"Data Security Chief" lol okay. Chief of giving everyone's data away, maybe
Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
401–410 of 436 posts
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#402Earlier 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…
> The "professional" journalists working for the NY Times KNEW about the Weinstein story as far back as 2004, but spiked it under pressure from various Hollywood interests.
Would you care to stand that up? Because it seems unsubstantiated.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Psychographic data (personalities and traits beyond simple demographics) has long been known and used before Facebook ever existed, it's just much easier now that so many people are feeding data to a centralized system with easy access. CA's CEO is seen presenting this clearly in 2016, specifically how well it helped the Cruz campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc Worldview Standard has a podcast calle…
This is in some sense an extension of the Myers-Briggs-type personality typing, which in its early days also grew out of data analysis. People use the Myers-Briggs typing at work because it helps you work with (read persuade) people. So you can make an argument this is at least 100 years old. As for why we've reached critical mass - it seems likely the ability to influence democratic elections, and the efforts by ene…
“his is in some sense an extension of the Myers-Briggs-type personality typing, which in its early days also grew out of data analysis.”
What a bizarre statement to make. In this sense anything that is in any way scientifically based “grew out of data analysis.”
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Question from a [mostly] ignorant person (me, about these subjets): Why would russian intelligence use an oil company as a shell ? Does Russia sell oil to the US ? If so do they market directly to individuals in the US ?
Yes. Yes. Lukoil gas stations.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who remembers how the Obama campaign's social media analytics and strategy were breathlessly praised ?
Is there a difference in the means and ends? I don’t think we have fully enough information yet, but if a political campaign is using analytics to clearly advertise their campaign, fine, that’s being straightforward. If a political campaign is posting in ways that do not clearly label it as a political campaign, and is lying to people viewing the data it is paying to show, would you agree that’s kind of a different s…
The cognitive ability to be aghast over false equivalencies continues to amaze me.
Also, rationalizing cheating, because they're certain everyone's doing do it, so it's only proper when the better cheater wins.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, and sites like Reddit make money on the same sort of thing. It wasn't controversial when Facebook and Google became arms of the Obama and then Clinton campaigns, but now more people are turning on Facebook after learning that their info was sold to the Trump campaign and companies and so on through companies like CA.
you really should not be downvoted, anecdotal but I have remarked on similar. I have a relative who is part of a few groups and they "managed" certain subreddits for a PAC. its all well established, get enough people together and you can nuke any story you want and take over subs with time. Facebook's crime was getting caught helping the wrong people
Facebook also plays both sides.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is in some sense an extension of the Myers-Briggs-type personality typing, which in its early days also grew out of data analysis. People use the Myers-Briggs typing at work because it helps you work with (read persuade) people. So you can make an argument this is at least 100 years old. As for why we've reached critical mass - it seems likely the ability to influence democratic elections, and the efforts by ene…
“his is in some sense an extension of the Myers-Briggs-type personality typing, which in its early days also grew out of data analysis.” What a bizarre statement to make. In this sense anything that is in any way scientifically based “grew out of data analysis.”
No, the history of personality typing is a much more interesting story than that, and depends very specifically on data.
Myers/Briggs/Jung identified 4-5 personality "axes" on which people vary. How did they do that? They basically gave a bunch of people surveys with hundreds of questions and did PCA on the data. They found that 4-5 dimensions explained a lot of the variance. That was a new finding based on data, at the same time that the field of statistics was developing. And it gave insight into how people behave. It's important enough that we frequently use it as a heuristic in workplaces today.
In modern times, we can do the same on much larger data sets. Given Facebook "like" data for 50 million people, you can do dimensionality reduction on the data and extract personality "types". There's no question that this gives you information about people. The question is how well it can be weaponized - that's the debate around CA now.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is in some sense an extension of the Myers-Briggs-type personality typing, which in its early days also grew out of data analysis. People use the Myers-Briggs typing at work because it helps you work with (read persuade) people. So you can make an argument this is at least 100 years old. As for why we've reached critical mass - it seems likely the ability to influence democratic elections, and the efforts by ene…
> As for why we've reached critical mass - it seems likely the ability to influence democratic elections, and the efforts by enemies of the Western world to use it to undermine democracy, are getting people to notice. American politicians of both stripes have realized the private sector now wields comparable propaganda power to that of the government, hence the post election "Russia" propaganda activity burst and ful…
Yes, I think that's right - Western societies need to think very carefully about the role of data, the power of private corporations, and the tension between profit-seeking and societal goals. Government regulation is the way we align societal goals with individual goals like profit seeking.
But the Russian state does spend billions on their secret services, and they consider America their "Main Enemy". Billions buys you something. I'd be shocked if there weren't more shoes to drop about Russia. But for now, we should be focused on domestic disinformation.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#409Earlier 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…
Because I still have Al Gore's voice in my head. I assumed they took this data and put it in a "Lock-box". You see, we need to take it all in and put it in a "Lock-box".
I'd be happy if we made it easier for gov't to buy stuff like ashtrays.
Re: Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree the problem is money, and I also agree that bad faith and disinformation are true measures of problematic political communication. A principle we could rely on is openness. Just disclose who is paying for what. And disclose the ads. If Trump/CA/Russia targeted an ad at you distorting HRC's record, we should know who paid for it. Up until now, political ads - TV, billboards, even direct mail - were discoverabl…
I agree with you in principle, but I'm not sure how feasible this given that I literally can't think of how to implement it. Political advocacy groups use complex hierarchies of shell companies and revolving payments to get money from super-donors into advertising. FB can't just release an invoice saying something like (Payment: 106,000; Sender: Robert Mercer) or "paid for by the Russian Federation". It would say thi…
It's very feasible, and even easy. You require disclosure of beneficial ownership of shell corps. That's already being done in some real estate markets to prevent money laundering: http://www.capdale.com/treasury-issues-final-regulations-to-...
Then we require that all money spent on politics (AND related political influencing, like money to Jud Watch and Cit U and Cato and AEI and Bradley Fdn and Am First and Koch Found and Americans for "Prosp" and the NRA) requires public disclosure of who's behind it.
We already do much of this for direct campaign donations and in real estate. It's just a matter of political will. And one side has spent 4 decades and hundreds of billions on creating this money-first system, so they are very invested in not changing it. If you care, the first thing to do is get Congress to pass a law rescinding most of Cit U decision.