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Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#301

Post by sounds »

fooey wrote: post #42
zilchers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because the "breaches" and "abuses" aren't breaches or abuses, it's Facebook's business model working as intended.

  “The people whose job is to protect the user always
  are fighting an uphill battle against the people
  whose job is to make money for the company,”
  said Sandy Parakilas
Just a shout out to all you who might be at a company like this.

If your company hasn't figured out user privacy yet (Facebook hasn't), you might want to look for the exit.

If your company treats you badly, look for the exit.

If your company treats you like you are expendable, you are.

If your company treats users like they are replaceable, they are - and when they have burned out all the users, the company will catch fire and sink.

Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#302

Post by roywiggins »

jimsmart wrote: post #259
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Additionally, this information about Cambridge Analytica came out months ago. Minor nit: Years ago. The name Cambridge Analytica was being circulated in hacker circles since at least mid-2016. Thus far, the only new revelation was the Channel 4 reporting [1]. Security nerds have been complaining about Facebook's business model for years and it fell upon deaf ears. Suddenly, the public gives a shit and I don't under…

Perhaps part of what's changed is that just a few weeks back Cambridge Analytica claimed — in writing, to the UK Parliament — that they did not harvest profiles from Facebook: "On 8 February 2018 Mr Matheson implied that Cambridge Analytica "gathers data from users on Facebook." Cambridge Analytica does not gather such data." — Letter from Alexander Nix, CEO, Cambridge Analytica, to the Chair of the Committee, 23 Feb…

They also testified to Parliament that they had no business in Russia, and an ex-founder (who left on bad terms, admittedly) has since come out and said that when he was still there, they were sending a Russian oil company information about how to target American voters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-ana...

Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#303

Post by DrScump »

debt wrote: post #30
fooey wrote: post #17

There'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…

"Facebook WAS inside Cambridge Analytica's office but have now "stood down" following dramatic intervention by UK Information Commissioner's Office.." Uhh....that's not good. In effect, this is a sanctioned data breach. Facebook opened the firehouse of user data by knowingly keeping very lax access to their developer APIs while not at all preventing developers from storing the data they accessed. That's a very seriou…

  have now "stood down"
... which could mean simply that "we finished doing what we came to do".

Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#304

Post by mattnewton »

jjeaff wrote: post #287
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the original quote from his speech in 2015: > When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best ... They're sending people that have lots of problems...they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. "They're rapists." is pretty self-explanatory. "And some, I assume, are good people." is indicative of Trump's sense of the scale of "good" versus "…

That's a disingenuous transcript. "They're rapists" is much more likely to be, "their rapists". And it makes a big difference. (as in, "...they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, their rapists.") In other words, they aren't sending their best, they are sending drug dealers, criminals, rapists, etc. That's completely different than that transcript's implication, which would be like saying, "they aren't sending…

Sorry, he wasn’t calling all Mexicans rapists, just the ones immigrating to the United States. Much better.

Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#305

Post by mhneu »

letslightafire wrote: post #208
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Additionally, this information about Cambridge Analytica came out months ago. Minor nit: Years ago. The name Cambridge Analytica was being circulated in hacker circles since at least mid-2016. Thus far, the only new revelation was the Channel 4 reporting [1]. Security nerds have been complaining about Facebook's business model for years and it fell upon deaf ears. Suddenly, the public gives a shit and I don't under…

My guess: Selling psychological data to advertisers is boring but if you get Bannon involved and rope it into the Trump news cycle, it suddenly gets a lot of people talking. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistl... This article is probably the biggest one right now.

Selling psychological data to advertisers is boring, but when you get billionaires and foreign powers involved to elect a would-be autocrat who is degrading American democracy, it suddenly gets a lot of people talking.

Yup. It's not a surprise why people are interested in the role of data in modern public debate and democracy.

Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#306

Post by magnusss »

briandear wrote: post #281
magnusss wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing changed. What happened in many of these cases (Weinstein, Facebook) is that the story was thoroughly researched and reported in depth by a team of professional journalists working for the New York Times. My only point (if there is one) is that, despite the massive proliferation of blogs and amateur media, it often takes a professional, salaried reporter to bring an important story into the public eye.

> the story was thoroughly researched and reported in depth by a team of professional journalists working for the New York Times No. It was Ronan Farrow that originally broke the story. The NY Times took their sweet time before going after someone that was an ultra-major Democrat party donor. The Weinstein story was rejected by multiple "professional" news outlets. The "professional" journalists working for the NY Ti…

I was unaware of the Farrow article, thank you for noting it. Its role in publicizing the Weinstein scandal doesn’t diminish my point, however. Farrow is hardly an amateur; as a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law graduate, he’s been published in numerous journals and works as an undercover journalist for NBC News. His article on Weinstein was carried by The New Yorker, a magazine with a stellar reputation for high journalistic standards. My point that it takes a pro to give credence to a big story still stands.

I understand your reluctance to credit the Times given how they sat on the news for years before finally publishing their expose. Nevertheless, the Times article came out on October 5, 2017 — five days before Farrow’s story hit the wire on newyorker.com. So technically the Times still gets the scoop — and most of the credit :-).

Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#307

Post by mirimir »

fooey wrote: post #17

There'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…

That is just bloody incredible! Talk about ham-handed CYA bullshit. This is plainly evidence destruction, no?

Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#308

Post by mhneu »

colordrops wrote: post #243
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Additionally, this information about Cambridge Analytica came out months ago. Minor nit: Years ago. The name Cambridge Analytica was being circulated in hacker circles since at least mid-2016. Thus far, the only new revelation was the Channel 4 reporting [1]. Security nerds have been complaining about Facebook's business model for years and it fell upon deaf ears. Suddenly, the public gives a shit and I don't under…

What changed is that an attack vector has been found to take out Cambridge Analytica. The Democrats are in full political warfare with the Trump regime, and this is just another salvo.

p.s. Did you know Steve Bannon looked at tech workers as people he could bamboozle to be his political footsoldiers? That's why the Mercers completely fund Breitbart - to propagandize young, mostly tech, men and boys.

From Josh Greene's book: "Yiannopoulos devoted much of Bretibart's tech coverage to cultural issues, particularly Gamergate, a long-running online argument over gaming culture that peaked in 2014. And that helped fuel an online alt-right movement sparked by Breitbart News.

"I realized Milo could connect with these kids right away," Bannon told Green. "You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.""

Mercer spends around $10M per year funding Breitbart to spread that propaganda.

Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#309

Post by duxup »

minimaxir wrote: post #3

Stamos had been actively engaging with security researchers on Twitter over the past few days about CA with heated discussions: > I have deleted my Tweets on Cambridge Analytica, not because they were factually incorrect but because I should have done a better job weighing in. https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975069709140877312 Archive of those deleted tweets: https://twitter.com/aprilaser/status/975078309930311…

It wasn't a breach.... because Facebook straight up let it happen.

I can see why Facebook would not want that out there.

Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

#310

Post by nerfhammer »

ineedasername wrote: post #291
jbooth wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not facebook data, that's DNC/Obama data, accumulated over time by other canvassers including your friend. They've done that since before Facebook even existed. Facebook's product is not selling that data, it's selling ads using the data. You can only sell the data once, you can sell the ads forever.

Well, yes & no: Facebook doesn't sell the data itself, but they do give it away when a user agrees when using an app or service mediated by Facebook. That seems to be what happened here: Users took a personality survey, and their data along with the data of their friends made its way to CA.

The "data" that you could get was just like what people listed in their profile page under "Interests" and things like that though. Which maybe tells you something, but not quite like home address and a list of political preferences
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