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Can someone explain to me why the Cambridge Analytica story is making people so much angrier than the later revelation that Facebook was scraping call+text info

Can someone explain to me why the Cambridge Analytica story is making people so much angrier than the later revelation that Facebook was scraping call+text info? That seems to be the larger problem to me. Somewhere at Facebook there is a team of people who wrote software to scrape, store and analyze the personal call+text data that users didn't explicitly mean to give to Facebook. The data that Cambridge Analytica attained (from Facebook's API) doesn't seem surprising at all. Isn't the Cambridge Analytics headline really just, "Group doesn't follow website's terms of service from five years ago".

Analemma_ 9y ago
Because people are really, really bad at understanding threats that have vague, uncertain consequences. For the last 15 years, trying to get people to seriously worry about privacy has had about as much success as getting them to worry about climate change: they claim to care, but their revealed preferences tell a different story. The problem is that the downsides are uncertain and in the future, whereas the upsides are immediate and certain. Our ape brains are horrible at evaluating tradeoffs of this kind. But the flip side to this is why the CA story has blown up: for once, the consequences— "CA got Trump elected!"— are immediate and graspable, in a way that "Facebook is scraping your text info" is not (even if it's probably not true). When the effects are right in your face and not time-delayed, people sit up and pay attention.
jnbiche 9y ago
Probably because of some of the things that Cambridge Analytica stands accused of, or else things they have blatantly admitted to while being secretly recorded: blackmail and bribery of politicians in multiple countries, hacking election results, and even more unethical acts[1,2]. People are upset that their data was essentially stolen from Facebook (it was collected for use in an academic study, then turned around and sold for profit to CA), used by a company with ethical failures as serious as Cambridge Analytica, and then Facebook buried the story. It was two years before it came to light thanks to Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr. Facebook also worked closely with CA during the Trump campaign, even though they would have known by that time that data obtained under the pretense of an academic study had been sold to CA. 1. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43528219 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43528219 2. https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-t...
tim333 9y ago
Personally: I don't care what facebook does with my data - there's nothing very exciting and I have ad blockers so don't even see the ads. It doesn't effect me. However the Analytica stuff is about conning the masses into voting for Trump and Brexit and that effects me big time and pisses me off somewhat. In face worse that conning - more initing the mob to hatred through lies and bullshit. See for example the Hillary is Satan ad paid for by the russians and targeted with facebook to the kind of people who vote on the basis of that kind of stuff https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/02/us/politics/02dc-ads-army-of-jesus/02dc-ads-army-of-jesus-jumbo.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/02/us/politics/02dc-...
- fiatpandas 9y ago
  By giving access to your data, you are saying it's ok to take that data and pander to your psyche in some fashion. You may not see direct advertising in your browser, but it leads back to how strategists decide to engage your physical community. And even if you block ads, your friends may not. Friends will influence you through your feed, based on the ads they see, based on your data.
  - tim333 9y ago
    Yeah but my data - I'm middle aged, read HN, speculate a bit in crypto etc - is not anything I'm worried about people knowing. I can understand if people want to keep stuff secret but I don't have much of that and what I do I don't post on the internet in any form. I've never really thought of facebook as much more private than HN - ie not private.
    - fiatpandas 9y ago
      But it’s not the secret data people are worried about with Cambridge Analytica. It’s mundane stuff that works to define a profile of your beliefs and mental vulnerabilities. And a big issue is many people see their data as not a big deal because they haven’t posted any nude photos to Facebook. Time to reframe how we view what is sensitive in the age of ML
    - 9y ago
machinehermit 9y ago
It is this weeks viral thing to be outraged about. I am buying some FB calls in the morning because no one will care about this "movement" in a month.
stordoff 9y ago
I'd imagine it's at least partly expectations - people know that Facebook has their data (even if not the full extent), so adding an additional class of data doesn't change that fundamental understanding or register as strongly. The fact that a third-party can pull your data out of Facebook is less obvious. The fact that it was used for political ends probably makes a difference as well, both in the amount of coverage it is receiving and that it makes the use of data into a more concrete issue (it's much easier to understand "this is what the data was used for" then "Facebook has your data and that's bad for hypothetical/abstract reasons"). > Isn't the Cambridge Analytics headline really just, "Group doesn't follow website's terms of service from five years ago" That's the act, but I'd say the usage/intent behind doing so is part of the story.
m52go 9y ago
> Isn't the Cambridge Analytics headline really just, "Group doesn't follow website's terms of service from five years ago". I think the the headline people are seeing is more like "Group doesn't follow website's terms of service from five years ago, and ends up helping Donald Trump win presidency." A big part of the reason this has become so big a story is political.
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  "A foreign entity that was not registered as foreign agents collaborated with a multinational corporation to influence the presidential election" is why people are outraged. But it's likely that none of this would have been investigated had Clinton won the election
  - fatbird 9y ago
    If Clinton had won, the propaganda and dirty tricks would have failed, and so would have seemed much lower priority.
- fatbird 9y ago
  Cambridge Analytica’s actions had real world political consequences, so yes it’s political for that reason. But another angle of the CA portion of the story is that they were ratfucking in a very effective way—such as publishing fake news about BLM activists were organizing violent rallies, then broadcasting that to likely Trump voters. In some cases they even organized BLM events with incitement to commit violence, then pushed true stories about the events that suited their narrative. In other words, CA demonstrated a tremendous vulnerability in our political dialogue to pure propaganda and dirty tricks that social media, in its algorithmic purity, was supposed to make less likely, not more. Some of the fallout of this affair will be a tremendous distrust that any provider of social media is an honest broker of what others use their services for. If my news feed is tainted by a group like CA manipulating it at the algorithm level, what hope can I have that anything I’m receiving over the Internet isn’t compromised? Maybe the stories are fake; maybe they’re true but the balance of stories is altered; maybe the facts are true-ish but slanted or selective. These are all legitimate concerns in the normal marketplace of ideas, but now we find the marketplace of ideas is deliberately compromised by malicious entities.
dawhizkid 9y ago
The CA story is the first tangible example of the societal consequences of exploiting social data for something other than selling you cat litter.
tfuop 9y ago
Bcuz someone wants to oust drumpf!!!
forgottenpass 9y ago
Can someone explain to me why the Cambridge Analytica story is making people so much angrier than the later revelation that Facebook was scraping call+text info? The lie that facebook (and the like) are sold on is that there are zero possible negative ramifications of giving Facebook that data. Of course that's not true. But something has caught people's attention and they're waking up to it. Now is the time to tell them all the other reasons to not trust facebook. Loudly scratching your head about why people care about Cambridge Analytica is to miss the opportunity you have.

