Suspending Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group from Facebook

Any tech site that provide private user data via an API needs to make sure that data is guarded like it was their own site, as if their own employees were accessing the data.

Maybe what's needed is a PCI-compliance standard or a HIPPA-act for general user data?

Good. We can expect such behavior from vile conservative companies like Cambridge Analytics, funded by Mercer and the cause for Brexit. Why are they even allowed on FB? Such extreme groups should never be allowed.

This is an especially egregious case because it was well-known a long time ago that Kogan extracted a lot of really sensitive user data via the Facebook APIs that could be used for precision ad targeting. It says a lot about FB that they took this long to take any significant action other than getting a pinky promise from multiple companies that they deleted the data.

Even if they deleted the data, they could have retained information generated using that data which would allow them to effectively abuse the original data for ad targeting - which they did years ago. FB had opportunity to know this long before now.

It's bewildering that they knew this huge amount of sensitive data got into the hands of unauthorized third parties and were willing to treat assurances as a sufficient remedy. At the very least, all of their ad targeting should have been carefully vetted, but it seems ridiculous to let these third parties continue operating on the service when they had already demonstrated a willingness to blatantly violate the FB ToS and use unethical tactics for ad targeting.

In practice FB users aren't informed enough to know what this means or care about it, but missteps like this really demolish any argument that FB cares about user privacy or ToS enforcement. They had a huge amount of time to realize this was happening and take action on it. At this point it seems unlikely that CA and SCL are the only companies doing things like this - it's not exactly a secret that these techniques are effective. If they wanted to make it clear to third parties that this wouldn't be tolerated, they should have cracked down years ago.

What stops them from creating a holding company and getting access from that? Seems like a rat and mouse game and feels like more a PR move because of recent bad news exposure.

CA's political stance is basically irrelevant here, they're mercenaries. "Liberal" companies of this stripe would easily do the same thing if given the opportunity. The sort of work they do is intrinsically compromising unless your business is operating with a very firm moral/ethical code and it really hinders your ability to chase opportunities and maximize revenues.

It's not a coincidence that Google ditched 'don't be evil', and doing that doesn't indicate a twist to the far right or anything of the sort: It's just the reality that being a wildly profitable advertising firm can require a lot of moral/ethical flexibility that leads to outcomes like what we have here with CA & SCL.

The significance of CA's politics is specifically that they gave their services for free to a political campaign that aligned with their goals, which is already of questionable legality - and in this case, likely expected and possibly already received regulatory kickbacks in exchange. But that doesn't really matter in the context of FB deciding to enforce rules.

EDIT: To clarify, Trump's campaign did pay CA but sources have claimed that they received a deep discount.