quote:

Originally posted by oldRoger:
What a revelation!!!!


But, our former POTUS Barak the All-knowing was credited by the NY Times and others for very cleverly doing exactly the same thing in his first run for the job.
In fact, the GOP was disparaged for their failure to make good use of the deep information available on social media.

If anyone is surprised by the depth of information available for sale on Facebook, Google, and social media; they have not been paying attention for the last 10-15 years.

Exactly right

Zuck is hiding right now, very uncharacteristic of him.

So much for Zuckerberg 2020!

quote:

Originally posted by ccmdfd:
I'm not wild about all of the information gathering/sharing over the internet, but I feel it's common knowledge that it's been occurring for quite some time.

Do you remember Campbell Brown on the Election Night of the Hanging Chads? Republicans, just before invading the count to stop it, were vocally complaining about what they considered abuses that were happening in plain sight. Brown's response? "Well, it's on tape". The problem, of course, and the reason the forces of truth and righteousness were obligated to invade the vote count room, is that recording something isn't at all the same thing as preventing, putting a stop to or reversing something.

You know, my first thought on reading the article wasn't that this is all tied up in Brexit and various conspiracies about ties between Russia and Trump. Instead, this looked like the opening shots of a war to control Facebook's capacity to act as a data mine. After all, the only way to really control this activity is to either contain whatever information Facebook is a means to gather or shut down Facebook's ability to gather information.

This may wind up being the scandal that justifies an invasion of the boardroom where Facebook sets data policy.

My feeling is that this is coming out because the leftists think this is going to hurt conservatives but quite frankly...there are a lot of conservatives who would be happy if big tech (google, twitter, amazon, facebook, apple) took a hit.

quote:

Instead, this looked like the opening shots of a war to control Facebook's capacity to act as a data mine. After all, the only way to really control this activity is to either contain whatever information Facebook is a means to gather or shut down Facebook's ability to gather information.

Actually Facebook and Twitter IS the mine that everyone wants to use, the information already exists there.
The essence of big government is the ability to regulate and control, big.gov wants to control the door to the mine.
The Administrative State would like nothing better than to be able to determine who and how the data collected by private parties is accessed (mined).
The complaint about the Trump campaign using data mining is not sincere. The entire problem is that data mining should only be available politically to progressives, no conservatives need apply.

Mining for politics is clever if Democrats do it and reprehensible if done by the GOP.

Cambridge Analytica announced it has suspended CEO Alexander Nix pending the results of an ongoing investigation that it improperly accessed 50 million Facebook accounts.

"In the view of the Board, Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation," the company said in a statement.

The U.K. firm describes itself as “a data-driven communications and marketing agency.”

In the recording, Nix is heard saying that the company could use unorthodox methods to wage successful political campaigns for clients.

He said the company could "send some girls" around to a rival
candidate's house, suggesting that girls from Ukraine are beautiful and effective in this role.

Cambridge has denied any wrongdoing in the Facebook data scandal. As a result, Facebook said it is looking into forensic audits to investigate Cambridge's claims.

In the statement, Cambridge added Dr. Alexander Tayler will serve as the acting CEO while the independent investigation is ongoing. It has also asked, Julian Malins, QC, to lead the investigation. The company's board of directors will share the findings publicly in due course.

The U.K. firm has come under fire in recent days after it was suspended by Facebook for improper access to 50 million Facebook accounts. The company, which has ties to the 2016 Donald Trump campaign, said it had deleted the data in a legal document to Facebook, but the facts have been disputed.

Link

Federalist
David Harsanyi

The Cambridge Analytica Panic Is The Silliest Conspiracy Of The Entire Russia Scare
And that's saying a lot.


What the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica panic lacks in relevance it sure makes up for in melodramatic rhetoric. Bloomberg, for instance, says that “revelations of the apparent skulduggery that helped Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election keep sending shock waves across the political landscape.” It’s true. Everyone is talking about it. The story has consumed most of the mainstream media.

The theory goes something like this: Facebook obtained information on users who took a personality quiz with their online friends. Another outlet, Cambridge Analytica, harvested that information to brainwash a bunch of rubes, and then yada, yada, yada … Russia! Senators are now demanding executives come forth and answer questions. Investigations must be open. Democracy is under threat.

Former Cambridge Analytica contractor and now-professional whistleblower Christopher Wylie told CNN that while at the company he helped build a “psychological warfare weapon” to “exploit mental vulnerabilities that our algorithms showed that [Facebook users] had.”

