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  1. You must read the article before you can comment on it.
    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      6 years ago

      Wow. There's a lot going on here. My first thoughts:

      I'm not sure if this is a huge bombshell or not. Of course Facebook is printing money by selling user data. And of course that's frightening when you think about it. To anyone/everyone who didn't know that's what's going on: wake. up.

      I'm so so happy to be completely off of Facebook products, including Instagram and Messenger. It's no surprise that the company wields an extraordinary amount of power and influence over society. And that most people would be deeply disturbed to find out how their data & information is being managed. But, unfortunately, most people don't take the time.

      The political angle, to me, is no more or less disturbing than the corporate/industrial one. It's all a nightmare.

      I'd love to hear from some other real readers on this one. Definitely worthy of deeper reading & discussion!

      • jeff6 years ago

        I'm not sure if this is a huge bombshell or not.

        I don't think it is, but can't say for sure since the article is so light on the actual details of the "leak." This actually read like a total non-story for me. BREAKING: Companies use data on constituents to devise election strategies! I guess it's super scary because the focus is on the campaigns of Trump and other conservatives.

        From what I gather, Dr. Kogan, together with Cambridge Analytica, built a Facebook app that scraped data from both users profile pages as well as their friends pages and paid users to install it. The article explicitly states that when researchers at Cambridge University were doing the same thing it was allowed by Facebook. It is unclear from the article why it was against the rules for Cambridge Analytica to do the same thing. Was it because they were a private company or the rules changed in the interim or were they actually exploiting some technical vulnerability?

        Either way what they were doing wasn't illegal or surprising to me in the least.

    • jamie6 years ago

      So creepy...... very disturbing.

    • erica6 years ago

      It's terrifying that firms are using psychographic data to influence political campaigns.

      We know Facebook sells our data to advertisers, so why are we surprised the tech company sells our data to scumbags like Mr. Nix at corrupt and illegal companies like Cambridge Analytica? I can't help but wonder if I was one of the 50 million people whose data Facebook sold.

      I'm deeply concerned that an individual was able to acquire data from Facebook just by telling the tech company that "he was collecting information for academic purposes." And Facebook didn't even take the time to verify THAT.

      • bill
        Top reader of all time
        6 years ago

        I agree that it's terrifying. I don't suggest to know how to make it illegal (or even if that's the right thing to do) but I know that not enough of us truly understand this situation. For example, how much data we are creating and giving away? To what extent can we be identified by this data (and does that matter?) To what extent are our opinions and beliefs being impacted by corporations and governments with powerful tools and data sets at their disposal.

        I love your last paragraph. It illustrates just how far Facebook has fallen in over their own heads. They really don't have a handle on any of the ways that their business is impacting society.

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      6 years ago

      If the media was one person, it would be your friend who's like, "It's perfectly okay if FB pries into my personal life and sells it to the highest bidder, but not if it's that crazy looking conservative woman who hangs with kellyanne conway and bannon!!"