271–280 of 583 posts
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Plus, a lot of the "news feed" articles started as re-shares of microtargetted ads. There absolutely should have been more transparency on virally reshared things that started as microtargetted ads.
Literally everything on Facebook is microtargeted ads. Engagement, including resharing, is just part of the targeting algorithm.
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What kind of safeguards would you introduce? At the very start of Facebook platform the API would anonymize the user's email address, the app would get an app-specific hash, e.g. abcdefg-app123456@facebook.net It was a working email address with Facebook handling the forwarding. This proved futile as the very first thing that apps then did was to ask users for their real email address.
"What kind of safeguards would you introduce?" I think the only sane response would be to shut down the developer program. I doubt it contributes much to the FB bottomline and it's clearly something FB doesn't care much about given the breadth of this scandal.
"It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends' data... this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends' data." I wonder why the Facebook of pre-2014 thought that this was an acceptable level of data sharing to developers? Did they trust that all platform developers would forever have good intentions? Or perhaps they felt the data being collecte…
The reason this whole thing became a scandal is because data is powerful at scale. To quote The Guardian's original article:
"(Cambridge Analytica) used them (data) to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box."
Facebook now have a $50bn business based on using exactly this kind of data "to predict and influence choices" people make. That's why their ad system works now, and didn't just a few years ago. They got very good at using large quantities of otherwise mundane data to guess who will click an ad and sign up to a cookie subscription or who needs a mortgage.
This is the same thing. If you know who's a maker and what seminar's they'll like, you know whos a Tory and what conspiracy meme they like. FB now know how powerful that is, but I'm not sure they did then.
Still... this sounds only semi-tangentially related to privacy. It is technically user data, but IDK if individual users were violated that much, at least relative to other breaches. It's not like the icloud breech, or Ashley Madison. Generally not data that people are horrified to find someone knows.
I think the meat of this issue is "power got into the wrong hands." At least that's what The Guardian was concerned with. User privacy is just the only violation. Power is the problem.
On that note, is FB the "right hands?."
Incidentally, all this is interesting in the context of Zuck running for office, or even just being involved in a politics. Whatever Cambridge Analytica could do, Zuck could day a lot more.
On top of that, he heads the biggest and most influential news/media company that ever existed. He should probably be banned from political involvement.
The trusting developers not to sell any data but putting zero safeguards in place to prevent this and extremely punitive repercussions despite being repeatedly told by the public, media, and even high level employees tells me Facebook can't plead ignorance to this and they not only knew this was happening, but they probably intended for it to happen. They knew it was illegal but put all the incentives for companies n…
So FB opened up their platform to 3rd party Devs in 2007 and this CA incident happened in 2013. FB changed their policy of not allowing broad data access to these Devs in 2014. So my question is: Why they admit that they'd audit the pre-2014 apps now when NYT and Guardian/Observer broke the news? And what policy is in place now that makes sure that these 3rd party Devs won't sell whatever info they do collect as per…
> We'll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data.
Sounds like they'll make the developer agreement legally binding so they can take legal action for violating the ToS.
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Facebook doesn't sell user data for money. It sells targeted advertising for money. There is a huge difference.
Yea, actually selling their user data would put them out of business... Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?
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"the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago." This...is not comforting.
They closed the barn door five years ago. The horse got out six years ago.
The trusting developers not to sell any data but putting zero safeguards in place to prevent this and extremely punitive repercussions despite being repeatedly told by the public, media, and even high level employees tells me Facebook can't plead ignorance to this and they not only knew this was happening, but they probably intended for it to happen. They knew it was illegal but put all the incentives for companies n…
WRT to FB's knowledge of this happening: Your assuming bad intent is no worse than FB's assuming good intent. Otherwise, one of the more reasonable FB comments on HN.
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It was standard crisis management PR sermon. "learn from this experience", "doesn't change what happened in the past. ", "responsibility", "going forward", "together". You find this same boilerplate from athletes who beat their wife, do drugs, or kill people.
I had a very hard time imagining Zuckerberg actually writing these words, it just felt too carefully crafted and full of standard PR tropes. The CNN interview should be interesting, then we can hear the actual words from his mouth.