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Watch the mini documentary of the undercover op by channel 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ This isn't just data mining, it's straight up misinformation, entrapment, and god knows what else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is completely different. Cambridge Analytica deliberately lied and deceived users about the intention of the application they created to harvest information about users: > Like all app developers, Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app. His app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app us…
The application is different, but not 'completely different". The use of friend lists harvested from an application to target ads was not known by users. Much of political campaigning, and advertising in general, is exactly as you describe, "using manipulation and psychological techniques to convince". I would agree with you that the purpose of the application was deceptive, but don't most applications that use Faceb…
Please, just call it what it is: propaganda.
Whether you're selling a product, a service or an idea, you're still doing your best to manipulate your target audience. The techniques are the same.
And I use the term in a purely clinical sense: manipulation at scale, the subtler the better.
Is it really that different from the 2012 campaign? "But the Obama team had a solution in place: a Facebook application that will transform the way campaigns are conducted in the future. For supporters, the app appeared to be just another way to digitally connect to the campaign.... That’s because the more than 1 million Obama backers who signed up for the app gave the campaign permission to look at their Facebook fr…
I would argue the difference there was that was an explicitly political app where from what I understand the app that leaked this data wasn't political in any way. Either way it's great to see some light shined on FB, this is exactly the reason I don't use their services.
> They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.
Watch the mini documentary of the undercover op by channel 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ This isn't just data mining, it's straight up misinformation, entrapment, and god knows what else.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/us/cambridge-analytica-al...
Note: I tried to post this here, because it seemed worthy of its own thread, but it was marked as a dupe for some reason - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16622761
Facebook engages in surveillance capitalism. Cambridge Analytica engages in Orwellian practices of deliberate and targeted mass manipulation, actively deceiving users from the outset about it's intentions, and using lies as a means to an end.
From the Facebook report on the reason CA was suspended:
> Like all app developers, Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app. His app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.” [0]
Cambridge Analytica's CEO also espouses complete deceit as a strategy core strategy for using data to manipulate outcomes and advocates for using "behaviorally targeted language" to create an outcome. Like say you have a "private beach." If you really want to keep people out, why not say "sharks sighted" instead?
His example, not mine: https://imgur.com/a/q1zYP, https://youtu.be/n8Dd5aVXLCc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bG5ps5KdDo
The scandals for me are two fold. First, we have a data repository (Facebook) that's powerful enough to assist in this type of weaponized manipulation that's entirely unprotected. Even if you think Facebook is some type of benevolent overlord that you trust with your data, it's a scandal that nothing has stopped any number of third-parties from doing what Cambridge Analytica did.
Second, we have a sitting president who actively made use of these "targeted information strategies" during his election in a blatantly unethical fashion. (For the record, so did Ted Cruz.) I for a long time laughed off the Antifa crowd as being an overreaction to Trump, but it's now blatantly clear to me that he deliberately used authoritarian tactics to win the election.
Some regulation I'd like to see for social network ads, at least for political ads: - Make all ads publicly viewable along with the targeting demographics. So everybody can see, for example, that a politician is pushing xenophobia to older people. - Some kind of ad "fake news" score associated with a campaign. This one is difficult, but I could imagine a score based on a mixture of "fake news scoring providers" from…
For all political ads, why not aggregate and publish the demographic's preferences too? "People who liked this ad also liked $these_things." That way you could see what kinds or subgroups the ads are trying to engage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it so hard to believe that everyone at Facebook is just shocked now to learn the realities of what they do. Their naivety and ignorance would have to be off the charts for it to be genuine.
I’ve worked in places that were pretty fubar. People work very hard to find ways to whitewash what they do. Nobody wants to be the bad guy.