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Fakebook, Suckerberg, Cambridge Analytica and Related Shenanigans


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I thought we could use a separate thread because some of this seems unrelated to the Russian investigated but still shady af.

 

 

  Oh and apparently we can thank them for Duterte too.

 

Edited by Coconut Flan
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I am so glad I've never created a facebook account. And anyone who looks at my twitter account would be very bored. I've never posted a single thing and don't follow anything.

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6 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I am so glad I've never created a facebook account. And anyone who looks at my twitter account would be very bored. I've never posted a single thing and don't follow anything.

I'm slightly more adventurous. I have an FB account, but never post and never have filled in my profile details other than my handle. My twitter account is an egg, that follows nothing but news sites and outlets and a couple of authors I like. Oh, and Aunt Crabby. :pb_lol:

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Thanks for starting this thread.  I've been struggling to understand the scope of the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook data [mis]usage, so have searched for somewhat easy-to-understand articles on the same.  Here's one:

Thumbnail sketch of the Cambridge Analytica Story - Washington Post
 

Spoiler

 

1. Who took what from Facebook?

During the summer of 2014, the U.K. affiliate of U.S. political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica hired a Soviet-born American researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, to gather basic profile information of Facebook users along with what they chose to “Like.” About 270,000 Facebook users, most or all of whom were paid a small amount, downloaded Kogan’s app, thisisyourdigitallife, which took the form of a personality survey. Kogan collected data not just on those users but on their Facebook friends as well, if their privacy settings allowed it -- a universe of people that reached 50 million. The app, in its terms of service, disclosed that it would collect data on users and their friends.

2. Did Kogan have Facebook’s permission?

In a general sense, yes. Since 2007, Facebook has allowed outside developers to build and offer their own applications within its space. When Kogan offered his app, Facebook also allowed developers to collect information on friends of those who chose to use their apps if their privacy settings allowed it.

3. Then what’s the issue here?

Facebook says Kogan “lied to us” by saying he was gathering the data for research purposes and violated the company’s policies by passing the data to Cambridge Analytica. (Kogan says his app’s terms and conditions specifically allowed “commercial use.”) Facebook says that after it learned of the situation in 2015, it removed Kogan’s app and demanded that he “and all parties he had given data to” destroy the data. Cambridge Analytica has maintained that it deleted all the data Kogan provided, but the New York Times reported that emails and documents suggest the firm “still possesses most or all of the trove.” Facebook is investigating whether that’s true, said its chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg.

4. Why did Cambridge Analytica want the Facebook data?

The firm uses data to reach voters with hyper-targeted messaging, including on Facebook and other online services. The company may have wanted the data to create psychological profiles that could be used to target voters during political campaigns. The firm believed those profiles were better predictors of how voters could be swayed through targeted ads than traditional data on party registration and voting patterns. Cambridge Analytica was funded by former Renaissance Technologies co-CEO Robert Mercer, a major supporter of Trump in 2016. Trump’s campaign manager, Steve Bannon, served on the firm’s board.

5. Did Cambridge Analytica pay Kogan?

It covered his costs in creating his app -- more than $800,000 -- and allowed him to keep a copy for his own research, the Times reported, citing company emails and financial records.

6. Did the Facebook data help Trump win the presidency?

Whether Cambridge Analytica’s models really work is a point of contention; even some of the firm’s clients have said they saw little value in it. Cambridge Analytica has denied it used psychographic modeling techniques on the Trump campaign. But it’s not clear whether the firm used the Facebook data in other ways to better understand and target voters. Also unknown: how many of the 50 million Facebook users whose data were acquired were registered U.S. voters.

7. Did any of this violate any rules?

That remains to be seen. The U.K. has data-protection laws that ban the sale or use of personal data without consent. And in 2011, Facebook settled privacy complaints by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission by agreeing to get clear consent from users before sharing their material. The FTC is now investigating whether Facebook violated the terms of that 2011 consent decree. The company would face millions of dollars in fines if it were found to have violated that pact. Lawmakers in the U.S. and U.K. are conducting their own inquiries.

 

 

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What the hell was FB planning on doing with medical info? 

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12 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

What the hell was FB planning on doing with medical info? 

Sell it. What else?

