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There’s a massive difference between Farmville et al and the OFA app. Facebook had limits in place that constrained the ratio between the number of friend prof

There’s a massive difference between Farmville et al and the OFA app. Facebook had limits in place that constrained the ratio between the number of friend profiles that were allowed to be accessed and the number of people that had explicitly authorized the app. They were a black box on this issue, but for example I had apps that were stopped from accessing deep profile information of friends (likes, occupation, etc.) when I reached 10:1. OFA’s ratio was in the 200:1 neighborhood. It was somewhat possible to overcome this by spreading the collection out of a number of months or years, which is what I believe the Kogan app did. But even in that case, with the data collection spread out over a long period of time, they had nowhere near the data that the Obama campaign was allowed access to. Finally, the CA data was years old, while the Obama data was allowed to stay fresh right up to election day because they had no API limits. So these apps with much larger install bases than Obama could have ever dreamed of had access to less data than OFA did because their ratio was not allowed to be as ridiculously asymmetric as Obama’s was. They still had access to large amounts of data, but only because of their massive authorized install bases (which in all of the cases you mention were far larger than the OFA install base). But none had the entire US social graph - with the exception of OFA.

zzzeek 9y ago
> OFA’s ratio was in the 200:1 neighborhood ratio. Great, what's your source for that data ? > So these apps with much larger install bases than Obama could have ever dreamed of had access to less data than OFA did because their ratio was allowed to be so ridiculously asymmetric. They still had access to large amounts of data because of their massive authorized install bases. But none had the entire US social graph. Nevertheless, they didn't seek to hoist a fascist leader apparently controlled by a foreign enemy on the US. It is perfectly fine that OFA and other organizations should not have this kind of access either. But this is whataboutism. Its truth or not does not mean the CA situation is not revealing of an enormous problem.
- downandout 9y ago
  OFA’s ratio was in the 200:1 neighborhood ratio Great, what's your source for that data ? My source is that I can do math. The campaign admits it had “the entire US social graph”. With ~200 million US Facebook profiles, and less than 1 million people that actually authorized Obama’s app, we come out with a ratio of roughly 200:1. Its truth or not does not mean the CA situation is not revealing of an enormous problem. It revealed an enormous problem when Obama did it (and worse, with Facebook’s approval). It only became an issue for the press, though, when they failed to manipulate the election in the way they wanted. I’m actually not an advocate of Trump - I’m just saying that this was either wrong or it wasn’t, regardless of who did it. In truth, they both did it. Obama just did it on a vastly larger scale.
  - oculusthrift 9y ago
    lol. so your answer is you have no proof. people exaggerate all the time when they say things like "entire social graph". Do you have any data that in 2012, 200 million unique americans were using facebook? And that obama had specific permission to bypass facebook's limit and get the 200:1 ratio?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - downandout 9y ago
      The data speaks for itself. Read it. As for proof that they got special permissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16669576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16669576
  - zzzeek 9y ago
    The statement made in the article: "In 2011, Carol Davidsen, director of data integration and media analytics for Obama for America, built a database of every American voter using the same Facebook developer tool used by Cambridge, known as the social graph API. " is ridiculous. There are millions of voters who have never had a Facebook account, and lots more back in 2011. They are handwaving, and this is not data. You have little basis to use qualitative, exaggerative terms like "vastly more" and you also don't know what kinds of access Cambridge Analytica may have had that differs from the data limits you experienced in your own development.
MarkMc 9y ago
Are you sure that Farmville didn't have a 200:1 ratio? It certainly looks suspicious, but I don't think you can rule out the profit motive. Perhaps in 2012 Facebook's position was, "If you pay us enough money we'll remove the API limits"
- downandout 9y ago
  Farmville had a massive install base. So they weren’t accessing that much data relative to the number of people that had directly authorized their app. The difference between it and the Obama app was the leverage that was allowed: less than 1 million people gave them access to their data, and they were able to use that to get deep profile data on nearly every US Facebook user - ~200 million accounts. Their attempts to do this set off all kinds of alarms, but Facebook went in and manually shut those alarms off and opened the floodgates to the data. Our data. Considering that at least half of them - ~100 million people - would have consciously objected to helping Obama do anything, much less get elected, that should have been earth shatteringly scandalous and probably should have buried Facebook right then and there. But instead, the press celebrated this technique, right up until it helped create a result other than the one it wanted.
  - MarkMc 9y ago
    There are two questions here: (1) Was Facebook biased in favor of the Democratic party? (2) Should the press have been more critical of the way personal data was used for political purposes? My answer to (1) is 'probably', but maybe Facebook would have been willing to "manually shut those alarms off and open the floodgates to the data" for anyone who gave them a million dollars?

