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by traek 2054 days ago
CA data was from a quiz, developed by a researcher at Cambridge University, hosted by that researcher, which scraped FB APIs after being authorized by a user.

This data is from a browser extension, developed by researchers at NYU, hosted by those researchers, which scrapes the FB site after being installed by a user.

IMO the situations are pretty analogous.

2 comments

The situations are in no way analogous. CA gathered data on users who did not opt in. They paid 270k users to take a quiz, and gathered information on 87MM of their Facebook friends who never consented to sharing their information.
No kidding, the difference between opt-in and secret-opt-in is obvious.
In CA scandal the data collected was about users.

Here data is collected about what Facebook does, what a corporation does.

They don't seem similar.