I'd be more interested in why Obama didn't re-form this office since it was so great, given the google/facebook anti-trust issues metastasized under his administration.
One person's claim is not that whole story.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar...
Edit: See link in response for an explanation. IMO I'm still uncomfortable with how they got data of friends, but that's about it. However, this does not refute the above point that Obama didn't heavily benefit from Facebook.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar...
Only in the sense that a car and a bus are the same thing because they both have four wheels.
As with all things technical though, it's the details that matter:
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar...
>> The people signing up [for the Obama campaign's app] knew the data they were handing over would be used to support a political campaign.
>> The people who downloaded the app used by Cambridge Analytica did not know their data would be used to aid any political campaigns. The app was billed as a personality quiz that would be used by Cambridge University researchers.
There were also substantial differences with regards to how the collected data was used.
"Facebook friends lists, tags and photos allowed Obama operatives to identify a person’s close friends, which they then matched with offline public records. (Was this person likely to vote for Obama, but unlikely to get out to vote?) They then told the app users which of their friends they should send campaign messages to.
Cambridge Analytica dialed up what Karpf called the creepiness factor. They combined the survey results with the Facebook data to create psychological profiles they then sold to campaigns. The idea was, if the firm could discover how these people thought, they could target ads toward them.
Cambridge Analytica then sent targeted ads to the users on their database as well as users with similar profiles, identified by Facebook’s Lookalike tool. The friends of the app users weren’t being targeted by their friends, but by the campaign itself. In other words, the consenting middle man was gone."
We must really have gone off the deep end here, because I can no longer tell who is trolling and who is posting for real.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and answer your question in good faith: whether you willingly give your information, or are tricked into giving it, makes a world of difference.
The only thing in common between the way the Obama campaign utilized Facebook data and the way Cambridge utilized the data is that, in both cases, the users sharing the data (whether willingly, or without realizing) also unwittingly provided access to their friend's data.
That's where the similarities end.
But no, the real reason most people were angry at Cambridge Analytica is that it (quite possibly illegally) obtained the data from Aleksandr Kogan, one of the researchers in Cambridge University who developed the original app. Furthermore, when Facebook noticed this and told them to delete the data, they did not.
THAT is the real scandal.
The comment you're replying to is positing that question in the context of other people giving up your information, not you yourself giving that information up.
In both cases, the users giving the data knew they were giving that data to someone on the Internet. Their friends, however, didn't. The friends of the (either willing or tricked) participants had their data given up, too. Those friends did not consent in either case.
In that case, I don't think it matters whether your data was given away willingly by your friends or whether your friends were tricked into giving it away. It's just splitting hairs over who is at fault when it's wrong in both cases.
No, not your information, their information. The post you're replying to is about the friends of the person using the app. In one case, the app user is tricked, in the other case the app user consents, but in both cases the vast majority of the data is from friends of the user, who had no say either way.
But the Obama administration also created the US Digital Service and 18F (after the healthcare.gov debacle), which are doing stellar work and continue to do so in the federal gov under the Trump Administration.
Obama also did create the Office of Science and Technology Policy, so maybe this was the successor of what this office would've been. But they were more science focused.
But that doesn't address my question about this particular office.
Suffice to say, he wasn't going to introduce a way to give the government objective understanding of issues around Google's monopoly.
Then I had to chuckle when several of my coworkers took leaves (fully supported by the leadership) to help out running the Obama infrastructure under Eric Schmidt. At times they got to fly between Chicago and SF on Eric's personal plane. Eventually several of those people ended up working for him (it's always weird when your ex-manager ends up leading a government department).
All the same, not crazy about politicians and corporations being so cozy, regardless of affiliation.