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50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

theguardian.com

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Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#181

Post by amelius »

underwater wrote: post #127
olivermarks wrote: post #44

My problem with this 'outing' of CA is that Facebook explicitly commercially exists to harvest user data for Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Fidelity etc etc so they can profile us. A million dollars is chump change in the crazy US election game. This all seems overly selective - it's ok for some people to profile but not for others. I'm not in favor of any of it to be clear but there is a definite political bia…

There is a big difference between sharing data with companies, and allowing companies to specify as targeting rules. Facebook lets companies bid for ads to show you, based on Facebook’s data about your interests and demographics. If you never engage with the ads there is no information leakage. It’s the difference between telling a random person “I’ll tell my gay friends about your party” and “Did you know that Bob i…

> If you never engage with the ads there is no information leakage.

But what if you do?

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#182

Post by clay_the_ripper »

gfodor wrote: post #176

I remember when the Obama campaign hired data scientists and used targeted social networking tools to pursuade voters who were on the fence and it was heralded as brilliant and the future of politics. I worked for a company crawling Facebook data by creating viral apps the year the original API came out. By now I am sure this is done by many companies. Why is any of this news? My understanding is that companies harve…

Isn’t harvesting data prohibited by Facebook TOS? (Not to say that people don’t still do it). Also, could you elaborate on what kind of data you get access to by doing this data harvesting versus just using Facebook targeting data that Facebook explicitly gives advertisers access to? I’m curious because fb gives a lot of targeting criteria, so I’m wondering what kinds of things this harvesting unlocks. Sentiment analysis on post language or something?

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#183

Post by stevenwoo »

mistermann wrote: post #163
threeseed wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they have considered it. And they have identified they are Russian. You really think governments wouldn't have checked this ?

I thought the public might be a bit more skeptical. How did they identify with certainty that they are Russian? Is there any way for someone without top secret clearance to verify this?

How - the special counsel Mueller has subpoena authority. First link from indictments in list form. The one I saw on TV was that guy with Hillary in a cage in parades - he was paid by Russians to make it. I also remember reading about the pro and anti gun rallies at that Texas state park - the Russians made the Facebook page for both sides in that little incident. https://mashable.com/2018/02/16/indictment-russian-trolls-in...

Presumably Mueller used that subpoena on Facebook and internet providers and the Russians didn't try to hide very hard and used mostly Russian ip addresses.

There's also the fact Facebook admitted it sold ads and post promotion to Russian agencies and told Congress the reach of those ads and posts. Recently Facebook revealed to all users in North America whether or not they had interacted with those ads/posts. Several news organizations have independently found the data from other sources including actual interviews with the people working in Russia.

One technique the Russians used was to impersonate Americans of some extreme view to stow discord and inflame the other side of some debate. https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-russians-impersonate...

There was also several different Facebook campaigns where they got Africans with pidgin English to pretend to be Americans and try to inflame white nationalists and latent racists fears.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#184

Post by cloakandswagger »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #114
allthenews wrote: post #52

Let's be realistic here. This headline is nothing but partisanship. The only reason this is exaggerated as a "data breech" is because of the connection to the Trump campaign. The real scandal is that such data is so easily harvested and freely available. I'd be interested in seeing how much of facebook's data repository was used in targeted political ads by all parties. Including Russian agitators who have been shown…

There are at least 25 scandals surrounding the Trump administration currently that are each worse than the two pseudo-scandals surrounding HRC that Conservatives managed to drum up, I. e. E-Mails and “Benghazi”. And ts not like FOX and the entire US Congress have less power than the Guardian. So, no: “They are all the same” isn’t just cynical and useless. It’s also wrong.

> There are at least 25 scandals surrounding the Trump administration

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop

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

I'd argue that this article pretty well encapsulates all of the various "scandals" the Trump administration is being bombarded with: breathlessly exaggerated so that people whose mind is already made up can scan over it and add another tickmark to their list of "scandals"

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#185

Post by tanilama »

gfodor wrote: post #176

I remember when the Obama campaign hired data scientists and used targeted social networking tools to pursuade voters who were on the fence and it was heralded as brilliant and the future of politics. I worked for a company crawling Facebook data by creating viral apps the year the original API came out. By now I am sure this is done by many companies. Why is any of this news? My understanding is that companies harve…

I am not shock by the facts that they are collecting data. The fact they are designing a psychological procedure to feed their narrative and agenda to you in an unconscious way, shaping and changing your world view, with that message only tailored to you, is very creepy to me. This doesn't sound like advertising to me, this is manipulation and brainwashing.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#186

Post by cloakandswagger »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #182
gfodor wrote: post #176

I remember when the Obama campaign hired data scientists and used targeted social networking tools to pursuade voters who were on the fence and it was heralded as brilliant and the future of politics. I worked for a company crawling Facebook data by creating viral apps the year the original API came out. By now I am sure this is done by many companies. Why is any of this news? My understanding is that companies harve…

Isn’t harvesting data prohibited by Facebook TOS? (Not to say that people don’t still do it). Also, could you elaborate on what kind of data you get access to by doing this data harvesting versus just using Facebook targeting data that Facebook explicitly gives advertisers access to? I’m curious because fb gives a lot of targeting criteria, so I’m wondering what kinds of things this harvesting unlocks. Sentiment anal…

> Isn’t harvesting data prohibited by Facebook TOS?

This should be the main takeaway from this article--that Facebook relies on the honor system for protecting user data.

Breaking a company's TOS isn't a crime in and of itself, and social media data has been used for political targeting for years now. Insinuating that Trump won because of a nefarious brain control operation fueled by data from a "data breach" is irresponsible.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#187

Post by banned1 »

gfodor wrote: post #176

I remember when the Obama campaign hired data scientists and used targeted social networking tools to pursuade voters who were on the fence and it was heralded as brilliant and the future of politics. I worked for a company crawling Facebook data by creating viral apps the year the original API came out. By now I am sure this is done by many companies. Why is any of this news? My understanding is that companies harve…

“Why is any of this news?”

Primarily because Obama could do no wrong! wink

And this time is Trump, who obviously did not win the election! double wink

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#188

Post by [deleted] »

banned1 wrote: post #187
gfodor wrote: post #176

I remember when the Obama campaign hired data scientists and used targeted social networking tools to pursuade voters who were on the fence and it was heralded as brilliant and the future of politics. I worked for a company crawling Facebook data by creating viral apps the year the original API came out. By now I am sure this is done by many companies. Why is any of this news? My understanding is that companies harve…

“Why is any of this news?” Primarily because Obama could do no wrong! wink And this time is Trump, who obviously did not win the election! double wink

[deleted]

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#189

Post by llukas »

Spooky23 wrote: post #98
matt4077 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really easy: you pass laws. Look at health records. HIPAA is rather successful at keeping your health data narrowly confined to those that need it. There is nothing that prevents similar laws to work for financial data, location data, etc. The only roadblock is people saying they “don’t personally think legislation is the answer”. Because there is literally nothing but law that can have an effect.

Good law is hard. HIPPA prevents gossip. That’s about it. The sales director for a drug manufacturer knows that you’ve filled a prescription before the claim is filed. Enfamil and Gerber knew the estimated due date of our baby — although the only interaction we had with anyone was a miscarriage at 8 weeks and a near fatal complication.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

Are you sure it wasnt something like this?

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