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Comment by hvass | Hacker News Reader

Is it clear exactly what 'data' was actually obtained by CA on those millions of people? (I am referring specifically to the millions, not the original subset of 200,000 or so).

Is it all public and friends-visible activity? Or it is basics such as name, email, profile photo, etc.? I cannot find so far addressed in the coverage exactly what kind of information CA have had on a per-person basis.

If someone can share coverage that outlines this I would be very grateful.

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The New York Times is reporting that they were also able to collect likes, because this was back when likes could be harvested through the API. Through likes alone, they could supposedly determine race, gender, sexual orientation, and other physical and mental traits/preferences with surprising accuracy.

Here is today's episode of The Daily where they discuss this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/podcasts/the-daily/cambri...

The pre-2015 (FB Graph v1.0) API gave apps access to not only all of a user's own data, but also all the friends-only data of their FB friends. This archive.org link shows the sort of information that the Friends API used to provide: https://web.archive.org/web/20130911191323/https:/developers...

This TechCrunch piece from 2015 talks about the reaction to the API access going away: https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/28/facebook-api-shut-down/

> It was always kind of shady that Facebook let you volunteer your friends’ status updates, check-ins, location, interests and more to third-party apps. While this let developers build powerful, personalized products, the privacy concerns led Facebook to announce at F8 2014 that it would shut down the Friends data API in a year. Now that time has come, with the forced migration to Graph API v2.0 leading to the friends’ data API shutting down, and a few other changes happening on April 30.

If I remember correctly, back in the day when the API still existed it would only give access to your friends public information

Yes, sorry, I should have been more specific. But what 'exactly' do they know. Does CA know that each person liked EXAMPLE POST ID #12379 on DATE XX/XX/XXXX and that you also like BRAND1, BRAND2, and that you also posted STATUS UPDATE1 on DATE .... What exactly do they have?

Here's a screenshot of the old api docs.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/x6WQmxyX0JIL26d62

If I'm remembering correctly the API would return all of the things you mentioned if that info was shared to your friends

I don’t think it would let you see which posts a user liked only the pages they liked

If by public information you mean 'information a friend has shared with you', then yes.

I would not exactly call that public, though.

No, I think it was only the actually public stuff

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