141–150 of 157 posts
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If you read higher up in that wiki it lists all of the money the initiative has given away so far. I'm not sure why people think that the LLC doesn't give away money.
That's called influence, changing people's minds with relatively small amounts of money. And it works.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They got it by using the same technique that Obama did in 2008 and 2012. They got one of your friends to authorize their app, and then they were allowed to access most of the data about your friends that you could access. The only difference between CA and Obama is that Obama’s app was given special permission to blow through data collection limits enforced on all other apps, such that even though less than 1 million…
There are, obviously similarities. Yet there are, I believe, also two major differences: (a) This was 8 and 4 years earlier. A lot changed in that timeframe. While, yes, there were always concerns about privacy, the string of data leaks, and the increasingly obvious power of statistical methods for targeting, have had a strong effect on the general public's attitude towards the practice. (b) The Obama campaign did no…
This seems like common sense, but do we have substantial evidence proving this, and to the degree of newspaper coverage we're seeing claiming public outrage? And if so, did the outrage precede the news coverage or follow it?
The so-called "data breach" was always in reality a by-product of an open platform that hundreds of thousands of developers could easily build apps on top. You may err on the side of "more reviews" or "less powerful API", but in the end, those ideals are in tension. The more open the platform, the more open to this kind of "breach". People who believe in the idea in this kind of platform having an API should have lon…
The Facebook API has been useless since 2014 when most access to friend data was cutoff. Since then, if your objective was data collection, that could be easily achieved by scraping publicly available information (many friends lists are public, there are many public posts, etc. - certainly enough to use in aggregate to formulate campaign strategies etc.). I suspect that will be the next “scandal,” since in 2018, peop…
Let me explain some simple things:
* this scandal (without scare quotes) is an issue because many people have finally realised that Facebook has a ton of information about them and they can't be trusted to handle that information properly.
* it's not just about ad targeting, it's about all the possible ways information can be misused too: stalking, blackmail, fraud, trolling, circumventing various constitutional protections, identity theft etc, etc.
* your assertion that it's impossible to to influence specific outcomes because of the impossibility to accurately target is... wrong. There were many account included in the CA data set, there were and are other data sets and even if they can't target those people with ads, they can probably send them an e-mail, give them a call or send someone to their house.
* people do have responsibility for what they post, but when their information is stored forever and combined with massive quantities of other collected and bought information the entity doing the above has a lot of power and a lot of responsibility too.
The Facebook API has been useless since 2014 when most access to friend data was cutoff. Since then, if your objective was data collection, that could be easily achieved by scraping publicly available information (many friends lists are public, there are many public posts, etc. - certainly enough to use in aggregate to formulate campaign strategies etc.). I suspect that will be the next “scandal,” since in 2018, peop…
It would also be interesting to see why you're so motivated to find excuses for Facebook and to whitewash the damning facts. Facebook employee? Family financial interests in the ad industry? Concerned citizen? Bored? Let me explain some simple things: * this scandal (without scare quotes) is an issue because many people have finally realised that Facebook has a ton of information about them and they can't be trusted…
None of the above. It’s because the hypocrisy of this whole thing is wrong and represents everything that’s wrong with the press today. There was a Facebook data abuse scandal where elections were involved, it just didn’t occur in 2016. It was committed by the Obama campaign in both 2008 and 2012. But the articles portraying that were downright celebratory. Now the “wrong” guy wins and all of a sudden it’s a big problem? There’s a word for that. It’s hypocrisy.
>this scandal (without scare quotes) is an issue because many people have finally realised that Facebook has a ton of information about them and they can't be trusted to handle that information properly.
I agree with you that Facebook gave away too much data pre-2014, but this isn’t the incident that proved they couldn’t be trusted with people’s data. It was the Obama campaign incidents, which involved 4x as many records, that proved it. Most of the holes have been closed today.
>it's not just about ad targeting, it's about all the possible ways information can be misused too: stalking, blackmail, fraud, trolling, circumventing various constitutional protections, identity theft etc, etc.
