19 ms·

New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

404 points by mindgam3 7y ago

sschueller 7y ago
"used stolen Facebook data" Is that factually correct? I was under the impression that facebook gave them API access.
- thomasmarcelis 7y ago
  They had API access but extracting and using the data in the way they did was against the terms of use IIRC
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Essentially. The root failure mode of FB's API solution is that it's an API for accessing private data and their only protection against clients abusing that access was a terms of service. Back in the mid-'00s, we started implementing something against FB's API and I was more than a bit shocked to discover that their solution for preventing someone from building a parallel network of friend relationships out of the available dataset was "Please don't do that, and anyway if you try to do it at scale we'll probably detect the bandwidth consumption and shut you down." Not great.
- everdev 7y ago
  They were getting a small number of users to fill out quizzes on Facebook. Unfortunately, the Facebook API gave them information not just about the user who filled out the quiz, but of all of that user's friends. It was against the Facebook ToS, but the data was still provided easily via the API. That's what allowed them to quickly build a database of most eligible voters with very little direct outreach.
- dfxm12 7y ago
  The developer of the app "thisisyourdigitallife" handed over data collected from that app to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook claims this violates their TOS. Based on that, the data can be called stolen. https://www.vox.com/2018/3/17/17134072/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-explained-user-data https://www.vox.com/2018/3/17/17134072/facebook-cambridge-an...
  - StuffedParrot 7y ago
    > Facebook claims this violates their TOS. Based on that, the data can be called stolen. They can call it that sure, but if they didn’t restrict access it’s hard to take this as anything but Facebook covering the entire point of their api—to get user data. Hell, if this is theft I should add “master burglar” to my resume—scraping in spite of being an obvious TOS violation is common in the industry. It’s certainly not a crime.
shadowgovt 7y ago
Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment. Problem is, even if they are a free and independent thinker, voting populations are large enough that the "average is the outcome" phenomenon comes into play, and voters are on average demonstrably vulnerable to coercion. Not enough to flip people's opinions 180 degrees, but enough to, say, get a reality TV star elected over a politician with a checkered history (that has itself been subject to decades of effort and millions spent to make said history checkered).
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  While I agree with "how malleable opinions are...", the actual answer is, "not very malleable". Every well-designed study of political advertising I've ever seen has shown that it's impact is very small, in some cases unmeasurably small. Thus, for example, the 2016 Clinton campaign raised a lot more $$ than the Trump campaign, whereas the Sanders primary campaign out-fundraised the Clinton one. Now, the impact on the politicians of fundraising, is not at all small. The primary advantage of personalized advertising and fundraising, is to help a campaign rake in more cash, which is both legalized bribery, and an incentive to stoke your base's outrate instead of reaching towards the middle. The worst thing about the CA/Facebook scandal, is that it's become an excuse for a large swath of the Democratic party to decide that it didn't make any mistakes in 2016 worth mentioning (or correcting).
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Correct. A study I've heard described (apologies for missing a link directly to it right now) attempted to micro-target advertising to nudge numbers, and found the strategy that worked wasn't to tell "dyed-in-the-wool" supporters of a candidate to vote for the other candidate; it was to tell them their vote didn't matter and they should stay home. It appeared to have effect.
fmakunbound 7y ago
After having seen The Great Hack https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9358204/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9358204/ over the weekend, it's hard to imagine how the scope expanded again. They used the developing countries all over the world as practice for UK brexit and US's 2016 elections.
- growlist 7y ago
  > UK brexit Is there any rock solid evidence around this yet? As far as I'm aware it's still in the realm of conspiracy theory. Given how far she's spun hearsay, circumstantial evidence and speculation, I'm betting if Carole Cadwalladr etc. did have anything concrete we'd never hear the end of it.
  - tiborsaas 7y ago
    Evidence for what? Cambridge Analytica's role in Brexit?
  - rjsw 7y ago
    It sounds like the management/salespeople of CA have been telling potential clients that they could affect election results whether it was true or not.
  - dfxm12 7y ago
    The head of biz dev for CA says they worked with Leave.EU and UKIP during the Brexit campaign. https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica-leave-eu-ukip-brexit-facebook/ https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica-leave-eu...
    - Chestofdraw 7y ago
      To add to that, Vote Leave used AggregateIQ which is essentially the same company as CA.
  - rumblerock 7y ago
    I don't have evidence for Brexit, but I did personally witness a similar operation in a 2014 Senate race where the data made clear that this wasn't something organic, or small scale (think orders of magnitude). While I can't tie direct to CA if they were leaders in the space there's no reason to believe they weren't using the same playbook, and more.
linusnext 7y ago
The story incorrectly reports the company was hired for the trump campaign to do data work. As per https://youtu.be/yjn6wK01cqk?t=1878 https://youtu.be/yjn6wK01cqk?t=1878 only staff were hired. edit: provide link, and clarify.
- Jakawao 7y ago
  Fine, I will bite. https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-really-do-for-trumps-campaign/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-rea... Cambridge worked both for the Trump campaign and a Trump-aligned Super PAC. Cambridge Analytica was paid $5.9 million by the Trump campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings If you have a source that shows otherwise, please share.
