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Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

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Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#121

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #44
fortythirteen wrote: post #40

Just get the f### off Facebook, already. If you're the kind of person who votes based on targeted advertising, or the hyperbolic posts of people who vote based on targeted advertising, don't ask Facebook to change. Get the f### off Facebook. If you don't like how Facebook is being used as an addictive propaganda tool by any and all political actors, including Facebook itself, then get the f### off Facebook. Ask the F…

Enough with the #. If you want to swear, swear. If you don't want to swear, don't. For fuck's sake.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#122

Post by tmuir »

darawk wrote: post #74
tmuir wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, that old classic, whataboutism. You'd have us believe Cambridge Analytica was some vendor the Trump Campaign used sparingly, had very loose connections with, and saw limited success with. Yet Cambridge Analytica is a Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon outfit. Steve Bannon, the campaign manager, and senior adviser to the president. Or at least it was during the time period in question. Steve Bannon was THE integra…

He didn't claim it wasn't affiliated with Trump, he said they didn't rely on it that much. And the appeal to 'whataboutism' is a complete non-sequitur, as there is no whataboutism in the parent comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Claiming that Obama's campaigns were the true microtargeters, and that if we are angry at the actions of generic people, we must then be angry at Obama, because he did these very things. That is the Whataboutism, or tu quoque fallacy.

In lieu of anything to back that claim up, I'll just stick with Hutchins Razor, and reply "Nuh Uh."

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#123

Post by dmix »

makomk wrote: post #60
oh-kumudo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you talk about Trump campaign is clearly far from the reality: https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4 Starting around 11:00 The CA person clearly shows, from the screenshots, they have personal level targeting to predict whether a person is neurotic or not, what ads should be used to exploit that.

That was (and still is) CA's supposed selling point. What's doubtful is that the Trump campaign were convinced this worked, or that there's any reason why anyone else should be. It just doesn't match up with the reporting I've seen based on campaign sources talking about how they designed ads and targetted people. It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psy…

> It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psychological classification on someone based on what they post online, but actually use that to work out how to manipulate their minds.

This is not dissimilar to the idea that Russia spending a few million dollars on Facebook ads and automated Twitter bots somehow played a defining role in influencing an election. Even within the context of 1.5yrs+ of 24/7 mainstream TV/internet news coverage, billions of dollars in marketing spend by both parties, the personal influence of two of the most famous celebrities in American history (Clintons and Trumps), a multi-decade legacy of highly partisan politics, etc, etc.

It seems measuring the real-world impact of these tools and tactics is completely ignored in favour of believing we're living in some fantasy scifi world where bots and pseudosciencey psychological profiles can make anyone president.

Has anyone asked how much impact these tools have had on the sales of consumer products over the last decade? If they've hardly revolutionized online advertising of consumer products to make people buy products they didn't want (which AFAIK it hasn't), I highly highly doubt it played a huge role in the election of someone a portion of the voting populace didn't want.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#124

Post by felipeerias »

bogomipz wrote: post #81
sithadmin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was responsible for? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like the chain of events is: 1.) Third party (Aleksandr Kogan) creates 'personality quiz' app, Facebook users opt-in to share information from their profile 2.) Aleksandr Kogan hands off data gathered by the app to Cambridge Analytica…

>"Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was responsible for?" How about a breach of basic responsibility to inform users that their data has been used inappropriately and transferred to a third party. FB knew about this as far back as 2015[1]. Did they let users know at any point? No. Further FB's Chief Security Officers's tweets on Friday failed to show any concern for FB users who wer…

"These guys unlawfully got data from a lot of our users. Surely they will delete it if we ask them to, right?

"Now they want to buy a lot of ads on our platform, great!

"Also their ads are getting a lot of engagement somehow, let's make it cheaper for them to buy more!"

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#125

Post by fudged71 »

fortythirteen wrote: post #40

Just get the f### off Facebook, already. If you're the kind of person who votes based on targeted advertising, or the hyperbolic posts of people who vote based on targeted advertising, don't ask Facebook to change. Get the f### off Facebook. If you don't like how Facebook is being used as an addictive propaganda tool by any and all political actors, including Facebook itself, then get the f### off Facebook. Ask the F…

This is a very privileged perspective.

Facebook spent years getting billions of people on the platform and those users haven't left due to lock-in. They are connected to their families, their businesses, their friends.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#126

Post by moolcool »

sithadmin wrote: post #6
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach, quibbling over what to call it and now this, is mind-blowing. Their "it wasn't a robbery because we left the front door open" excuse may finally bring about trans-Atlantic regulation of social media.