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I deactivated my FB account soon after the world went to fucking hell in an orange hand basket. I'm going back in to download everything so I can save stuff when I finally decide to delete it all together.  I now know Facebook is the center of all evil, but I really miss some of my  old friends and family. This does suck.

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I'm no fun. My social media is FreeJinger and a site that discusses my Alma mater's sports teams. No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

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1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

I'm no fun. My social media is FreeJinger and a site that discusses my Alma mater's sports teams. No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

This is me! FJ, Ask a Manager, and some read-only on Reddit. 

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Of course Cam Anal isn't the only one. There's also CubeYou. And probably many, many others.

Facebook suspends another data analytics firm after CNBC discovers it was using tactics like Cambridge Analytica

Quote

Facebook is suspending a data analytics firm called CubeYou from the platform after CNBC notified the company that CubeYou was collecting information about users through quizzes.

CubeYou misleadingly labeled its quizzes "for non-profit academic research," then shared user information with marketers. The scenario is eerily similar to how Cambridge Analytica received unauthorized access to data from as many as 87 million Facebook user accounts to target political marketing.

Like Cambridge Analytica, the company sold data that had been collected by researchers working with the Psychometrics Lab at Cambridge University.

The CubeYou discovery suggests that collecting data from quizzes and using it for marketing purposes was far from an isolated incident. Moreover, the fact that CubeYou was able to mislabel the purpose of the quizzes — and that Facebook did nothing to stop it until CNBC pointed out the problem — suggests the platform has little control over this activity.

Facebook, however, disputed the implication that it can't exercise proper oversight over these types of apps, telling CNBC that it can't control information that companies mislabel. Upon being notified of CubeYou's alleged violations, Facebook said it would suspend all CubeYou's apps until a further audit could be completed.

"These are serious claims and we have suspended CubeYou from Facebook while we investigate them," Ime Archibong, Facebook vice president of product partnerships, said in a statement.

"If they refuse or fail our audit, their apps will be banned from Facebook. In addition, we will work with the UK ICO [Information Commissioner's Office] to ask the University of Cambridge about the development of apps in general by its Psychometrics Centre given this case and the misuse by Kogan," he said. Aleksander Kogan was the researcher who built the quiz used by Cambridge Analytica.

"We want to thank CNBC for bringing this case to our attention," Archibong added.

The revelation comes as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to answer questions before Congress this week stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees and the House Energy and Commerce Committee are expected to quiz him on what the site is doing to enhance user privacy, and prevent foreign actors from using Facebook to meddle in future elections.

Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has claimed personal responsibility for the data privacy leaks, and the company has launched several initiatives to increase user control over their data.

Meet CubeYou

CubeYou boasts on its web site that it uses census data and various web and social apps on Facebook and Twitter to collect personal information. CubeYou then contracts with advertising agencies who want to target certain types of Facebook users for ad campaigns.

CubeYou's site says it has access to personally identifiable information (PII) such as first names, last names, emails, phone numbers, IP addresses, mobile IDs and browser fingerprints.

On a cached version of its web site from March 19, it also said it keeps age, gender, location, work and education, and family and relationship information. It also has likes, follows, shares, posts, likes to posts, comments to posts, check-ins and mentions of brands/celebrities in a post. Interactions with companies are tracked back to 2012 and are updated weekly, the site said.

"This PII information of our panelists is used to verify eligibility (we do not knowingly accept panelists under the age of 18 in our panel), then match and/or fuse other online and offline data sources to enhance their profiles," CubeYou wrote.

The company's web site currently claims it has more than 10 million opted-in panelists, but the cached March 19 version said it had "an unbiased panel of more than 45 million people globally." (Click the images in this story to make them bigger.)

CubeYou collected a lot of this data through online apps that are meant to be entertaining or fun.

An ad agency exec who met with the company confirmed CubeYou said it mostly collects information through quizzes.

According to its web site, one of CubeYou's "most viral apps" is a Facebook quiz created in conjunction with the University of Cambridge called "You Are What You Like." It is meant "to predict a user's personality based on the pages s/he liked on Facebook."

Two versions of this app still were active on Facebook as of Sunday morning. The most recent version of this app has been renamed "Apply Magic Sauce," (YouAreWhatYouLike.com redirects to ApplyMagicSauce.com), and existed on the platform as recently as Sunday morning. Another version still called "You Are What You Like" is also available.

