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Post by nucleusofswarm on Apr 6, 2018 23:45:29 GMT
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Post by jasonward on Apr 7, 2018 0:11:44 GMT
What aspect?
The focus on Facebook as enabler of all evil? Or of Russia the doer of all evil? Or Cambridge Analytica the unscrupulous villain of the piece? Trump and his campaign and Brexit using these things? That this was kind of inevitable and you can bet there are many more actors doing this same sort of thing, currently keeping their head low.
One thing I find amazing and alarming at the same time, is the conversation around the data and it being deleted (or not). What amazes and alarms me, is the naivety to which people think of information.
Cambridge Analytics say they have deleted the data in question... yeah... maybe... but actually, its probably not even possible now. Let me try to explain.
I used to work at a data analytics company, and we sourced our data from all over, and created our own data sets from that.
So lets take a simple example
OSIS is the name of directory enquiries data in the UK, it includes lots of information, far more than you would expect and also contains ex-directory listings. There are strick licencing rules about how the data can be used, which the industry (or at least large sections of it) pay no head to (I know because the company I worked for paid no heed at all, indeed had policies in place to hide and obfuscate our misuse).
So take OSIS, merge with PAF (Post office Address File), add data from The Sunday Times wine buyers list, and indeed, merge any of the many thousands of data sets available, run de-duplicating.
So what have I ended up with? The resultant data is not OSIS, it's not PAF, it's not any of its constituents, it's not even a superset or subset, some data was removed some was added, some was changed.
So along comes the regulator and shouts at you for using OSIS, so you delete OSIS, and tell everyone you no longer have OSIS, you told the truth, you don't you deleted it (ignoring the fact that with modern computers and databases and backup, deleting anything is near impossible and maybe even illegal) - but you don't care, because all the information you wanted from OSIS is now in your own data set.
The data harvested from Facebook will never go away, no matter what anyone says.
But this whole subject is HUGE, from the actions of foreign agents, ethics of commercial companies, the lack of clarity and understanding of the public and even regulators, the endless march of computing power, the morality of social media, the susceptibility of the public to misinformation, this subject goes on and on and on and on and on and on....
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Post by sherlock on Apr 7, 2018 10:06:27 GMT
I hope this ends the naivety about data in politics. Campaigns have been using data for years, there are companies out there that collect data and political campaigns come to them and then use it to target their voters. This is now a standard tactic. I literally have lectures about data and political communication.
Data is collected really easily. I run a small blog on Google's Blogger site and the amount of data I can see about who's viewing it is ridiculous. I get their country (assuming they're not using a VPN), what device they're looking at it on, what browser they viewed it on. And this is just the data I can see, I'm sure Google collects far, far more.
If the outcome of this scandal is people are more aware of how much data these companies collect, so much the better.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2018 11:46:05 GMT
don't use facebook
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 15:06:33 GMT
No impact on me, as I don't use social media.
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Post by muckypup on Apr 8, 2018 16:33:11 GMT
No impact on me, as I don't use social media. What’s this forum then......hehehe we lots of brexit add on here during the campaign
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Post by jasonward on Apr 8, 2018 17:14:32 GMT
No impact on me, as I don't use social media. It is unfortunately naive to believe that because someone doesn't use Facebook or even social media that data on you is not collected and collated. This isn't about consumer behaviour, its about how data is collected by who and how they use it. It is also unfortunately naive to believe that because someone doesn't use Facebook or even social media that targetted campaigns designed to spread, fear, lies, misinformation etc etc don't effect you. You, whoever you are, what ever you do, where ever you are, are part of this, and there is nothing you can do about, EXCEPT, get wise to it and get regulators and law makers to get out ahead of this, and stop the morally questionable practices that arise from the collection of this data.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 19:24:56 GMT
No impact on me, as I don't use social media. What’s this forum then...... Home!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 19:34:55 GMT
No impact on me, as I don't use social media. It is unfortunately naive to believe that because someone doesn't use Facebook or even social media that data on you is not collected and collated. This isn't about consumer behaviour, its about how data is collected by who and how they use it. Well, I have a Gmail address and use Google Maps so my data is most certainly collected by Google! Plus I use an iPhone and an iPad so that brings Apple in to the data collection equation too, at the very least. But I meant the Facebook/Cambridge Analyctica thing more than anything else, as that's what the thread title is about. I don't avoid Facebook/Twitter because of the data harvesting, I stay off them as I think they are full of idiots!
