Secretly Harvesting Facebook Data Helped Decide the 2016 Election

David Posnett — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 21:38:20 +0000

On March 17th, The Guardian and The New York Times published a groundbreaking article about whistleblower Christopher Wylie and his role in harvesting Facebook data used by Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm contracted by the Trump campaign. Wylie asserts they accessed the personal information of 50 million Facebook users without their permission, gathering information via an app called “Thisisyourdigitallife,” which sold itself as a research app used by psychologists to predict personality. Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app, collecting detailed information on not only them, but also their online friends who never gave consent. Personal information harvested included name, education, work history, birthdays, likes, locations, photos, relationship status, religious affiliations and political membership. Even more disturbing, The Guardian claims Facebook was made aware of the data breach in 2015, yet they did nothing to ensure the stolen data was destroyed.

The Attorney General of Massachusetts has already launched an investigation into Cambridge Analytica, and Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Kennedy (R-LA) have sent a joint letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanding chief executives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google testify before Congress about how their companies share personal user data. “While Facebook has pledged to enforce its policies to protect people’s information, questions remain as to whether those policies are sufficient and whether Congress should take action to protect people’s private information,” wrote Klobuchar and Kennedy.

Congress and State Attorneys General must act swiftly to investigate the practices of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook to ensure the online privacy of users is safeguarded and not shared without informed consent.

Fake News

David Posnett — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 03:17:36 +0000

The issue of “fake news” has been bothering me: East Hampton Star under Guest Words.

Along with the disdain of the current administration for science or any real data for that matter, just consider the infantile debate on the attendance numbers at the Trump inauguration versus the D.C. Women’s March the following day. Consider the Republican’s pursuit of a health care policy that is predicted to fail and to harm the uninsured, the elderly and even our hospitals, their resistance to funding of research meant to save us from an epidemic such at the Zika virus and their unwillingness to believe in man-made climate change or to do something about it. All this is frightening. The attack on climate change includes people like Robert Mercer, the hedge fund billionaire behind the Trump/Bannon campaign. Across the country, there are even legal cases attacking science and anti-science education legislation.

Fake news fits right into this mix. But the origins are probably more complex. There has been a worldwide shift in how people inform themselves. Books, journals, newspapers are out. The internet, social media, opinion bloggers, and TV cable news are in. There are those that wish to make a quick buck by inventing fake news stories peddled on websites and promoted by Breitbart, and they are getting handsomely paid, per click, on their stories!

So where does this leave us? Asking Facebook and Twitter to edit their sites does not strike me as a feasible solution. That leaves us only with education. As stated in the East Hampton Star: “We need to educate our children, at home and in our schools, how to vet information, how to use fact-check sites such as snopes.com, how to look for confirmatory reports, and how to have a high degree of skepticism. Critical thinking should be part of every curriculum. If you are on a school board make a suggestion. We need courses on internet literacy, vetting sources, and the like. And, young minds should be warned about looking for news that confirms your own bias. They should be encouraged to have an open mind and engage in open-minded discussions with classmates”

data – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Secretly Harvesting Facebook Data Helped Decide the 2016 Election

Fake News