Facebook ALLOWED Obama Campaign to Mine Data

Facebook ALLOWED Obama Campaign to Mine Data

Facebook stocks plummeted on the news of the Cambridge Analytica data breach. But, Obama staffers dropped another bomb.

While all the hoopla over the recent “data breach” at Facebook brews, the bigger story occurred years ago. What Facebook now accuses Cambridge of doing at the behest of the Trump campaign had been done in the past.

Back in 2014, Facebook stopped people from mining its database. But in 2012, Facebook took a very different view on such breaches.

As Grabien News elaborates:

Facebook is portraying itself as shocked after a whistleblower is exposing just how easy the social network makes it for firms like his former employer, Cambridge Analytica, to take users’ private data and exploit it in virtually unlimited ways.

But according to President Obama’s former digital director, the social network told the campaign they knew its users’ data were being improperly seized by the campaign in 2012, but they chose to look the other way because Facebook supports Obama.

The Canadian born techie turned whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, said Cambridge Analytica, was able to create a personality profile users voluntarily took, but which inadvertently gave access to the quiz takers’ entire social network. The survey that began with just 270,000 people ultimately ended up collecting data on more than 50 million people.

Facebook says this mass collection of its users’ data violated its terms and asked Cambridge Analytica to delete the data. However, Wylie told NBC, “Facebook never checked to make sure that happened.”

The Pioneer

Leftists call Obama a pioneer. But they do it for all the wrong reasons.

The 2012 campaign pioneered exploitation of social media. But Obama’s team didn’t just use social media to spread the word. They used social media to harvest souls, as in Facebook users’ personal information. The former director of Obama for America’s Integration and Media Analytics, Carol Davidsen, candidly admitted that Facebook acknowledged letting their campaign improperly access its users data.

Grabien continues:

Facebook; #KevinJackson“Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing,” Davidsen wrote Sunday night after news of Cambridge Analytica broke. “They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”

Facebook code named the Obama project tärgus. And this was not some clandestine, under the table spy operation, but instead one known well enough that the story was covered by TIME Magazine at the time.

The Double Standard

The double standard is clear her. But Leftists dominate social media so the rules don’t apply to them.

Thus, Facebook overlooked the data mining by the Obama team. And the fawning media declared the man a genius, a pioneer. However, in Trump’s case, the move is considered nefarious, and obviously the new reason (#1424) of why Hillary Clinton lost and Trump won.

Facebook’s attitude toward the Trump-aligned Cambridge Analytica was decidedly different. After news reports surfaced late last week that showed how the firm was able to exploit the social media platform, Facebook banned both Cambridge Analytica and its former staffer Wylie from the platform.

“In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe,” Facebook wrote in a blog post Friday night. “He also passed that data to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, Inc.”

“Several days ago, we received reports that, contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted,” Facebook wrote. “We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims. If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made. We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook, pending further information.

Democrats want Zuckerberg to answer for his part in Hillary Clinton’s loss. And you can bet Hillary Clinton will mention this at her next “Why I got my butt kicked” event.

Yet again, Americans should run for the popcorn and soda, and wait on the fireworks.

Because I can’t wait to see how Zuckerberg explains allowing Barack Obama’s campaign to do what Facebook now declares to be against their rules.

Further, I hope that Cambridge Analytica sues Facebook. It appears they have done nothing wrong, except bet on what Leftist believe is “the wrong horse”. If CA had done what they did for Obama or Hillary Clinton, you can bet we never would have seen this story. But they worked on behalf of Trump.

Facebook shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose who gets data and who doesn’t. Given the safeguards that Facebook implemented in 2014, the onus was on Facebook to look at the data. And as for what CA wanted the data for, that is none of Facebook’s business. The companies entered into an agreement, and CA has no obligation to tell Facebook what it was doing. Honestly, does anybody believe Facebook would have allowed CA to even move forward if they found out the company worked on behalf of the Trump campaign?

This isn’t a FISA warrant CA was after. They simply contracted to do business, and they did so cleverly.

Isn’t the irony here hilarious? We’ve got both Twitter and Facebook, two obviously Leftist social media platforms, and the most dominant ones at that. And they might be the reason Trump was elected.

 

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