“weaponized data from 200 million Facebook accounts.”
A monthly active user is someone who checks into Facebook at least once a month. According to Facebook, in the second quarter of 2012 there were 186 million monthly active users in both the US and Canada. In the third quarter there were 189 million in both the US and Canada. Probably 20 million of these were in Canada. It’s a certainty that no one had access to every single account on Facebook, nor would it mean much as a large majority had established political views and could not be swayed by anything.
In addition, as mentioned, the Obama campaign had permission to do so from people who used their app. The app Cambridge accessed did not, nor did they have permission to share it with Cambridge. This is a crucial difference.
I’m not sure what “weaponized” means.
Probably, the Obama campaign had access to fewer accounts than the Cambridge people did as there were many fewer people on Facebook at the time.
Opinions are like assholes (everyone has one), but facts are objective. CA used social networking to spread lies. I don’t think anybody will disagree with this, regardless of their political leanings.
While I disagree with you, I will not pursue. There are SO many layers to this matter. It goes on endlessly. Where you end up depends in the main upon where you started.
My post is not a political opinion or perspective. It is fact. There is no way the Obama campaign took data from 200 million US users as there were not that many users. It’s also a fact that, however many they received data on, it would be utterly impossible to convince or change the minds of more than 50% of them. “Weaponize” is a dramatic term that is essentially meaningless.
What the Obama campaign did was legal, with permission.
The app that Cambridge used was illegal, in several ways: 1) The app did not have permission from its participants to share info from friends and 2) It did not have permission to share its data with Cambridge Analytica and 3) Cambridge Analytica did not have permission to use that data.
Those are facts. Cambridge also engaged in this behavior in other countries around the world, including Britain, Mexico, Kenya, India and others.
That is why Cambridge is the subject of criminal investigations in several countries and the Obama campaign is not.
If one wishes to maintain what the Obama campaign did and what Cambridge Analytica did are identical, that is an opinion, but it’s clearly not a fact.
I often see people making statements solely from their political views and then project that mindset to others, believing anyone asserting contradictory facts must be speaking solely from a political perspective.
I am not.
And I am well aware that all political parties engage in shenanigans, illegal and otherwise, including ones you support and ones others might support.
You may think that this guy is lying, but there’s no proof of that. You may disagree that disinformation, rumors, and propaganda are lies, but you’d be factually wrong. What’s there to disagree about?
Good luck detecting and determining which model phone someone visiting your website has, there are how many slightly different models, even assuming browser security would let you query enough information to accurately determine it. It sounds like they are using screen resolution as a proxy for how fancy the website visitor’s phone is.