I'm not so charitable towards the public.

I wouldn't place any bets that the striking wave of outrage directed at Facebook right now isn't strictly related to the outcome. In this case, that outcome is Trump in the White-house. Not that that isn't a good reason to be outraged - but I don't think its a very principled reason.

2016 Trump campaign, data was used to stir up FUD and/or discourage voting.

In either case, similar amounts of personal data was harvested from facebook, for whatever purposes the clients cared to use it for, to predictable results.

EDIT: And that's all besides the point - the problem isn't that someone with bad intentions got ahold of data and used in a way they shouldn't have, the problem is people are just getting ahold of data they should not have - period.

How so? Unless they were working with the rest of the media outlets and pushing the "Trump has no chance" / "He will never be the president" story. Do you know of any such campaigns? I mostly see it as a mass media hubris. The same outlets Clinton was expecting to help her ended up undermining the election for her, because, well if Trump only has 1% of winning, why bother putting on the shoes and going out to vote.

Wait, how did Russia, Assange and Trump coordinate? I keep hearing people talk about it, never seen any clear explanation.

The hacking part is me just repeating the assessment of DHS and CIA, per congressional briefings. The coordination is my suspicion based on known interactions with high level Trump campaign surrogates (Trump Jr, Stone) and Assange. The DNC/Podesta hack attribution is Crowdstrike's.

https://www.factcheck.org/2018/02/words-trump-russian-meddli... might provide you with more of the information you lack.

Is that Comey's hearing? I remember listening to that. He believed that Russians hacked the DNC but he has not seen any evidence of it and he (the FBI) had no access to the servers. He says it comes from believing Crowdstrike. It seems the only solid peace of evidence comes from this one company.

Crowdstrike has made up stuff before. In their report about the war in Ukraine they published a made up number about the losses of artillery units. The Ukrainians publicly called them out on it http://www.mil.gov.ua/news/2017/01/06/informacziya-po-vtrati... and they were forced to update their report https://www.crowdstrike.com/resources/reports/idc-vendor-pro... They put more effort into the zombie soldier from the front page than the content of the report itself. Given the thousands and thousand of hours and all the pages and books written on this topic, they'd be a lot more evidence than just the Crowdstrike's report.

> they were released through Wikileaks as an intermediary.

Assange denies they came from the Russians or a state actor. He could be lying, Hillary certainly wanted to "drone that guy". But as an organization, if he was speaking on behalf of Wikileaks, they have been pretty factual. They obviously pick what they report on but once they say something I have not seen them blatantly lying.

> https://www.factcheck.org/2018/02/words-trump-russian-meddli...

Thanks for the link! The first part is saw is point out how Trump is contradicting himself. There is a whole sub-reddit (trump vs trump I think) and is basically just that. He is saying contradictory thing about anything, I don't see that as proof of collusion.

The timeline re-iterates that the evidence came from Crowdstrike. I'd hope there'd be more evidence than that. Maybe let DHS should take a look those machines. They should be able to find someone interested enough to investigate that. Wonder why they didn't / won't do it

I see what you mean by Trump Jr. coordinating with Assange on tweeting a about emails and how Assange wanted Jr to "leak" a tax report from Trump. Yeah that does look shady, agreed.

One thing I still don't see is Russians colluding with Trump compared to the volume of news and articles convinced of it: "he looked at him at the G20 summit", "he congratulated him on a bogus election", "he acts like he is subservient to him", "they have a piss tape". Those are fun to listen to and pretty effective, certainly keep people clicking and retweeting, but there needs to be something more solid there I think.

If you disagree with Crowdstrike's methodologies, then by all means let's get specific. They were the principle investigators on the case. They are well regarded. I didn't read the Ukraine link you provided because 1. I have no idea if the team was even the same and 2. it's likely they've been wrong once before, so it's immaterial.

I literally don't understand the words you wrote about Wikileaks. Yes, I don't believe Assange.

I don't get your reaction to the link. You think they colluded, but think it's overcovered in the media? You want DHS to investigate the DNC hack 2 years after the fact? Who ever mentioned Reddit? Donald Trump is a liar so he is not guilty of collusion?

You seem intent on minimizing this to the point of being gratuitously contrary. Thank you for the discussion.

Just pointing out the same company had made pretty large factual errors in their report were even the people on the side they supported had to publicly refute them.

