the number of profiles, and were allowed to keep the data current because Facebook voluntarily removed the API limits for them. Why would you question Obama’s own campaign director? As if it were a secret that Facebook is left leaning and wanted to help Obama.
  - IAmEveryone 9y ago
    > Why would you question Obama’s own campaign director? As if it were a secret that Facebook is left leaning and wanted to help Obama. Precisely because everyone knows/thinks Facebook was sympathetic towards Obama, I believe it's not unthinkable that someone used that fact as an explanation when they were asked and did not actually know the specific reason.
    - downandout 9y ago
      Her statements are highly specific.
- 9y ago

portofcall 9y ago

Basing your claim on what someone said to stroke the ego of a political operative, as communicated via a Tweet? I’m totally convinced, no further evidence required! (/s)

makomk 9y ago

The NYT magazine article about this also mentions that the scale of the Obama campaign's data extraction tripped internal Facebook alerts which had to be overridden: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaig... (Back in 2013, they of course spun this as a demonstration of just how impressive and well-done it was.)

daenz 9y ago
This all should serve as another reminder to not yield certain leniencies to "our" guys just because we want them to have an advantage. Because it sets a precedent, and then future organizations, like CA, can do the same thing for people we don't like.
artursapek 9y ago
Nice. So they intentionally helped Obama, but indirectly helping Trump has caused international outrage.
- ineedasername 9y ago
  I'd say its that the intervening years have shed the bloom from the rose that was Facebook, and a lot more people have become a lot more savvy to the topic since then. That makes CA the tipping point for public sentiment in the US, but Europe has been ahead of us for these types of concerns. Worth noting that i haven't seen many people placing blame on the Trump campaign either, it seems to be going swuarely where it belongs: CA and Facebook. It would be nice if more splashed on to other big players for this type of data too, like google. Google hasn't yet betrayed their trust to as great an extent though.
  - avree 9y ago
    I disagree. Its undoubtedly a political issue. When it was used by Obama, the media lauded it as a genius use of tech and proof that his campaign was 'hooked in' to modern tools. Trump is obviously less popular in certain circles, which is the only reason why this is now a huge issue.
    - fatbird 9y ago
      The Obama campaign took all that data and did normal political campaigning with it: targeting likely voters and bombarding them with campaign messaging. Cambridge Analytica ran Facebook-powered ratfucking operations: for example, organizing Black Lives Matter rallies with violent messaging, then highlighting the violent BLM rallies to scared white rural voters. Facebook should never have facilitated this level of data collection for any campaign, but characterizing the current anger at Facebook as media-driven favoritism is Internet Research Agency level trolling.
    - skocznymroczny 9y ago
      Yep, liberals are so full of themselves and surround themselves with other liberals only, so the thought of someone actually voting differently is hard to fathom for them, be it Trump, Brexit, Le Pen. They are trying to rationalize it somehow that the poor people are being manipulated by Russia/fake news/Facebook/CA/insert the next week's boogeyman.
      - 9y ago

IAmEveryone 9y ago

I believe it's quite obvious that the campaign director either remembers this wrong, or the person they talked to gave them the wrong reason. Why? Because four years later, Facebook would let Cambridge Analytica do something similar without having a reason to particularly like them. And even after learning about CA's breach of trust, they chose to mostly remain inactive, even when they learnt that the company was working for Ted Cruz and Trump, two candidates you probably wouldn't want to help if you're making business decisions based on political sympathy.

downandout 9y ago
First, Facebook didn’t allow CA to do anything. That’s because CA didn’t ever have an app on Facebook. The app in question was a personality quiz created by an independent developer. It accessed a small fraction of the number of profiles that OFA did, and it was only able to do so over a much longer period of time. The data from the app was then sold to CA years after the fact. It was a normal app that operated within the normal parameters imposed by Facebook on all other applications. That’s far different than the Obama situation. They accessed ~4 times the number of profiles, and were allowed to keep the data current because Facebook voluntarily removed the API limits for them. Why would you question Obama’s own campaign director? As if it were a secret that Facebook is left leaning and wanted to help Obama.
- IAmEveryone 9y ago
  > Why would you question Obama’s own campaign director? As if it were a secret that Facebook is left leaning and wanted to help Obama. Precisely because everyone knows/thinks Facebook was sympathetic towards Obama, I believe it's not unthinkable that someone used that fact as an explanation when they were asked and did not actually know the specific reason.
  - downandout 9y ago
    Her statements are highly specific.
9y ago