Did anybody not realise that is why facebook exists?

[VapingBad]

RE the Cambridge Analytica story.

This is the tip of the iceberg, so not everyone will be offering on the ground service laundering money and supplying hookers, but they see any data you put on the internet as public domain, from liking a tweet too (god forbid) your birthday, your work place or the road you live on.  It should be strongly curtailed and no one government has jurisdiction so we have been in the wild west for a decade. FB are particularly focused on this ad they go to such lengths to identify the person, IIRC it is in their T&Cs and know a member here who was forced to change their account name to first-name last-name from a nick name.  (And politicians are awful at this, don't have a scooby and have left an open field chasing the wrong goals, IIRC our current home secretary complained that tech exerts kept patronising her over thinking a backdoor into encryption would be anything but a really stupid idea.)

[VapingBad]

A good analogy is like they are going through your bins, you can shred or burn your bank statements etc, but they still will try.


$5,000,000,00 wiped of fb value.

[thebishman]

Jon...whats this about? Im not on FB

[Get Off My Cloud]

I haven't read all that much about it but from what i understand is this company made a FB app and just like every other FB app ever when you download and install it you click a button which grants them access to certain data on your account like your friend list etc and this company in particular used the data that people gave them permission to access to target political ads.
I'm confused though as to why this all of a sudden is scandal when it's been how these firms have worked for years?

Here's a report from 2012 for example on Obama's campaign doing the same thing and everyone thought it was brilliant back then.

[Postmodern Smoking]

Mar 20, 2018 22:02:40 GMT thebishman said:

Jon...whats this about? Im not on FB

There was a documentary exposé last night, and it's also been on the news .... and in the papers.


..... do keep up Neil!

[DaveJ]

I s'pose it's the old story - there's no such thing as a free lunch. Nothing's offered by business for free. In the case of Facebook and other "social media" sites - which are nothing but big business - the cost to you isn't money. Rather, it's your information. Anything and everything about you, what you do, where you go, what you buy, who you interact with ...

And so many people willingly offer them so much information.

[Perpetua]

Mar 21, 2018 2:19:38 GMT DaveJ said:

And so many people willingly offer them so much information.

Which is the really scary part . . . . the naivety of some people when they're using the internet!

[solac77]

The scary part of all of this is Donald trump is somehow linked to Cambridge analytica and someone there is linked to Facebook. The data you freely give up is/has been passed on to deep mind which is an ai company which is kinda run by Google. They have been collecting all your online presence for what let's say 25years prob longer and feeding their ai machine. Also along the way alogrythms are pushing politics on sites like pof tinder etc etc skynet is happening just at a slower rate. Scary stuff indeed.

[solac77]

Also fb has always said they have never passed on their data.....finally they have come unstuck.

[DaveJ]

Mar 21, 2018 6:06:06 GMT solac77 said:

Also fb has always said they have never passed on their data...

Ummmm - perhaps FB do, maybe not. Donno.

Also remember the search engines (Google et al) look everywhere they can. This site, AAEC for example, often has "bots" scanning thro posts for info. Even without Proboards offering data to the big search engine people, the big search engine people still know all about AAEC and posts made here. I'm betting FB sees similar.

[VapingBad]

Mar 20, 2018 22:25:38 GMT Get Off My Cloud said:

I haven't read all that much about it but from what i understand is this company made a FB app and just like every other FB app ever when you download and install it you click a button which grants them access to certain data on your account like your friend list etc and this company in particular used the data that people gave them permission to access to target political ads.
I'm confused though as to why this all of a sudden is scandal when it's been how these firms have worked for years?

Here's a report from 2012 for example on Obama's campaign doing the same thing and everyone thought it was brilliant back then.

This app went further, had elevated permissions from fb and allowed users to give permission to share friends data, plus the Obama one was from his campaign and not disguised.

[Get Off My Cloud]

Mar 21, 2018 6:06:06 GMT solac77 said:

Also fb has always said they have never passed on their data.....finally they have come unstuck.

They don't SELL data but they do allow third party apps to COLLECT data, when you play all those games on FB or vote on a polling app, or use a contest entry app etc you click that terms and conditions box and that is you granting legal permission for that app to collect your data.

I'm still confused though as to why the big fuss all of a sudden, nothing this company did was illegal, nothing they did was different to what has been happening for years.
I'm not sure why people are acting like they've only just learned that targeted ads are a thing.

It's not like it's a nefarious thing either it's really just a money saving and efficiency exercise for campaigns, ads cost money so it's only sensible to place your ads to a targeted audience and not just blanket advertise.

They have battleground states in the US and states that both parties know are just going to go one way or the other no matter what and neither party wants to waste a load of their cash campaigning in states they know they've got in the bag or the other candidate has got in the bag they want their money being spent in those states which could go either way to swing it their way.

Trump's campaign isn't going to want to spend loads of cash with FB ads for users in a Democrat stronghold like California just like they're not going to waste a load of money putting up physical billboards there it costs money, likewise Clinton's campaign isn't going to waste time and money with somewhere that is rock solid Republican like Kansas.

[VapingBad]

Get Off My Cloud read the story, looks like they went further this time, but as you say they have been doing this for a decade, not just fb, but fb is made specifically for targeting advertising.

[thebishman]

Thanks for this people. Hadnt caught up with the news when i asked last night.

I suppise this was always going happen

[Get Off My Cloud]

Mar 21, 2018 7:06:47 GMT VapingBad said:

Get Off My Cloud read the story, looks like they went further this time, but as you say they have been doing this for a decade, not just fb, but fb is made specifically for targeting advertising.

I'm trying to but it's pretty freaking difficult to find an actual reliable source, i keep seeing stories saying they mined data without permission which is nonsense.
They created a questionnaire app, people took part and granted permission for the data to be accessed.
It seems people are conflating not stating in the questionnaire that the data the user was giving permission for them to take was being used for political ad targeting with not having permission.
They have no legal requirement to state what the data is being used for they only need legal permission to collect it which was granted.
The data wasn't collected illegally and it wasn't used illegally from what i can see, none of the stories i have read cite any criminal code being infringed, no FEC regulation, no nothing.