When a user clicks on the "App Terms" link for the Apply Magic Sauce app, it links to a page saying that the information collected through the quiz is intended for "non-exclusive access for research purposes only" and only for "non-profit academic research that has no connection whatsoever to any commercial or profit-making purpose or entity."

After CNBC contacted Facebook for this story, Facebook said there were two previous versions of the app named "You Are What You Like," one created in 2013, which was deleted by the developer, and one submitted later in 2013.

Both of those prior versions had similar disclaimers on Facebook about being used for academic research purposes.

In addition, those prior versions were able to get access to information from friends of the people who took the quiz -- as also happened in the Cambridge Analytica case. Until 2015, Facebook allowed developers to access information on Facebook friends as long as the original app user opted-in, a loophole that expanded the database of personal information considerably.

If the original user still remained opted in, CubeYou could theoretically still access their data to this day.

CubeYou and Cambridge U's response

When reached for comment, CubeYou CEO Federico Treu said the company was involved with developing the app and website, but only worked with Cambridge University from December 2013 to May 2015.

It only collected data from that time and has not had access since June 2015 to data from new people who have taken the quiz, Treu said

He also pointed out that the YouAreWhatYouLike.com website has different -- and looser -- terms of usage than the Facebook terms that CNBC discovered.

The web site says, "the information you submit to You Are What You Like may be stored and used for academic and business purposes, and also disclosed to third parties, including for example (but not limited to) research institutions. Any disclosure will be strictly in an anonymous format, such that the information can never be used to identify you or any other individual user." (Italics added by CNBC.)

He also denied CubeYou has access to friends' data if a user opted in, and said it only connects friends who have opted into the app individually.

Cambridge University said CubeYou's involvement was limited to developing a website.

"We were not aware of Cubeyou's claims on their blog," the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Center said in a statement.

"Having had a look now, several of these appear to be misleading and we will contact them to request that they clarify them. For example, we have not collaborated with them to build a psychological prediction model -- we keep our prediction model secret and it was already built before we started working with them," the institution said.

"Our relationship was not commercial in nature and no fees or client projects were exchanged. They just designed the interface for a website that used our models to give users insight on their [the users'] data. Unfortunately collaborators with the University of Cambridge sometimes exaggerate their connection to Cambridge in order to gain prestige from its academics' work," it added.

'A great place for us to get smart about the consumer'

CubeYou certainly claimed it was able to use this data to target Facebook users, and advertisers seem to have bought the pitch.

CubeYou's web site says its customers include global communications firm Edelman, and sports and entertainment agency Octagon. It also works with advertising agencies including 72 and Sunny (which counts Google, Adidas and Coors Light as clients), the Martin Agency (Discover, Geico, Experian), and Legacy Marketing (L'Oreal, Hilton, TGI Fridays), among others.

The site does not say which CubeYou data was used on which projects, but all agencies' testimonials talk about how CubeYou's data has allow more understanding of potential customers.

"CubeYou is a great place for us to get smart about the consumer," one customer testimonial from Legacy Marketing says. "We primarily use Mintel for our research, but there's very little consumer segmentation and I think that the greatest benefit of a tool like CubeYou is you can get highly nuanced data about demographics, psychographics and interests so easily."

The solution, however, is pretty simple: don't play free quizzes on the internet.

Edited by fraurosena
I can spell, even when typing really fast... but not always, it seems
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I listened to a few minutes of the Zuckerberg testimony on NPR today while driving to COSTCO and quit listening after a few minutes.   I couldn't believe it when Z-berg tried to explain that fb lets users structure their experience by giving them lots of options, while hoping that the US Senator who asked him a very pointed policy question wouldn't notice he was offering a misleading, and frankly bullshit, reply.  It didn't work.  He sounded like a sales pitch rather than a knowledgeable CEO. 

And it probably got on everyone's very last nerve when Z-berg started every response with Senator! Yadayadayada....

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"7 takeaways from Mark Zuckerberg’s marathon congressional testimony"

Spoiler

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testified about data privacy Tuesday in a marathon hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees. Here are seven takeaways.

