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> Facebook themselves allowed the Obama campagin to pull demographic information in violation of their own polices, which was arguably impacted far more people

> Facebook themselves allowed the Obama campagin to pull demographic information in violation of their own polices, which was arguably impacted far more people (https://www.investors.com/.. https://www.investors.com/... && http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/...). Neither of those citations say that what the Obama campaign did violated Facebook's policies. The "But the Obama campaign did something similar!" is an argument based on false equivalence, used to muddy the conversation. (Further, both of those citations - a right-leaning source[0] and a tabloid, respectively - are articles written about some tweets. Which is not to say that they're wrong, but without further confirmation, one might want to take them with a grain of salt.) [0] The "You might like" links at the bottom are to the articles "Russia Scandal: Did Obama Tutor Hillary Clinton In Electoral Conspiracy 101?", "Will Mueller Ever Admit That There Was No Trump-Russia Collusion?", and "Hillary Clinton Still Can't Believe She Lost ... Or Why".

cryptonector 9y ago
> > Facebook themselves allowed the Obama campagin to pull demographic information in violation of their own polices, which was arguably impacted far more people (https://www.investors.com/.. https://www.investors.com/... && http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/...). > Neither of those citations say that what the Obama campaign did violated Facebook's policies. The text you quoted does not claim that the Obama campaign violated FB's policies. It says that FB allowed the Obama campaign to do things that would -without FB's approval- have violated FB's policies.
InTheArena 9y ago
Actually, if you look, the original source said that Facebook admitted that they were only doing so because they wanted Obama to win - and that for anyone else it would be a violation of their practices. The OFA postulated that Facebook did the same for other parties, but no evidence has come to light. In fact, reading what the OFA admitted, and what is under investigation here, the only difference seems to be that Facebook didn't unofficially bless the efforts of Cambridge, while they did for OFA. Here is the money quote - directly from Twitter: “They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side" That's not a conspiracy theory, or some evil double standard. That is a director for OFA explicitly mentioning that they were being given special data "because they were on our side". You should be very very scared about social network deciding to be on peoples side. See Trump and Twitter. It's as if the last two years hasn't convinced you to be deeply skeptical of social networks and surveillance as a service operations. This universal confirmation bias is the exact same bias that Trumpkins use to ignore any news they don't like. Facebook will keep selling you to the highest bidder. They don't give a fsck about your political point of views. (And this is probably tame for what they do for China to suppress their people).
- the-dude 9y ago
  There were rumors of Zuck wanting to run for president. Somehow, I think after this, it is ( I hope ) unthinkable.
  - InTheArena 9y ago
    we are firmly in the era of celebrity presidents - every president since Carter has been less qualified then the previous in terms of previous executive experience. Zuck, Kamala Harris and Oprah are whetting their appetites.
    - adamsea 9y ago
      Kamala Harris may be a political darling at the moment, but she is not a celebrity politician and so it doesn’t make sense to compare her to Oprah or Mark Zuckerberg. Harris has been in law/politics for basically her whole career: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris
    - CPLX 9y ago
      One of those three people is a sitting US Senator.
      - InTheArena 9y ago
        Who will not have even served out her term when she runs for president. These are the type of people we feel are well qualified to run the most powerful, largest, and most expensive institution in human history?
        tomrod 9y ago
        Of course. The people that would elect them are decidedly and unabashedly anti-technorati. It is a good thing we have the bureaucrat firewall in place, frustrating though it is.
        tclancy 9y ago
kristianc 9y ago
> (Further, both of those citations - a right-leaning source[0] and a tabloid, respectively - are articles written about some tweets. Which is not to say that they're wrong, but without further confirmation, one might want to take them with a grain of salt.) The tweets were from Obama's own Campaign Director, saying that OFA were allowed to violate FB's TOS in a way that others weren't.
jsonne 9y ago
Here's NPR. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805347/how-does-cambridge-analytica-flap-compare-with-obama-s-campaign-tactics https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805347/how-does-cambridge-... Relevant quotes from Betsy Hoover the Obama 2012 online organizing director: "So the app that everyone's referring to in this moment was an app called Targeted Sharing. It was an app that we created on Facebook that fully followed Facebook's terms of service. And any individual could decide to use the app. When they clicked on the app, a screen would pop up that would say what data they're authorizing the app was giving us access to and exactly how we were going to use that data. And so at that time, it was totally legitimate on Facebook to say you're giving us access to your social network. You're giving us access to your friends on Facebook." "...So, you know, we got your list of friends. And then we matched it to our model, our list of voters that we didn't build with Facebook data. We built with voter history and, you know, all of the other data points that Democratic campaigns use to build models. But we matched the data of your friends to that model and then reflected it back to the person who had authorized the app..." Sounds very similar to Cambrdige Analytica imho. In addition I don't really think that exploring how deep the rabbit hole goes is deflection, rather showing how much more pervasive this practice is than people think.
- scottmf 9y ago
  >The people signing up knew the data they were handing over would be used to support a political campaign. Their friends, however, did not. >Facebook friends lists, tags and photos allowed Obama operatives to identify a person’s close friends, which they then matched with offline public records. (Was this person likely to vote for Obama, but unlikely to get out to vote?) They then told the app users which of their friends they should send campaign messages to. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/22/meghan-mccain/comparing-facebook-data-use-obama-cambridge-analyt/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/... They seem pretty different. Not just in how the data was collected, but how it was then used. The research into Facebook likes and personality and the manipulation of those psychological profiles, which CA based their entire operation on, didn’t even exist in 2008. Comparing the two is absolutely a false equivalency. And the CA scandal goes way beyond the Facebook stuff. The company is allegedly involved in various illegal and anti-democratic activities around the world. Are people really downplaying this simply because they support Trump and CA has a Trump connection?
paulddraper 9y ago
> Neither of those citations say that what the Obama campaign did violated Facebook's policies. So? I can see why Facebook would care about that, because owning/selling/managing the data is their model. But that doesn't matter to me a Facebook user when the end result is the same (my FB info provided to political campaign.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rmc 9y ago
> both of those citations - a right-leaning source[0] and a tabloid, respectively The Daily Mail is a tabloid, and is so bad that it has been banned from being used as source in Wikipedia. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia-bans-daily-mail-as-unreliable-source-for-website https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia...

