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So maybe a fair re-phrasing would be: "Facebook provided personal information to Cambridge Analytica and they used this information to assist the Trump campaign

So maybe a fair re-phrasing would be: "Facebook provided personal information to Cambridge Analytica and they used this information to assist the Trump campaign" With the understanding that (1) the data was taken without the permission of all people impacted (i.e. if your friend installed the app and gave their permission, then you could be affected), and (2) it's debatable how effective the data actually was for the campaign. I think the "public Facebook APIs" descriptor is a little off — Facebook viewed it as a data breach and apologized (and got sued, and fined, etc). So it was pretty shady, not just simple above-board access.

stickfigure 4y ago
Around that era I used those APIs to build a somewhat novel (and not very successful) dating site where you could play matchmaker for your friends based on their likes. I assure you, the API was public. At some point Facebook started getting flak for having APIs that grant access to data-about-friends. There are a couple ways of looking at this; one way is "I didn't grant my friends permission to share my data with an app!" the other is "you shared your data with friends via Facebook, what does it matter if they use the FB UI or some other app". It's a can of worms but I don't think anyone would call it a breach.
- turtledragonfly 4y ago
  Ok, fair enough — was a public API at the time, which was subsequently removed/limited and apps that had been using it in that way were termed "abusive". And I should correct myself that the phrase used by Zuck[1] was "breach of trust" not "data breach," though several other sources (articles, etc[2]) at the time did in fact use the term "data breach." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180326162844/https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104712037900071 [2] (example) https://money.com/facebook-cambridge-analytica-data-breach-numbers/

stickfigure 4y ago

Around that era I used those APIs to build a somewhat novel (and not very successful) dating site where you could play matchmaker for your friends based on their likes. I assure you, the API was public. At some point Facebook started getting flak for having APIs that grant access to data-about-friends. There are a couple ways of looking at this; one way is "I didn't grant my friends permission to share my data with an app!" the other is "you shared your data with friends via Facebook, what does it matter if they use the FB UI or some other app". It's a can of worms but I don't think anyone would call it a breach.

turtledragonfly 4y ago
Ok, fair enough — was a public API at the time, which was subsequently removed/limited and apps that had been using it in that way were termed "abusive". And I should correct myself that the phrase used by Zuck[1] was "breach of trust" not "data breach," though several other sources (articles, etc[2]) at the time did in fact use the term "data breach." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180326162844/https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104712037900071 [2] (example) https://money.com/facebook-cambridge-analytica-data-breach-numbers/