The Goat Pen

In 2012, The Guardian reported that President Obama’s reelection team was “building a vast digital data operation that for the first time combines a unified database on millions of Americans with the power of Facebook to target individual voters to a degree never achieved before.”

What, exactly, would Obama be doing? According to The Guardian, Obama’s new database would be gathered by asking individual volunteers to log into Obama’s reelection site using their Facebook credentials. “Consciously or otherwise,” The Guardian states, “the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page — home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends — directly into the central Obama database.”

Facebook had no problem with such activity then. They do now. There’s a reason for that. The former Obama director of integration and media analytics stated that, during the 2012 campaign, Facebook allowed the Obama team to “suck out the whole social graph”; Facebook “was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.” She added, “They came to [the] office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”

Not so with Trump. As soon as Facebook realized that Cambridge Analytica had pursued a similar strategy, they suspended the firm.

eCat wrote:

Saint wrote:The Russians are a proud people, like hilljacks, and they owe much of their stupidity to that.

I think that might be an apt comparison, especially if the hilljacks used West Virginia and North Carolina as puppet states to keep out everyone else.

Ye sayin we hain't got hilljacks here, boy?

Oh yeah. All over.

eCat wrote:I can't fall into that line of thinking

1. no one can ever dictate to anyone alive what the value of their life is worth.
2. if we thought that way, then our life expectancy would still be in the 50 or 60's because in the early 1900's that was living a full life. Figuring out a way to prolong the life of an 87 year old is why in some measure she got to 87 in the first place.

It's not so much age. It is reasonable chance at a shred of quality of life and survivability. If, for example, I am diagnosed with pancreatic cancer with any mets, a glioma, or a glioblastoma or whatever, I am not taking any chemo or radiation or having any surgeries or anythng of the sort. I will take some opiods and die peacefully. And with advanced age or any comorbidities, no one ahould even be offered any curative treatments - and certainly no insurance should reimburse such.

lets play a game of Russia or West Virginia

DooKSucks wrote:Reminder: chelski is owned by a truly evil individual

Maybe one day Liverpool will finally get their hands on one of these.

[img2]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/3e/35 ... fdee91.jpg[/img2]

"I will take some opiods and die peacefully."

Amen, brother!

eCat wrote:lets play a game of Russia or West Virginia

First three are Russian, last three WV

I could never understand the allure of Russian/Eastern European women. They have weird looking knees, and their faces look like they are on chemo.

Russia, Russia, WV, Russia, WV, WV

A rare image of Lenin doing the Trotsky Trot

I agree with Churchill’s description of Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. But perhaps there is a key; that key is Russian national interest.” They are a fascinating people, capable of producing such cultural giants as Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoyevsky; but also such unimaginable monsters like Lenin, Beria and Dzerrzinski. I have shared a religion with them for 20 years, and the most truthful thing I have learned is they are happiest when there is a strong man at the top, calling all the shots. They are distrustful of Western-style democracy, which they regard as intolerable chaos.

PS, I am also surprised that FB selling customer data for exploitation by big corporations is considered news. I thought that was common knowledge. Same for Alexa; in her presence I mention the book “Moby Dick,” and suddenly ads pop up on my computer inviting me to visit Melville’s birthplace and the National Whaling Museum.

sends me to pornhub

Heh

I guess Trump's wasn't the first Presidential campaign to abuse Facebook.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/onlin ... 56e644e26e

I posted a picture of my dog on Facebook early this morning and a caption about him playing in the snow.

I'm using my VPN thru work and went to look at the picture. For a brief moment the photo didn't appear but in the box was a link that said "item may contain snow" which I'm sure is part of their profiling alogorithm

That's one of the reasons I never had a FB account, and never missed it.

Professor Tiger wrote:That's one of the reasons I never had a FB account, and never missed it.

Facebook doesn't work well if you have no friends.