The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works
This is a scandal, and we should not blur lines here.<p>Facebook engages in surveillance capitalism. Cambridge Analytica engages in Orwellian practices of deliberate and targeted mass manipulation, actively deceiving users from the outset about it's intentions, and using lies as a means to an end.<p>From the Facebook report on the reason CA was suspended:<p>> Like all app developers, Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app. His app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.” [0]<p>Cambridge Analytica's CEO also espouses complete deceit as a strategy core strategy for using data to manipulate outcomes and advocates for using "behaviorally targeted language" to create an outcome. Like say you have a "private beach." If you really want to keep people out, why not say "sharks sighted" instead?<p>His example, not mine: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/q1zYP" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/q1zYP</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/n8Dd5aVXLCc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/n8Dd5aVXLCc</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bG5ps5KdDo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bG5ps5KdDo</a><p>The scandals for me are two fold. First, we have a data repository (Facebook) that's powerful enough to assist in this type of weaponized manipulation that's entirely unprotected. Even if you think Facebook is some type of benevolent overlord that you trust with your data, it's a scandal that nothing has stopped any number of third-parties from doing what Cambridge Analytica did.<p>Second, we have a sitting president who actively made use of these "targeted information strategies" during his election in a blatantly unethical fashion. (For the record, so did Ted Cruz.) I for a long time laughed off the Antifa crowd as being an overreaction to Trump, but it's now blatantly clear to me that he deliberately used authoritarian tactics to win the election.