Not only that but the founder of Crowdstrike might be a bit biased. He is a member of the Atlantic Council http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/dmitri-alp... which traditionally is critical of Russia. That's fine, it's good thing they are but it introduces a conflict of interest. Moreover he is a donor to the Clinton Foundation to the tune of $10M. Again nothing wrong with that per se. He is free to donate, but that also is a conflict of interest. And had this been a forgotten memo or a minor incident, that's fine, but it seems a whole lot of articles, reporting, twitter messages, TV time and hearings were based on just the finding of this one company.

> I literally don't understand the words you wrote about Wikileaks. Yes, I don't believe Assange.

Sorry for being confusing. I mean to say Wikileaks have been pretty factual. They pick their stories based on their political bias or most media impact but once they say something, I have not seem them blatantly lie before. So when he said "these did not come from Russia or a another state actor" I'd have to see more evidence to say "clearly he is lying"

> I don't get your reaction to the link.

Again for for confusion. I thanked you for the link. I wasn't being facetious. I learned something new about Assange nagging on Trump Jr to leak tax documents and asking them to mention more of leaked emails.

> You want DHS to investigate the DNC hack 2 years after the fact?

I want to see more solid claims behind a year+ of wasted propaganda effort. There has to be something more credible there.

> Who ever mentioned Reddit?

I did. Because the first part of the article was talking how Trump contradicts himself. Yeah he contradicts himself. It looks like trolling to me and everyone is taking the bait so he knows how to waste everyone's time and get them to talk about his spelling mistakes and contradictions. I don't see how that is proof of collusion between him and Russia.

> Donald Trump is a liar so he is not guilty of collusion?

I say he is liar and a troll based on what I have seen. Haven't decided if he does it consciously and deliberately or it is just his personalty and he just says whatever he feels currently without thinking to match with anything he said in the past.

> You seem intent on minimizing this to the point of being gratuitously contrary. Thank you for the discussion.

Nah just trying to get to the bottom of things. I find this focus on Russia collusion pretty interesting. I've been talking about media and how PR works for a while. Personally I think it is disappointing to see this much effort wasted, because that time, energy could have been spent on something else.

In general, I never quite could figure out Guccifer 2.0. It seemed like it was multiple people, just based on going from terribly broken English to fluent within the same paragraph. Which would be consistent with this part of the story

---

Sometime after its hasty launch, the Guccifer persona was handed off to a more experienced GRU officer, according to a source familiar with the matter. The timing of that handoff is unclear, but Guccifer 2.0’s last blog post, from Jan. 12, 2017, evinced a far greater command of English that the persona’s earlier efforts.

---

> Do you retract your statement?

Not yet. I'd want wait and see what happens with this one. There was another similar story of a written confession from someone in jail who claimed they were order to hack the DNC. http://www.newsweek.com/russian-hacker-stealing-clintons-ema... that one says it was FSB not GRU but they probably work together. I haven't heard much since.

That was on public TV with reporters around. I remember that, pretty sure it was a joke. Is that the only evidence of Russian collusion?

To go back, it all started with Russian altering votes. As in, hiding in Wisconsin, in the bushes with laptops, giving Trump extra votes. We even had recount which both Stein and Clinton supported. People were donating towards it and everything.

Then it went Putin and Trump are exchanging secret hand gestures at G20.

Then some Trump people were in the same hotel at some meeting at Putin people, so that was considered "collusion".

Then it was the piss "dossier".

I still don't see solid evidence of collusion vis-a-vis the amount of time and energy devoted to talking about. Many articles today even start with "Given that Trump colluded with Russia...". So used as an established fact and I think it is far from it.

You have a former Obama campaign staffer saying that what they did raised alarms with Facebook. Hence, what they were doing was not OK by someone’s standard. Plus, the intent of the app is irrelevant. By using it you authorized it to get information on everyone in your friend list, something they’ve since disabled for, wait for it, privacy reasons because it’s not like the people on your friend list were ever asked for _their_ consent during the harvesting process.

To the extent that there was no deception in the Obama's campaign's usage, it was because there was no communication at all. This is not an improvement! And they got more data from this "no communication at all" than CA did.

Yes. Everyone was doing it. I totally agree we have a systematic problem here. But everyone was doing it and we have a systematic problem here works in all directions at once. Trump can't be singled out.

