"The deception was lacking" is not only a material difference, but a key difference, assuming this Chicago Tribune article is accurate: >"However, as former Ob

"The deception was lacking" is not only a material difference, but a key difference, assuming this Chicago Tribune article is accurate: >"However, as former Obama advisers point out, there are significant differences between the way Obama’s campaign mined data from Facebook, and the activities of which Cambridge is accused: The Obama campaign collected data with its own campaign app, complied with Facebook’s terms of service and, most important in my view, received permission from users before using the data." https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-perspec-page-facebook-zuckerberg-obama-20180323-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-pers... Cambridge Analytica made a personality quiz app and in the terms stated the data would be used only for academic purposes. The creator, the app, the theme of the app, the name of the app, and the purported use of the data wouldn't have indicated any kind of political purpose to any users, while the Obama campaign app was clearly attributed to the Obama campaign and the purpose was evident. There was some potentially questionable behavior due to the app's ability to scrape info about all of the app users' friends, but the app did request permission to see users' friends lists beforehand. I don't know the exact details of the nature of that scraping or how it was presented to users, but even if ones assumes they also did something shady, Cambridge Analytica was definitely sneakier and behaving more like a private intelligence agency than a campaign contractor/advisor. edit: I don't know enough about the facts of the use of users' friends' data to judge how ethical or consensual it was. I just think that either way, the Cambridge Analytica one is definitely less defensible.