cryptonector 9y ago

> > Facebook themselves allowed the Obama campagin to pull demographic information in violation of their own polices, which was arguably impacted far more people (https://www.investors.com/.. https://www.investors.com/... && http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/...). > Neither of those citations say that what the Obama campaign did violated Facebook's policies. The text you quoted does not claim that the Obama campaign violated FB's policies. It says that FB allowed the Obama campaign to do things that would -without FB's approval- have violated FB's policies.

InTheArena 9y ago

Actually, if you look, the original source said that Facebook admitted that they were only doing so because they wanted Obama to win - and that for anyone else it would be a violation of their practices. The OFA postulated that Facebook did the same for other parties, but no evidence has come to light. In fact, reading what the OFA admitted, and what is under investigation here, the only difference seems to be that Facebook didn't unofficially bless the efforts of Cambridge, while they did for OFA. Here is the money quote - directly from Twitter: “They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side" That's not a conspiracy theory, or some evil double standard. That is a director for OFA explicitly mentioning that they were being given special data "because they were on our side". You should be very very scared about social network deciding to be on peoples side. See Trump and Twitter. It's as if the last two years hasn't convinced you to be deeply skeptical of social networks and surveillance as a service operations. This universal confirmation bias is the exact same bias that Trumpkins use to ignore any news they don't like. Facebook will keep selling you to the highest bidder. They don't give a fsck about your political point of views. (And this is probably tame for what they do for China to suppress their people).

