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Based on this answer, and the fact that the discussion was said to get off topic and I wanted to know more, I thought about asking this question to find an answer.

It seems to me that both campaigns used data that was obtained without the consent of the vast majority of people:

From Politifact

The Obama campaign and Cambridge Analytica both gained access to huge amounts of information about Facebook users and their friends, and in neither case did the friends of app users consent.

And then later:

Whereas the data gathering and the uses were very different, the data each campaign gained access to was similar.

So my question is: did both sides basically do the same thing (using data without the users' consent), but Facebook only got "called out" when the Cambridge Analytica founder blew the whistle?

I would like to make one thing clear as far as I understand it. Both camps started by getting user data from users who willingly used their app. Then both campaigns used the data from those users to get the data from all the users in their contact/friend list as well (without consent from those friends), bloating the original amount of data x100.

Some information from this article:

the Obama camp used a common Facebook developer API–the same one used to access the data for Cambridge Analytica–to create a Facebook app that could capture the personal data not only of the app user, but also of all that person’s friends.

and this

The Obama campaign’s director of integration and media analytics Carol Davidsen said on Twitter that Facebook was surprised to learn how much user data could be pulled out through its graph API. “We were actually able to download the entire social network of the U.S.

It feels to me that the Obama campaign did not do anything wrong as such - Facebook is to blame for not protecting the data. But (like my question), if both sides did the same thing, then one could also not say that CA did much wrong.

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Alfa Bravo
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    if both sides did the same thing, then one could also not say that CA did much wrong. Or they both did wrong? Just cause Obama's campaign did something, doesn't make it right. – Azor Ahai -him- Apr 11 '18 at 17:32
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    For the sake of accuracy: the whistleblower was not the founder of Cambridge Analytica. – terdon Apr 11 '18 at 21:21
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    Also for the sake of accuracy, now I also know that the Trump campaign never actually used the data from CA. They went with the RNC data instead that proofed to be more reliable. So all this hype and saying "it is more proof of Trump rigging the election" when he didn't even use the data. – Alfa Bravo Apr 12 '18 at 12:35
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    Many years ago I got a facebook developer's account for an app I was thinking of making, and got access to their graph API. Never panned out, but I was shocked how much data I could download... all my users, and all the friends of my users. Facebook's terms of use said, basically, 'be sure to erase it all if the user unfollows you, don't use it for any nefarious purposes,' but I would be surprised if there aren't thousands of companies who are keeping that sort of data. It just happened to explode on Cambridge Analytica, probably just because of their Trump connection. – Ask About Monica Apr 12 '18 at 20:22
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    @AlfaBravo They claim they never used the data. Their claims have proven....less than reliable... in the past though. – Tim B Apr 13 '18 at 10:22

3 Answers3

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did both sides basically do the same thing (using data without the users consent)

No, according to your link

  • The people signing up for ["Obama for America"] knew the data they were handing over would be used to support a political campaign.

  • The people filling in the Cambridge University personality quiz were not informed that their data would be used to support a political campaign.

The way the data was used was different

  • The "Obama for America" app encouraged its users to send campaign messages to their friends
  • The Trump campaign worked with Cambridge Analytica (CA) with the intention† to use this data to directly send targeted adverts to friends of users of the personality tests without involving those users.

What is true is that, in both cases, friends of users were not explicitly asked by Facebook or by anyone else for consent for their data to be used in this way. Facebook seems to have taken the view that if you choose to share data with a friend, that friend is free to share that data further. Facebook's history suggests that their meat-based products are often unaware of or oblivious to the sausage-factory's sales to their real customers.

† The Trump campaign are reported as saying the data obtained by CA (in contravention of Facebook policies‡) was not actually used because the RNC had some better data they could use for the purpose.

‡ Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, says the data was passed to CA in contravention of Facebook's policies at that time.

I would like to make one thing clear as far as I understand it. Both camps started by getting user data from users who willingly used [their respective] app.

That is not the case. There was no "Trump for America" app. Facebook users did not willingly use a Trump campaign app. They thought they were using a Cambridge university personality test.

