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Jury finds Facebook liable for deceiving users in Cambridge Analytica case

423 points · 107 comments · pseudolus

  1. cm2012 · · focus · HN ↗
    Standard PSA: Cambridge Analytica electing Trump is not a true story. Cambridge Analytica absolutely broke Facebook's terms of service with its personality quiz scheme but it did not affect the 2016 election.

    I'm an advertiser who has managed hundreds of millions of dollars for small startups and big corporations, brands, as well as a few small political campaigns.

    Even at the time of the Trump election, the kind of ad targeting that Cambridge Analytica says they were offering through the personality quizzes was absolute garbage. There is a reason why the official response from Boz doesn't even mention the personality quiz stuff, because it was essentially irrelevant to the Trump campaign's performance on paid advertising on Meta. And I would go further to say that, except for his success in fundraising, all of his Meta advertising probably didn't move that many votes.

    Cambridge Analytica, the organization, of course, loves to claim that they're the dark evil viziers behind the Trump campaign and they've advertised themselves as such to dictators all over the world. But that's just like Edward Bernays writing "Propaganda" back in the day, it is a way to sell their services. Trump digital director Brad Parscale said the campaign did not even use Cambridge Analytica’s controversial psychographic targeting.

    Not to mention, the only reason that Cambridge Analytica had that open graph information available is because communities like Hacker News begged again and again for Facebook to open the graph and not have a walled web. After that they cut off that graph access.

    1. JimDabell · · focus · HN ↗
      > the only reason that Cambridge Analytica had that open graph information available is because communities like Hacker News begged again and again for Facebook to open the graph and not have a walled web.

      This isn’t true. All the early Facebook access revolved around engagement and anything even remotely related to data portability was verboten.

      1. bryan_w · · focus · HN ↗
        Are you ok?

        Facebook and Google were one of the first major online services offering an "takeout" feature in service of data portability. FB had multiple rss feeds. It's graph API was around quite early due to demand.

        1. alex1138 · · focus · HN ↗
          My understanding of the internet is Google is extremely flawed but fair and they didn't try to hold you hostage

          Facebook is not fair and they actively do (ever try deleting an account? surprise! it's back a few months later. look at how many users we have, as measure of our success)

          There&#x27;s this for example <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1890164">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1890164

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