Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm no fan of Facebook, but if they have some sort of contract with CA, isn't it within their right to audit them? And if one company wanted to invite another for whatever collaboration, they should be allowed to. And if the collaboration is doing something illegal, obviously personnel from both companies should be charged. And FB can do whatever investigation it wants (as long it's legal) and the authorities are fre…
When police are involved that's one of those 'get in line' situations. I suspect the UK authorities are far more worried about the potential for destruction of evidence that they are in hampering an 'investigation' by FB.
Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
171–180 of 436 posts
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
No different than Spez @ Reddit saying he knows the Facebook accounts of anonymous users accessing adult content and can cross-reference that with their reddit accounts when they are logged in and sell that information to third parties. Reddit probably makes more money that way than any other, but that's just my guess because they clients are loaded and include sovereign states. Tons of sites are no better, probably…
Apropos of nothing, Ellen Pao commented on how Reddit handles user data: > In 2014, we decided not to sell reddit user data because there is no way to monitor and verify use. There is no way to ensure data is deleted/corrected. It may be on any engineer's laptop. Who had access to copy it? How do you correct or delete PII or unauth porn after it's sold? https://twitter.com/ekp/status/975192404167831552
A lot of reddit data is actually far more accessible via the API or the public data dump, which is on BigQuery. What makes the data less useful is the comparative anonymity because reddit users tend to use pseudonyms, and the fact that you can’t target users after building a targeting model from scraped data.
You could still trawl the reddit data to find useful correlations, and maybe get a good deal on ads if you notice the overlap of /r/the_donald with /r/bedwetting or whatever.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the "breaches" and "abuses" aren't breaches or abuses, it's Facebook's business model working as intended.
This fact has me more confused than anything. What did most people think Facebook was doing... Keeping all the data locked away an never letting anyone make use of it? The interest in that data by political entities should have been especially obvious. Additionally, this information about Cambridge Analytica came out months ago. I remember first hearing about it on a podcast that was mostly focused on the personality…
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
This fact has me more confused than anything. What did most people think Facebook was doing... Keeping all the data locked away an never letting anyone make use of it? The interest in that data by political entities should have been especially obvious. Additionally, this information about Cambridge Analytica came out months ago. I remember first hearing about it on a podcast that was mostly focused on the personality…
I think culturally we've accepted that political propaganda is different from run-of-the-mill corporate advertisement. Even the words we use are different: few people would call a TV spot "propaganda", even though both seek to influence people to act in a certain way. People understand and accept the concept and execution of advertisement. Propaganda is not received in the same way.
The problem is when huge amounts of money get mixed up in it. In the US money doesn't buy you political power directly, but it does buy you a voice (in the form of advertisements using mass media). It's still up to the listeners to listen to your voice one way or the other, but the disproportionate loudness of people's voices ensures that arguments backed by money are supported much louder than those without money (this is the thesis of Manufactured Consent). Ok, this is less than ideal, but things probably aren't skewed that much regarding things like social issues.
Political advertisement, in my opinion, doesn't veer into the realm of propaganda until one of two things happen: either the source is dishonest about their intentions (e.g. a person fully aware of climate change publicly denying it for financial reasons) and true beliefs, or their arguments are veiled in a way such that they do not appear to be advertisement at all. For example, suppose out of 100 homicides in the US, 10 were committed by Green people against Purple people, but a news organization decides to cover 5 homicides this week, and focuses solely on the ones between green and purple people. That doesn't look like an ad, even though it is one. The problem is that there's big money in this type of propaganda; these days political power is all about controlling narratives. It allows for a type of "inception" of beliefs and values - for example, making Green people think they're on the bring of a race war with Purple people - by letting people come to conclusions themselves after being presented by a highly slanted distribution of input.
This type of belief-inception is precisely what Cambridge Analytica specialized in. By knowing demographic information, they could target individuals based on issues they knew they would be sensitive to, and slowly indoctrinate them with desired views. I'll use my race example again, because Robert Mercer is essentially an unapologetic racist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mercer_(businessman)#Ra.... You start by painting a narrative picture, highlighting race-related conflicts and painting a picture of deteriorating race relations. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, this stokes racial tensions, creating more incidents for you to curate. By misrepresenting the relative frequency of these types of occurrences, people gradually come to the conclusion that you want them to: in this case, that black people are becoming more racist towards white people. You can use this to bring over working-class white people to the Republicans. Another good example of this type of indoctrination was Gamergate (which essentially birthed Breitbart / the alt-right) being used to galvanize frustration with the social justice sphere into creating a community of young male "race-realists"
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don’t need to flip the voters, just get them to not show up, and get more republicans to show up. This isn’t about politics, this is about buisiness interests, and professional reputation. Some examples of ads using this technique: http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/11/03/text-vote-hillary-... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-e...
Hillary Clinton had a $1.2 billion campaign budget, along with the vast majority of active social media users, the whole of Silicon Valley, and most of the press on her side. If Democrats didn’t show up to vote for her, the root cause wasn’t less than $1 million worth of ads for fake news stories.
In any case, CA thinks they are influencing elections, and are selling as much to clients. It’s like arguing over whether or not someone is helping a drug kingpin because they don’t actually sell a lot of drugs.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. The timing's weird, but stranger things have happened...
What's weird about the timing? I assume NYT ran it as soon as they could confirm it, and that Alex commented as soon as it was published. The timing here seems pretty straightforward.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#177There's breaking reporting that Facebook just had personnel in the Cambridge Analytica offices before the UK authorities could get there with warrants. https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/975844154361221121 > BREAKING: Facebook WAS inside Cambridge Analytica's office but have now "stood down" following dramatic intervention by UK Information Commissioner's Office.. https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/9758…
I seriously feel like I’m missing something here, why isn’t Facebook fully behind getting to the bottom of this? Going back even further, why was it so difficult for them to even admit they had a problem during the election? I don’t think it’s as simple as “more money,” but maybe as simple as people too close to the problem and too enamored by what they’ve created?
https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-t...
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#178There's breaking reporting that Facebook just had personnel in the Cambridge Analytica offices before the UK authorities could get there with warrants. https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/975844154361221121 > BREAKING: Facebook WAS inside Cambridge Analytica's office but have now "stood down" following dramatic intervention by UK Information Commissioner's Office.. https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/9758…
Just curious, what authority does FB have to have the personnel in CA offices? Why didn't CA simply call the cops to get them out?
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don’t need to flip the voters, just get them to not show up, and get more republicans to show up. This isn’t about politics, this is about buisiness interests, and professional reputation. Some examples of ads using this technique: http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/11/03/text-vote-hillary-... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-e...
Those ads read like parodies of a Russian attempting to write English. Nearly every one has a grammatical error or a factual inaccuracy that is obvious after 2 seconds of thought. I particularly like "dynastic succession of the Clinton family in American politics breaches the core democratic principles laid out by our founding fathers", especially given that the son of one of our presidential founding fathers himself…
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the "breaches" and "abuses" aren't breaches or abuses, it's Facebook's business model working as intended.
This fact has me more confused than anything. What did most people think Facebook was doing... Keeping all the data locked away an never letting anyone make use of it? The interest in that data by political entities should have been especially obvious. Additionally, this information about Cambridge Analytica came out months ago. I remember first hearing about it on a podcast that was mostly focused on the personality…
No, there's new Cambridge Analytica information, as of today:
https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-t...