Facebook employs psychologist whose firm sold data to Cambridge Analytica

The Guardian ^ | 18 Mar 2018 17:06 EDT | Paul Lewis and Julia Carrie Wong

[blueplum]

The co-director of a company that harvested data from tens of millions of Facebook users before selling it to the controversial data analytics firms Cambridge Analytica is currently working for the tech giant as an in-house psychologist.

Joseph Chancellor was one of two founding directors of Global Science Research (GSR), the company that harvested Facebook data using a personality app under the guise of academic research and later shared the data with Cambridge Analytica.

{snip} Chancellor is still working as a researcher at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters in California, where psychologists frequently conduct research and experiments using the company’s vast trove of data on more than 2 billion users...

[blueplum]

"research and experiments"

psychological experimentation on humans?

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[Mr. Blond]

Facebook’s whole purpose is to datamine its users for info.

[shanover]

Everybody that I know might as well have a probe from their brain to FakeBook. Most are Conservative but willingly trade off civil liberties and privacy for the “service”. Of course they are in denial when I weigh in on Zuckerturd and facts. It is quite scandalous and shocking.

[blueplum]

Psych experimentation is not the same as datamining.

[Mr. Blond]

ok? Facebook’s entire business model is selling its users data to advertisers, that’s why their IPO was initially a bust, because their user base was inflated with sock accounts. They do use psychological techniques to keep users coming back, not sure if I’d call that experimentation.

Their objection of Cambridge doing the same thing is pretty hypocritical.

[kdot]

Is trumps 2020 campaign manager tied to this somehow? Hit job?

[who_would_fardels_bear]

The gist of the article is that Bannon used the info from Cambridge Analytica (CA) to game the election by sending fake news to us gullible conservatives.

The "findings" of CA were supposedly that conservatives are generally closed and single minded so it is easy to craft a message that will get them to behave in particular ways, e.g. support Trump. However, liberals are much more open minded and have a greater variety of interests so it is difficult to craft a message that will work with all of them.

Not mentioned in the article is that during this same time period the NYT, WaPo, nightly news programs and the rest of the MSM were firehosing a message to all Americans that Hillary was inevitably going to be our next great president.

So even if they are right about Bannon, who really is the worst manipulator of American minds? Who for example got a majority of American's to be OK with abortion, homosexuality, illegal immigration, casual drug use, etc. over such a short period of time?

[blueplum]

seems to me that it contradicts Facebook’s allegation that “controversial” CA misappropriated the info, when the info was already mined under false pretenses and for sale by the psych’s company, (the apparently non-controversial) GSR.

And one has to wonder why Facebook management hired someone whose company had already been involved in mining millions of records to produce a workproduct that could be sold to any takers. Rather sketchy.

[a fool in paradise]

When they put all negative stories in your feed for a week, that’s psychological testing and nothing to do with ad revenue or click addiction.

They’ve done all sorts of experimentation on users’ moods.

And they dare blame ‘Russia’ for trying to ‘influence’ AN election?

[Mr. Blond]

Fair point, and a better explanation. Still not what I would call a “business model”, which the other guy seemingly argued. There’s a modus operandi apart from the business model.

[Krosan]

GSR is not non-controversial as they are the ones who stole the info. They were supposed to do their science research and then delete the data, but they sold the data to CA.