Obama 2012

NPR reports Betsy Hoover, the online organizing director for Barack Obama's 2012 presidential campaign as saying:

the app that everyone's referring to in this moment was an app called Targeted Sharing. It was an app that we created on Facebook that fully followed Facebook's terms of service. And any individual could decide to use the app. When they clicked on the app, a screen would pop up that would say what data they're authorizing the app was giving us access to and exactly how we were going to use that data. And so at that time, it was totally legitimate on Facebook to say you're giving us access to your social network. You're giving us access to your friends on Facebook.

we matched the data of your friends to that model and then reflected it back to the person who had authorized the app and said, if you want to reach out to your friends about this election on Facebook, here are the ones that you should reach out to first. And that was it...

Users of the "Obama for America" app provided access to information about their friends explicitly in order to find out which ones would be receptive to messages from the user regarding the political campaign those users were supporting.

Trump 2016

USA Today reports Patrick Ruffini, a co-founder Echelon Insights, a Republican-leaning digital analytics and research firm, as saying:

had Cambridge Analytica just put out the app themselves, they would have been playing by the rules

Obama's team put out the app themselves, Trump's did not. A republican says Trump's team were not "playing by the rules".

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RedGrittyBrick
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According to Facebook, Cambridge Analytica obtained the data from a third party, a Cambridge university researcher, which was in violation of Facebook policy. The Obama campaign got their data openly, under their own name. Whether this is a significant difference from a privacy perspective is perhaps subjective, but there are certainly ethical implications.

Addendum: it should perhaps be emphasized that Cambridge Analytica denies that the data in question was used in the Trump campaign.

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According to information available on the net the differences were:

  1. the data used by Cambridge Analytica was improperly shared with them by another company that did the actual scraping. CA then used, allegedly, that data in the primaries to create targeted ads. What actual data was used we don't know. Who was actually targeted, we also don't know for sure. Also, that data wasn't used during election.
  2. Obama2012 app users knew their data was to be used in political campaign and that they compromised their friends' personal data. Obama2012 then proceeded to scrape - unconsented - data on 190 million users and deliver political ad disguised as message from friend during election.

That would mean that no, both issues aren't the same.

The problem is that "Cambridge Analytica Scandal" is very much a media fabrication. No doubt CA execs did a lot of damage to themselves, but any proof of legal transgressions by them has yet to surface. It is also designed to "cover" much worse transgressions by "much more palatable ideologically" parties. Very similar in level but much worse in reach (yes, Obama2012).

Or, to put it in words of someone better with them:

But keep in mind that it wasn't the Trump campaign that solicited the collection of the data. And, as we said, it didn't use the data in the general election campaign.

Obama, in contrast, was collecting live data on active users right up until Election Day, and at a scale that dwarfed anything the Trump campaign could access.

More important, the vast majority of people involved in these data-mining operations had no idea they were participating. And in the case of Obama, they had no way of knowing that the Obama campaign material cluttering their feed wasn't really just political urgings from their friends.

There is one other big difference: how these revelations were received by pundits and the press. In 2012, Obama was wildly celebrated in news stories for his mastery of Big Data, and his genius at mining it to get out the vote.

We were told then about how the campaign "won the race for voter data," and how it "connected with young voters." His data analytics gurus were treated as heroes.

This is not to say that Facebook doesn't deserve criticism. Clearly, its data-protection policies have been slipshod.

But the recent fury exposes a massive double standard on the part of those now raising hell.

When Obama was exploiting Facebook users to help win re-election, it was an act of political genius. When Trump attempted something similar, with unclear results, it's a travesty of democracy and further evidence that somehow he stole the election.

