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I think that the whole point about this Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal is not that Facebook collects all sorts of data, but that Facebook shares that

I think that the whole point about this Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal is not that Facebook collects all sorts of data, but that Facebook shares that data to third party services via "Login With Facebook" without any previous consent of users. The privacy settings of your Facebook account lose their purpose when Facebook creates an advertising profile (which may or may not be very accurate) which all said third party services may use to fuel their own advertising strategies. The contents of said ad profiles include your interests which also may reflect your ethnic background, sexual preferences, political views, et cetera. All of which CA (mis)used for analytics. But, (I checked today) users are able to disconnect ad profile sharing or delete some data. So, there is no scandal here, yet I didn't know until today that such settings even existed. So, it is convenient for Facebook to say that users usually have full control over their data. That Facebook now feels betrayed by CA because such data (generally available to service providers) has been used inappropriately shows either that they were complicit by enabling CA to do so and knew about it all along, or they didn't know what they were doing at all. I'm not sure which is worse. If a third party says "trust me, I'll handle all the data responsibly" doesn't mean anything, because there is no oversight whatsoever. Additional clauses in contracts do not make Facebook a victim of contract breach. The product in itself is flawed, because it handles the data irresponsibly.

fleitz 9y ago
Users are also highly irresponsible with their data, you didn’t even know the settings available, and others know they are giving up psychological profiling info and do it willingly. No one really cares until the media overhypes what is possible with the data, P&G knows it can’t use FB ads to get users to buy things but somehow Trump was able to get people to vote for him? What about the idea that maybe as the emails disclose it was Hillary who gave the MSM the idea to promote Trump, how about maybe she was so unlikable that she had to rig the primaries to win against a political neophyte because when she ran against the rookie obama she also lost. Maybe it wasn’t CA, FB or Russians that lost the election but her perennial unpopularity. Fundamentally if you want to keep your ‘privacy’ it’s pretty dumb to go posting intimate details of your life on the internet.

fleitz 9y ago

Users are also highly irresponsible with their data, you didn’t even know the settings available, and others know they are giving up psychological profiling info and do it willingly. No one really cares until the media overhypes what is possible with the data, P&G knows it can’t use FB ads to get users to buy things but somehow Trump was able to get people to vote for him? What about the idea that maybe as the emails disclose it was Hillary who gave the MSM the idea to promote Trump, how about maybe she was so unlikable that she had to rig the primaries to win against a political neophyte because when she ran against the rookie obama she also lost. Maybe it wasn’t CA, FB or Russians that lost the election but her perennial unpopularity. Fundamentally if you want to keep your ‘privacy’ it’s pretty dumb to go posting intimate details of your life on the internet.