  - linusnext 7y ago
    5 Million was for ad buys on TV. The rest was just for support staff that actually were not employees of CA.
    - n4r9 7y ago
      The Wired article says the rest went to "Oczkowski and his team". Oczkowski is CA's former head of product and worked there until April 2017. Either way, I'm not sure the distinction you're making is very significant?
      - linusnext 7y ago
        The statement that the stolen data was used for the campaign is contradicted by the interview link provided.
        n4r9 7y ago
        Ah, I see what you mean, yes: it's denied by the campaign manager.
buboard 7y ago
In politics , the best manipulation campaign is to have a vision that moves people. Why are american Dems stirring again the CA pot? It s frankly bad publicity at this moment to blame everything to the evil bad actors. It may appeal to a small part of their voter base, but conspiracies usually alienate moderate/undecided ppl
- SpaceManNabs 7y ago
  Conspiracies tend to have the connotation as stories believed by a small segment of the population hoping to have access to secret knowledge that tends to be wrong and based in narrative rather than facts. Is this how you are using the word? Where are the lack of facts in how CA melded elections?
  - buboard 7y ago
    > are the lack of facts in how CA melded elections CA's job was to meddle in elections, the question is if it's effective. there is very little evidence that it worked.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - n4r9 7y ago
      What would constitute evidence that it worked?
      - buboard 7y ago
        I don't know
        schmilk 7y ago
        This really seems like a burden of proof situation. If a bad actor is demonstrably trying to be a bad actor, then they are a bad actor, and we should make a big deal out of it. Saying "yes, they are bad actors, but can you prove they actually accomplished their goal?" just enables more bad actors. Perhaps the burden of proof that a bad actor did not accomplish their goal should be on the bad actor. Otherwise more and more will spring up, and we'll just throw our hands up saying, "meh, we can't prove they were effective".
freewizard 7y ago
Yes, FB & CA should be hold accountable for abusing user privacy, but real elephant in the room is about the legislation of political campaigns, specifically: - amount of $ campaign may collect and spend - granularity of users segment campaign may target
- n4r9 7y ago
  Agreed, although the first point is kind of questionable because as technology improves, the cost of voter manipulation could plummet.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I think that people who are whistle blowers and release information like this are hero’s and deserve as much protection as civil society can offer them. Off topic, but I feel like saying it: here in the USA, the administrations of presidents Obama and Trump have really tried to stomp out valid whistle blowing efforts. I hope that history is very harsh on both presidents in this issue in the future when people start to ask how democracies got so subverted by corporate/elite interests.
mzs 7y ago
the actual files: https://twitter.com/HindsightFiles/status/1214039510859825153 https://twitter.com/HindsightFiles/status/121403951085982515...
0xADEADBEE 7y ago
One thing I notice often gets glossed over when Cambridge Analytica comes up is that they didn't really shut down at all. While CA ceased trading, a company called Emerdata was created around that time by the same directors [0]. Their Company's House filing documents can be seen here: [1]. I'm not yelling 'conspiracy!' or anything, but it's notable that this isn't more widely reported. I'll be watching them with interest. [0] - https://www.newsweek.com/what-emerdata-scl-group-executives-flee-new-firm-and-its-registered-office-909334 https://www.newsweek.com/what-emerdata-scl-group-executives-... [1] - https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10911848/officers https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10911848/officers
xibalba 7y ago
I remain unconvinced that Cambridge Analytica had any material impact on the election. Please give me some hard evidence to the contrary. This whole scandal seems like a red herring onto which people project their a) anger about their losing candidate or b) their personal and often unsubstantiated beliefs about the "harm" they could experience due to "big data".
- nojvek 7y ago
  how would you prove the inverse of this? i.e cambridge analytics didn't have any material impact. I think most are basing it on the assumption that CA with the help of Facebook could target millions of americans in a personalized way and display ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate. No way to say it's a guaranteed method, but it's as effective as bill board marketers proving their ads change people's opinions about a brand. That's where most of the presential election fund raises go to anyway right? to reach out to people and sway their opinion?
  - xibalba 7y ago
    > how would you prove the inverse of this? I don't know, but that alone isn't a convincing argument. > ...ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate > ...that's where most of the presential election fund raises go to... Perhaps. The question is, what is the effect? I would wager it is very small to nil.
    - nojvek 7y ago
      As nil as Coca-Cola’s billboard/tv marketing ? When I still had FB, their ads/propaganda was super convincing about Hillary and her hacked email server yada yada. It was quite a genius marketing method to reach millions.
- rumblerock 7y ago
  The Senate intelligence committee report from October is the most detailed look into their operation. In sum, you're looking at an operation across platforms (FB, Twitter, etc.), with the manpower to generate endless content and avatar accounts, with this type of data in addition to what the political campaigns already had. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
lerie 7y ago
I am still confused as to how democracy is threatened by any of this complete horse shit of a scandal. "micro-targeted" ads? You mean advertising to a person and not a group of people? So, instead of saying "this guy like this stuff", the ads say "this guy like the brand you buy"? I am just lost on how any of this crap played any kind of outcome in any voter choice anywhere. Did the ads lie to people? Did the ads vote for people? Whats the deal? To believe any of this crap is to believe that people are forced at gunpoint by an ad to vote a certain way. complete nonsense.

