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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

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.
- downandout 9y ago
  I think the context you're missing is the qualitative differences in the uses of the data. The data in both cases was used to formulate campaign strategy and target ads. This use, by the way, was a blatant violation of the Facebook Developer TOS at the time, which stated essentially that the data obtained could only be used for the purpose of operating that app. Further, Obama's former campaign director has recently said in a series of tweets that they had the entire US social graph, were assisted by Facebook in getting it because Facebook was "on their side," and that their use of that data (in violation of developer TOS) significantly contributed to their victories. How is that not scandalous? So in both cases, they complied with the TOS in the collection of the data (although Obama was given special permission to blow through data collection limits enforced on all other apps). Then, once they had the data, in both cases, they violated the TOS by using that data for purposes other than operating their apps. The only difference between the two is that Obama did it on a much larger scale (about 4X), and he was assisted in violating FB's own policies by FB itself, where Kogan (not CA, who never had an app) was not.

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.
downandout 9y ago
I think the context you're missing is the qualitative differences in the uses of the data. The data in both cases was used to formulate campaign strategy and target ads. This use, by the way, was a blatant violation of the Facebook Developer TOS at the time, which stated essentially that the data obtained could only be used for the purpose of operating that app. Further, Obama's former campaign director has recently said in a series of tweets that they had the entire US social graph, were assisted by Facebook in getting it because Facebook was "on their side," and that their use of that data (in violation of developer TOS) significantly contributed to their victories. How is that not scandalous? So in both cases, they complied with the TOS in the collection of the data (although Obama was given special permission to blow through data collection limits enforced on all other apps). Then, once they had the data, in both cases, they violated the TOS by using that data for purposes other than operating their apps. The only difference between the two is that Obama did it on a much larger scale (about 4X), and he was assisted in violating FB's own policies by FB itself, where Kogan (not CA, who never had an app) was not.