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Post by jasonward on Apr 8, 2018 20:51:17 GMT
It is unfortunately naive to believe that because someone doesn't use Facebook or even social media that data on you is not collected and collated. This isn't about consumer behaviour, its about how data is collected by who and how they use it. Well, I have a Gmail address and use Google Maps so my data is most certainly collected by Google! Plus I use an iPhone and an iPad so that brings Apple in to the data collection equation too, at the very least. But I meant the Facebook/Cambridge Analyctica thing more than anything else, as that's what the thread title is about. I don't avoid Facebook/Twitter because of the data harvesting, I stay off them as I think they are full of idiots! Do you have apps installed on your phone? OK, so they probably have access to all your contacts, location data, call logs and anything else you clicked OK when you installed them, web browsing history for instance. Now imagine that say 10% of your friends have similar apps installed in their phones. OK, so I know who your friends are, who their friends are, where you hang out, where you work, where you live, what you browse and I know about your friends too, even those that don't have the apps installed, I can infer an awful lot just by their connections to those I do have data on. I know what interests you, from your messages I know what programs you watch, even if I have no direct data on it, I can infer with a much larger degree of accuracy than most believe your political beliefs and voting intention, I know when you will be home and when you will down the pub and who you will be with. I did all without ever actually having done anything to really look at your personally, I just did that for everyone caught in the net, which is basically more or less everyone, and all some of them did was have a mobile phone and install an app. Add in the detailed tracking information that Google and Facebook have access to and you got to realise that your life, your past and even your future is now just a commodity for companies to buy, sell and exploit. For the most part, when this is just used for targetted advertising, then its not a problem, when it says used by police to predict where they need to put place to stop crime, then OK, that sounds OK.... maybe. But it can and is so much deeper than that, as the Russia/Facebook/Trump/Brexit/Cambridge Analytica story show. Governments, corporations, campaign groups all have access to data, and what they might do with that data is limited only by their imaginations. This issue is not Facebook, or social media, its not Russia or Trump, it's not any of those things, there just the surface area of some scandal you see today. This is about data, and the power it gives and who have that power and who over sees that power. This is about power, and using or not using Facebook makes no difference.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Apr 8, 2018 21:42:20 GMT
I know Facebook is supposed to roll out a new feature tomorrow that shows all the apps a user has and the information collected with an option to delete those apps. It would have been a better start two years ago when FB first found out about it. One of the interesting things Zuckerberg said in an interview last week was that maybe it is time things such as Facebook, Twitter etc face some regulation. We are at the very tip of the iceberg right as far as this story is concerned.
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Post by barnabaslives on Apr 8, 2018 23:34:12 GMT
This issue is not Facebook, or social media, its not Russia or Trump, it's not any of those things, there just the surface area of some scandal you see today. This is about data, and the power it gives and who have that power and who over sees that power. Perhaps it's also about about the rotten things that very unimaginative people will often do to make a dirty dollar? (BTW, I personally don't use Facebook because the minute I sign up for it, it won't be hip anymore and everyone will drop it like a hot potato, just like that time I signed up for MySpace). :-)
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Post by number13 on Apr 9, 2018 0:46:54 GMT
I don't use 'big corporate' social media apart from email (which counts, but to a far lesser extent.) And as far as targeted ads, trackers, etc., etc. are concerned - use a Hosts File. The best single computing tip I was ever given. It's a (long) list of places on the Internet for your computer not to visit, ever, regardless of what app, browser or other program tries to. It's not a solution for everyone - maybe not for you if you have to connect your laptop to a business network, but I've been using a Hosts File on all my home systems for years and I wouldn't be without it. I install the latest file manually whenever an update is released (usually monthly or longer), but there are programs that will do it for you. There are various junk-blocking host files available but this is the one I found originally and which I still use: 'Blocking Unwanted Connections with a Hosts File' winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htmIt's free to use, it helps a lot and it gives my systems extra security on top of the usual antivirus software / firewall. Unwanted addresses are never visited or responded to. Ads are never downloaded or displayed, just the empty placeholders. So when I browse, I see dead adverts - all the time...(Some people have a problem with this approach because of 'keeping the Internet free to use' i.e. cutting advertising revenue that is paid-per-view. This is a valid viewpoint but the number of people who use a Hosts File or other adblockers is a tiny fraction of the whole.)
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2018 17:30:58 GMT
It is also unfortunately naive to believe that because someone doesn't use Facebook or even social media that targetted campaigns designed to spread, fear, lies, misinformation etc etc don't effect you. I don't think that.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2018 17:54:43 GMT
Some people have a problem with this approach because of 'keeping the Internet free to use' i.e. cutting advertising revenue that is paid-per-view. This is a valid viewpoint but the number of people who use a Hosts File or other adblockers is a tiny fraction of the whole. uBlock Origin all the way here, I don't want to see ads - or pop-ups telling me it's not nice to use an adblocker - when I'm browsing the internet in my own home on my own PC.
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