4 ms·

Facebook accused of massive fraud in new lawsuit filed by Cook County

93 points by Jerry2 9y ago

trisimix 9y ago
Really digging this Facebook dogpili vibe.
downandout 9y ago
I wonder if the statute of limitations to sue Facebook over allowing the Obama campaign “ingest the entire US social graph” [1] has expired. Red states and Republicans should jump on this bandwagon too. Allowing Facebook data to be used in elections is either fraud or it isn’t, regardless of whether the candidate benefiting from it is the one the press likes or not. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/facebooks-rules-for-accessing-user-data-lured-more-than-just-cambridge-analytica/2018/03/19/31f6979c-658e-43d6-a71f-afdd8bf1308b_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/facebooks-ru...
- evgen 9y ago
  Keep beating that dead horse, I am sure eventually people will stop laughing at you...
  - downandout 9y ago
    I will call out hypocrisy wherever I see it, whether you and your ilk laugh or not. It's not OK for either side to do this stuff, yet it is celebrated when the left does it and demonized when the right does it. It's either right or wrong, pick one and stick with it. The fact that you are "laughing" at an issue this serious simply because it hurts your side, by the way, is one of the reasons that you lost the election.
    - gdulli 9y ago
      I think the context you're missing is the qualitative differences in the uses of the data. Facebook leaking data to anyone who's figured out how to use it to feed more money back to FB through targeted ads has been going on every day for years by countless parties. Hence the FB valuation. CA was just a tipping point of public awareness. If CA hadn't been caught on tape admitting to fabricating fake news to elect Trump, the story would be much smaller. It's now more than the sum of its parts. It may seem unfair that the negative attention brought to specifically the CA acquisition of the data feels disproportionate, but CA brought this on itself. I assure you, if either Obama campaign had used Facebook to create and spread Macedonia-type blatant fake news like CA did, it would have been a big scandal. But "fake news" in its current very specific meaning did not exist until this election cycle.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > If CA hadn't been caught on tape admitting to fabricating fake news to elect Trump, the story would be much smaller. It's now more than the sum of its parts. Well, that, and the various Russian connections and the confluence with the broader Russian interference / Trump collusion issue. > But "fake news" in its current very specific meaning did not exist until this election cycle. Well, it wasn't a factor in US elections; what Rand called the Russian “firehose of falsehoods” propaganda model, which got branded “fake news” when it became evident in the 2016 election context, did exist previously.
        gdulli 9y ago
        I'd define the current "fake news" phenomenon as the unique and novel combination of: 1. The ability to create and publish to a large audience a blatantly false story. 2. The ability to throw together a landing page that resembles a "real" media site (to those who don't care to think about it closely) 3. #1 and #2 can be done very easily and with a modest budget and modest level of technical skill. 4. The internet allows #1 and #2 to be done anonymously and without accountability. (For a while. Perhaps.) And obviously obscures the nation of origin. Also the audience is specifically primed to accept fake news at this point in history because of: 5. The 25-year softening of the American public's interest in discerning truth from fiction (thanks Fox News) from entertainment (thanks CNN) in political reporting. 6. An economic downturn whose recovery bypassed a lot of people who didn't have modern enough skills, which is textbook conditions for making people susceptible to the loudest demagogue who blames outsiders rather than suggest one has the responsibility to adapt to a changing economy. Making college free is a real solution but it puts time and effort on people.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Allowing Facebook data to be used in elections is either fraud or it isn’t No, that's not how fraud works.
  - downandout 9y ago
    I agree with you. But the attorney for Cook County, who filed this absurd lawsuit, does not.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      I don't see evidence for that. Particularly, I haven't seen any argument that Obama transferred information out of its app for other uses, instead of using it within the app in exactly the method allowed by FB’s public policies. While those policies may have been laxer than some would prefer, the Illinois lawsuit relied heavily on the fact that the info was used outside the parameters of those policies, while users were ensured it would be used only within the policies, and that FB was aware of the unauthorized use and failed to notify or arrest it, and indeed benefited from it. The thing that is charged as a violation is not “using Facebook data in an election campaign”, but “using personal data without even the kind of consent that comes from acting within public policied on how data will be used.”
      - downandout 9y ago
        Particularly, I haven't seen any argument that Obama transferred information out of its app for other uses, instead of using it within the app in exactly the method allowed by FB’s public policies. That is actually not the case. The public policies at the time stated that the data gleaned from any app was to be used solely for the purpose of operating the app. Obama, however, with the full knowledge and consent of Facebook, used this data for campaign strategy and ad targeting. They downloaded the entire US social graph (also something no other app was allowed to do), and then used that data far outside of the publicly disclosed purposes. So if they can legitimately be sued for failing to do enough to stop Kogan/CA from using the data in violation of publicly stated policies, they suffer even more liability in the Obama case, as they were active and willing participants in Obama's activities that also violated the publicly stated policies.
dragonwriter 9y ago
Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, the latter largely based on poor response (which, along with some of Facebooks marketing, is used to suggest willful cooperation) when the abuse by the former was discovered.
mudil 9y ago
“Facebook… is the largest data mining operation in existence.” You know what? It's actually a true statement. Just add Google as a co-conspirator.

