Moem wrote: ⤴Sat Mar 24, 2018 3:39 pm
Penn wrote: ⤴Sat Mar 24, 2018 1:54 pm
to my understanding if people would have adjusted their privacy settings in Facebook their information would not have been available. Personal responsibility applies here.
The metadata is much deadlier than the data. It's the information about your surfing behaviour, gathered from all over the web, that counts. Not the pictures of your dog.
Wow, do you really think pictures of your dog (I prefer cats but don't have either) is all the additional info in the 2 different ways of collecting info?
The difference is huge. In fact, knowing a bit more about how data is used in political campaigns in the US (and that probably extends to elections in your country since those practices aren't secrets) than most people I can tell you the like button on other some websites doesn't give much more significant info than campaign workers have been acquiring elsewhere for many years so there is nothing of note there. I say "much more" but in actuality it could be more accurate to say "no difference at all" since other meta-data collection on the internet might acquire the exact same information.
But linking that data to an individual Facebook user in combination with all the other available data if you leave all your Facebook privacy settings at default is so huge it could easily sway an otherwise close election.
Instead of talking elections and Facebook, maybe using my own recent youtube usage and different browsing behaviors can illustrate the point.
I actually have my data clearing when I shut down my browser. The most obvious difference that makes is if I close my browser after this post then go to youtube the link between an individual user using this forum and youtube is probably not there.
If I go to the youtube.com homepage it will show a lot of videos and if I ever counted I would guess over 90% of those videos will not interest me. They aren't targeted to me as an individual. I go to someone else's home as I have done with this machine and the number would be at least close to the same but a few of the videos might be different because a different IP (which all websites collect) is going to have a slightly different demographic based on a general geographic area and different racial, economic and educational tendencies of the area. A browser with no data for them to read goes primarily off of overall national interests of their users with only slight variations for area.
Allow cookies to remain and youtube will get more information about this computer but not necessarily me as an individual. This may be a machine that has multiple users on the same login. Over time those cookies will get it to a point they can guess certain things such as how many different users and possibly even gender, race and educational levels.
Now the videos on the homepage will be different but they will still use overall statistics and geographic tendencies for the most part. Example for me. I don't use youtube much but recently over a 3 week period I did view a lot of "Kitten Lady" videos (she does mostly stuff on fostering orphaned kittens for those who might be interested). This will probably mean with cookies used the section called "The Daily Aww" will be more towards the top of the page but there might not be much in that section related to what was of interest to me over that 3 week period.
Other examples of what might changes might be sports would initially be higher but it will probably target generic sports, at least at first, instead of the few sports related videos I watch so I still won't click those much. It would also probably pick up on an interest in sci fi but not see only specific sci-fi interests me such as Star Trek.
But what if I am logged in or my browser is setup in a way where it is linked to my gmail account (multiple ways that can happen). Now suddenly they will see a more clear picture, even if I am dumping cookies between sessions. Such as, instead of seeing me as someone interested in generally cute pets they might notice I had 2 categories of interest during that span. Orphaned kitten care and dealing with ferals. Since tendencies indicate people interested in this might also like cutesy videos of cats and puppies I will see an increase in those too even though that isn't something I was watching. If I don't have an ad blocker I will probably also see an increase in advertisements geared towards cat owners.
Now add cookies again. Now my marital status, approximate age, educational level, other areas I have a connection to, interest in technology and a whole slew of other info about me as an individual is there. They might even (incorrectly) ascertain I was fostering a feral mother cat with her kittens. Or (correctly) just figure out the whole 3 weeks of interest started from wanting to know verify (or they would assume, learn) the difference between stray and feral but one thing led to another due to an unknown reason for that question entering my mind (unless I mentioned that reason on social media or in an email).
Now take that progression of how much knowledge each internet behavior has to politics.
No, the difference isn't pictures of my non-existent dog.
Mike, since I see you posted before I finished typing all this - I agree and we have talked about this before. Both government and big business plus now people are learning (as I already knew), political campaigns have too much damn information on "we the people". Even without signing in.