404 points by mindgam3 7y ago

sschueller 7y ago

"used stolen Facebook data" Is that factually correct? I was under the impression that facebook gave them API access.

thomasmarcelis 7y ago
They had API access but extracting and using the data in the way they did was against the terms of use IIRC
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Essentially. The root failure mode of FB's API solution is that it's an API for accessing private data and their only protection against clients abusing that access was a terms of service. Back in the mid-'00s, we started implementing something against FB's API and I was more than a bit shocked to discover that their solution for preventing someone from building a parallel network of friend relationships out of the available dataset was "Please don't do that, and anyway if you try to do it at scale we'll probably detect the bandwidth consumption and shut you down." Not great.
everdev 7y ago
They were getting a small number of users to fill out quizzes on Facebook. Unfortunately, the Facebook API gave them information not just about the user who filled out the quiz, but of all of that user's friends. It was against the Facebook ToS, but the data was still provided easily via the API. That's what allowed them to quickly build a database of most eligible voters with very little direct outreach.
dfxm12 7y ago
The developer of the app "thisisyourdigitallife" handed over data collected from that app to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook claims this violates their TOS. Based on that, the data can be called stolen. https://www.vox.com/2018/3/17/17134072/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-explained-user-data https://www.vox.com/2018/3/17/17134072/facebook-cambridge-an...
- StuffedParrot 7y ago
  > Facebook claims this violates their TOS. Based on that, the data can be called stolen. They can call it that sure, but if they didn’t restrict access it’s hard to take this as anything but Facebook covering the entire point of their api—to get user data. Hell, if this is theft I should add “master burglar” to my resume—scraping in spite of being an obvious TOS violation is common in the industry. It’s certainly not a crime.

shadowgovt 7y ago

Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment. Problem is, even if they are a free and independent thinker, voting populations are large enough that the "average is the outcome" phenomenon comes into play, and voters are on average demonstrably vulnerable to coercion. Not enough to flip people's opinions 180 degrees, but enough to, say, get a reality TV star elected over a politician with a checkered history (that has itself been subject to decades of effort and millions spent to make said history checkered).

