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Comment by rubbingalcohol | Hacker News Reader

Given Netflix's multi-year production deal with the Obamas and Susan Rice, I would expect this is just more pro-DNC propaganda. What Cambridge Analytica did was not unique or special. Facebook turned a blind eye and profited greatly from this sort of "off the books" use of their data in many other instances, including Barack Obama's 2012 campaign. It was only a problem for the pink haired whistleblower once Trump started paying the bills in 2016.

I previously worked with an individual who had been employed by Obama's 2012 campaign and she gleefully described using the same sorts of tactics that were suddenly so scandalous after Trump got elected. The problem here is the amount of data being collected and the potential for and actual instances of abuse, not who is abusing it. But apparently it's totally cool if "your side" is doing it.

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I can't find the article right now, but I remember reading an article many years ago on Wired about the Obama campaign and their use of targeting and "big data". Really interesting stuff about how they were buying TV spots and the Romney campaign couldn't figure out why, and how their use of technology was a massive advantage.

The White House also evaluated personalization technology to use on whitehouse.gov so that they could serve particular "stats" during major events (election season, SOTU, etc.).

The biggest difference between the two campaigns was that in the 2012 campaign these APIs were available, while in 2013-2015, Facebook shut down the friends API, with a few exceptions. The only reason CA got access to it was that it was for "research purposes".

In other words, CA lied about the intended use. From a data collection standpoint, it was the same thing Obama's campaign did in 2012 for get out the vote efforts.

It is a bit infuriating that there is this 'boogeyman' in CA when really if you listen to any interview with Brad Parscale he says pretty clearly it is all due to them actually using everything facebook offered them.

"Parscale said he asked the Facebook “embeds” to teach staffers everything the Clinton campaign would be told about Facebook advertising “and then some”. Parscale told CBS he was told the Clinton campaign did not use Facebook employee embeds. “I had heard that they did not accept any of [Facebook’s] offers,” he said."

So really this is all due to a complete incompetence on one campaigns digital strategy while another actually put in work.

> [...] But apparently it's totally cool if "your side" is doing it.

The documentary, at the end, with the teacher in and students drawing a conclusion makes the point that this isn't just a one company thing. It makes the point that big data companies are the problem. They even quote in an interview the names Google and Facebook.

However, as someone else already replied to you, this API which was used by CA wasn't meant to be used anymore. That's a big difference.

Incidentally, Susan Rice (on the Netflix board) was the national security advisor that spied on Trump campaign members.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/politics/susan-rice-house-inv...

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