They didn't sell any data to Cambridge Analytica. CA just ran apps (quizzes) on Facebook at a time where such apps would be given too many permissions by default. In particular they'd have access to the user's friend list. Much like apps on iPhones back in the day.
Ah I see. So the data that FB collected was leaked to 3rd parties because of the systems they put in place exposed it. That's not much better.
The end result was the same, and it let to a wave of privacy resulting in Apple locking down their app permissions further, and FB throwing a fit about it.
I think it let everyone to really lock down their APIs. I used to meet startup founders who unironically told me their monetization plan was to mine users contacts and other information and sell it on. "Everybody's doing it" they'd tell me.
I think people are only annoyed at Apple because they use that same locked down information for their own services, including their ad network. Though of course Facebook does that too.
It is somewhat strange to sell how HN has shifted again. Somewhere along 2022, most of the extreme left, also the Anti Facebook, Anti Ads, group are gone or disappeared.
You can now actually say They didn't sell any data to Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook profited handsomely from the truly fucked up ad targeting they offered CA, quite literally segmenting populations based on things like personality, political beliefs, traits that define protected classes, racist/antisemetic/etc beliefs, whether they were friends with people who were/had either of those things, if they were mentally ill, etc. Their API also exposed their users' private data, including things like location, likes, follows, comments, friends, their posts, etc.
Facebook's API allowed CA to harvest a lot of data, which allowed them to conduct psychological profiling and targeting research, and analysis on massive troves of FB's data. All of that allowed them to develop tailored ads for specific segments of the population they chose to turn elections. Based on the profiling they did, for example, they were able to determine that if they were able to show 1,000 narrowly chosen people in one neighborhood, say, racist ads, CA's statistics show that they will be able to turn a tight election. CA was able to do this because of the data Facebook provided them, as well as the advertising platform Facebook provides that allowed CA to pinpoint segments of the public that are susceptible to their particular brand of psychological and political exploitation.
However, the data that CA mined was provided by Facebook's API, and anyone with a free API key could have mined it. FB technically didn't sell them the data, but they certainly sold them the means to manipulate elections and violate the privacy of millions of people. And as I said, that's a technicality that doesn't mean much.
What? Not at all, from what I recall. When did it come out that FB sold the data to Cambridge Analytica? I thought they mostly abused/misused a "loophole"
Facebook's targeting, down to segmenting people who believe in the "white genocide conspiracy theory" into their own category[1], that allowed CA to laser pinpoint groups of people to show ads to[2], was a key part of the scandal, as was the fact that Facebook's API "leaked" information about users. I say "leaked", because it was the same kind of data a lot of APIs offered at the time and still do[3]. That data was offered for free to anyone with an API key.
