Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me guess. It’s a globalist media conspiracy to take down Trump?
Not at all. Just media's desperate hunger for any story that paints Trump in a bad light. The recent video evidence on Cambridge Analytica shows that they were at least shady in their operations. But their approach to targeting voters and scraping Facebook userdata would have been described as brilliant data wizzardry if it were done for the other side.
Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
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Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#62tell me again why you think the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a bad idea?
I was actually surprised by the generally positive reaction the GDPR got in recent threads here on HN. I guess the suspicion of data hoarding overcame conspiracy theories about government regulation or EU protectionism.
BUT it’s important to note that GDPR would probably not have had an effect on the specific situation with Cambridge Analytica. CA is obviously toast if not by law then by the attention alone. Facebook, however, is likely allowed to share data under GDPR as they did with CA: they got the users’ permission initially, and there isn’t much you can do to protect yourself against malicious actors.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#63Oh man this is bad. >the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches [...] warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach >One Facebook executive advised him against looking too deeply at how the data was being used, warning him: “Do you really want to see what you’ll find?” >They felt that it was better not to know. I found th…
Lol, "this is bad"? This is normal. I can give you an entire list of F500 companies I've worked at that have the same mindset. I've sat in meetings with F100 CIOs where they were given the same warning and shrugged it off. I've been asked before to turn off security monitoring systems because executives prefer to not know about vulnerabilities rather than know about them and not be able to fix them. The only thing sh…
People love to pretend to be horrified by things they've assumed to be true. "What? A politician is corrupt? Outrage!!" "What? They're tracking me to build profiles on my use of all their advertising driven free services? Outrage!!" I'm sure there's a word for it in German.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#64Can we not let this become framed as a "breach"? No systems were compromised. Nothing of Facebook's was accessed that wasn't supposed to be accessed. This was data intentionally exposed by Facebook , just exfiltrated and given to an entity whom Facebook hadn't authorized. This is simply the extent to which we've permitted these Internet giants to collect information about us. It's business as usual. Edit: To clarify,…
I hope you are saying that this is worse than a simple breach, not that it is a non-issue.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#65The cool thing? This "whistleblower" already spoke publicly with an op-ed on the NYT months ago. Again, this is just the top of the newscycle. Let's see what happens in three months from now. My guess: Facebook revenue will go up. This is a PR shitshow, and a great piece of advertising for Facebook's ad department. A lot of marketers right now are thinking "wait, we could do that with all that Facebook data we have?!…
My thoughts exactly. People seem to hold on to Facebook whatever the stories are, so there is no real problem. I was even thinking of buying stocks soon (wait one more week to have the market process these 'new' facts).
It may not be seen as ethical here, but I also plan on buying some more FB. This is a huge overreaction, and we all know it'll blow over inside of a week.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a matter of fact, this is news and surprising for most users of Facebook even if it's not for you. By saying that no one should be surprised, are you not taking the same condescending attitude that you're pointing out in Zuckerberg?
Well, it is extremely naive to think that Facebook does not use all the data they get about you. Then again, most people are very naive about this kind of everyday technology.
Most people are extremely nontechnical and are inadvertently ignorant rather than naive.
People that don’t have jobs working with data, who are not technical or mathematical, aren’t going to know.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#67It would be interesting to see someone analyze if the relationship between government and Facebook got more news coverage this time than it did when Snowden reported the exact same thing in 2013 or when other people reported it back in 2012. In particular it would be interesting to see which new sites write articles about it and if possible how negative they are.
For example we have CNN article in 2013: https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/30/us/nsa-social-networks/
vs now in 2018: http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-data-sca...
Maybe that would explain why we see so many that got surprised by this while others has seen it for a long time and just got used to everyone not caring.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it is extremely naive to think that Facebook does not use all the data they get about you. Then again, most people are very naive about this kind of everyday technology.
More specifically, I think many people are naive about how it can be applied to their lives. Every company tracks you. From what you purchase at target, to broad pattern behavior tracking on the web via ad companies, I think most people know their being tracked at various stages for various reasons. However, is it bad that target knows I like to buy grass fed beef? Probably not. It reveals some things about me, but I…
You must probably don't know how powerfull this analytics are. Is it possible to correlate and infer all kind of data, based on other signals, what kind of person are you.
For example if you drive a bicycle and eat beef, most likely you have a certain income, have a certain family type ( you use same IP!! ) , which means you might have a certain political view and concerns. And this is where targeted manipulation is active, they can drive you in a certain direction. Psychology at it's best.
This is how you win an election.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#69What's utterly horrifying about this whole thing is how the media is acting as if this is some sort of surprise. Like what did you think was happening at a company collecting data about billions of people? Especially at a company that has a CEO who is famous for calling its own users dumb fu * * s? A company that experimented on at risk teens. Like come on. --edit--- Or lordy, didn't expect this comment to blow up th…
I know this is HN (where it is probably less of a surprise) but for a wider audience taking this kind of opportunity to write a smug comment might just be harmful to them, their privacy and their rights.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#70What's utterly horrifying about this whole thing is how the media is acting as if this is some sort of surprise. Like what did you think was happening at a company collecting data about billions of people? Especially at a company that has a CEO who is famous for calling its own users dumb fu * * s? A company that experimented on at risk teens. Like come on. --edit--- Or lordy, didn't expect this comment to blow up th…
Yeat, especially considering that:
- This was part of an open API, you just needed to sign up for free. There is no data breach.
- EVERYONE was using it - this consisted mostly of games like Farmville. This is how they can show your friends progress and their profile pic.
- It was shut down more than a year ago.
Actually there is no newsworthy thing at Facebooks side at all, the new thing is that companies built games just to harvest this data and use it for something else.