Analemma_ 9y ago

Because people are really, really bad at understanding threats that have vague, uncertain consequences. For the last 15 years, trying to get people to seriously worry about privacy has had about as much success as getting them to worry about climate change: they claim to care, but their revealed preferences tell a different story. The problem is that the downsides are uncertain and in the future, whereas the upsides are immediate and certain. Our ape brains are horrible at evaluating tradeoffs of this kind. But the flip side to this is why the CA story has blown up: for once, the consequences— "CA got Trump elected!"— are immediate and graspable, in a way that "Facebook is scraping your text info" is not (even if it's probably not true). When the effects are right in your face and not time-delayed, people sit up and pay attention.

jnbiche 9y ago

Probably because of some of the things that Cambridge Analytica stands accused of, or else things they have blatantly admitted to while being secretly recorded: blackmail and bribery of politicians in multiple countries, hacking election results, and even more unethical acts[1,2]. People are upset that their data was essentially stolen from Facebook (it was collected for use in an academic study, then turned around and sold for profit to CA), used by a company with ethical failures as serious as Cambridge Analytica, and then Facebook buried the story. It was two years before it came to light thanks to Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr. Facebook also worked closely with CA during the Trump campaign, even though they would have known by that time that data obtained under the pretense of an academic study had been sold to CA. 1. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43528219 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43528219 2. https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-t...

tim333 9y ago

Personally: I don't care what facebook does with my data - there's nothing very exciting and I have ad blockers so don't even see the ads. It doesn't effect me. However the Analytica stuff is about conning the masses into voting for Trump and Brexit and that effects me big time and pisses me off somewhat. In face worse that conning - more initing the mob to hatred through lies and bullshit. See for example the Hillary is Satan ad paid for by the russians and targeted with facebook to the kind of people who vote on the basis of that kind of stuff https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/02/us/politics/02dc-ads-army-of-jesus/02dc-ads-army-of-jesus-jumbo.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/02/us/politics/02dc-...

