Hacker News

New stories

Live mirror
30 storiesupdated just nowView source snapshot
  1. Evolving programming languages in the AI era (twitter.com/josevalim)
    —discuss
  2. A single function Jev-like wrapper for LLMs, including vision models (allanrbo.blogspot.com)
    —discuss
  3. Is this the best condom? [video] (youtube.com)
    1comments
  4. An agent used DNS to reach an external chatbot (alignment.openai.com)
    1comments
  5. MiMo-V3 is getting a new architecture. HySparse2 (twitter.com/_luofuli)
    —discuss
  6. Pencils Down, Notation Up (intertwingly.net)
    —discuss
  7. Music for 18 Bouncy Balls (ianbutterworth.github.io)
    —discuss
  8. Why The Ambidextrous Universe is a masterpiece of science writing (newscientist.com)
    —discuss
  9. Show HN: HN roasted my email signatures, so I rebuilt the editor (esigna.app)
    —discuss
  10. Ask HN: ML-Based Tool Feedback
    —discuss
  11. A Type Stronger Than the Sum of Its Components (schneems.com)
    —discuss
  12. The Arena (thearena.rip)
    —discuss
  13. Dobium: $0 commission prediction exchange (dobium.com)
    1comments
  14. The World as a Hologram (arxiv.org)
    1comments
  15. The millionth.bid: the last bidder's quest (millionth.bid)
    —discuss
  16. US lawmakers aim to keep China's tech out of sensitive government systems (rnz.co.nz)
    —discuss
  17. Planetary Gear (Code Art) (chuanqisun.com)
    —discuss
  18. Show HN: Jevlang. delegate every if/while condition to Jev (github.com/roywiggins)
    —discuss
  19. Cognition Crosses $1B in Annualized Revenue Run Rate (cognition.com)
    —discuss
  20. Distributed Quantum Compiler (DQC / XDQC) by MemQ open-source now (hpcwire.com)
    —discuss
  21. Great News from Saturn's Moon Enceladus in the Search for Life in Space (fu-berlin.de)
    1comments
  22. Make an animated pelican on unicycle jugging fish while explaining bash command (twitter.com/goodside)
    1comments
  23. Lecture: Blowup for the Euler Equations with Smooth Forcing – Tristan Buckmaster [video] (youtube.com)
    1comments
  24. Ask HN: Is multi-model redundancy now a compliance requirement for small teams?
    1comments
  25. Show HN: A dashboard for tracking usage limits across Claude, Codex, and Cursor (usagebuddy.com)
    1comments
  26. Walgit: A Git server that is one binary in front of an object store (github.com/rgodha24)
    1comments
  27. Show HN: CoordMap – free browser tools for coordinates, elevation, and distance (coordmap.com)
    —discuss
  28. Trading a Cloud Identity for Your Own: Workload Attestation on Managed Compute (netflixtechblog.com)
    —discuss
  29. Were 1970s Korean Orphanages a Great Place to Raise Kids? (richardhanania.com)
    1comments
  30. A thesis isn't enough for a PhD (lemire.me)
    —discuss

Jury finds Facebook liable for deceiving users in Cambridge Analytica case

110 pointsby 2h agocbsnews.com
15 comments
2h agoHN ↗

Since these articles tend to actually bury the data that was scraped:

  > .. the information likely included one's "public profile, page likes, birthday and current city" ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

This information was limited to what was publicly accessible on the site rather than some private data as many outlets tend to claim.

2h agoHN ↗

The data wasn't "scraped." Here's the part you left out describing what really happened:

Aleksandr Kogan, a data scientist at the University of Cambridge, was hired by Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of SCL Group, to develop an app called "This Is Your Digital Life" (sometimes stylized as "thisisyourdigitallife").[15][16] Cambridge Analytica then arranged an informed consent process for research in which several hundred thousand Facebook users would agree to complete a survey for payment that was only for academic use.[15][17] However, Facebook allowed this app not only to collect personal information from survey respondents but also from respondents' Facebook friends.[15] In this way, Cambridge Analytica acquired data from millions of Facebook users.[15]

2h agoHN ↗

Is that not parsed as,

(public profile), [private] page likes, [possibly private] birthday and [possibly private] current city

?

(I've put in my best understanding of the other elements. AIUI, you can make the latter two public, but if I recall the scandal, that wasn't what occurred.)

1h agoHN ↗

I am not sure that this is the case.

The app had access to data about the friends of its participants.

AFAIR that included attributes that were set “friends-only”.

2h agoHN ↗

This was 10 years ago. Pretty crazy that this is finally seeing the justice system.

27m agoHN ↗

Reminds me of that FOIA request a guy filed when he had his kid and did not receive reply/confirmation until his kid was in college...

2h agoHN ↗

Meta agreed in August to pay up to $18 billion to settle the multistate lawsuit surrounding child safety issues. Buried in the 130-page settlement was an agreement to release Meta from future liability related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, making New Mexico the only state to pursue a case. Florida was the only other state that did not sign the settlement, saying it was not tough enough on Meta.

This is an inconvenient reminder for people who want more "regulation" and who believe states with high levels of paper regulation like California really care about protecting consumers.

Years down the line, you'll find that a bunch of the people who worked on these cases have cush jobs working on the other side.

1h agoHN ↗

Standard PSA: Cambridge Analytica electing Trump is not a true story. Cambridge Analytica absolutely broke Facebook's terms of service with its personality quiz scheme but it did not affect the 2016 election.

I'm an advertiser who has managed hundreds of millions of dollars for small startups and big corporations, brands, as well as a few small political campaigns.

Even at the time of the Trump election, the kind of ad targeting that Cambridge Analytica says they were offering through the personality quizzes was absolute garbage. There is a reason why the official response from Boz doesn't even mention the personality quiz stuff, because it was essentially irrelevant to the Trump campaign's performance on paid advertising on Meta. And I would go further to say that, except for his success in fundraising, all of his Meta advertising probably didn't move that many votes.

Cambridge Analytica, the organization, of course, loves to claim that they're the dark evil viziers behind the Trump campaign and they've advertised themselves as such to dictators all over the world. But that's just like Edward Bernays writing "Propaganda" back in the day, it is a way to sell their services. Trump digital director Brad Parscale said the campaign did not even use Cambridge Analytica’s controversial psychographic targeting.

Not to mention, the only reason that Cambridge Analytica had that open graph information available is because communities like Hacker News begged again and again for Facebook to open the graph and not have a walled web. After that they cut off that graph access.

1h agoHN ↗

Quizzes had like an 85% engagement rate on Facebook, they were legendarily effective paid eyeballs content. Adtech firm System1 aka OpenMail even merged with an adtech firm that owned a quiz content company, it made like $1m/2wks at small scale. I don't really know what Cambridge Analytica concretely did (to this day I have not seen a single screenshot of any of their creatives or a single concrete report of theirs) but I do know quizzes were really effective. For whatever purposes.

1h agoHN ↗

"Let this be a warning to every technology company doing business in our state," Torrez said Friday. "If you lie to New Mexicans about how you use their data, we will find out, and we will hold you accountable."

This is a great way to get companies to simply stop operating in your state

51m agoHN ↗

Great, we don’t want companies that break the law here in NM

13m agoHN ↗

Cyberpunk 2077 in all states except New Mexico.