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Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

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Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#361

Post by heretoo »

mrlala wrote: post #352
heretoo wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was about tracking and informed consent, then the illegal ity is there https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/facebook-... There was no consent because tracking was not opt-in but opt out. More recently regarding user personal details and lack of consent, again deemed illegal in Germany https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/12/facebook-... The pattern I see is that europe considers faceb…

>There was no consent Voluntarily putting your info on a free site is the consent. Would you also cry "illegal" if HN sold your post history, which they have tied to your IP address, which they can easily link to who you are?

If it mattered to me, was necessary, and i was in the right legally, then I would need to.

Each country has its own laws covering this situation.

Giving someone personal information still restricts them legally irrespective of what they think i've consented to or their own definition of consent. The legal system has its own opinion.

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#362

Post by mirimir »

detaro wrote: post #325
downandout wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're framing this improperly. Prior to 2014, anybody could create an app, and if people authorized it to, it could access some friend data. Your comment reads as if they went and made some special arrangement with Facebook and lied to them saying it was for "academic purposes". That just isn't the case. Every single Facebook user with the ability to write code could do this easily and automatically for the 7 years…

> No authorization was required - they gave them free, full access to the entire social graph Source? All I can find is a scheme where they prompted people to sign in to a campaign site and grabbed the friend data that way. Icky as hell, but it's not obvious why that's "even worse" than CA.

It does seem like the Obama campaigns got preferential access to Facebook data. Data for even more people than CA got. And perhaps the Clinton campaign did as well, or at least got access to the older data.

What distinguishes CA and the Trump campaign is how well the data was used. CA staff apparently just did a better job at using the data to manipulate people. Their canvassing app. Using bots on Facebook and Twitter. Plus entrepreneurs from Eastern Europe or whatever. And maybe they went further, discouraging potential Clinton and Sanders supporters fron voting.

But anyway, the key point isn't whether CA or Obama/Clinton got more data from Facebook, or whether Facebook willingly helped Obama/Clinton. The key point is how well voters can now be manipulated. It's another level in the problem that money buys political power. And it's arguably how AI could do the same.

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#363

Post by astrange »

zug_zug wrote: post #248

I think Zuckerberg just doesn't get it (or is playing dumb). The point is this - I don't and will never trust facebook as a company. There is no way to salvage that. Once you've established yourself as untrustworthy you can't talk your way out of it, because there in no reason to believe your excuses and trust there aren't omissions. Consider the microphone accusation (and the legalese they used in their oddly specif…

> Once you've established yourself as untrustworthy you can't talk your way out of it

Can't you? I mean clearly this is a common opinion, it's the basis of the American belief that all crimes should result in 30 year prison sentences. But I don't see why you should think this way.

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#364

Post by Slansitartop »

jjulius wrote: post #252
bduerst wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the tl;dr: on Beacon?

>Beacon formed part of Facebook's advertisement system that sent data from external websites to Facebook, for the purpose of allowing targeted advertisements and allowing users to share their activities with their friends. Beacon would report to Facebook on its members' activities on third-party sites that also participate with Beacon. These activities would be published to users' News Feed. This would occur even whe…

Was this the thing that would put up a notification on your Facebook profile that you just bought a dildo from Amazon (for instance)?

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#365

Post by uberman »

gwicks56 wrote: post #54

1000 word statement. Number of times the word "advertising" was mentioned: 0 Facebook continues to pretend it's business model is unicorns and kittens, not selling user data for money.

Interesting, that is same as the number of times "sorry" and "apologize" was used apparently.

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#366

Post by neuronexmachina »

downandout wrote: post #342
neuronexmachina wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know, they should have done it when Obama committed even worse Facebook privacy violations back in 2008/2012. I know a lot of folks have been desperate to make a false equivalence with the Obama campaign's social media use, but it doesn't pass the sniff test: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/03/21/no-obama-didnt-empl...

I hope you're kidding. Not sure what the rule on repeating myself is but since this is currently the top comment in this chain, I'll post it here anyway: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-... . "Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn't stop us once they realized that was what we were doing." - Carol Davidsen, Former Obama Campaign Director They…

I'm not sure why you keep on repeating that line, it's just a statement of fact. There were hundreds (if not thousands) of FB apps from that time period that pulled comparable social graphs before FB switched to the v2 Graph API in 2015. What CA did beyond this is that (1) they collected their political data under the guise of a personality test, without any indication to users what their data would be used for, and (2) the data was used for political microtargeting (in violation of FB's TOS) instead of just sending voluntary messages to friends.

If you know of any evidence that Obama's campaign broke either the law or FB's ToS, please let me know.

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#367

Post by j-walker »

> In 2015, [...], so we immediately banned Kogan's app from our platform,

> Last week, [...] We immediately banned them from using any of our services.

Can someone explain how they banned them twice, or what the differences are between FB's "platform" and their "services" ??

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#368

Post by anonnel »

xkjkls wrote: post #345
anonnel wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are buying ads for people to see. Some others, however, are using the platform as access to user’s extensive 3P data, once they click and are shuffled through multiple shady ad exchanges gathering and selling data, including the social graph. Some others, like CA and ilk, also get easy access to user’s psychometric data, by embedding the psychometrics into A/B tested ad content. The adage “you are the pro…

Facebook has cut down more and more on that as they've decided to be an advertising company instead of a platform. The vast majority of their data issues come from pre-2015 when they were still experimenting with their business model. Honestly, at the moment, Facebook has huge economic incentives to keep as much data to itself as possible. Facebook being the only place where you can microtarget to such an extent is a…

Even with their data policies, FB (and any ad platform) enables massive data-mining by the third parties which host the ad exchanges and destinations.

And microtargeting can be abused (or just plain used, depending on your perspective) to infer only additional data by incorporating it into the 3P analysis once users click and start loading non-FB content. Microtargeting by its nature leaks information about the target segments ...

Figuring out the data FB uses to microtarget is simply a matter of buying enough ads, or getting in the middle of enough campaign-to-user relationships (as a central 3P ad exchange or tracking service).

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#370

Post by dang »

ProAm wrote: post #82
dang wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't; that just leads to the same discussion over and over, which makes it off topic for HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616988 ). There's tons of substance to be discussed here without reaching for the global hash table ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9722096 ). Fortunately the community has mostly been doing that, but let's not spoil it.

@dang - Normally I agree with you, but I do feel in this instance, especially in regards to him trusting (or once trusting) a third party with his data that the quote is appropriate. It wasn't a troll comment to any HN'er but more of an observation of the pot calling the kettle black. Zuckerberg is absolutely 'trusting' that CA has deleted the data that they gained from FB. While it may be often brought up on HN, its…

You've made a better case for it than I'd imagined! But is it necessary? IMO the damage of internet shame-memeing is larger than the local benefit.

The point isn't to defend Zuckerberg, btw; it's to defend the quality of this community. If we're to realize our dreams of doing marginally better than internet median, we need people to check their worst instincts here.

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