New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
techcrunch.com
New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
1–10 of 204 posts
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#2"used stolen Facebook data"
Is that factually correct? I was under the impression that facebook gave them API access.
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#3"used stolen Facebook data" Is that factually correct? I was under the impression that facebook gave them API access.
They had API access but extracting and using the data in the way they did was against the terms of use IIRC
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#4Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#5"used stolen Facebook data" Is that factually correct? I was under the impression that facebook gave them API access.
They had API access but extracting and using the data in the way they did was against the terms of use IIRC
Essentially. The root failure mode of FB's API solution is that it's an API for accessing private data and their only protection against clients abusing that access was a terms of service.
Back in the mid-'00s, we started implementing something against FB's API and I was more than a bit shocked to discover that their solution for preventing someone from building a parallel network of friend relationships out of the available dataset was "Please don't do that, and anyway if you try to do it at scale we'll probably detect the bandwidth consumption and shut you down." Not great.
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#6"used stolen Facebook data" Is that factually correct? I was under the impression that facebook gave them API access.
They were getting a small number of users to fill out quizzes on Facebook. Unfortunately, the Facebook API gave them information not just about the user who filled out the quiz, but of all of that user's friends.
It was against the Facebook ToS, but the data was still provided easily via the API. That's what allowed them to quickly build a database of most eligible voters with very little direct outreach.
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#7"used stolen Facebook data" Is that factually correct? I was under the impression that facebook gave them API access.
The developer of the app "thisisyourdigitallife" handed over data collected from that app to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook claims this violates their TOS. Based on that, the data can be called stolen.
https://www.vox.com/2018/3/17/17134072/facebook-cambridge-an...
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#8Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment.
Problem is, even if they are a free and independent thinker, voting populations are large enough that the "average is the outcome" phenomenon comes into play, and voters are on average demonstrably vulnerable to coercion. Not enough to flip people's opinions 180 degrees, but enough to, say, get a reality TV star elected over a politician with a checkered history (that has itself been subject to decades of effort and millions spent to make said history checkered).
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#9Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment. Problem is, even if they are a free and independen…
While I agree with "how malleable opinions are...", the actual answer is, "not very malleable". Every well-designed study of political advertising I've ever seen has shown that it's impact is very small, in some cases unmeasurably small. Thus, for example, the 2016 Clinton campaign raised a lot more $$ than the Trump campaign, whereas the Sanders primary campaign out-fundraised the Clinton one.
Now, the impact on the politicians of fundraising, is not at all small. The primary advantage of personalized advertising and fundraising, is to help a campaign rake in more cash, which is both legalized bribery, and an incentive to stoke your base's outrate instead of reaching towards the middle.
The worst thing about the CA/Facebook scandal, is that it's become an excuse for a large swath of the Democratic party to decide that it didn't make any mistakes in 2016 worth mentioning (or correcting).
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#10After having seen The Great Hack https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9358204/ over the weekend, it's hard to imagine how the scope expanded again. They used the developing countries all over the world as practice for UK brexit and US's 2016 elections.