<story><title>Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55998588</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Nextgrid</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m no Facebook fan but the reasons behind the lawsuit are bad and could set a bad precedent.&lt;p&gt;Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook API to ask users to share data about them &amp;amp; their friends. Stupid users agreed to that.&lt;p&gt;The argument here isn&amp;#x27;t that Facebook is playing fast and loose with tracking &amp;amp; user data (which would be a legitimate argument), it&amp;#x27;s that Facebook is allowing people to grant access to their data to third-parties and Facebook should somehow be faulted for that. Facebook is a neutral carrier here, and they acted on behalf of the user - he decided that Cambridge Analytica should have had access to his data. Facebook should not be forced to somehow be the arbiter of this.&lt;p&gt;This lawsuit will give even more reasons to platforms to restrict API access which would impact legitimate usage much more than nefarious abuse (stupid people will always find a way to screw up, API or not - if the API is gone they&amp;#x27;d happily enter their Facebook credentials directly instead).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dfxm12</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook API to ask users to share data about them &amp;amp; their friends. Stupid users agreed to that.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to Facebook, this is not what happened and CA&amp;#x27;s collection of this data represented a breach in their platform policies [0]:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL&amp;#x2F;Cambridge Analytica ... He also passed that data to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, Inc.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;[Kogan] did not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing information on to a third party, including SCL&amp;#x2F;Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;0 - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;about.fb.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;suspending-cambridge-analytica&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;about.fb.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;suspending-cambridge-analy...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55998588</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Nextgrid</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m no Facebook fan but the reasons behind the lawsuit are bad and could set a bad precedent.&lt;p&gt;Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook API to ask users to share data about them &amp;amp; their friends. Stupid users agreed to that.&lt;p&gt;The argument here isn&amp;#x27;t that Facebook is playing fast and loose with tracking &amp;amp; user data (which would be a legitimate argument), it&amp;#x27;s that Facebook is allowing people to grant access to their data to third-parties and Facebook should somehow be faulted for that. Facebook is a neutral carrier here, and they acted on behalf of the user - he decided that Cambridge Analytica should have had access to his data. Facebook should not be forced to somehow be the arbiter of this.&lt;p&gt;This lawsuit will give even more reasons to platforms to restrict API access which would impact legitimate usage much more than nefarious abuse (stupid people will always find a way to screw up, API or not - if the API is gone they&amp;#x27;d happily enter their Facebook credentials directly instead).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ginko</author><text>&amp;gt;The argument here isn&amp;#x27;t that Facebook is playing fast and loose with tracking &amp;amp; user data (which would be a legitimate argument), it&amp;#x27;s that Facebook is allowing people to grant access to their data to third-parties and Facebook should somehow be faulted for that.&lt;p&gt;Even so you wrote yourself that users shared data about their friends. Why does Facebook allow people to share the data of others who didn&amp;#x27;t agree to this?</text></comment>