From The Guardian:
Before Facebook suspended Aleksandr Kogan from its platform for the data harvesting “scam” at the centre of the unfolding Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media company enjoyed a close enough relationship with the researcher that it provided him with an anonymised, aggregate dataset of 57bn Facebook friendships.
Facebook provided the dataset of “every friendship formed in 2011 in every country in the world at the national aggregate level” to Kogan’s University of Cambridge laboratory for a study on international friendships published in Personality and Individual Differences in 2015. Two Facebook employees were named as co-authors of the study, alongside researchers from Cambridge, Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. Kogan was publishing under the name Aleksandr Spectre at the time.
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“The sheer volume of the 57bn friend pairs implies a pre-existing relationship,” said Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. “It’s not common for Facebook to share that kind of data. It suggests a trusted partnership between Aleksandr Kogan/Spectre and Facebook.”
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Facebook has not explained how it came to have such a close relationship with Kogan that it was co-authoring research papers with him, nor why it took until this week – more than two years after the Guardian initially reported on Kogan’s data harvesting activities – for it to inform the users whose personal information was improperly shared.
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“We made clear the app was for commercial use – we never mentioned academic research nor the University of Cambridge,” Kogan wrote. “We clearly stated that the users were granting us the right to use the data in broad scope, including selling and licensing the data. These changes were all made on the Facebook app platform and thus they had full ability to review the nature of the app and raise issues. Facebook at no point raised any concerns at all about any of these changes.”
Kogan is not alone in criticising Facebook’s apparent efforts to place the blame on him.
“In my view, it’s Facebook that did most of the sharing,” said Albright, who questioned why Facebook created a system for third parties to access so much personal information in the first place. That system “was designed to share their users’ data in meaningful ways in exchange for stock value”, he added.
Whistleblower Christopher Wylie told the Observer that Facebook was aware of the volume of data being pulled by Kogan’s app. “Their security protocols were triggered because Kogan’s apps were pulling this enormous amount of data, but apparently Kogan told them it was for academic use,” Wylie said. “So they were like: ‘Fine.’”As I wrote yesterday, Facebook is the problem, here. They didn't just fall in with bad company, through no fault of their own; they jumped into shark-infested waters with a bucket of chum, ignored the circling fins (the warning signs that their own processes threw up), and raked in the money quite cheerfully right up until the moment when it became apparent that they were, indeed, bleeding heavily and about to lose an unknown number of corporate limbs. They didn't care when it mattered, and they didn't act when it mattered, and they damned well knew better at the time.
And while Facebook's users may not be fleeing for the exits quickly enough for Zuckerberg to give #deleteFacebook more than a lip-service mention, FB's real customers, their advertisers, are apparently beginning to decide that they don't want their good names associated with any of this shit, and are heading for the exits, beginning with Mozilla. From Betanews:
Mozilla is not happy with Facebook. Not happy at all. Having already started a petition to try to force the social network to do more about user privacy, the company has now decided to withdraw its advertising from the platform.
The organization is voting with its money following the misuse of user data by Cambridge Analytica, as it tries to force Facebook into taking privacy more seriously.
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Mozilla says that it is not happy to financially support a platform that does not do enough to protect user privacy. But the company is not severing ties completely. It says that advertising is being "paused" and that if the right steps are taken by Facebook "we'll consider returning."Mozilla will not be the last to cut Facebook loose over this, but good for them for being the first... at least, the first to make such a public exit.
BTW, it may look like I quoted a huge chunk of The Guardian's article, there, but trust me, there is so much more detailed information in their coverage of this. Their piece is absolutely a must-read for anyone with interest in this story, so go give them some clicks.