If you told Facebook to give someone access to your personal information and they took it and handed it off to a third party, what is Facebook supposed to do about that? What can Facebook do about that? What could any website do about that?

I despise Facebook, but I really don't understand this whole Cambridge Analytica thing. There doesn't appear to be an endgame for those criticizing Facebook over the ordeal. Of all the despicable things Facebook has done, why is this the one that everyone clings to?

It's not that my friend gave my info to someone else. My friend allowed the app to ask Facebook information about me.

In the end, it's still Facebook who handed over my data. That my friend decided that was OK doesn't change much.

> My friend allowed the app to ask Facebook information about me.

Unless there's a major security vulnerability, you can only delegate access to data you have access yourself. So your friend did the equivalent of giving Cambridge Analytica your data - the technical implementation of it (as to whether CA got the data off your friend's phone or from Facebook directly) doesn't really change the outcome.

How is this any different than FB asking for access to your private contacts, to "help" you find them on FB? What if one of your friends isn't on FB, and doesn't want FB to have their info? Your friend didn't give you permission to give FB their private contact information, ie phone number. FB then goes and makes a shadow profile based on that info you supplied without permission, and any time you mention or tag said friend, whether in a text of photo.

As I understand, it was a browser extension which scraped data off the Facebook pages visited by users. There is no way Facebook could reasonably detect or combat that.

I think you're confusing it with another recent FB event where they sued browser extension makers for scraping FB data.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-sues-two-chrome-exten...

> As I understand, it was a browser extension which scraped data off the Facebook pages visited by users.

That is false:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

Nevermind. I thought it was a browser extension. I was not aware of the "Open Graph" platform. Thank you for the correction.

The same argument could be said today about your web browser.

I wrote this comment for people in this conversation to see. Yet you allowed Google Chrome access to the comment. You let your adblocker see it. You let lots of software companies scrape it. You shared the data with a wider audience than I intended.

Sure, the argument doesn't hold much water on the public internet. But now consider HN was an invite-only forum, in fact an invite-only forum just like my facebook page...

You’re making the same argument. Public comments are fair game and there’s no expectations of privacy. A private, or invite only, or a network like fb with complex privacy controls is another story entirely.