I suppose in a way they are monetizing/selling the use of your data because they're collecting it and selling the aggregation of that data back to advertisers.
Sure, it's not a selling of the raw data record but with advertising and targeting an advertiser can get pretty close.
Yeah, that targeting bit is fine to argue and I tried to infer that with my comment as well.
I just have an issue with hyperboles like "sold individual user's behavioral profile to Cambridge Analytica" being thrown around in articles related to tech when in HN of all places, you can argue without resorting to that.
Yes, I imagine saying things that aren't quite true may at scale cause people to disbelieve the real arguments.
> it was harvested because of poor API policy which was fixed in the future
Is there any evidence that it was actually fixed?
They had a bunch of blog posts about restricting APIs like this[1]. I think someone can look at the current APIs and see what related friends information they allow. The last time I used FB APIs was in 2012 and the last time I used FB was in 2014, so not up to date with them.
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/
I believe they made modifications after that, yes.
But if you believe they don't still provide access via substantially similar APIs to "trusted partners", I have a bridge that may interest you...
There is a danger of FB manipulating things on its own but they didn't sell the data to any third party including Cambridge Analytica, it was harvested because of poor API policy(your friend auth giving access to some of your details) which was fixed in the future. The behavioral profiles were built by Cambridge Analytica on its own by the data it stole.
Why would FB in any instance even sell your data? I would argue it is in FB's interest to keep the data for itself, not letting anyone have it and be the gatekeeper.
The right thing to argue is, whether you want FB/Tiktok itself to have the treasure trove of data or not, and whether you want to allow them to use that to do precise targeting.