Reading material:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/428530/facebook-the-real-presidential-swing-state/

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-scandal-trump-election-obama-2012/

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/514406/data-won-the-us-election-now-can-it-save-the-world/

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    Do you have a source for the "Obama2012 [...] deliver political ad disguised as message from friend" part? Because as far as I understood it, the users were sending messages to their friends, based on recommendations from the app. These are two very different things, so if indeed the first happened, that would change things imho. Regarding the "unconsented": You mean without consent from the friends, right? Because afaik, the original user was informed that this data would be scraped for this specific purpose, and they consented to that. – tim Apr 11 '18 at 14:09
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    Adding on to @tim's comment, the Obama2012 app got consent from the app user for each action it performed. It provided suggested messages, and easy ways to share some content (eg during the live stream of the Democratic National Convention, if the user authorized the app while viewing the stream, they were given the option to post that they were watching the stream). Essentially, it was a tool to assist Obama supporters in spreading campaign messages. – LazyGadfly Apr 11 '18 at 14:55
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    "the data used by Cambridge Analytica was improperly shared with them" seems to directly contradict with "any proof of wrongdoing by them has yet to surface". – LazyGadfly Apr 11 '18 at 14:58
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    Can you provide a more specific citation than "According to information available on the net"? – LazyGadfly Apr 11 '18 at 14:59
  • @LazyGadfly - as far as I know when this happened this was not a felony, infraction nor any other "illegal" flavor. Company claims it does not have the data and gov. watchdog haven't said anything to the tune of illegality, too. So, no. But will edit to avoid that impression. Thanks. –  Apr 11 '18 at 15:03
  • @LazyGadfly - adding relevant information. –  Apr 11 '18 at 15:17
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    @tim - users were asked to tap a button that sent to their friends message from campaign, and to specific friends, at that. So yes, ad disguised as message from friend. And unconsented - data consisting personal information of the friends of the users. Which data wasn't theirs to give out, consent for the app notwithstanding. –  Apr 11 '18 at 15:38
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    I think 'encouraging users to send ads to their friends' is quite different from 'the app sending ads disguised as messages'. – npostavs Apr 11 '18 at 21:59
  • The issue at hand is not a legal matter, so your points to that end are superfluous. Cambridge Analytica violated Facebook's Terms of Service. –  Apr 12 '18 at 06:09
  • @npostavs - not so much when that app was sending that message to specific users, which were targeted by the app, not the user. I do not dispute content was legit, I dispute the fact that Obama campaign knew who to send it to. That's the point. –  Apr 12 '18 at 08:19
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    @DoritoStyle - tell me how they violated terms of service? They used data they did not collect. They would be in violation of new GDPR regulations, but that's still a month away from being law. Someone else violated the FB ToS, and we don't even know how and what exactly data was used by CA. –  Apr 12 '18 at 08:20
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    "Obama campaign knew who to send it to. That's the point." - it's a good point. You should change "Obama2012 then proceeded to [...] deliver political ad" into "Obama2012 then proceeded to [...] craft targeted political ads for app users to send to their friends" so that the point won't be obscured. The difference between user tapping and app sending automonously is like the difference between a human operated drone strike, and Skynet sending the Terminator (slight hyperbole). Hence you should avoid sensationalism and be clear that you're not claiming the latter. – npostavs Apr 12 '18 at 12:42
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    @AcePL tell me how they violated terms of service Faebook has written a detailed explanation of the violation, which references their Platform Policy. Several of these policies were violated by both CA and Aleksandr Kogan; one of the key violations was of the rule in Section 3, Number 9: Don't sell, license, or purchase any data obtained from us or our services. Similar wording has been in place since at least May 2011. – LazyGadfly Apr 12 '18 at 17:28
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    @LazyGadfly That link establishes that Kogan violated Facebook's ToS, but it doesn't seem to make it clear that CA ever even would have needed to consent to it in the first place. They obtained their information from a third party (Kogan,) not from Facebook itself, so it doesn't seem clear that they were ever in any contractual relationship with Facebook to start with. – reirab Apr 13 '18 at 05:56
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    @LazyGadfly Also, the two quotes you quoted earlier are not necessarily contradictory. Proving that x gave something improperly to y proves that x committed some wrongdoing, but it doesn't necessarily prove that y has (at least if we're using 'wrongdoing' to mean that some law or contract was violated.) – reirab Apr 13 '18 at 06:00