1) asking a user who had signed up for the Obama campaign if the campaign could contact their friends Johnny and Sue (discovered via their Facebook API) to ask them to support the Obama campaign.
2) Obtaining Facebook data by a professor for an academic study, who then turns around and sells said data to Cambridge Analytica, who uses it for targeted fake news propaganda. All of this without any consent from any user.
Add to this the fact that CA was also self-admittedly conducting political blackmail and bribery, and allegedly hacking election results, and you have a pretty ugly picture.
While I agree that the professor acted unethically, above and beyond the original problem with the Facebook API. This depiction of the Obama campaign is too rosy:
> 1) asking a user who had signed up for the Obama campaign if the campaign could contact their friends Johnny and Sue (discovered via their Facebook API) [...]
The idea that Alice has any right to consent to the dissemination of other people's (Bob and Charlie) data is just ridiculous. Just because they're called "Facebook friends" doesn't mean they have any more rights to give out my information than any other stranger. The entire concept is busted. To my mind that is still unethical, even though Facebook permitted it, and the Obama campaign was clearly the user of the data (rather than a fourth-party).
Not exactly, they obtained data of friends of people who consented. That doesn't mean the friends consented. That is almost the same as Cambridge Analytica did with their quiz. I don't see much of a difference.
jnbiche|8 years ago
1) asking a user who had signed up for the Obama campaign if the campaign could contact their friends Johnny and Sue (discovered via their Facebook API) to ask them to support the Obama campaign.
2) Obtaining Facebook data by a professor for an academic study, who then turns around and sells said data to Cambridge Analytica, who uses it for targeted fake news propaganda. All of this without any consent from any user.
Add to this the fact that CA was also self-admittedly conducting political blackmail and bribery, and allegedly hacking election results, and you have a pretty ugly picture.
cyphar|8 years ago
> 1) asking a user who had signed up for the Obama campaign if the campaign could contact their friends Johnny and Sue (discovered via their Facebook API) [...]
The idea that Alice has any right to consent to the dissemination of other people's (Bob and Charlie) data is just ridiculous. Just because they're called "Facebook friends" doesn't mean they have any more rights to give out my information than any other stranger. The entire concept is busted. To my mind that is still unethical, even though Facebook permitted it, and the Obama campaign was clearly the user of the data (rather than a fourth-party).
partiallypro|8 years ago
unknown|8 years ago
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