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Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

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Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#51

Post by scoggs »

medyadaily wrote: post #32

I have a personal story from inside facebook to share. and when I shared this story on my facebook my personal facebook was suspended too. 5 years ago Facebook recruiter reached out to me and invited me to the W hotel in Chicago. I was very excited -not for the job- but for the opportunity to meet with senior Facebook managers and tell them about an evil thing Facebook does. Here is the background story: I am Kurdish…

I just find it disgusting that, as a company, they feel they have the right to act in such a way. At the end of the day I guess it's safe to assume that somebody inside or outside of Facebook has an agenda to proceed with actions like these and I'm sure there are many other cases of things like this around the world but the entire thing just leaves the worst taste in my mouth.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#52

Post by scoggs »

oh-kumudo wrote: post #45
makomk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's really the problem. I mean, Obama's 2012 campaign scraped the data of Facebook friends of people who'd signed into the campaign website in order to figure out the most effective way to convince those friends to vote for him via microtargeting and other techniques, in particular working out which friends their volunteers could most easily convince to vote for him. We're not just talking about gene…

What you talk about Trump campaign is clearly far from the reality: https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4 Starting around 11:00 The CA person clearly shows, from the screenshots, they have personal level targeting to predict whether a person is neurotic or not, what ads should be used to exploit that.

Here's a timestamp for anybody who needs it:

https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4?t=10m33s (10:33)

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#53

Post by colordrops »

sithadmin wrote: post #6
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach, quibbling over what to call it and now this, is mind-blowing. Their "it wasn't a robbery because we left the front door open" excuse may finally bring about trans-Atlantic regulation of social media.

>The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was responsible for? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like the chain of events is: 1.) Third party (Aleksandr Kogan) creates 'personality quiz' app, Facebook users opt-in to share information from their profile 2.) Aleksandr Kogan hands off data gathered by the app to Cambridge Analytica…

Using an "honor system" doesn't work for privacy, considering thousands of apps have access to the data. The problem is not Aleksandr Kogan.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#54

Post by bodyfour »

garblegarble wrote: post #30
mlamat wrote: post #14

In about 20 minutes, an explosive documentary about this will be airing on Channel 4 BBC.

>Channel 4 BBC Just a side-note, Channel 4 is an entirely separate wholly commercial public-service broadcaster, whereas the BBC is publicly funded via a license that's required to watch live TV

Yes, the fact that "BBC4" and "Channel 4" are completely different things is (understandably) missed by nearly everyone outside the UK.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#55

Post by niuzeta »

watertom wrote: post #50
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably worth rehashing the infamous messages: > Zuck: People just submitted it. > Zuck: I don't know why. > Zuck: They "trust me" > Zuck: Dumb fucks. A cynic would interpret the current state of the world to suggest that Zuckerberg, and by extension Facebook, considers a large segment of the world population "Dumb fucks" http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...

Didn't Zuck take the idea for Facebook from someone else and then run with it?

It's a popular story, but out of all gripes you have against Zuck it's perhaps the least relevant. Especially so in HN, where the daily mantra is "the idea is worthless but the execution is".

There are many valid criticisms against Zuck, and I don't think this one quite holds value as much as the others.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#56

Post by donarb »

This has bigger implications than just data breaches, it goes to campaign finance violations of the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica shared an address in Beverley Hills with Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon's political consulting company called Glittering Steel. The implication is that GS used Cambridge's data to target users on Facebook with political ads for Trump all while being paid by a PAC called Make America 1 that was believed to be funded by Robert Mercer and his family.

This Twitter user has numerous posts about this. Not sure exactly who they are, but they have multiple sources of information about this story. https://twitter.com/emlas/status/975138624911151104

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#57

Post by JumpCrisscross »

chatmasta wrote: post #41
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that was a privilege that the users authorized them to grant Kogan was granted permission to ephemerally use, for academic purposes, the data of a quarter of a million people who authorized the access. Kogan got fifty million peoples' data ( i.e. Facebook let him scrape the data of people who had not given authorization, some of whom had explicitly gone into their privacy settings to turn off the sharing of their d…

This is hyperbole. He created an app, wrote in the description that it was for academic purposes, and then later amended the description / TOS to allow selling of data. Facebook is faulting him because he did not update them on the purpose of the app. There were no systemic barriers in place that Kogan had to circumvent to get access to the data; the Facebook API worked as expected and gave it to him. Regardless of t…

> the Facebook API worked as expected and gave it to him

"Breach" doesn't have to involve a technical malfunction. An employee handing confidential information to an outsider is a breach. Facebook collected users' information. The information was accessed, stored, and distributed without Facebook's (nor their users') authorization. That's a breach.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#58

Post by UncleEntity »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #12
darawk wrote: post #5

Why are people calling this a data breach? As I understand it, CA just scraped the data from users who authorized their app to do so. Am I missing something here?

Facebook did not authorize data retention. CA’s actions were therefore unauthorized use of data, which is the textbook definition of a data breach.

> Facebook did not authorize data retention. CA’s actions were therefore unauthorized use of data, which is the textbook definition of a data breach.

But they did authorize data acquisition which means they weren't "breached" but fully consented to handing over the data.

Be like HN saying I can read all the comments I want but can't copy them to my hard drive, if I did copy them and used them for some other purpose would this also be a "textbook definition of a data breach"?

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#59

Post by warent »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #39
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach, quibbling over what to call it and now this, is mind-blowing. Their "it wasn't a robbery because we left the front door open" excuse may finally bring about trans-Atlantic regulation of social media.

Probably worth rehashing the infamous messages: > Zuck: People just submitted it. > Zuck: I don't know why. > Zuck: They "trust me" > Zuck: Dumb fucks. A cynic would interpret the current state of the world to suggest that Zuckerberg, and by extension Facebook, considers a large segment of the world population "Dumb fucks" http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...

That text was so long ago I don't think it's relevant anymore. Oprah Winfrey was also crack cocaine smoker in a cycle of abusive relationships in her late twenties. If people choose to change their perspectives they can, and everything indicates that Mark has matured quite a bit since then.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#60

Post by makomk »

oh-kumudo wrote: post #45
makomk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's really the problem. I mean, Obama's 2012 campaign scraped the data of Facebook friends of people who'd signed into the campaign website in order to figure out the most effective way to convince those friends to vote for him via microtargeting and other techniques, in particular working out which friends their volunteers could most easily convince to vote for him. We're not just talking about gene…

What you talk about Trump campaign is clearly far from the reality: https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4 Starting around 11:00 The CA person clearly shows, from the screenshots, they have personal level targeting to predict whether a person is neurotic or not, what ads should be used to exploit that.

That was (and still is) CA's supposed selling point. What's doubtful is that the Trump campaign were convinced this worked, or that there's any reason why anyone else should be. It just doesn't match up with the reporting I've seen based on campaign sources talking about how they designed ads and targetted people. It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psychological classification on someone based on what they post online, but actually use that to work out how to manipulate their minds. It's hard enough designing a repeatable and meaningful personality classification with the full co-operation of the test subjects.

Not only that, the one campaign we can confirm did use CA's tech - Ted Cruz in the primaries - flopped, and it certainly didn't get rave reports on its accuracy, ability to convince, and understanding of how they thought from those it was targetting.

Edit: Brad Parscale's actually on video saying that the campaign didn't use psychographics because they didn't think it actually worked: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/secret-weapon/ (6:35ish).

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