So, in other words, he worked in the advertising business.

Those who have covered politics for more than a single Trump-cycle should know better than to use this kind of unnerving rhetoric for what amounts to average microtargeting, which has been used by hundreds, if not thousands, of firms. Yet, now, when it serves to bolster convoluted theories about an election being overthrown, terms like “psychographics” and “breach” are being thrown around to make it sound like someone hacked into voting rolls after boring into the deepest recesses of our souls.

Moreover, the idea that Facebook can know your “mental vulnerabilities” is only true if you share your nightmares with them. If you’re uncomfortable with data mining and your information being shared, don’t take surveys. Because, breaking news: You don’t have to be on Facebook. You don’t have to use Twitter. You don’t have a constitutional right to play FarmVille without answering some questions. You don’t get free stuff. The very existence of these tech companies is predicated on mining data so that they, or third parties, can sell you things.

Cambridge Analytica, a shady company owned by the British firm called SCL Group — and, reportedly, in part by the right-wing funding Mercer family — claimed it could build models that identify persuadable voters by using six key personality types. Considering the amount of data Hillary Clinton had at her disposable, the idea that more data equals more persuasion is suspect. Aside from that, Cambridge Analytica’s effectiveness is questionable, as are its business practices. As others have pointed out, most Republicans used the firm to open to door to the Mercers’ checkbook..


Yet, on the most obvious level, Cambridge Analytica is another story about double standards. The only consistent position the Left seems to take these days is that the mechanisms they use to keep power automatically transform into nefarious and un-democratic when the opposition use them.

By constantly using the word “breach,” for instance, reporters are trying to insinuate that someone stole voter data that typically is off limits. Cambridge Analytica was allowed to pull that profile data. Facebook only changed its policy in early 2015. But then Trump campaign dropped Cambridge Analytica before the general election for the RNC data, reportedly never using the any of the “psychographic” information. According to CBS News, in Sept. 2016, it had “tested the RNC data, and it proved to be vastly more accurate.”

Even if they hadn’t, however, their efforts would have been akin to those being heralded as revolutionary when it served the interests of Democrats. Facebook, in fact, allowed the Obama campaign to data harvest in the same way that is now generating headlines and handwringing. Do you remember any outrage and trepidation over privacy and manipulation of your thoughts in 2012? If anything, there should be outrage that a massive social media company allowed one party to do things that it forbade another.

And so what if voters were being “targeted?” Part of living in a free society means being bombarded by messages we don’t like. The entire Facebook/Russiabot scare is predicated on the notion that people don’t have free will. It’s only once we start micromanaging the information Americans consume that we begin undermining choices. Of course people shouldn’t get their news from Facebook. And a reliable Fourth Estate which reports without bias to help Americans navigate through this messy contemporary digital life would be helpful. But the Cambridge Analytica story is just another example of how it fails.

Link

quote:

Originally posted by oldRoger:
The Administrative State would like nothing better than to be able to determine who and how the data collected by private parties is accessed (mined)...Mining for politics is clever if Democrats do it and reprehensible if done by the GOP.

Ah, but that's the elites talking. How many rank and file Donkeys do you think are paranoid about anyone getting access to mined data? Come to think of it, how many Donkeys do you think actually trusted Hill more than they trust Trump?

No, at some point it is, IMHO, entirely possible for cross-partisan support to develop behind the idea that Zuckerburg and all of the other evil capitalists out there in Silicon Land just don't need to have or be able to grant access to that information.

FaceBook stock is down about $20 a share this week.

Good!

quote:

And so what if voters were being “targeted?” Part of living in a free society means being bombarded by messages we don’t like. The entire Facebook/Russiabot scare is predicated on the notion that people don’t have free will.

Exactly!

These folks don't believe in free will -- at least not for the unwashed masses who live outside the beltway.

"Trump STOLE the Election" Blah Blah Blah.

I'm tired of hearing it. I'm tired of the seemingly ceaseless efforts of career bureaucrats to push Trump and his Deplorables from power.

Yeah, just another nothing burger here. Obummer and his crew were given accolades and bragged about the same back in 2012. They even said Facebook was ‘on their side’.

Just more trash thrown against the wall by the media.

quote:

No, at some point it is, IMHO, entirely possible for cross-partisan support to develop behind the idea that Zuckerburg and all of the other evil capitalists out there in Silicon Land just don't need to have or be able to grant access to that information.

