The willingness to excuse Facebook selling your privacy because you agree with a political point of view is part of the problem.
If we trust The Daily Mail article:
Davidsen said that she felt the project was 'creepy' - 'even though we played by the rules, and didn't do anything I felt was ugly, with the data'
If we trust the IBD article:
The only difference, as far as we can discern, between the two campaigns' use of Facebook, is that in the case of Obama the users themselves agreed to share their data with the Obama campaign, as well as that of their friends.
The users that downloaded the Cambridge app, meanwhile, were only told that the information would be used for academic purposes. Nor was the data to be used for anything other than academic purposes.
It's an important distinction, to be sure, and Facebook is right to be attacked for its inability to control how its user data were being gathered and shopped around.
(Though it should be pointed out that it wasn't a Cambridge Analytica app, and Cambridge Analytica obtained the data from a 3rd party who wasn't authorized to provide it.)
After all, both campaigns (and most major US political campaigns) surely had embedded Facebook employee account managers helping them spend as much money as effectively as possible, while scrutinizing their account usage.
(Who, me, cynical?)
It's becoming clear exactly what the cost of social surveillance is in our lives. This is just one of many significant problems with it.
There have always been jackasses willing to sacrifice morals (or rightness) in favor of power. Social networks just make it easier to ignore signals that should humanize power.