zzzeek 9y ago

> OFA’s ratio was in the 200:1 neighborhood ratio. Great, what's your source for that data ? > So these apps with much larger install bases than Obama could have ever dreamed of had access to less data than OFA did because their ratio was allowed to be so ridiculously asymmetric. They still had access to large amounts of data because of their massive authorized install bases. But none had the entire US social graph. Nevertheless, they didn't seek to hoist a fascist leader apparently controlled by a foreign enemy on the US. It is perfectly fine that OFA and other organizations should not have this kind of access either. But this is whataboutism. Its truth or not does not mean the CA situation is not revealing of an enormous problem.

downandout 9y ago
OFA’s ratio was in the 200:1 neighborhood ratio Great, what's your source for that data ? My source is that I can do math. The campaign admits it had “the entire US social graph”. With ~200 million US Facebook profiles, and less than 1 million people that actually authorized Obama’s app, we come out with a ratio of roughly 200:1. Its truth or not does not mean the CA situation is not revealing of an enormous problem. It revealed an enormous problem when Obama did it (and worse, with Facebook’s approval). It only became an issue for the press, though, when they failed to manipulate the election in the way they wanted. I’m actually not an advocate of Trump - I’m just saying that this was either wrong or it wasn’t, regardless of who did it. In truth, they both did it. Obama just did it on a vastly larger scale.
- oculusthrift 9y ago
  lol. so your answer is you have no proof. people exaggerate all the time when they say things like "entire social graph". Do you have any data that in 2012, 200 million unique americans were using facebook? And that obama had specific permission to bypass facebook's limit and get the 200:1 ratio?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - downandout 9y ago
    The data speaks for itself. Read it. As for proof that they got special permissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16669576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16669576
- zzzeek 9y ago
  The statement made in the article: "In 2011, Carol Davidsen, director of data integration and media analytics for Obama for America, built a database of every American voter using the same Facebook developer tool used by Cambridge, known as the social graph API. " is ridiculous. There are millions of voters who have never had a Facebook account, and lots more back in 2011. They are handwaving, and this is not data. You have little basis to use qualitative, exaggerative terms like "vastly more" and you also don't know what kinds of access Cambridge Analytica may have had that differs from the data limits you experienced in your own development.

MarkMc 9y ago

Are you sure that Farmville didn't have a 200:1 ratio? It certainly looks suspicious, but I don't think you can rule out the profit motive. Perhaps in 2012 Facebook's position was, "If you pay us enough money we'll remove the API limits"

downandout 9y ago
Farmville had a massive install base. So they weren’t accessing that much data relative to the number of people that had directly authorized their app. The difference between it and the Obama app was the leverage that was allowed: less than 1 million people gave them access to their data, and they were able to use that to get deep profile data on nearly every US Facebook user - ~200 million accounts. Their attempts to do this set off all kinds of alarms, but Facebook went in and manually shut those alarms off and opened the floodgates to the data. Our data. Considering that at least half of them - ~100 million people - would have consciously objected to helping Obama do anything, much less get elected, that should have been earth shatteringly scandalous and probably should have buried Facebook right then and there. But instead, the press celebrated this technique, right up until it helped create a result other than the one it wanted.
- MarkMc 9y ago
  There are two questions here: (1) Was Facebook biased in favor of the Democratic party? (2) Should the press have been more critical of the way personal data was used for political purposes? My answer to (1) is 'probably', but maybe Facebook would have been willing to "manually shut those alarms off and open the floodgates to the data" for anyone who gave them a million dollars?