In fact, Trump may not even have used the data significantly [2], which makes it even more blatently obvious to the rest of America and the world that it's not a matter of principle, it's all a matter of who did it and whether or not we can tar certain people with it.

The question I have, and rather a lot of watching Americans and even the world have, is: Does "Silicon Valley" care about our privacy, no matter who is violating it? Or is "Silicon Valley" only suddenly concerned because the wrong people may tangentially have gotten something out of it, but when the "right people" do it Silicon Valley will do everything in its still-considerable power to cover for them?

One answer leads to beginning to recover the respect the public even quite recently had for Silicon Valley, but may require a lot of people in Silicon Valley to admit that, yes, "their guys" have been abusive and some corrective actions may need to be taken. (And for quite a lot of people, not just an ambient "yeah, some other people need to do something but not really me" but you, you dear reader, need to understand that abuses occurred and stop covering for them because they were done by the "right person".)

The other answer leads to a world in which this week was merely the warning shot in a war that Silicon Valley is basically structurally doomed to lose [3], no matter how invincible it may feel right now, and proving to the world at large that all their fears about Silicon Valley are completely, 100% justified. Which is it going to be? The hard way that's right in the long term, or the short-term psychologically satisfying answer that leads to doom in the long term?

[1]: https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975565844632821760?ref_src...

[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-o...

[3]: Vast, vast quantities of Silicon Valley power and money are tied up in the premise that even now only a vanishing fraction of their market power has been exploited, and the best days are still ahead. If America and the world at large (the vast, vast bulk of which is not Silicon Valley liberal!) decide that Silicon Valley is the enemy, then all the stock valuations for things like Google and Facebook will more-or-less turn on a dime from "Companies that have immense growth potential in front of them" to "Companies very likely to be in short-term decline". The stock market carnage and loss in power and prestige that will go with that will be historic. Silicon Valley would be well advised not to play with this fire.

I have trouble finding these arguments convincing in light of concrete data.

I have looked at examples of the fake news posts on Facebook, as reported by the media. Two of them say that you can tweet or SMS to vote instead of going in person. Is this all it takes to disrupt an American election?

I saw two other posts - one for a fake event called miners for Trump, and one that says Hillary Clinton has a low approval rating with military veterans. Is there someone making a serious argument that Hillary voters saw this and changed their minds? Folks were on the fence but this is what pushed them to vote for President Trump? I don't find that believable. The posts are weak and hardly convincing, if at all.

There was also an anti Trump march after the election which was attended by a large number of people including Michael Moore, which turned out to be organised by Russians on Facebook. That one was effective but seemed to be aimed at the President.

This is the kind of hoax stuff that you used to see in email forwards, and those have been doing the rounds for years. Seeing them on Facebook is not a new phenomenon, it's just a different platform.

I find this line of reasoning very sketchy because I have yet to see any content or post that makes a compelling argument based on false facts. If you have seen any such posts I would like to see them.

I'm also confused about why CA needed the data they took from Kogan in order to do this. How does one relate to the other? Let's pretend I have Kogans data right here with me and I have a few of these fake posts, what do I do next? Do I start adding some of these folks as friends and start sharing content with them? How did they use the Kogan data exactly?

By comparison I think some of the memes and hoaxes that the online Trump groups (mostly young Americans) came up with were quite well made. There was a campaign called #DraftOurDaughters that purposely perpetrated a hoax that Hillary Clinton wanted to draft women to fight wars in the middle East. There were also several campaigns to draw attention to the practice of spirit cooking, which was referenced once or twice in John Podesta's emails. I remember being in a discord voice chat one day in 2016 with a few folks from 4chan's /pol/ board and there was work being done where the emails were being made into pamphlets to pass around at church to reach some of the less tech savvy folks, and older folks who were not on Twitter and didn't know much about Wikileaks.

As for point #1, given that nobody consented to their data going to either Obama or Trump I think the comparison is quite valid. CA broke an arbitrary platform policy whereas the Obama campaign got the data with their blessing. I don't think that is a good thing, or that it makes their use of people's personal data acceptable.

Hating isn't illegal, immoral or even necessarily a bad idea. Hate can be justified. Hate is dangerous in politics as is any strong emotion. Trying to hold a country together demands compromise, which in turn requires moderation.

