Not that we shouldn't be outraged. I'm glad we finally have outrage. We should have all been outraged a long time ago.
This is not even remotely true, especially when it comes to the general population. I'm not trying to slam you here, I was of same mindset too, since at least 2009 (I stopped using API in 2013 and assumed things were clamped down).
I don't want to be a nag on his, e.g. Mustnt assume everyone knows what you know! Rather, I think this is an advantageous mindset to have. Anything you know in your profession, especially when it comes to tech or data, you can assume plenty of people (including future customers) don't have a damn clue.
I think one of the societal problems we have right now is an overwhelming lack of tech literacy. It affects the media but also (and more importantly) government. People simply don't understand this stuff, and the problem isn't going to go away, because if you do have tech knowledge you can make far more money as a developer than you can as a journalist or politician.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...
From the article:
> Barack Obama's re-election team are building a vast digital data operation that for the first time combines a unified database on millions of Americans with the power of Facebook to target individual voters to a degree never achieved before.
Also
> Consciously or otherwise, the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page – home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends – directly into the central Obama database.
> "If you log in with Facebook, now the campaign has connected you with all your relationships," a digital campaign organiser who has worked on behalf of Obama says.
That's less true for the old school media companies, but most new media companies are very tied to advertising networks for their revenue.
[0] Washington Post: About 100 million people couldn’t be bothered to vote this year
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/12/about...
[1] A reported 137,100,229 people voted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
I think that sort of statement applies here. Some people have known about what this data can be used for and truly understood the implications of it for a long time. Those people are also the type of people that have stopped using Facebook years ago. Most others are just now starting to realize it.
My issue is that they’ve always been transparent about collecting and sharing data. They just say it in a friendly way.
There’s a whole episode of South Park with the Eula. And people stil don’t read before clicking.
This happens in many places. Check out the effect of unnoticed binding arbitration clauses - http://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-supreme-court-californ...
I’m happy if laws change to improve this. But I’m surprised too.
But almost no one realized that there employment history was being shared with the Trump Campagin, because THEIR GRANDMA took a personality quiz to find out "Which Golden Girl She Was Most Like".
And where did we consent to this actually? When I signed up for Facebook 3rd party apps didn't exist. When my friends started installing them, I thought I was protected because I stayed away. I consented to sharing my information with Friends obviously, but with 3rd party apps they install???
I'd really like to see how that language was written, for a condition that didn't even exist yet.
Nerd being a nerd: Foo is terrible for privacy!
Nerd trying to look non-nerdy: Nerds say this, but ordinary people don't care! So Foo will win, get used to it.
This scandal however, makes it seem more like ordinary people would care, except they don't know about the terribleness of Foo.
Actually I think the it's a confusing mishmash of the two. People don't learn about stuff because they don't care. And its rational not to care about something if there isn't something you can do about it.
But when a scandal like this hits, more people decide to care because "join the bandwagon of protest" becomes a thing you can do. And that makes more people know about it, which make the potential bandwagon bigger, etc.
This 'outrage' wasn't real until it impacted politics.