Re:The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is ...
by soundwave106 on Monday March 19, 2018 @06:33PM
(#16623915)
I personally think the news on this is rather "noisy" right now (we'll see what emerges later). But from what I see of the Channel 4 expose (https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-t...), this story potentially involves far more than the United States election... and may actually involve flat out illegal activity.
Either way, I agree with you that the election of Donald Trump was more than just "the Russians". However, just because some of the elements were home-grown doesn't IMHO mean that we dismiss the degeneration of social media that has come about of late. Both from Facebook (and others, but they are the big offender)'s tendency to over-spy into your personal life (of which Cambridge Analytica is a symptom of this). And the extremely poor safeguards on API abuse on too many social media platforms (Russian and other Twitter political propaganda bots are but a symbol of the bot problem on Twitter and elsewhere in general).
Either way, I agree with you that the election of Donald Trump was more than just "the Russians". However, just because some of the elements were home-grown doesn't IMHO mean that we dismiss the degeneration of social media that has come about of late. Both from Facebook (and others, but they are the big offender)'s tendency to over-spy into your personal life (of which Cambridge Analytica is a symptom of this). And the extremely poor safeguards on API abuse on too many social media platforms (Russian and other Twitter political propaganda bots are but a symbol of the bot problem on Twitter and elsewhere in general).