fiatpandas 9y ago
By giving access to your data, you are saying it's ok to take that data and pander to your psyche in some fashion. You may not see direct advertising in your browser, but it leads back to how strategists decide to engage your physical community. And even if you block ads, your friends may not. Friends will influence you through your feed, based on the ads they see, based on your data.
- tim333 9y ago
  Yeah but my data - I'm middle aged, read HN, speculate a bit in crypto etc - is not anything I'm worried about people knowing. I can understand if people want to keep stuff secret but I don't have much of that and what I do I don't post on the internet in any form. I've never really thought of facebook as much more private than HN - ie not private.
  - fiatpandas 9y ago
    But it’s not the secret data people are worried about with Cambridge Analytica. It’s mundane stuff that works to define a profile of your beliefs and mental vulnerabilities. And a big issue is many people see their data as not a big deal because they haven’t posted any nude photos to Facebook. Time to reframe how we view what is sensitive in the age of ML
  - 9y ago

machinehermit 9y ago

It is this weeks viral thing to be outraged about. I am buying some FB calls in the morning because no one will care about this "movement" in a month.

stordoff 9y ago

I'd imagine it's at least partly expectations - people know that Facebook has their data (even if not the full extent), so adding an additional class of data doesn't change that fundamental understanding or register as strongly. The fact that a third-party can pull your data out of Facebook is less obvious. The fact that it was used for political ends probably makes a difference as well, both in the amount of coverage it is receiving and that it makes the use of data into a more concrete issue (it's much easier to understand "this is what the data was used for" then "Facebook has your data and that's bad for hypothetical/abstract reasons"). > Isn't the Cambridge Analytics headline really just, "Group doesn't follow website's terms of service from five years ago" That's the act, but I'd say the usage/intent behind doing so is part of the story.

m52go 9y ago

> Isn't the Cambridge Analytics headline really just, "Group doesn't follow website's terms of service from five years ago". I think the the headline people are seeing is more like "Group doesn't follow website's terms of service from five years ago, and ends up helping Donald Trump win presidency." A big part of the reason this has become so big a story is political.

TAForObvReasons 9y ago
"A foreign entity that was not registered as foreign agents collaborated with a multinational corporation to influence the presidential election" is why people are outraged. But it's likely that none of this would have been investigated had Clinton won the election
- fatbird 9y ago
  If Clinton had won, the propaganda and dirty tricks would have failed, and so would have seemed much lower priority.
fatbird 9y ago
Cambridge Analytica’s actions had real world political consequences, so yes it’s political for that reason. But another angle of the CA portion of the story is that they were ratfucking in a very effective way—such as publishing fake news about BLM activists were organizing violent rallies, then broadcasting that to likely Trump voters. In some cases they even organized BLM events with incitement to commit violence, then pushed true stories about the events that suited their narrative. In other words, CA demonstrated a tremendous vulnerability in our political dialogue to pure propaganda and dirty tricks that social media, in its algorithmic purity, was supposed to make less likely, not more. Some of the fallout of this affair will be a tremendous distrust that any provider of social media is an honest broker of what others use their services for. If my news feed is tainted by a group like CA manipulating it at the algorithm level, what hope can I have that anything I’m receiving over the Internet isn’t compromised? Maybe the stories are fake; maybe they’re true but the balance of stories is altered; maybe the facts are true-ish but slanted or selective. These are all legitimate concerns in the normal marketplace of ideas, but now we find the marketplace of ideas is deliberately compromised by malicious entities.

dawhizkid 9y ago

The CA story is the first tangible example of the societal consequences of exploiting social data for something other than selling you cat litter.

tfuop 9y ago

Bcuz someone wants to oust drumpf!!!

forgottenpass 9y ago

Can someone explain to me why the Cambridge Analytica story is making people so much angrier than the later revelation that Facebook was scraping call+text info? The lie that facebook (and the like) are sold on is that there are zero possible negative ramifications of giving Facebook that data. Of course that's not true. But something has caught people's attention and they're waking up to it. Now is the time to tell them all the other reasons to not trust facebook. Loudly scratching your head about why people care about Cambridge Analytica is to miss the opportunity you have.