Posted on 03/20/2018 4:07:04 AM PDT by IBD editorial writer
Privacy: Facebook faces what some are calling an "existential crisis" over revelations that its user data fell into the hands of the Trump campaign. Whether or not the attacks on the social media giant are justified, the fact is that the Obama campaign used Facebook (FB) data in the same way in 2012. But the reaction from the pundits and press back then was, shall we say, somewhat different.
According to various news accounts, a professor at Cambridge University built a Facebook app around 2014 that involved a personality quiz. About 270,000 users of the app agreed to share some of their Facebook information, as well as data from people on their friends list. As a result, tens of millions ended up part of this data-mining operation.
Consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which paid for the research, later worked with the Trump campaign to help them target advertising campaigns on Facebook, using the data they'd gathered on users.
But it's not entirely clear how the Trump campaign used the information. According to the New York Times, Cambridge Chief Executive Alexander Nix said that the data "helped shape Mr. Trump's strategy," but the article notes that other campaign officials dispute that.
It goes on to quote Nix saying that Cambridge "did not have enough time to comprehensively model Trump voters."
Since this involves the Trump campaign, the news accounts have been suffused with dark conspiratorial tones. The Times article talks about how Trump consultants "exploited" Facebook data, and quotes a source calling it a "scam." It has been widely described as a massive data breach.
But at the time the Cambridge researcher collected the data, Facebook was promoting itself as a way to marry campaign voter data with Facebook's ocean of user-behavior data.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
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And yet ironically, simply posting on social media is a worse crime.
If this sort of stuff works on anybody, it would be the weak minded and typically those voters who tend to be liberal
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I get called ‘disruptive’ when, while approaching the polling station, someone (from either side) tries to hand me some literature etc.
I - loudly enough - proclaim that if I didn’t know what I was going to do after 1 year of BS and lies would go home if I didn’t know who or what I was going to vote for.
Then, if someone with said paperwork should happen to be ‘near me’ in line will get to hear my ‘routine’ again.
Of course, when I go the majority of those there know who/what already...
(Before the fresh busloads get trucked in...<: <: <:)
I should ‘play’ dumb and ask for a sample ballot and how to fill out...see how many of the idiots ‘bite’...
Isn’t the entire business model of Facebook to collect data on its users and sell that data ? I always thought it was
Maybe time to consider an internet bill of rights:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/internet-bill-rights-2
How else would they make billions?
Lets step back and think for a few seconds. Isn’t the whole purpose of elections and representation to ensure that politicians follow the “will of the people?”
Isn’t this data mining thing just a way to better determine the will of the people?
I am not a facebook user, but I would love to have the goobermint take my opinions and feelings into account more than they do.
Now if they are using the data to drum up support for stupid ideas, that is a negative. But if they are using this as a super opinion poll, and then crafting policy to appeal, that is the whole idea behind elections.
I think I’ll wear a MAGA hat just to piss off all the lefties that are there to do data science for “social good”.
Wear an NRA hat and it will put the place in lockdown.
I assumed everyone knew how Facebook made their money, it sure wasn’t those cheesy ads that pop up once in awhile
I don’t use FaceBook.
That being said it *is* interesting to see that policy
Yep, two standards. Anything democrats do is enlightened, wonderful and IS the future. If we do the exact same thing it’s criminal.
I’ve grown to hate the MSM...
Spot on nothing is free.
YOUTUBE- Per Maxine Waters Obama has the kind of Data Base that no one has seen before-2013
I don’t either.
I’ve not signed up for any social media type stuff.
thanks!
Exactly correct.
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