Facebook is empowering mass surveillance and propaganda, and encourages outrage and knee-jerk reactions. Trying to separate out who is using that power for good or ill and judge equivalence based on that is risky. If the judgment is wrong great damage will be done.

It is better to to acknowledge that power in itself is dangerous, and political power should be carefully controlled. Controlling and limiting political power has been a very successful strategy leading to excellent results in the past.

[1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cHYYHF...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/cambridge-an...

https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975568208886484997

---

They [Facebook] were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.

---

You just have to be on the right "side" that's all.

I wonder if anyone went back and ensure they deleted all the data they harvested, then went back and verified that they didn't lie. And in case they didn't, wonder what the media response would be and how many articles would be written about it.

"I am also 100% positive that Facebook activity recruits and staffs people that are on the other side."

Cambridge Analytica did far worse than Obama's team. They lied about the purpose of the app to steal social graph data. But fundamentally, the abuse of social graph information is the same. They may have gone to different ends (getting people to vote for obama, vs getting people to not vote for clinton), but they are fundamentally the same types of activity.

You can't tell it was appropriate for Obama's social media team to steal the social graph and use that to target people (who did not approve their information being obtained).

1. https://www.rt.com/tags/the-julian-assange-show/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Propaganda_cla...

There's a Russian behind every curtain! They're perhaps the most powerful country on earth! Literally everything (from Bernie to Jill Stein to Trump to the NRA) is Russina backed! ZOMG!

I'm guessing you haven't ever read anything about McCarthyism. https://theintercept.com/2017/02/23/the-increasingly-unhinge...

What about the founder of Wikileaks working for Russian propaganda media, which is what we're discussing here? I'm not sure what your motivation to deflect on this is.

He's talking about McCarthyism, which is very relevant to the subject at hand.

But back in 2016: Obama said there was “no serious” person who would suggest it was possible to rig American elections, adding, “I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes.” [0]

I wonder how public opinion shifted. Back in 2016, the idea of rigging elections with facebook ads was alex-jones-level of tinfoil conspiracy, and now we are discussing it as an obvious, cheap and effective tactic.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election/obama-tells-...

Obama probably felt that he would have damaged the democratic party by saying anything else.

You are absolutely correct, however I would argue that it has only relatively recently entered the common HN lexicon. The vast majority (~675 out of 704^) of comments using it here in the comments are < 2 yrs old.

Admittedly the first comment on HN that used the term is 7 years old, but that comment [0] predates the creation of the wikipedia article (frequently trotted out when invoking the term here) by about a year.

As an aside, I'd love see a dataviz app that shows the lifecycle of terminology and memes that thrive in various internet discussion boards.

0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2944345

^well it'll be 705 including this post ;)

Again, that still doesn't make it new or intellectually dishonest to point out.

Not accusing you of the above, but "Whataboutism" is as old as double-standards it draws attention to. But IMHO the accusation is more often use for ill than for good.

What would you prefer them to do, in depth investigations into how fuzzy cats are? Generally, in investigative journalism, someone gets hurt. It’s not a conspiracy against poor innocent Trump, just the nature of the beast.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/technology/users-abandon-...

I doubt there's been any sort of a reliable survey on this, yet once again numerous media outlets are portraying extreme public outrage at this. My spider sense tells me the outrage isn't coming from the public.

At the end of the day in both cases, the analytics group (CA or Obama for America) obtained the data of millions of users that did not directly and explicitly authorize their data to be analyzed. ~50M in the case of CA and ~180M in the case of OFA.

Neither CA nor OFA broke any statues or laws, they both worked around loopholes and tricks in Facebook's TOS & API.

2. CA used the data to intentionally spread and optimizing the sharing of bogus news.

I haven't yet heard this exact argument made for why this specific case was bad, though I suspect it's implied, but it seems like that is just a piece of the problem. Interestingly however, the contents of the targeted ads seems immaterial to the most important argument which is that this was a "breach" of private user data - a completely separate argument.

Your last point I think sums it up well, Trump and his cronies used the system against itself and people don't like it. Full stop. It wasn't the fact that he used it, because others did, it was the fact that he used it in a way that we didn't expect or like (not that it broke laws).

I mean say what you will but it truly embodies the hacker ethos.