I’m sorry, but I’m confused. Didn’t Russia hack the 2016 Presidential Election? And that’s why Hillary lost, right? (That, and, women can’t think for themselves, and vote the way their husbands and boyfriends tell them to. Hey, don’t look at me, that’s what she said.)
And the sophisticated tools of KGB-era espionage used by the Russians were…. Facebook and “troll farms.” Yes. Hundreds, maybe dozens, of Russians were opening up FB accounts and flooding the Twittersphere with memes. Election Memes!
Not sure how effective the Troll Memes were, we are not allowed to see them while the House Select Committee on Intelligence has them. And these messages and posts were enough to meddle in the election and swing the Electoral College in favor of Donald J Trump.
I, for one, only saw anti-Trump messages and memes on my Facebook page. But how much of this really matters in the end? If we discount women on Facebook – who we’ve established are under some spousal-mindcontrol – then can we assume only men on Facebook were tricked into switching their vote (from Hillary to Trump)?
Well it matters a lot to Facebook, which is accused of not disclosing a hack, and Facebook users who’s personal
identifiable information that was on their Facebook pages is now (or was) residing on the data servers of a data analytics company called Cambridge Analytica. [Today Facebook (FB) stock is down 7% at market close.]
Forget the Russian Trolls, for today’s story is about Cambridge Analytica ( a non-partisan organization that “delivers Data-Driven Behavioral Change by understanding what motivates individuals…that moves them to action.”) The company sent out an App to some users and asked them to complete a survey. What they didn’t know was the app then harvested all their Facebook data and the data of all their Facebook friends – unbeknownst to us all.
Including Facebook – which wasn’t so much hacked as it was susceptible to a software application that copied all the data of a user’s publicly available Facebook page. If any crime was committed it would be that C.A. did not disclose how much data it would abscond with, or whose, or perhaps why.
Every piece of information you put on Facebook is in the public domain and your privacy rights only extend to what is included in the User Agreement you agreed to (with or without reading first).
So in a sense, Cambridge Analytica merely took data that users’ already made publicly available. It did go on to take other users’ data who may not have/didn’t agree to take the Cambridge Analytica “survey.” (The New York Times article went on to say “this was legal at the time,” in 2014-15.) Reports are that about 50 million Facebook users have been effected. Executives are being called to task to answer, Why this happened and what FB will do about it in the future. CEO Mark Zuckerberg being called once again to testify in front of Congress. Silicon Valley social media companies have enjoyed the excuse that they are merely a platform for users to share information and they are constantly innovating their technology to safeguard users’ privacy.
Alas, trying to tie this into election meddling doesn’t make sense, and if called before Congress that’s what this will mean. And I just don’t see a concerted effort by Facebook to affect the presidential election of 2016. I know a lot of politicians and people are still trying to come to grips with the result, but let’s try to keep the blame focused squarely on one company and individuals at a time here.
This is the proverbial spaghetti plate thrown against the wall. We already have both Houses and a Special Counsel conducting parallel investigations into the election trying to link the Trump Campaign to Russia in any way shape or form. And the first company pilloried for dirty schemes was Fusion GPS, another data research firm that produces opposition research for political campaigns. (In the end the report Fusion GPS produced ended up in the Hillary Campaign; which explains why they are no longer in the news cycle even when the same subject comes up.)
What Cambridge Analytica was doing with all this Facebook data was conning people into believing they could turn Facebook data into usable voter profiles. (Well, that’s my way of looking at it.)
Cambridge Analytica allegedly used a data set of the 50 million people to create what it calls “psychographical modeling,” whatever that may be. This “data to inform your future outreach” could be used to streamline your voter targeting efforts and get the most return on investment.
Imagine this: A data firm using data to produce a data-based research product. This is what we are fighting against now all of a sudden?
The fact that the data was collected surreptitiously seems unethical, but is it illegal? Is it open and transparent? No. But remember that Fusion GPS was in front of Congress and would not reveal their “sources and methods” used to compile the Dossier on Donald Trump. And Hillary made sure that DNC voter information wasn’t shared with the Bernie Sanders Campaign. (And he still won half the states during the Primary, ethics be damned.)
So who has to be clear and transparent when working on a political campaign? If not Fusion GPS, why can’t Cambridge Analytica use the same excuse? If anything, Facebook should be suing C.A. for by-passing their lucrative data sharing and ad selling business model.
Oh yeah, Facebook collects and keeps all of our data anyways in order to deliver targeted marketing to us. Oh, and our internet browsing data, too – what we do outside of Facebook. That information is fed back to Facebook in a reciprocal third party data-sharing agreement so Facebook can show us even more targeted marketing relating to those third party companies.
Since this already happens why would it be untoward for a political campaign to use this information coming from a research firm? The only conclusion I can make is people are none too happy that it was the Trump Campaign that employed the services of Cambridge Analytica (and won), and it was Hillary that relied on foreign influence, and lost. How they may have collected the information should be an issue separate an apart from how the Campaign used it.
Now that this has come to light people don’t know if this is a data breach, a hack, another Russian ploy, or a devious plot by the Trump Campaign to abuse and misuse voter data. Steve Bannon, Trump Campaign and White House henchman extraordinaire, was a VP at C.A. So it is probably fair to say that neither Facebook nor C.A. has anything to worry about; this will just all end up as another Trump problem that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller can add to the pile on his desk. And why Hillary lost.
How Trump Consultants Exploited Facebook Data of Millions