Facebook's internal review of possible abuse covers 'tens of thousands of apps'

Zuckerberg was on Capitol Hill because personal information about an estimated 87 million Facebook users may have been improperly shared with the data firm Cambridge Analytica. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked whether there have been similar breaches involving other companies.

“We believe that we're going to be investigating many apps — tens of thousands of apps,” Zuckerberg said without citing specific examples. “And, if we find any suspicious activity, we're going to conduct a full audit of those apps to understand how they're using their data and if they're doing anything improper. If we find that they're doing anything improper, we'll ban them from Facebook, and we will tell everyone affected.”

It is possible, in other words, that Facebook will discover additional abuses.

Facebook is cooperating with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III

This is unsurprising because Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which involved the use of Facebook to spread disinformation. Still, it is notable that Zuckerberg confirmed the company's cooperation with Mueller's team.

“I actually am not aware of a subpoena — I believe that there may be [one] — but I know we're working with them,” Zuckerberg said.

He added that he has not been interviewed by the special counsel's team but answered “I believe so” when asked whether other Facebook staffers have.

“I want to be careful here because that — our work with the special counsel is confidential,” he said, “and I want to make sure that, in an open session, I'm not revealing something that's confidential.”

Zuckerberg couldn't, or wouldn't, answer some questions about how Facebook tracks users

“There have been reports that Facebook can track a user's Internet browsing activity, even after that user has logged off of the Facebook platform,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said. “Can you confirm whether or not this is true?”

“Senator, I want to make sure I get this accurate, so it would probably be better to have my team follow up afterwards,” Zuckerberg replied.

“You don't know?” Wicker asked, incredulously.

In a similar exchange, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asked whether Facebook tracks users' devices even when they are not connected to Facebook.

ZUCKERBERG: I'm not sure the answer to that question.

BLUNT: Really?

ZUCKERBERG: Yes. There may be some data that is necessary to provide the service that we do, but I don't have that, sitting here today, so that's something that I would want to follow up with you on.

Some senators don't understand how Facebook works

In perhaps the most glaring example, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) asked Zuckerberg, “How do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?”

Zuckerberg paused for a moment, seemingly surprised by the basic nature of the question, and said, “Senator, we run ads.”

Public speaking does not come naturally to Zuckerberg

NBC reported that Zuckerberg prepared for his testimony by participating in four practice sessions. The New York Times reported that Facebook “hired a team of experts, including a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, to put Mr. Zuckerberg, 33, a cerebral coder who is uncomfortable speaking in public, through a crash course in humility and charm.”

Zuckerberg did appear to be prepared, but he also appeared robotic, at times.

An ad-free, subscription-based version of Facebook is possible

Zuckerberg said “there will always be a version of Facebook that is free” and “we don't offer an option today for people to pay to not show ads.” The qualifiers in those statements — “version,” “today” — suggest a future, ad-free version of Facebook could come with a subscription fee.

Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said something similar to NBC last week: “We don't have an opt-out [of ads] at the highest level. That would be a paid product.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is going to be a Fox News hero

Prepare to see footage of Cruz grilling Zuckerberg about political bias on every Fox News opinion show.

... < video I won't watch because I despise Cruz >

Yes, the focus of the hearing was user privacy. But, as I wrote Monday, some conservatives in the media hoped that Zuckerberg would be confronted about Facebook's alleged bias against right-leaning speech. Cruz delivered.

“There are a great many Americans who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship,” Cruz said.

“I understand where that concern is coming from because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place,” Zuckerberg replied. “And this is actually a concern that I have and that I try to root out in the company — is making sure that we don't have any bias in the work that we do, and I think it is a fair concern that people would wonder about.”

I didn't watch the circus because I can't stand Suckerberg and didn't want to see grandstanding. From what I've read, it seems to have gone as I had expected.

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Schmuckaberg sounds like Kellyanne, Sarah Sanders and Trump all rolled into one honking snot ball.

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Holy fuck. :pb_eek:

So the Koch brothers will be able to have unprecedented access to FB data.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

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It sounds like just a PR move in which he continues doing  whatever he was doing before  but CA pretends he won't

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  • Coconut Flan changed the title to Fakebook, Suckerberg, Cambridge Analytica and Related Shenanigans

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