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[Tack]

So guys. The Zuckerberg/Chris Wylie thing.

Link

Summary:
Essentially social media information has allegedly been sold to paramilitary information warfare companies so that they can hyper-target demographics in order to sway elections.

Not sure it has its own thread but hey. Brave New Eighty-Four?

[wierd]

No, more

"You mean giving my personal information to a soulless entity is a BAD IDEA?!"

Here's your sign.  Dont use facebook. Dont use social media. 

[MorleyDev]

This is more the people not being able to keep up with the consequences of the technology. Facebook didn't add Likes and the like to be used as propaganda tools, they were added to be a neat little thing to make people use the service and feel more involved. They didn't allow apps to use their APIs to capture and analyse user data, they did it to let businesses add extra functionality to their platform without needing to invest the development time themselves.

I mean, you think that quiet corner cafe don't keep at least track of which tables are used? Which type of person buys from them? What type of coffee is more popular? Of course they do, and all the modern analytics are just extensions of that but at finer detail, because computers allow for that kind of granularity and because that kind of granularity is needed to keep on top of a large complex IT system. Because in order to effectively maintain a system, you need to keep track of how it's used.

Every development house I've ever worked for has had an analytics database of how their system is being used, what APIs are being called and what the performance is. And if they don't when I get there, they will have by the time I've left.

Really the 3rd party businesses accessing the API and abusing the data...really, the idea is basically the same as the German spy sat in a British Cafe in WW2, listening to the chat around them and reporting back the mood of the country from that chatter and anything else they overhear. The only difference here is the scale has grown.

And I can't help but think that blaming Facebook is like blaming the Cafe. Sure, they should do what they can to protect that data and stop it being gathered, but...well, if you flat-out forbid that gathering analytics then everything on the internet falls down. Google, Facebook, this very fucking forum. Everything.

[wierd]

No, the Like! button was offered by FaceBook as a means of increasing user impressions, to increase value to their advertising partners.

Site builders gave Facebook what they wanted, by using the Like! button for the purposes you mentioned.  The purpose of the like button was never to serve that community function. It was to collect the data from more users than had signed up for their service, and for no other purpose.  If it did not provide that function, Facebook would never have offered it.

[MorleyDev]

No, the Like! button was offered by FaceBook as a means of increasing user impressions, to increase value to their advertising partners.

If you want people to use your system, user engagement is key. If you want to fund your system, you need people using it and ads to drive money into the system. If you want to sell ads effectively on the internet, where nearly every type of person imaginable uses it, you need to target those ads. That's true for physical stores that have advertisements in the windows, as much as it is websites.

This isn't some vast cackling conspiracy to trick people into buying things, it's how businesses have operated since before the internet. All that changed is the scale.

[smjjames]

The main difference from a cafe and facebook is that you don't typically shout your most personal details at the top of your lungs and that the Cambridge Analytics thing was using peoples data without permission. I mean, if you really wanted privacy for something, you wouldn't go to a cafe.

Seems to me like it's more a consequence of lack of oversight on data collection and usage of that data.

[wierd]

Another difference is that you can go to a different cafe, and not be in the same database.

Facebook's tools are ubiquitous to site builders, who have standardized on the platform.  It is nearly impossible to not send Facebook data without actively sabotaging their script execution, and even then they can collect data on your unique pattern of service disruption.

[MorleyDev]

The main difference from a cafe and facebook is that you don't typically shout your most personal details at the top of your lungs.

Replace cafe with pub then. People definitely do that there.

Yeah, there is supposed to be oversight over how the APIs are used. People have to explicitly confirm what they want to allow, for example. GDPR is addressing these things, but it's a lot of work to implement that kind of thing and even then, people are dumb and so will agree to anything if it's put in from of them as a "Yes" or "No" box.

Like I said, the scale has changed. Things have centralised. Repeating the work someone else has done is a waste of time, of course businesses are going to now do that whenever possible. Hence why a few tools become common underpinnings for the whole stack.

[smjjames]

No, the Like! button was offered by FaceBook as a means of increasing user impressions, to increase value to their advertising partners.

