The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works • Hacker News Board

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#111

Post by karmelapple » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 3:22 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #101

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA sound like a bunch of scumbags and I'm glad people are shining light on these kinds of activities. However, I'm not convinced what they did was really all that new or interesting. This is our modern world and it's terrifying. Call it marketing, propaganda, fake news or disinformation, we're being manipulated constantly by numerous unattributable actors. The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called…

> The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called out for it? I mentioned this in another thread and got immediately downvoted, which I predicted would happen. I will add more context here to perhaps avoid that. What I said was: "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 anothe…

Did the gaming company you work for represent themselves in inaccurate ways? This seems to be what CA did - fraudulent identities, putting out news that they knew was not truthful, and not identifying their ads and output as part of a political campaign.

That's one of the problems for me in all of this; a group that is lying, or perhaps breaking campaign disclosure laws, is acting wildly different than a gaming company.

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#112

Post by karmelapple » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 3:25 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #80

mattmcknight wrote: post #11

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…

Yes, because the Obama backers signed up for an app that was clearly affiliated with the Obama campaign. Were these backers assholes for knowingly wanting to spam their friends with Obama propaganda? Sure, because everyone hates spamming. Cambridge Analytics is accused of using data that was harvested from a quiz app that was purportedly the creation of a Cambridge professor. I think that CA is being accused of somet…

It sounds like they are being alleged of lying and not identifying themselves as having been affiliated with either a PAC or a campaign. By doing that, that's breaking the law.

Additionally, the CEO has basically admitted - under hidden camera - that they are fine with blackmail and lying. Is blackmail and lying technically illegal? I'm not sure. But if you lie and blackmail as part of a political campaign, but do not let people know you are a political campaign, you have broken the law.

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#113

Post by mhneu » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 3:46 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #101

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA sound like a bunch of scumbags and I'm glad people are shining light on these kinds of activities. However, I'm not convinced what they did was really all that new or interesting. This is our modern world and it's terrifying. Call it marketing, propaganda, fake news or disinformation, we're being manipulated constantly by numerous unattributable actors. The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called…

> The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called out for it? I mentioned this in another thread and got immediately downvoted, which I predicted would happen. I will add more context here to perhaps avoid that. What I said was: "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 anothe…

There's just a ton more money on the right - the Koch network and GOP billionaire donors dwarf the spending by progressives.

So it's a lot easier for right-wing purchased media and social media and purchased think tanks (Cato/Koch) and foundations (Bradley, DeVos) and right-wing news outlets to spread propaganda. Because they have more money to spend.

So I think rightfully, people feel that the bigger threat is from the right. It's not a coincidence that CA was heavily funded by a GOP billionaire who wants to damage gov't services to cut his own taxes (Mercer is in an $8B dispute with the IRS).

I think the real problem is what Zeynep Tufeksi has been writing about: informed consent. Even if some tiny print says it's ok in a click-contract where they have a majority of the negotiating power, Facebook is releasing data on its uses without their informed consent. That's what we as a society need to re-evaluate.

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#114

Post by mhneu » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 3:47 AM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #106

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA sound like a bunch of scumbags and I'm glad people are shining light on these kinds of activities. However, I'm not convinced what they did was really all that new or interesting. This is our modern world and it's terrifying. Call it marketing, propaganda, fake news or disinformation, we're being manipulated constantly by numerous unattributable actors. The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called…

They aren't just scumbags they are snake oil salesmen. No one in the political world thinks of them as anything but snake oil salesmen. Their company is about tricking people into buying their service and never delivering any results. Look at their track record. A lot of people will point to them and say "see, this is how Trump won the election" but that's just not even remotely close to the truth, and honestly just…

Yes, you've put your finger on the core of it - the way Facebook compromises privacy. It's about informed consent on sharing data - we need companies to get informed consent.

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#115

Post by mhneu » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 3:49 AM UTC

lstroud wrote: post #104

fny wrote: post #36

This is a scandal, and we should not blur lines here. 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 in…

“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” Isn’t this the modern definition of politics?

Which needs fixing. We need to restore truth to public debate, and to politics. Cynicism is destroying Western liberal democracy.

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#116

Post by ikeyany » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 3:58 AM UTC

stevenwoo wrote: post #108

ikeyany wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains the actions of (some of) Facebook's "rockstar" developers. That does not explain the actions of Facebook's data scientists, psychologists, product managers, and execs. Occam's razor - They knew, and perhaps they cared, but they cared far more about their salary and climbing the industry ladder to say no or blow the whistle.