>The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was responsible for? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like the chain of events is: 1.) Third party (Aleksandr Kogan) creates 'personality quiz' app, Facebook users opt-in to share information from their profile 2.) Aleksandr Kogan hands off data gathered by the app to Cambridge Analytica…

Facebook trusted user data to a third party who didn't turn out to be trustworthy. How are they not due some share of the blame? Do you think the TOS provides sufficient (or any) protection for this data in the real world?

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#127

Post by tmuir »

chatmasta wrote: post #41
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that was a privilege that the users authorized them to grant Kogan was granted permission to ephemerally use, for academic purposes, the data of a quarter of a million people who authorized the access. Kogan got fifty million peoples' data ( i.e. Facebook let him scrape the data of people who had not given authorization, some of whom had explicitly gone into their privacy settings to turn off the sharing of their d…

This is hyperbole. He created an app, wrote in the description that it was for academic purposes, and then later amended the description / TOS to allow selling of data. Facebook is faulting him because he did not update them on the purpose of the app. There were no systemic barriers in place that Kogan had to circumvent to get access to the data; the Facebook API worked as expected and gave it to him. Regardless of t…

You bring up a very interesting thought experiment.

We may very soon see a software developer expounding on all of these "clean code" principles before congress as their defense. How conventional wisdom, and industry wide best practices recommend that software be built in a manner that lends itself to all of these positive effects that allow large software projects and companies to proliferate in the first place. Separation of concerns being the main concept that comes to mind. Is this the 21st century's "just following orders"?

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#128

Post by braderhart »

medyadaily wrote: post #90
manfredo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My disgust lies with the regime that's suppressing that regional identity. Unless we have reason to believe that Facebook would still disallow the Kurdistan option even if governments didn't criminalize recognition of Kurdistan, then this blame rests on Turkey. I can't find a reason to fault Facebook's response to this harmful government policy. Would it be better to allow people to select the "Kurdistan" option, kno…

I can confirm iranian government not only does not have any problem with word Kurdistan, Iran has an official Province called Kurdistan, and it is constitutional. (same with Iraq) and I am form Iran living in USA, I should be allowed to enter my hometown's province, just like every other iranian proviince( Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, ...) but Facebook enforces Turkey's disgusting rules on Iran too.

So it is essentially Facebook not listening to its users, and understanding the territories in which it operates? i also imagine that Facebook has a political and national agenda to follow at this point, if not also one that is supported by the MIC as well.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#129

Post by darawk »

tmuir wrote: post #122
darawk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't claim it wasn't affiliated with Trump, he said they didn't rely on it that much. And the appeal to 'whataboutism' is a complete non-sequitur, as there is no whataboutism in the parent comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism Claiming that Obama's campaigns were the true microtargeters, and that if we are angry at the actions of generic people, we must then be angry at Obama, because he did these very things. That is the Whataboutism, or tu quoque fallacy. In lieu of anything to back that claim up, I'll just stick with Hutchins Razor, and reply "Nuh Uh."

> Claiming that Obama's campaigns were the true microtargeters, and that if we are angry at the actions of generic people, we must then be angry at Obama, because he did these very things. That is the Whataboutism, or tu quoque fallacy.

Obama's campaigns were pretty well known to be engaged in extensive microtargeting. Here:

https://www.mediavillage.com/article/how-data-and-micro-targ...

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#130

Post by pas »

dmix wrote: post #123
makomk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was (and still is) CA's supposed selling point. What's doubtful is that the Trump campaign were convinced this worked, or that there's any reason why anyone else should be. It just doesn't match up with the reporting I've seen based on campaign sources talking about how they designed ads and targetted people. It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psy…

> It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psychological classification on someone based on what they post online, but actually use that to work out how to manipulate their minds. This is not dissimilar to the idea that Russia spending a few million dollars on Facebook ads and automated Twitter bots somehow played a defining role in influencing an election.…

It's easy to start wildfires, that's what paid agitators do and likely did. The problem is - of course - millions of Americans were (and still are) very susceptible to particular kinds of bullshit. (InfoWars, religon, guns don't kill people, "gay agenda", anti-vaxxers, other new age fuckvoodoo, and so on.)

Yes, it's probably unknowable how effective the russian bots were exactly.

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