If you want people to use your system, user engagement is key. If you want to fund your system, you need people using it and ads to drive money into the system. If you want to sell ads effectively on the internet, where nearly every type of person imaginable uses it, you need to target those ads.

Using the data themselves and keeping it safe is one thing, knowingly or unknowingly letting some third party abuse it is another.

Using big data and metadata like the way Cambridge Analytics did it (except in a non-shady way) is going to be used as a source of information for campaigns whether we like it or not. Again, it seems like a lack of oversight and our laws and regulations not keeping up with technology.

[MorleyDev]

If you look at what they did to get the data, they:
1) Released quiz that required user data access.
2) People used that quiz, giving the company access to the user data that the user explicitly have them permission to access.
3) Copied and kept that data after they accessed it and did future analytics based on it for non-academic purposes.

Only of those things broke both the rules and spirit of the rules as laid out by data protection regulations (at least the ones in Europe).

[wierd]

I dont buy it.

Numerous attempts to offer users a proactive "No, I dont want you to use my data for anything motherfucker." voice have always been ignored or defeated by these agents. Remember the "Do not track" flag?  yeah.  That.

They could instead offer a nice little message that says "Hey, we need to sell that data to run the site bro."  or the API could just disable all the fancy features the site designer intended for community integration when that message is sent by the client-- but no.

gotta circumvent, and get and use it despite the clear intent of the user.

[MorleyDev]

Because filtering out everything is literally impossible. I mean, you can "do not track" and not store information directly tied to a user, and GDPR means they legally have to make you opt-in to that kind of thing. But general 'a visit at /X/Y/Z at 12:05" is literally impossible not to capture somewhere on your server.

Even if you aren't tracking who is doing the views, the only situation where you will not have any data about what views are happening in the system is if there are no views happening.

And of course passing a law doesn't change shit if the person doing it doesn't care about following that law, except giving a legal course after the damage is already done.

[smjjames]

What can be legislated though is what they do with it and possibly how it's accquired. The scandal here is that Cambridge Analytics mined the data without Facebook even knowing they were doing it, I think. Plus the fact that they're getting a huge PR hit over this.

[MorleyDev]

What can be legislated though is what they do with it and possibly how it's acquired.

And it already is legislated, at least in Europe. GDPR came into force recently, and that's an evolution of previous legislation. Dunno if America has an equivalent, or how strict it is. And at the end of the day, you can't legislate around stupidity. If people aren't checking what they're giving permission over, there's really not much you can do except educate people.

And anonymised collection of data is basically a requirement for computers to function since every webserver everywhere logs out "GET /sfm/index.php 2018-03-20 ..." somewhere, it's needed for diagnosing issues with the server and whatnot, so just outright banning would immediately result in the switching off of the entire internet.

The scandal here is that Cambridge Analytics mined the data without Facebook even knowing they were doing it, I think.

The issue is there's not a lot a provider can do to stop a 3rd party keeping a hold of data after the fact, since that data has to hit some of their code/servers at some point for them to...ya know, use it for whatever the thing they're supposed to be providing is. You can make doing so not allowed, but they were allegedly entrapping people with Ukrainian prostitutes so I can't imagine it being illegal isn't much of a deterrent.

The inherent problem with computers is that basically anything a 'bad guy' uses is just an alternative application of something needed for the 'good guys'. Encrypted mobile devices keep you safe if your phone is stolen, and if you are a terrorist plotting a bombing. Banning something to stop the one will hurt the other.

[Tack]

I mean personally I can see how this is just the way of the future, better get used to it.
A very thick end of the unlikely wedge is just good ol’ “managed democracy”

Imagine the little popup on your computer which says

Hello!
Elections for [20XX] have just been processed.
Assessment of your digital footprint has been added to the demographics of your Bloc, and a suitable government has been assembled in regards to the majority sentiment.

The current government shares your views on:
Defense Spending, [Minority issue A], Immigration, [Minority issue B]

The current government does not share your views on:
Big business spending, [Minority issue C], Tax policy

Keep voting with your clicks, and we will see you next year!

Eager to pass the time? Try this video on where government taxes are assigned, and why they’re so important!