For execs sure it's about managing the product, i.e. the users, especially in what we've seen in public statements from Zuckerberg and Sanders. For the data scientists and psychologists, it's a chance to work on large scale data/populations and test all sort of theories and hypotheses on a large scale, probably unavailable anywhere else except Google and Amazon as postulated here. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine…

That would be an example of caring more about advancing one's career than the deleterious effects your work has on individuals.

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#117

Post by danso » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 4:17 AM UTC

karmelapple wrote: post #112

danso wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because the Obama backers signed up for an app that was clearly affiliated with the Obama campaign. Were these backers assholes for knowingly wanting to spam their friends with Obama propaganda? Sure, because everyone hates spamming. Cambridge Analytics is accused of using data that was harvested from a quiz app that was purportedly the creation of a Cambridge professor. I think that CA is being accused of somet…

It sounds like they are being alleged of lying and not identifying themselves as having been affiliated with either a PAC or a campaign. By doing that, that's breaking the law. Additionally, the CEO has basically admitted - under hidden camera - that they are fine with blackmail and lying. Is blackmail and lying technically illegal? I'm not sure. But if you lie and blackmail as part of a political campaign, but do no…

I haven’t been reading all the latest CA coverage, but from what I’ve seen from the Guardian’s and Observer’s latest deep dive, there’s an issue of violating UK data privacy laws, since CA is alleged to have been involved in Brexit related campaigns. In these stories, it’s not alleged that Trump’s campaign did anything illegal.

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#118

Post by eadmund » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 4:19 AM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #82

nopriorarrests wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worth remembering though, that this messenger was deliberately picked from the crowd of 16 (!) people during primaries. Voters spoke when they abandoned Kasich, Jeb and the rest. It's not like they had no choice. They had.

There was an interval of about 3 months where if Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich had agreed to draw straws and support the winner, Trump could have been stopped relatively easily. But instead they all assumed Trump could never win, and thus spent a lot of resources attacking each other and splitting the traditional Republican vote.

And that was due to two insane factors: first, that we use primaries rather than caucuses; second, that many of them define the winner as the one with the most votes.

On the first point, a representative democratic republic really shouldn't be choosing its candidates by popular vote. A caucus system empowers parties to moderate & modulate the voices of their voters. As horrifically corrupt as Clinton, Inc. were in the 2016 election, in general it's a good thing for party insiders to seek a more electable candidate.

On the second point, it simply makes no sense at all for a 40-30-30 split to go to the fellow with 40% of the vote. Instant runoff voting or a similar method would be far preferable to the current way we count votes.

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#119

Post by skookumchuck » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 4:44 AM UTC

mhneu wrote: post #113

colordrops wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called out for it? I mentioned this in another thread and got immediately downvoted, which I predicted would happen. I will add more context here to perhaps avoid that. What I said was: "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 anothe…

There's just a ton more money on the right - the Koch network and GOP billionaire donors dwarf the spending by progressives. So it's a lot easier for right-wing purchased media and social media and purchased think tanks (Cato/Koch) and foundations (Bradley, DeVos) and right-wing news outlets to spread propaganda. Because they have more money to spend. So I think rightfully, people feel that the bigger threat is from…

> There's just a ton more money on the right - the Koch network and GOP billionaire donors dwarf the spending by progressives.

Clinton heavily outspent Trump in the last election.

"Clinton's unsuccessful campaign ($768 million in spending) outspent Trump's successful one ($398 million) by nearly 2 to 1. The Democratic National Committee and left-leaning outside groups also outspent their Republican counterparts by considerable margins."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/14/someb...

Re: The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works

#120

Post by timgilbert » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:16 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #101

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA sound like a bunch of scumbags and I'm glad people are shining light on these kinds of activities. However, I'm not convinced what they did was really all that new or interesting. This is our modern world and it's terrifying. Call it marketing, propaganda, fake news or disinformation, we're being manipulated constantly by numerous unattributable actors. The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called…

> The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called out for it? I mentioned this in another thread and got immediately downvoted, which I predicted would happen. I will add more context here to perhaps avoid that. What I said was: "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 anothe…

I believe that many organizations are actively working in opposition to Trump using these kinds of psychographic tools, but I'm not really convinced that the upswellings of public sentiment are mostly, or even largely, the result of their efforts. Just reporting factual information about what his administration is doing works fairly well to alienate large parts of the nation which aren't part of his political base, and their opposition seems like a natural consequence of his administration's decision to govern from the far right. I think you should give people some credit for having good-faith opinions of their own.