When Obama Harvested Facebook Data in 2012, Everyone Cheered

> This Facebook treasure trove gave Obama an unprecedented ability to reach out to nonsupporters. More important, the campaign could deliver carefully targeted campaign messages disguised as messages from friends to millions of Facebook users.

They weren't "disguised." Messaging friends about Obama was the entire, publicly stated, purpose of the app. The only reason anyone opted into the app in the first place was to message their friends. That's the only way the Obama campaign advertised it.

> in the case of Obama, they had no way of knowing that the Obama campaign material cluttering their feed wasn't really just political urgings from their friends.

It really was just political urgings from their friends. The Obama app did post content on its own and the Obama campaign did not put any ad money behind it. It was a tool for people to harass their friends about Obama.

It's not in any way analogous to what Cambridge Analytica did; the only commonality is that they were both Facebook apps. IBD might as well run an editorial titled "When Farmville Harvested Facebook Data, Everyone Cheered."