March 21, 2018

As Scandal Rocks Facebook, Something More Sinister Emerges That Should Concern Everybody

The Hillary Clinton campaign is building on President Obamas efforts in 2012 to create an edge over Donald Trump by using data mining to influence voters and affect the course of the presidential election.



Data mining can target individuals and tailor political advertisements to show voters what theyll most likely want to hear about. For example, a woman with children who has voted Republican in the past will most likely have different political interests than a retired man who doesnt have children and has rarely voted, according to Meta Brown, data analytics consultant.



Perhaps the mother would hear the candidates position on school funding, while the retiree would hear about Medicare, Brown said.

Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as "surveillance companies." Their rebranding as "social media" is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense. (Edward Snowden - Twitter)

They came to office in the days following election recruiting & 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, Carol Davidsen, director of data integration and media analytics for Obama for America, wrote Sunday on Twitter.



Davidsen said she and her team were able to gather massive amounts of personal information from Facebook users, as well as their friends.



Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didnt stop us once they realized that was what we were doing, she said on Twitter.

The Times original story made reference to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandbergand mentioned her consternation at Stamos efforts to shepherd the tech giant towards being more transparent about Russian trolls electoral interference. Heres the original paragraph in question:



Mr. Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigation and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social networks chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.



This morning, however, readers noticed the sole reference to Sandbergs displeasure with Stamos transparency effortsviz. Russia in particularwas wiped clean off the ether. Now, Sandbergs name and the storys only reference to her alleged role in frustrating Stamos attempts to highlight and root out Russian troll influence on the platform are gone because someone at the New York Times replaced the entire sentence.



Instead of an obvious reference to Facebook COO Sandberg, the New York Times readership will note a vague reference to the fact that Stamos anti-Russian transparency efforts were met with resistance by colleagues. Theres also no longer any explicit mention that Sandberg was one of those colleagues in the story. In other words, readers will now see nothing to suggest Sandberg had a problem with Stamos work related to Russia.

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