Just so we are clear on the numbers (GP):
- Facebook announced in early April that the data of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with a political consulting firm connected to President Trump during the 2016 election.
- But in 2012 the Obama campaign harvested data from 190 million Facebook users.
The media cheered in 2012 the sheer brilliance of the Obama campaign. Data used for similar GOP “mining”? Not so much.
TIME (11/20/2012):
…But the Obama team had a solution in place: a Facebook application that will transform the way campaigns are conducted in the future. For supporters, the app appeared to be just another way to digitally connect to the campaign. But to the Windy City number crunchers, it was a game changer. “I think this will wind up being the most groundbreaking piece of technology developed for this campaign,” says Teddy Goff, the Obama campaign’s digital director.
That’s because the more than 1 million Obama backers who signed up for the app gave the campaign permission to look at their Facebook friend lists. In an instant, the campaign had a way to see the hidden young voters. Roughly 85% of those without a listed phone number could be found in the uploaded friend lists. What’s more, Facebook offered an ideal way to reach them. “People don’t trust campaigns. They don’t even trust media organizations,” says Goff. “Who do they trust? Their friends.”…
Another interesting article that links to Obama’s campaign managers Twitter is this one at THE DAILY MAIL:
‘They were on our side’: Obama campaign director reveals Facebook ALLOWED them to mine American users’ profiles in 2012 because they were supportive of the Democrats
- Carol Davidsen, who worked as the media director at Obama for America, claimed Obama campaign mined millions of people’s information from Facebook
- She said that Facebook was surprised at the ease with which they were able to ‘suck out the whole social graph’
- But the firm never tried to stop them when they realized what was doing, and even told them they’d made a special exception for them
- They ‘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,’ she tweeted
- Davidsen said that she felt the project was ‘creepy’ – ‘even though we played by the rules, and didn’t do anything I felt was ugly, with the data’
- Davidsen posted this in the wake of the uproar over Cambridge Analytica, and their mining of information for the Trump campaign
[….]
Carol Davidsen, who worked as the media director at Obama for America and has spoken about this in the past, explained on Twitter that she and her team were able to ingest massive amounts of information from the social network after getting permission from Facebook users to access their list of 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,’ wrote Davidsen.
She wrote that, not only did Facebook not try to stop them, but the company said they’d made a special exception for them.
‘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,’ she tweeted.
Davidsen was then careful to note: ‘I am also 100% positive that Facebook activity recruits and staffs people that are on the other side.’ ….
Also, remember this?
BEFORE IT’S NEWS has the transcript:
“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday.
“That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can’t get around it. And he’s [President Obama] been very smart. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”