from the these-are-not-the-data-you're-looking-for dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow0245
A data set of more than 3 million Facebook users and a variety of their personal details collected by Cambridge researchers was available for anyone to download for some four years, New Scientist reports. It's likely only one of many places where such huge sets of personal data collected during a period of permissive Facebook access terms have been obtainable.
The data were collected as part of a personality test, myPersonality, which, according to its own wiki (now taken down), was operational from 2007 to 2012, but new data was added as late as August of 2016. It started as a side project by the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre's David Stillwell (now deputy director there), but graduated to a more organized research effort later. The project "has close academic links," the site explains, "however, it is a standalone business." (Presumably for liability purposes; the group never charged for access to the data.)
Though "Cambridge" is in the name, there's no real connection to Cambridge Analytica, just a very tenuous one through Aleksandr Kogan, which is explained below.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @01:53AM (3 children)
Come on, guys! It's the fucking Internet!
The damn slogan has always been "Once it's on the Internet, it's always on the Internet!"
Linus Torvalds famously admitted that he doesn't back anything up; he just posts his stuff online because he knows it will be replicated thousands of times.
You're all a bunch of wankers, and I don't feel sorry for you prole asses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @02:07AM
Russia! Russia! Russia! [youtu.be]
I say why all the build-up. Just push the fucking button and get it over with! Kill us all!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @03:26AM (1 child)
Wait, I thought this was true. Why is it flamebate?
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday May 19 2018, @05:49AM
I dunno. This is why I wait with baited breath, and a bated hook, to baet the flame that will troll the moths to the camera over a Christian truck.
https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/bate [leo.org]
Go away! 'Bating! (Idiocracy, 2006, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ [imdb.com] )
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday May 19 2018, @02:07AM
I don't have a FB account. In the beginning it was, as the illustrious Ms White said, "a waste of time". Then it morphed into this huge privacy violator. Don't have a FB account? Doesn't matter, they hoover up all the info from your friends and acquaintances.
Now I find out my personal info, which I carefully guard, may have been used without my knowledge. Quite frankly, this is one of the few cases where I care that the lawyers get millions and I get a coupon for 1 year of FB for free.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.