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> CA scraped Facebook APIs what does it mean to scrape an API. I usually hear that word for html website scraping.
by dominotw 7y ago
> CA scraped Facebook APIs
what does it mean to scrape an API. I usually hear that word for html website scraping.
- myhf 7y agoNormal API use is to read information about the people directly interacting with a post or an app, for the purpose of facilitating that interaction. Cambridge Analytica used posts to get API access to all users (and friends-of-friends) who interacted with those posts, in order to incrementally build a copy of the complete social graph. The process is similar to scraping.
- r00fus 7y agoThis is still an ACL issue - that Facebook allowed CA to pull data they weren’t authorized for doesn’t mean making API access is a bad idea. It increases the attack surface but publicly to everyone.
- Thorrez 7y agoIf I share some information with a friend of a friend, should that information be viewable by an app that the friend of a friend activated? For Cambridge Analytica, the answer was "yes", so Cambridge Analytica was able to scrape a bunch of stuff. If we make the answer "no", then it won't be possible to build alternate UIs, because the Facebook UI will be able to show my friend of a friend my information, but an alternate UI won't be able to do so.