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LovingA2andMI's JournalFacebook employs psychologist whose firm sold data to Cambridge Analytica
This Story Has SPIDER LEGS. #StayWokeFolks
Joseph Chancellor was one of two founding directors of Global Science Research (GSR), the company that harvested Facebook data using a personality app under the guise of academic research and later shared the data with Cambridge Analytica.
He was hired to work at Facebook as a quantitative social psychologist around November 2015, roughly two months after leaving GSR, which had by then acquired data on millions of Facebook users.
Chancellor is still working as a researcher at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters in California, where psychologists frequently conduct research and experiments using the company’s vast trove of data on more than 2 billion users.
It is not known how much Chancellor knew of the operation to harvest the data of more than 50 million Facebook users and pass their information on to the company that went on to run data analytics for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Chancellor was a director of GSR along with Aleksandr Kogan, a more senior Cambridge University psychologist who is said to have devised the scheme to harvest Facebook data from people who used a personality app that was ostensibly acquiring data for academic research.
On Friday, Facebook announced it had suspended both Kogan and Cambridge Analytica from using the platform, pending an investigation.
Facebook said in a statement Kogan “gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels” but “did not subsequently abide by our rules” because he passed the information on to third parties. Kogan maintains that he did nothing illegal and had a “close working relationship” with Facebook.
Facebook appears to have taken no action against Chancellor – Kogan’s business partner at the time their company acquired the data, using an app called thisisyourdigitallife.
Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used the data to build sophisticated psychological profiles of US voters."
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/facebook-cambridge-analytica-joseph-chancellor-gsr?CMP=share_btn_tw
Facebook may have violated FTC privacy deal, say former federal officials...
Source: Washington Post
Two former federal officials who crafted the landmark consent decree governing how Facebook handles user privacy say the company may have violated that decree when it shared information from tens of millions of users with a data analysis firm that later worked for President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Such a violation, if eventually confirmed by the Federal Trade Commission, could lead to many millions of dollars in fines against Facebook, said David Vladeck, who as the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection oversaw the investigation of alleged privacy violations by Facebook and the subsequent consent decree resolving the case in 2011. He left that position in 2012.
On Sunday morning, Vladeck said in an interview with The Washington Post that Facebook’s sharing of data with Cambridge Analytica “raises serious questions about compliance with the FTC consent decree.”
The FTC did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday morning.
Facebook has denied violating the consent decree when it allowed an app developer working for Cambridge Analytica to gain access to information about estimated tens of millions of people. The group included both the 270,000 Facebook users who downloaded a psychological testing app and the Facebook “friends” of those people. This included the preferences those friends had expressed by hitting the widely used “like” button on social media posts or news stories.
In a statement Saturday, Facebook said, “We reject any suggestion of the violation of the consent decree. We respected the privacy settings that people had in place. Privacy and data protections are fundamental to every decision we make.”
Vladeck, now a professor at Georgetown Law, said violations of the consent decree could carry a penalty of $40,000 per violation, meaning that if news reports that the data of 50 million people were shared proves true, the company’s possible exposure runs into the trillions of dollars. Vladeck said that such a fine is unlikely but that the final penalty still could be very large.
“That’s the maximum exposure, though it’s not clear to me that the agency would insist on that kind of a penalty,” he said.
The FTC issue is rising as lawmakers in both the United States and Britain call for answers from Cambridge Analytica and Facebook — in some cases demanding that Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg personally appear at legislative hearings.
The FTC consent decree required that users be notified and that they explicitly give their permission before data about them is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established. The developer of the app sought permission from those who downloaded it but not their Facebook friends. The app, called “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered personality predictions and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/03/18/facebook-may-have-violated-ftc-privacy-deal-say-former-federal-officials-triggering-risk-of-massive-fines/?utm_term=.0dec17cb769d
If You Don't Know, Now You Know...This Happened in Election 2016 and This Is What Turned The Election...
A self-described gay, Canadian vegan, Wylie eventually became — as he told The Guardian — the developer of “Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindfuck tool.”
The goal, as The Guardian reported, was to combine social media’s reach with big data analytical tools to create psychographic profiles that could then be manipulated in what Bannon and Cambridge Analytica investor Robert Mercer allegedly referred to as a military-style psychological operations campaign — targeting U.S. voters."
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/18/facebook-has-suspended-the-account-of-the-whistleblower-who-exposed-cambridge-analytica/
Facebook in storm over Cambridge Analytica data scandal
Source: Financial Times
Facebook is under increasing pressure to explain how data collected on 50m users were exploited for political gain, following claims that data firm Cambridge Analytica used the leaked information to help Donald Trump win the US presidency.
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are calling on the social network to reveal more information about how Cambridge Analytica, which has close ties to Steve Bannon, Mr. Trumps former chief strategist, harvested data of mostly US voters.
British MP Damian Collins has asked Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks chief executive, to personally testify in an investigation into how the social network was also used in political campaigns including the Brexit referendum. Mr Collins said it was time for Mr Zuckerberg to stop hiding behind his Facebook page.
Mr. Collins on Sunday accused Alexander Nix, Cambridge Analyticas chief executive, of deliberately misleading a committee hearing last month when he told parliament that his firm did not use any Facebook data. Mr. Nix told the Financial Times at the weekend that he stood by his comments, despite a former employee turned whistleblower claiming he had evidence to the contrary.
Mr. Nix said: We deleted our Facebook data at the time we were alerted to a possible contravention of Facebook data policies.
When asked why he did not disclose this to parliament, he said: They didnt ask me that. They asked me if you used Facebook data in your model. The answer to that question is no.
Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/828e50ac-2ace-11e8-a34a-7e7563b0b0f4
This is serious folks. Wanna know what happened during Election 2016?
It all starts and ends with Facebook, The Mercer's Cambridge Analytica, Russia, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump (plus other players on the Trump Team). As the Whistleblower from Facebook (whose account on FB is now SUSPENDED on FB -- interesting timing don't ya think -) now says and read this one twice if needed:
"A self-described gay, Canadian vegan, Wylie eventually became as he told The Guardian the developer of Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mindfuck tool.
The goal, as The Guardian reported, was to combine social media reach with big data analytical tools to create psychographic profiles that could then be manipulated in what Bannon and Cambridge Analytica investor Robert Mercer allegedly referred to as a military-style psychological operations campaign targeting U.S. voters." - [link:https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/18/facebook-has-suspended-the-account-of-the-whistleblower-who-exposed-cambridge-analytica/Techcrunch]
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