the-dude 9y ago
There were rumors of Zuck wanting to run for president. Somehow, I think after this, it is ( I hope ) unthinkable.
- InTheArena 9y ago
  we are firmly in the era of celebrity presidents - every president since Carter has been less qualified then the previous in terms of previous executive experience. Zuck, Kamala Harris and Oprah are whetting their appetites.
  - adamsea 9y ago
    Kamala Harris may be a political darling at the moment, but she is not a celebrity politician and so it doesn’t make sense to compare her to Oprah or Mark Zuckerberg. Harris has been in law/politics for basically her whole career: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris
  - CPLX 9y ago
    One of those three people is a sitting US Senator.
    - InTheArena 9y ago
      Who will not have even served out her term when she runs for president. These are the type of people we feel are well qualified to run the most powerful, largest, and most expensive institution in human history?
      - tomrod 9y ago
        Of course. The people that would elect them are decidedly and unabashedly anti-technorati. It is a good thing we have the bureaucrat firewall in place, frustrating though it is.
      - tclancy 9y ago

kristianc 9y ago

> (Further, both of those citations - a right-leaning source[0] and a tabloid, respectively - are articles written about some tweets. Which is not to say that they're wrong, but without further confirmation, one might want to take them with a grain of salt.) The tweets were from Obama's own Campaign Director, saying that OFA were allowed to violate FB's TOS in a way that others weren't.

jsonne 9y ago

Here's NPR. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805347/how-does-cambridge-analytica-flap-compare-with-obama-s-campaign-tactics https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805347/how-does-cambridge-... Relevant quotes from Betsy Hoover the Obama 2012 online organizing director: "So the app that everyone's referring to in this moment was an app called Targeted Sharing. It was an app that we created on Facebook that fully followed Facebook's terms of service. And any individual could decide to use the app. When they clicked on the app, a screen would pop up that would say what data they're authorizing the app was giving us access to and exactly how we were going to use that data. And so at that time, it was totally legitimate on Facebook to say you're giving us access to your social network. You're giving us access to your friends on Facebook." "...So, you know, we got your list of friends. And then we matched it to our model, our list of voters that we didn't build with Facebook data. We built with voter history and, you know, all of the other data points that Democratic campaigns use to build models. But we matched the data of your friends to that model and then reflected it back to the person who had authorized the app..." Sounds very similar to Cambrdige Analytica imho. In addition I don't really think that exploring how deep the rabbit hole goes is deflection, rather showing how much more pervasive this practice is than people think.

scottmf 9y ago
>The people signing up knew the data they were handing over would be used to support a political campaign. Their friends, however, did not. >Facebook friends lists, tags and photos allowed Obama operatives to identify a person’s close friends, which they then matched with offline public records. (Was this person likely to vote for Obama, but unlikely to get out to vote?) They then told the app users which of their friends they should send campaign messages to. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/22/meghan-mccain/comparing-facebook-data-use-obama-cambridge-analyt/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/... They seem pretty different. Not just in how the data was collected, but how it was then used. The research into Facebook likes and personality and the manipulation of those psychological profiles, which CA based their entire operation on, didn’t even exist in 2008. Comparing the two is absolutely a false equivalency. And the CA scandal goes way beyond the Facebook stuff. The company is allegedly involved in various illegal and anti-democratic activities around the world. Are people really downplaying this simply because they support Trump and CA has a Trump connection?

paulddraper 9y ago

> Neither of those citations say that what the Obama campaign did violated Facebook's policies. So? I can see why Facebook would care about that, because owning/selling/managing the data is their model. But that doesn't matter to me a Facebook user when the end result is the same (my FB info provided to political campaign.)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rmc 9y ago

> both of those citations - a right-leaning source[0] and a tabloid, respectively The Daily Mail is a tabloid, and is so bad that it has been banned from being used as source in Wikipedia. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia-bans-daily-mail-as-unreliable-source-for-website https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia...