Zuckerberg and Sandberg Ordered To Testify Over Alleged Involvement In Cambridge Analytica Scandal (gizmodo.com) 35
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg will have to provide testimony to a federal court to discuss their alleged involvement in the company's notorious Cambridge Analytica scandal, over half a decade since it first captured the world's attention. [...] Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm that used Facebook user data to target and lobby potential voters ahead of the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. The ensuing scandal helped trigger an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission that resulted in Facebook agreeing to a record-setting $5 billion settlement over its privacy practices.
A new filing (PDF) in the Northern District of California Tuesday shows Zuckerberg and Sandberg agreed to be deposed for six and five hours respectively in September of this year. This comes as part of a class action lawsuit filed against Meta, claiming the company violated consumer privacy laws when it shared user data with Cambridge Analytica back in 2015. [...] In addition to Zuckerberg and Sandberg, the court's also seeking to depose Meta's newly named CTO Javier Olivan -- who previously served as the company's Chief Growth Officer -- as well as a handful of other "key witnesses." Olivan's deposition is expected to last three hours. According to Tuesday's filing Meta will also hand over 1,200 documents "previously withheld as privileged." Plaintiffs in the case previously accused Meta and the law firm representing it of "stonewalling," during the court's discovery phase.
A new filing (PDF) in the Northern District of California Tuesday shows Zuckerberg and Sandberg agreed to be deposed for six and five hours respectively in September of this year. This comes as part of a class action lawsuit filed against Meta, claiming the company violated consumer privacy laws when it shared user data with Cambridge Analytica back in 2015. [...] In addition to Zuckerberg and Sandberg, the court's also seeking to depose Meta's newly named CTO Javier Olivan -- who previously served as the company's Chief Growth Officer -- as well as a handful of other "key witnesses." Olivan's deposition is expected to last three hours. According to Tuesday's filing Meta will also hand over 1,200 documents "previously withheld as privileged." Plaintiffs in the case previously accused Meta and the law firm representing it of "stonewalling," during the court's discovery phase.
Hopefully it costs them billions (Score:2, Insightful)
I would be fine with that.
https://www.news.com.au/techno... [news.com.au]
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Can't wait for the results of this trial in 2035! (Score:3)
I hope Meta (or whatever it will be called then) is still around then.
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They could probably burn through illiquid assets through 12 more years of Donald Trump. But they'll definitely be gone by Barron's fourth term.
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It's too late to do anything now anyway. Can't undo brexit or Trump's presidency. There is no restorative justice.
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Meta (or whatever it will be called then)
Metastabook.
Why such controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because they helped Trump?
FB's *entire* business model has always been about selling user data or providing access to such data to third parties for cash.
When this story came out my response was, "So what? This is what FB does. Who doesn't know that the users are the product?"
I still don't get why anyone finds this shocking. As if CA was the only company doing something like this? Countless companies do -exactly- the same thing on FB.
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Re: Why such controversy? (Score:1)
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Re: Why such controversy? (Score:5, Informative)
""How dare you!" tweeted Michael Simon, who headed Obama's micro-targeting team in 2008, in response to the firm.
"We didn't steal private Facebook profile data from voters under false pretenses. OFA (Obama's campaign) voluntarily solicited opinions of hundreds of thousands of voters. We didn't commit theft to do our groundbreaking work."
Jeremy Bird, a member of the 2012 Obama team, echoed those sentiments, warning: "Do not use the Obama campaign to justify your shady business."
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Targeting ads is not selling data. I'll grant you that targeting political ads is its own form of evil, but that's not what Cambridge Analytica was about. Facebook gave them the actual targeting data (i.e., the lists of actual users and their preferences), supposedly for academic research. And then CA used that data to micro target ads to specific users.
In any case, after 2016, Google stopped allowing targeted political ads (either x months before an election, or with some other caveats - but at least th
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Its ok, just say you're too stupid to understand.
Re:Kangroo Justice system (Score:5, Informative)
That argument, that Obama in 2008 did the same thing Trump did in 2016, is from Steve Bannon, former Trump campaign manager who might be more than a little biased.
The Obama campaign collected their data from their official app and did so within Facebook's Terms of Service. People who interacted with the Obama campaign knew they were interacting with the Obama campaign.
Cambridge Analytica is believed to have violated these terms and the Trump campaign is believed to have shared their data with other parties. Their Facebook survey claimed to be from Cambridge University- it wasn't. Users were never informed that their data would be sold all over and used to model their thought processes.
So no, it was not the "EXACT" same thing...
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Re:Kangroo Justice system (Score:4, Interesting)
In the case of brexit, Cambridge Analytica used fake competitions to gather data. The odds of winning were astronomical, and the competitions had nothing to do with anything political, but once someone entered their data was available to CA staff.
Michal Kosinski developed psychological profiling techniques that used the stolen data, such as likes, to build profiles that were more accurate than having that person answer questions, or questioning their friends and relatives.
Cambridge Analytica then used those profiles to identify individuals for micro-targetting, with messages tailored to small numbers of individuals. Most of the material they were shown did not identify itself as being part of any brexit campaign, or even as being political in nature. Worst still, because the messages were so narrowly targeted, it was difficult for anyone not in the target group to track or counter them.
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But you're right, buying elections shouldn't be permitted. Which is why the real investigation should be into how Zuckerberg gave tons and tons of cash to election officials to run "non-partisan voter turnout campaigns", but somehow only in extremely partisan pro-Democrat districts. Or how Michelle Obama and Tom Hanks (that makes me sad) threw huge parties next to Atlanta's largest polling place
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This response makes it seem as though you are not completely familiar with the way data was collected, shared, and processed.
One group says "Hello, I am a political campaign and I have some questions for you that we will use in a political manner." As long as they uphold what they said they would do, this is fairly straightforward. This is apparently what the Obama campaign ended up doing.
While another group says "Hello, I am one of the most trusted names on Earth in academia and this is a fun time quiz." A
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...their data would be sold all over and used to model their thought processes.
This is quite literally the reason businesses like Facebook, Twitter, Google exist.
"Selling your data all over and modeling your thought processes" is the cost you agree to in exchange for being provided a way to share political memes and pics of your friends drinking bellinis while getting mani-pedis.
I don't understand the dramatic level of pearl-clutching shock over this from the "2016 election was stolen!!1!" Hillary supporters any more than I understand the dramatic level of 1776 LARPing from the "2020
In other news, spoons deemed to make people fat (Score:2)
This is typical. When they fail to understand that hand grenades work in both directions, blame the company that made the hand grenade.