Are you saying that you believe that Donald Trump is using this data to stalk you? Because this “scandal” cannot be executed again. These capabilities were removed in 2014.
>your assertion that it's impossible to to influence specific outcomes because of the impossibility to accurately target is... wrong. There were many account included in the CA data set, there were and are other data sets and even if they can't target those people with ads, they can probably send them an e-mail, give them a call or send someone to their house.
While it’s true that there are other bands of communication available, the articles surrounding this subject have mostly focused on Facebook advertising, where this is no longer possible and hasn’t been for several years. Read my comment.
>people do have responsibility for what they post, but when their information is stored forever and combined with massive quantities of other collected and bought information the entity doing the above has a lot of power and a lot of responsibility too.
This is a ridiculous statement. If you voluntarily post things publicly, you should expect that they will be stored and crawled. That’s like saying ”I walked down the street naked, and now I can’t believe that my neighbors won’t delete their pictures of it!” If you don’t want it out, don’t put it out in public.
The Facebook API has been useless since 2014 when most access to friend data was cutoff. Since then, if your objective was data collection, that could be easily achieved by scraping publicly available information (many friends lists are public, there are many public posts, etc. - certainly enough to use in aggregate to formulate campaign strategies etc.). I suspect that will be the next “scandal,” since in 2018, peop…
It would also be interesting to see why you're so motivated to find excuses for Facebook and to whitewash the damning facts. Facebook employee? Family financial interests in the ad industry? Concerned citizen? Bored? Let me explain some simple things: * this scandal (without scare quotes) is an issue because many people have finally realised that Facebook has a ton of information about them and they can't be trusted…
First it was just contextual information like text and location. Now its morphed into something incredibly sinister and toxic.
Hundreds of thousands of people are devoted to building detailed historical profiles and models to give advertisers the ability to micro target people based on sexual preferences, moods, race, religion, political inclinations and other intimate personal information that should not be available COLLATED to anyone. All accompanied by apologism, hand waving, muddying the waters, deception and denial.
It's ironic our societies depend on those who are hungry and deprived to be ethical and not succumb to theft and loot while those who have can behave without ethical constraints and discuss it in a detached intellectual manner.
The so-called "data breach" was always in reality a by-product of an open platform that hundreds of thousands of developers could easily build apps on top. You may err on the side of "more reviews" or "less powerful API", but in the end, those ideals are in tension. The more open the platform, the more open to this kind of "breach". People who believe in the idea in this kind of platform having an API should have lon…
Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". They took arrows for years: all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types, all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules. They didn't get it wrong because they know who butters their bread: customers. Developers are rightly prioritized last. Fun to give this Paul Graham essa…
Nobody is complaining about being able to install a Facebook app that harvests your data. The issue is it could also harvest your friends' data by default.
Although honestly I think this is all manufactured outrage. The fact that this could happen was totally public in 2012 and the public weren't outraged about it then.
The so-called "data breach" was always in reality a by-product of an open platform that hundreds of thousands of developers could easily build apps on top. You may err on the side of "more reviews" or "less powerful API", but in the end, those ideals are in tension. The more open the platform, the more open to this kind of "breach". People who believe in the idea in this kind of platform having an API should have lon…
Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". They took arrows for years: all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types, all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules. They didn't get it wrong because they know who butters their bread: customers. Developers are rightly prioritized last. Fun to give this Paul Graham essa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". They took arrows for years: all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types, all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules. They didn't get it wrong because they know who butters their bread: customers. Developers are rightly prioritized last. Fun to give this Paul Graham essa…
> Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". Being a walled garden is independent of privacy. The calendar app on macOS Calendar app allows me to share my calendars in an open format (ICAL) and interoperates with other calendar apps through that specification. It respects my privacy by not sharing anything I don't ask it to without being "walled". Signal is open and…
Actually, the only way privacy can be guaranteed is with code you control running on a machine your control. Free Software (and not Open Source) has everything to do with privacy, as it is about control.