Unfortunately this useful data exists on social media. I think it would be better if it didn't exist but it does.
The data will be used and the regulatory state wants to be certain that the it controls usage.

I am certain that Zuckerburg and his ilk would be happy to deny the data to the GOP and equally happy to grant free assess to the Democrats.
The only answer to this problem that I see is to make the data equally available to both parties. What will happen I suspect is that all parties will be denied its use for political purposes. However, liberal-progressive causes will be determined by the regulatory state to be non-political, while those I hold dear will be found to be political.

This is an attempt by legacy 'journalism' to take down their biggest threat. Nothing more, nothing less.

All I care about is that Zuckerberg's company has lost billions in value, and FB users are leaving in droves.

Eat it, little Marky.

Oh no!
So you're saying that facebook has leaked my yahoo email address and a couple pictures of my truck? How will I ever recover?

Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Tells UK Lawmakers, Trump's Election Made Him Speak Out



According to Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower behind the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, we have President Trump to thank for the exposure of Facebook as a data-hording, privacy-busting super-surveillance 'state'.

Wylie, appearing in front of U.K. lawmakers in London this morning, said that the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president in 2016 made him speak out about the practices being employed by the political data firm.

"I wouldn't say it was just because of Donald Trump, but Donald Trump makes it click in your head that this actually has a much wider impact. I don't think that military-style information operations is conducive for any democratic process," he told the committee of lawmakers.

As CNBC notes, Wylie was the man who revealed to the New York Times and the U.K.'s Observer newspaper the practices of Cambridge Analytica and the data harvesting that took place. He is speaking to members of parliament on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee, chaired by lawmaker Damian Collins.

Lawmakers questioned Wylie on the links between Cambridge Analytica, its parent company SCL, and work on various political campaigns including Brexit.

* * *

In other words, if Hillary had won, the general public would remain oblivious to Facebook's (and other social media giants) massive data-gathering efforts.. and Mark Zuckerberg would still be the 4th richest person in the world (instead of 8th!).

https://www.zerohedge.com/news...ction-made-him-speak

Facebook's market cap, even with its currently depressed stock price, is $463.03 billion. That's more than Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, and WalMart. Do people really think all that money came from operating a free service for people to share with their "friends" a dressed up highlight reel of their lives? Facebook is a data mining platform, period.

I'm confused here.

When Obama did the VERY SAME THING in 2012, he and his team were SO very savvy and smart, why they were geniuses!

Team Trump does it and they are dragging Zuckerberg before Congress to testify about Evil Facebook and their invasion of privacy and how wrong Trump was to use this data?

I don't have a facebook account so I can't check to see what they think of me


Facebook is facing a backlash on two continents from users, advertisers and lawmakers for having allowed Cambridge Analytica to allegedly amass information on 50 million of its users.
The company’s core business that powers around $4 billion in monthly revenue is monetizing everything you do on Facebook to serve its advertisers. However, users may not know that the powerful social network already has an opinion about your political leanings — and it’s fairly easy to find out what Mark Zuckerberg’s company thinks of your political preferences.

Hidden in plain sight under Ad Preferences is a section called Your Information. If you click on that tab, you’ll see an option for Your Categories, which contains a section called US Politics — in parentheses, Facebook will have you labeled as Very Liberal, Liberal, Moderate, Conservative or Very Conservative.

The social network says it fills up these categories “based on information you've provided on Facebook and other activity.”

Under Your Categories, users will also find their birthday, whether or not they are listed as friends of expats, and whether or not they have a "multicultural affinity" on Facebook.

It seems like those five labels are the only options for Facebook political affiliation, which is a bit limiting on a platform that lets its 2 billion monthly users choose among 58 different gender identities.

Regardless of whether you’ve clicked like for a particular candidate or political party, Facebook also tries to determine the self-professed political identities of other users who have liked the same pages as you — and then lumps you in with them.

Don’t want the algorithm to factor in your presumed political affiliation for advertising purposes? Just hover over the box, click the X and see how the tweak impacts your experience on the site.

Meanwhile, as a new poll shows only 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook with their personal data, Zuckerberg has declined to testify in front of British lawmakers about the data scandal but the CEO and co-founder has reportedly expressed willingness to do so in the United States.

U.K.-based Cambridge Analytica, which has ties to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign, has denied any wrongdoing.


http://www.foxnews.com/tech/20...how-to-find-out.html