Meet Chris Wylie, the British liberal democrat who created Mintjewlips, Sidedish, and the rest of the Trumptards (Facebook data scandal)

[Dan Druff]

Bullshit.

People are not well informed how their posts and information can be harvested by Facebook, its users, and its apps.

In particular, most do not understand that you cannot control your own privacy there to a large degree. I can be found on anyone's friends list who doesn't hide their list. Any post I make on any group can be found through a search if that group is public (or is later changed to public). Any post I make on a person's wall becomes accessible if they change their status to public.

Facebook is intentionally difficult, silent, and confusing about this type of stuff, so people don't have their guard up.

You know those obnoxious privacy policies you get from banks and other companies, which they are required by law to disclose to you (and let you opt out of certain privacy intrustions)?

Those are there for a reason.

Companies which harvest large amounts of data about their customers -- even in the process of doing normal business -- need to be transparent and held accountable for what they do (or allow to be done) with the information.

You can't just say, "Well, the customers gave the info, so tough luck on them."

The customer needs to be well informed exactly who and what will be getting access to all of their stuff, and what exact privacy they do and don't have.

I don't have any of my personal information on any social media platform, and nobody warned me.

Do you want a medal?

I don't understand what point you're making here.

If you want me to acknowledge that you're more privacy-conscious than the average American, congratulations. So am I.

But the fact is that there was plenty of deception involved with people who DID put information on Facebook, and that's a big problem.

Furthermore, you need to understand what is meant by "personal information".

It isn't just the basic stuff like name, address, e-mail, phone number, workplace, etc.

Any detail about you on your Facebook profile could be considered personal information, as it tells a story about you.

For example, a look at my profile, without seeing a single post of mine, would clearly indicate that I'm a Jewish poker player whose politics are right of center, that I like 1970s/1980s music and TV, that I'm a Dodgers fan, that I hate SJWs, and various other little views into things I like and dislike.

I don't give a shit if this type of info is scraped because I'm public about that stuff anyway, but if I were less information savvy and more gullible, even that stuff could be used to manipulate me with fake news and other targeted bullshit.

I was already somewhat turned off by Facebook 9 years ago when it was already telling me (accurately) who on their system I knew in real life, before I did more than fill out my name.