93 points by Jerry2 9y ago

Really digging this Facebook dogpili vibe.

I wonder if the statute of limitations to sue Facebook over allowing the Obama campaign “ingest the entire US social graph” [1] has expired. Red states and Republicans should jump on this bandwagon too. Allowing Facebook data to be used in elections is either fraud or it isn’t, regardless of whether the candidate benefiting from it is the one the press likes or not. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/facebooks-rules-for-accessing-user-data-lured-more-than-just-cambridge-analytica/2018/03/19/31f6979c-658e-43d6-a71f-afdd8bf1308b_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/facebooks-ru...

evgen 9y ago
Keep beating that dead horse, I am sure eventually people will stop laughing at you...
- downandout 9y ago
  I will call out hypocrisy wherever I see it, whether you and your ilk laugh or not. It's not OK for either side to do this stuff, yet it is celebrated when the left does it and demonized when the right does it. It's either right or wrong, pick one and stick with it. The fact that you are "laughing" at an issue this serious simply because it hurts your side, by the way, is one of the reasons that you lost the election.
  - gdulli 9y ago
    I think the context you're missing is the qualitative differences in the uses of the data. Facebook leaking data to anyone who's figured out how to use it to feed more money back to FB through targeted ads has been going on every day for years by countless parties. Hence the FB valuation. CA was just a tipping point of public awareness. If CA hadn't been caught on tape admitting to fabricating fake news to elect Trump, the story would be much smaller. It's now more than the sum of its parts. It may seem unfair that the negative attention brought to specifically the CA acquisition of the data feels disproportionate, but CA brought this on itself. I assure you, if either Obama campaign had used Facebook to create and spread Macedonia-type blatant fake news like CA did, it would have been a big scandal. But "fake news" in its current very specific meaning did not exist until this election cycle.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > If CA hadn't been caught on tape admitting to fabricating fake news to elect Trump, the story would be much smaller. It's now more than the sum of its parts. Well, that, and the various Russian connections and the confluence with the broader Russian interference / Trump collusion issue. > But "fake news" in its current very specific meaning did not exist until this election cycle. Well, it wasn't a factor in US elections; what Rand called the Russian “firehose of falsehoods” propaganda model, which got branded “fake news” when it became evident in the 2016 election context, did exist previously.
      - gdulli 9y ago
        I'd define the current "fake news" phenomenon as the unique and novel combination of: 1. The ability to create and publish to a large audience a blatantly false story. 2. The ability to throw together a landing page that resembles a "real" media site (to those who don't care to think about it closely) 3. #1 and #2 can be done very easily and with a modest budget and modest level of technical skill. 4. The internet allows #1 and #2 to be done anonymously and without accountability. (For a while. Perhaps.) And obviously obscures the nation of origin. Also the audience is specifically primed to accept fake news at this point in history because of: 5. The 25-year softening of the American public's interest in discerning truth from fiction (thanks Fox News) from entertainment (thanks CNN) in political reporting. 6. An economic downturn whose recovery bypassed a lot of people who didn't have modern enough skills, which is textbook conditions for making people susceptible to the loudest demagogue who blames outsiders rather than suggest one has the responsibility to adapt to a changing economy. Making college free is a real solution but it puts time and effort on people.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Allowing Facebook data to be used in elections is either fraud or it isn’t No, that's not how fraud works.
- downandout 9y ago
  I agree with you. But the attorney for Cook County, who filed this absurd lawsuit, does not.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    I don't see evidence for that. Particularly, I haven't seen any argument that Obama transferred information out of its app for other uses, instead of using it within the app in exactly the method allowed by FB’s public policies. While those policies may have been laxer than some would prefer, the Illinois lawsuit relied heavily on the fact that the info was used outside the parameters of those policies, while users were ensured it would be used only within the policies, and that FB was aware of the unauthorized use and failed to notify or arrest it, and indeed benefited from it. The thing that is charged as a violation is not “using Facebook data in an election campaign”, but “using personal data without even the kind of consent that comes from acting within public policied on how data will be used.”
    - downandout 9y ago
      Particularly, I haven't seen any argument that Obama transferred information out of its app for other uses, instead of using it within the app in exactly the method allowed by FB’s public policies. That is actually not the case. The public policies at the time stated that the data gleaned from any app was to be used solely for the purpose of operating the app. Obama, however, with the full knowledge and consent of Facebook, used this data for campaign strategy and ad targeting. They downloaded the entire US social graph (also something no other app was allowed to do), and then used that data far outside of the publicly disclosed purposes. So if they can legitimately be sued for failing to do enough to stop Kogan/CA from using the data in violation of publicly stated policies, they suffer even more liability in the Obama case, as they were active and willing participants in Obama's activities that also violated the publicly stated policies.

dragonwriter 9y ago

Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, the latter largely based on poor response (which, along with some of Facebooks marketing, is used to suggest willful cooperation) when the abuse by the former was discovered.

mudil 9y ago

“Facebook… is the largest data mining operation in existence.” You know what? It's actually a true statement. Just add Google as a co-conspirator.