rossdavidh 7y ago
While I agree with "how malleable opinions are...", the actual answer is, "not very malleable". Every well-designed study of political advertising I've ever seen has shown that it's impact is very small, in some cases unmeasurably small. Thus, for example, the 2016 Clinton campaign raised a lot more $$ than the Trump campaign, whereas the Sanders primary campaign out-fundraised the Clinton one. Now, the impact on the politicians of fundraising, is not at all small. The primary advantage of personalized advertising and fundraising, is to help a campaign rake in more cash, which is both legalized bribery, and an incentive to stoke your base's outrate instead of reaching towards the middle. The worst thing about the CA/Facebook scandal, is that it's become an excuse for a large swath of the Democratic party to decide that it didn't make any mistakes in 2016 worth mentioning (or correcting).
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Correct. A study I've heard described (apologies for missing a link directly to it right now) attempted to micro-target advertising to nudge numbers, and found the strategy that worked wasn't to tell "dyed-in-the-wool" supporters of a candidate to vote for the other candidate; it was to tell them their vote didn't matter and they should stay home. It appeared to have effect.

fmakunbound 7y ago

After having seen The Great Hack https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9358204/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9358204/ over the weekend, it's hard to imagine how the scope expanded again. They used the developing countries all over the world as practice for UK brexit and US's 2016 elections.

growlist 7y ago
> UK brexit Is there any rock solid evidence around this yet? As far as I'm aware it's still in the realm of conspiracy theory. Given how far she's spun hearsay, circumstantial evidence and speculation, I'm betting if Carole Cadwalladr etc. did have anything concrete we'd never hear the end of it.
- tiborsaas 7y ago
  Evidence for what? Cambridge Analytica's role in Brexit?
- rjsw 7y ago
  It sounds like the management/salespeople of CA have been telling potential clients that they could affect election results whether it was true or not.
- dfxm12 7y ago
  The head of biz dev for CA says they worked with Leave.EU and UKIP during the Brexit campaign. https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica-leave-eu-ukip-brexit-facebook/ https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica-leave-eu...
  - Chestofdraw 7y ago
    To add to that, Vote Leave used AggregateIQ which is essentially the same company as CA.
- rumblerock 7y ago
  I don't have evidence for Brexit, but I did personally witness a similar operation in a 2014 Senate race where the data made clear that this wasn't something organic, or small scale (think orders of magnitude). While I can't tie direct to CA if they were leaders in the space there's no reason to believe they weren't using the same playbook, and more.

linusnext 7y ago

The story incorrectly reports the company was hired for the trump campaign to do data work. As per https://youtu.be/yjn6wK01cqk?t=1878 https://youtu.be/yjn6wK01cqk?t=1878 only staff were hired. edit: provide link, and clarify.

Jakawao 7y ago
Fine, I will bite. https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-really-do-for-trumps-campaign/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-rea... Cambridge worked both for the Trump campaign and a Trump-aligned Super PAC. Cambridge Analytica was paid $5.9 million by the Trump campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings If you have a source that shows otherwise, please share.
- linusnext 7y ago
  5 Million was for ad buys on TV. The rest was just for support staff that actually were not employees of CA.
  - n4r9 7y ago
    The Wired article says the rest went to "Oczkowski and his team". Oczkowski is CA's former head of product and worked there until April 2017. Either way, I'm not sure the distinction you're making is very significant?
    - linusnext 7y ago
      The statement that the stolen data was used for the campaign is contradicted by the interview link provided.
      - n4r9 7y ago
        Ah, I see what you mean, yes: it's denied by the campaign manager.

buboard 7y ago

In politics , the best manipulation campaign is to have a vision that moves people. Why are american Dems stirring again the CA pot? It s frankly bad publicity at this moment to blame everything to the evil bad actors. It may appeal to a small part of their voter base, but conspiracies usually alienate moderate/undecided ppl

