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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

#231

Post by noelwelsh »

zombieprocesses wrote: post #229
noelwelsh wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actual reasons to be worried about this kind of thing: - The advertisements were not overt ("fake news") - It raises the barrier of entry to the political process - Filter bubble effects Or you can believe a story about "elites" and "biased media".

> There are actual reasons to be worried about this kind of thing: I suppose. Why weren't people worried about this during obama's campaign? > - The advertisements were not overt ("fake news") - It raises the barrier of entry to the political process - Filter bubble effects If filter bubble effects are a problem, then we should be looking into traditional media, not social media. I'd say there is more of a filter bub…

1. Obama's use of social media was reported.

2. Why is whatever Obama did relevant to this story? Do two wrongs make a right?

3. Where in the linked article does the journalist inject their own opinion? I couldn't find any instances. The opinions came from the interview subjects, and are reported by the journalist as they should be.

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

#232

Post by raverbashing »

zombieprocesses wrote: post #224
raverbashing wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every advertisement should be ostensive Using fb to advertise for Obama, Trump, etc, is ok However that's not what has been done, but the a) use of shills and fake personas to pump up opinion b) creation of fake "grassroots movements" and "news articles" with a divisive purpose https://thinkprogress.org/russia-facebook-pages-sophisticate... https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaLago/comments/7y6ola/there_ha...

Did you really link to russianlago, an actual shill subreddit? Also thinkprogress is a shill advocacy organization. > However that's not what has been done, but the a) use of shills and fake personas to pump up opinion b) creation of fake "grassroots movements" and "news articles" with a divisive purpose This has been done since forever. People supporting Obama did in 2008. Those supporting Ron Paul did it. Bernie sa…

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

#233

Post by zombieprocesses »

raverbashing wrote: post #232
zombieprocesses wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you really link to russianlago, an actual shill subreddit? Also thinkprogress is a shill advocacy organization. > However that's not what has been done, but the a) use of shills and fake personas to pump up opinion b) creation of fake "grassroots movements" and "news articles" with a divisive purpose This has been done since forever. People supporting Obama did in 2008. Those supporting Ron Paul did it. Bernie sa…

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

#234

Post by zombieprocesses »

tanilama wrote: post #185
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.

> This doesn't sound like advertising to me, this is manipulation and brainwashing.

If advertising isn't manipulating and brainwashing, what is it? As far as I can tell, advertising is precisely that.

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

#235

Post by raverbashing »

zombieprocesses wrote: post #233
raverbashing wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> But it doesn't do your argument any favor when you use two shill sites to defend your position

And it doesn't help your point that you conveniently ignored the point these two websites are making, and that have been reported by others as well.

"Everybody knows this" is a cop-out.

Shilling is bad, but water is still wet regardless if it's reported by TP or FoxNews or Breitbart, as opposed to you who prefers to shoot the messenger and has a 32 day old account. Just an observation

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

#236

Post by vanderZwan »

verylittlemeat wrote: post #217
blablabla123 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the other question is why this hasn't been any news yet. But the answer might be that 10 years ago Tech wasn't much in the news because it was just not interesting for most people. This has changed a lot in the last few years though, which might explain why the news agency now have to work through (at least!) 10 years of tech news backlog. I'd definitely like to see coverage of these topic from 'traditional j…

>I guess the other question is why this hasn't been any news yet. But the answer might be that 10 years ago Tech wasn't much in the news because it was just not interesting for most people. This 100% untrue: https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-interne... https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/exclusi... These are only two links but let me assure you if you're interested google is full o…

> To me that is what makes this whole "we scraped data and stole the election for trump" narrative seem extremely suspicious.

Suspicious of what? Be more clear about what you're trying to say here please.

Because I hope it's not that people didn't complain enough when Obama did it, and therefore now nobody can? (aside from the fact that I did complain, because I complain about all advertising, but that's not the point)

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

#237

Post by vanderZwan »

SZJX wrote: post #204
pm90 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this hard to understand? The same technology can be used for both good and bad. Obama used it to inform people about his polcies and get the out to vote. Trump used it to spread lies, falsehoods and half-truths. Essentially any media that was outlandish enough to become viral was promoted and promoted to hapless people who probably might have wondered why they were seeing so many distressing articles about Ame…

Yep. So Obama is just "good" and Trump is just "bad". Way to view things boy. At most this is your own political standards. Not anything that can be neutral and objective. Claiming one set of political ideas to be "right" is very dangerous.

So you are stating that the reverse interpretation where Obama spread lies and falsehoods, and smears his opponents while Trump was merely informing the public of truths is objectively just as valid as the opposite?

Just because something is political and not neutral does not mean that there are no facts associated with it. We may disagree on them, debate them, but to take the stance that there are none at all is the kind of tactic used by people who do not wish to debate the actual validity of their viewpoints.

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

#238

Post by thomzi12 »

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…

Did you not read the article? Millions of users took a personality test that had nothing to do with politics, and that data was sold to the Trump campaign for targeting.

When did Obama’s campaign ever do that?

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

#239

Post by whatever_dude »

rpmcmurphy wrote: post #63
bredren wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the very beginning there has been a rule that you were not allowed to persist data more than a few days in your own dB. But it was obvious there was no way for fb to verify what you did or did not keep. There has never been substantial control on profile data harvest on fb. It was whatever you could get users to okay, which was a lot given the value your app had to appear to provide.

A substantial percentage of the US population installed that "cow clicker" app at some point, and who knows what data they harvested. Even if they did not access your full profile, they could probably learn a lot about you based on when and how often you were clicking on cows.

While your point stands, Cow Clicker itself was unlikely to be doing something nefarious. It was created specifically as a criticism of similar game mechanics, and got viral mostly by accident.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker

Hence why the researcher who created it decided to kill it.

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

#240

Post by rhizome »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #149
rhizome wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, the downside of the consumer data culture in which we live is that you don’t really get to make that call. This can be changed, regardless of whether any of us is ready to throw up our hands about the whole situation as it stands.

Isn't the GDPR supposed to help with that?

I would love to see international privacy rights harmonization with GDPR the way we had the Berne Convention for copyright.
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