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A lot of people felt Facebook should do more to proactively stop people from scraping and aggregating data from their site after the CA debacle. Which is what

A lot of people felt Facebook should do more to proactively stop people from scraping and aggregating data from their site after the CA debacle. Which is what they are doing here, and you are labeling “absolutely preposterous”. Which way is it? Should they let people do whatever they want with their accounts as you suggest, and risk a repeat of the CA fiasco? Or try to proactively stop it like they are now?

rizpanjwani 6y ago
This looks like a strawman dressed in false dilemma. With Cambridge Analytica debacle, as I understand it, it was a facebook quiz hosted by facebook and the data collected from facebook directly and used for nefarious purposes. This is a an extension developed by researchers asking users to install it on their machines and used exactly as advertised: scrapes advertisement data that facebook shows them.
- traek 6y ago
  CA data was from a quiz, developed by a researcher at Cambridge University, hosted by that researcher, which scraped FB APIs after being authorized by a user. This data is from a browser extension, developed by researchers at NYU, hosted by those researchers, which scrapes the FB site after being installed by a user. IMO the situations are pretty analogous.
  - RSZC 6y ago
    The situations are in no way analogous. CA gathered data on users who did not opt in. They paid 270k users to take a quiz, and gathered information on 87MM of their Facebook friends who never consented to sharing their information.
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      No kidding, the difference between opt-in and secret-opt-in is obvious.
  - mszcz 6y ago
    In CA scandal the data collected was about users. Here data is collected about what Facebook does, what a corporation does. They don't seem similar.
rcoveson 6y ago
> Which way is it? Should they let people do whatever they want with their accounts as you suggest, and risk a repeat of the CA fiasco? Or try to proactively stop it like they are now? No, they should assume all the data they serve about people is being collected and indexed by all the people they serve it to, and then restrict what they serve accordingly. Suing people for asking their computers to record what Facebook served them is insane.
austincheney 6y ago
> Should they let people do whatever they want with their accounts as you suggest, and risk a repeat of the CA fiasco? Yes.
cbozeman 6y ago
What Cambridge Analytica fiasco? https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/10/06/1602008755000/ICO-s-final-report-into-Cambridge-Analytica-invites-regulatory-questions/ https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/10/06/1602008755000/ICO-s-f... The more I learn about CA and this so-called "fiasco", the more I realize other companies know far more and actively did far more than CA did. They were an easy scapegoat for Hillary Clinton losing what should have been the easiest Presidential election win in American history. The fact someone made a few hundred thousand - million off a documentary is even more pathetic.
- 3np 6y ago
  "Everyone else is doing it" and "these other people are worse" is hardly a justification.
ricardo81 6y ago
>A lot of people felt Facebook should do more to proactively stop people from scraping and aggregating data from their site after the CA debacle. Which is what they are doing here, and you are labeling “absolutely preposterous”. Maybe not the best usage of the word scraping. CA had access to the data without having to scrape the front end. For this extension, it is by consent of the user For scraping, I agree. Facebook should try their best to stop people accessing personal data of people they don't know. They do make reasonable attempts, it's less than trivial to set up fake accounts on scale but not impossible. Their "bulk uploads" feature is designed in such a way that it doesn't link email addresses to profiles (or at least as easily), unlike LinkedIn and Twitter. Saying that, it's up to the user to set their privacy settings but I would much prefer the defaults (if they still aren't, I don't use FB) were automatically set to non-public. I've seen an implementation that used headless browsers and thousands of FB accounts to scrape millions of profiles.
raxxorrax 6y ago
They harvested the data about users without their consent. This is about users wanting to protect against said data collection, so I think your angle comes from the wrong perspective and the juxtaposition (Which way is it?) is wrong. > Should they let people do whatever they want with their accounts That CA didn't have the consent of users was the scandal.

rizpanjwani 6y ago

This looks like a strawman dressed in false dilemma. With Cambridge Analytica debacle, as I understand it, it was a facebook quiz hosted by facebook and the data collected from facebook directly and used for nefarious purposes. This is a an extension developed by researchers asking users to install it on their machines and used exactly as advertised: scrapes advertisement data that facebook shows them.

traek 6y ago
CA data was from a quiz, developed by a researcher at Cambridge University, hosted by that researcher, which scraped FB APIs after being authorized by a user. This data is from a browser extension, developed by researchers at NYU, hosted by those researchers, which scrapes the FB site after being installed by a user. IMO the situations are pretty analogous.
- RSZC 6y ago
  The situations are in no way analogous. CA gathered data on users who did not opt in. They paid 270k users to take a quiz, and gathered information on 87MM of their Facebook friends who never consented to sharing their information.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    No kidding, the difference between opt-in and secret-opt-in is obvious.
- mszcz 6y ago
  In CA scandal the data collected was about users. Here data is collected about what Facebook does, what a corporation does. They don't seem similar.

rcoveson 6y ago

> Which way is it? Should they let people do whatever they want with their accounts as you suggest, and risk a repeat of the CA fiasco? Or try to proactively stop it like they are now? No, they should assume all the data they serve about people is being collected and indexed by all the people they serve it to, and then restrict what they serve accordingly. Suing people for asking their computers to record what Facebook served them is insane.

austincheney 6y ago

> Should they let people do whatever they want with their accounts as you suggest, and risk a repeat of the CA fiasco? Yes.

cbozeman 6y ago

What Cambridge Analytica fiasco? https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/10/06/1602008755000/ICO-s-final-report-into-Cambridge-Analytica-invites-regulatory-questions/ https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/10/06/1602008755000/ICO-s-f... The more I learn about CA and this so-called "fiasco", the more I realize other companies know far more and actively did far more than CA did. They were an easy scapegoat for Hillary Clinton losing what should have been the easiest Presidential election win in American history. The fact someone made a few hundred thousand - million off a documentary is even more pathetic.

3np 6y ago
"Everyone else is doing it" and "these other people are worse" is hardly a justification.

ricardo81 6y ago

>A lot of people felt Facebook should do more to proactively stop people from scraping and aggregating data from their site after the CA debacle. Which is what they are doing here, and you are labeling “absolutely preposterous”. Maybe not the best usage of the word scraping. CA had access to the data without having to scrape the front end. For this extension, it is by consent of the user For scraping, I agree. Facebook should try their best to stop people accessing personal data of people they don't know. They do make reasonable attempts, it's less than trivial to set up fake accounts on scale but not impossible. Their "bulk uploads" feature is designed in such a way that it doesn't link email addresses to profiles (or at least as easily), unlike LinkedIn and Twitter. Saying that, it's up to the user to set their privacy settings but I would much prefer the defaults (if they still aren't, I don't use FB) were automatically set to non-public. I've seen an implementation that used headless browsers and thousands of FB accounts to scrape millions of profiles.

raxxorrax 6y ago

They harvested the data about users without their consent. This is about users wanting to protect against said data collection, so I think your angle comes from the wrong perspective and the juxtaposition (Which way is it?) is wrong. > Should they let people do whatever they want with their accounts That CA didn't have the consent of users was the scandal.