SpaceManNabs 7y ago
Conspiracies tend to have the connotation as stories believed by a small segment of the population hoping to have access to secret knowledge that tends to be wrong and based in narrative rather than facts. Is this how you are using the word? Where are the lack of facts in how CA melded elections?
- buboard 7y ago
  > are the lack of facts in how CA melded elections CA's job was to meddle in elections, the question is if it's effective. there is very little evidence that it worked.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - n4r9 7y ago
    What would constitute evidence that it worked?
    - buboard 7y ago
      I don't know
      - schmilk 7y ago
        This really seems like a burden of proof situation. If a bad actor is demonstrably trying to be a bad actor, then they are a bad actor, and we should make a big deal out of it. Saying "yes, they are bad actors, but can you prove they actually accomplished their goal?" just enables more bad actors. Perhaps the burden of proof that a bad actor did not accomplish their goal should be on the bad actor. Otherwise more and more will spring up, and we'll just throw our hands up saying, "meh, we can't prove they were effective".

freewizard 7y ago

Yes, FB & CA should be hold accountable for abusing user privacy, but real elephant in the room is about the legislation of political campaigns, specifically: - amount of $ campaign may collect and spend - granularity of users segment campaign may target

n4r9 7y ago
Agreed, although the first point is kind of questionable because as technology improves, the cost of voter manipulation could plummet.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

I think that people who are whistle blowers and release information like this are hero’s and deserve as much protection as civil society can offer them. Off topic, but I feel like saying it: here in the USA, the administrations of presidents Obama and Trump have really tried to stomp out valid whistle blowing efforts. I hope that history is very harsh on both presidents in this issue in the future when people start to ask how democracies got so subverted by corporate/elite interests.

mzs 7y ago

the actual files: https://twitter.com/HindsightFiles/status/1214039510859825153 https://twitter.com/HindsightFiles/status/121403951085982515...

0xADEADBEE 7y ago

One thing I notice often gets glossed over when Cambridge Analytica comes up is that they didn't really shut down at all. While CA ceased trading, a company called Emerdata was created around that time by the same directors [0]. Their Company's House filing documents can be seen here: [1]. I'm not yelling 'conspiracy!' or anything, but it's notable that this isn't more widely reported. I'll be watching them with interest. [0] - https://www.newsweek.com/what-emerdata-scl-group-executives-flee-new-firm-and-its-registered-office-909334 https://www.newsweek.com/what-emerdata-scl-group-executives-... [1] - https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10911848/officers https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10911848/officers

xibalba 7y ago

I remain unconvinced that Cambridge Analytica had any material impact on the election. Please give me some hard evidence to the contrary. This whole scandal seems like a red herring onto which people project their a) anger about their losing candidate or b) their personal and often unsubstantiated beliefs about the "harm" they could experience due to "big data".

nojvek 7y ago
how would you prove the inverse of this? i.e cambridge analytics didn't have any material impact. I think most are basing it on the assumption that CA with the help of Facebook could target millions of americans in a personalized way and display ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate. No way to say it's a guaranteed method, but it's as effective as bill board marketers proving their ads change people's opinions about a brand. That's where most of the presential election fund raises go to anyway right? to reach out to people and sway their opinion?
- xibalba 7y ago
  > how would you prove the inverse of this? I don't know, but that alone isn't a convincing argument. > ...ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate > ...that's where most of the presential election fund raises go to... Perhaps. The question is, what is the effect? I would wager it is very small to nil.
  - nojvek 7y ago
    As nil as Coca-Cola’s billboard/tv marketing ? When I still had FB, their ads/propaganda was super convincing about Hillary and her hacked email server yada yada. It was quite a genius marketing method to reach millions.
rumblerock 7y ago
The Senate intelligence committee report from October is the most detailed look into their operation. In sum, you're looking at an operation across platforms (FB, Twitter, etc.), with the manpower to generate endless content and avatar accounts, with this type of data in addition to what the political campaigns already had. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

lerie 7y ago

I am still confused as to how democracy is threatened by any of this complete horse shit of a scandal. "micro-targeted" ads? You mean advertising to a person and not a group of people? So, instead of saying "this guy like this stuff", the ads say "this guy like the brand you buy"? I am just lost on how any of this crap played any kind of outcome in any voter choice anywhere. Did the ads lie to people? Did the ads vote for people? Whats the deal? To believe any of this crap is to believe that people are forced at gunpoint by an ad to vote a certain way. complete nonsense.