One possible legal problem that isn't getting any attention involves whether Facebook made, and the Obama campaign accepted, illegal "In-kind" contributions to Obama's 2012 re-election effort.
X. As we noted earlier, the Obama campaign's use of Facebook data dwarfed anything Trump did.
About a million people let the campaign gather not only data on themselves, but on all their friends, who didn't know their data was being harvested as well - a number that could easily have reached 190 million, which, at the time, was about equal to every active Facebook user in the U.S. Obama's tech gurus were able to match this rich treasure trove of personal data - likes, dislikes, photos, etc.
The campaign aggressively used its unique access to influence millions of people the campaign identified as "Persuadable," sending them highly targeted campaign messages that appeared to come from their Facebook friends, rather than the Obama campaign.
After the Cambridge Analytica story broke, an Obama campaign staffer, Carol Davidsen, tweeted about how "Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn't stop us once they realized what we were doing." By "Whole social graph," she presumably meant profiles of every Facebook user in the U.S. She went on to tell the Washington Post that "We would ask permission to basically scrape your profile, and also scrape your friends, basically anything that was available to scrape. We scraped it all."
He goes on, if "Facebook gave the Obama campaign free access to this type of data when it normally does not do so for other entities - or usually charges for such access - then Facebook would appear to have violated the federal ban on in-kind contributions by a corporation. And the Obama campaign may have violated the law by accepting such a corporate contribution."
To be sure, von Spakovsky isn't saying that Facebook or Obama did break the law, only that, given what Davidsen has now admitted, the Federal Election Commission, if not the Justice Dept., should investigate.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-scanadal-trump-obama-campaign-election-meddling/
X. As we noted earlier, the Obama campaign's use of Facebook data dwarfed anything Trump did.
About a million people let the campaign gather not only data on themselves, but on all their friends, who didn't know their data was being harvested as well - a number that could easily have reached 190 million, which, at the time, was about equal to every active Facebook user in the U.S. Obama's tech gurus were able to match this rich treasure trove of personal data - likes, dislikes, photos, etc.
The campaign aggressively used its unique access to influence millions of people the campaign identified as "Persuadable," sending them highly targeted campaign messages that appeared to come from their Facebook friends, rather than the Obama campaign.
After the Cambridge Analytica story broke, an Obama campaign staffer, Carol Davidsen, tweeted about how "Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn't stop us once they realized what we were doing." By "Whole social graph," she presumably meant profiles of every Facebook user in the U.S. She went on to tell the Washington Post that "We would ask permission to basically scrape your profile, and also scrape your friends, basically anything that was available to scrape. We scraped it all."
He goes on, if "Facebook gave the Obama campaign free access to this type of data when it normally does not do so for other entities - or usually charges for such access - then Facebook would appear to have violated the federal ban on in-kind contributions by a corporation. And the Obama campaign may have violated the law by accepting such a corporate contribution."
To be sure, von Spakovsky isn't saying that Facebook or Obama did break the law, only that, given what Davidsen has now admitted, the Federal Election Commission, if not the Justice Dept., should investigate.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-scanadal-trump-obama-campaign-election-meddling/
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