Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach, quibbling over what to call it and now this, is mind-blowing. Their "it wasn't a robbery because we left the front door open" excuse may finally bring about trans-Atlantic regulation of social media.

I&#x27;m still shaken with the magnitude and strength of the revelations that have been made in the last five hours on Cambridge Analytica (though some of the things sound more like SCL -- they share the same CEO).<p>At 7pm GMT we had the Channel 4 News investigation[0] which featured Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, in which he appeared to be bragging to a fictional Sri Lankan businessman (who was in fact an undercover reporter) about the things they can do to discredit his opponents involving (with a delicious dose of irony) hidden cameras. Such tactics sounded a lot like they may involve trafficking of Ukrainian sex workers. There were also things that sounded a lot like blackmail and spreading of things that may not be true.<p>Then, just after that undercover story broke we had the Facebook raid, which really looked a lot to my untrained eye like heroic efforts to protect data of the more evidential variety from being unnecessarily breached to the authorities or the public.<p>At 10.30pm we got an interview [1], filmed before the undercover reporting broke, with Alexander Nix. Most memorable to me was Mr Nix seemed to attempt to confidently assure us that Dr Aleksandr Kogan had merely shared with them the gradients with which to build additional models upon and had never shared the data harvested from FB as the whistleblower in this article had alleged. We were also either told or given the impression that this was a great big misunderstanding and all part of a spectacularly coordinated attack by journalists who were upset about Trump.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.channel4.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;cambridge-analytica-revealed-trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.channel4.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;cambridge-analytica-revealed-t...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BBCNewsnight" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BBCNewsnight</a>

Just get the f### off Facebook, already.<p>If you&#x27;re the kind of person who votes based on targeted advertising, or the hyperbolic posts of people who vote based on targeted advertising, don&#x27;t ask Facebook to change. Get the f### off Facebook.<p>If you don&#x27;t like how Facebook is being used as an addictive propaganda tool <i>by any and all political actors, including Facebook itself,</i> then get the f### off Facebook.<p>Ask the Facebook &quot;friends&quot; you care about for an email address, phone number, or other messaging account and get the f### off Facebook.<p>You don&#x27;t need up to the minute information on the playdate of your cousin&#x27;s college room mate&#x27;s toddler. Get the f### off Facebook.

I have a personal story from inside facebook to share. and when I shared this story on my facebook my personal facebook was suspended too.<p>5 years ago Facebook recruiter reached out to me and invited me to the W hotel in Chicago. I was very excited -not for the job- but for the opportunity to meet with senior Facebook managers and tell them about an evil thing Facebook does. Here is the background story:<p>I am Kurdish from Iran. And Iran has many provinces. one of them is called Kurdistan. In Facebook profile section for Hometown you could pick all of the Iranian provinces except Kurdistan.<p>And at first I thought it was a bug. For years and years we submitted bug reports and collected petitions for Facebook they never responded why the Kurdistan province cannot be picked while other provinces could be picked.<p>Till one day, An internal document -guidance- leaked out of Facebook. That explained it all ! One of the pages was talking about Kurdistan. In which they had explained any reference to Kurdistan is considered terrorism. That was on the request of Turkish government.<p>In &quot;Turkey&quot;, the word Kurdistan is forbidden. and many people in Turkey been prisoned for speaking Kurdish. however in &quot;Iran&quot; we officially have a province called &quot;Kurdistan Province). and Iranian government recognizes the name Kurdistan for my homeland. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Provinces_of_Iran" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Provinces_of_Iran</a><p>But Facebook decided to enforce the Turkish government racist rule on other countries that have Kurdistan (Iran, Iraq, Syria...)<p>Also in that leaked guidance memo. Kurdistan flag was considered illegal. And hundreds of Kurdish pages and accounts got banned for having Kurdistan flag.<p>While Kurdish flag is illegal in Turkey. Kurdish flag is officially recognized in the Constitution of Iraq for Kurdistan regional government.<p>So when they invited me to W Hotel to recruit me. I was like yes finally I can meet the people in person. Because as a Kurd I have no importance and they will never respond to me but a software engineer I am pretty attractive on the market.<p>So I asked the question from one of the managers. And told them my story this for years and years I send them emails and nobody got back to me and we made petitions about this so-called bug.<p>He said these things are decided by higher management.<p>I told him how often do you show this disagreement to higher managers or Mark Zuckerburg&#x27;s policies if you have a different opinion. He responded if I disagree with them I wouldn&#x27;t work there.<p>I left the W Hotel in Chicago 5 years ago refusing to proceed with a job on FB. I knew Facebook is on the wrong path. And today I see that prediction coming true.<p>Even today when Turkey committed a massacre in Kurdish city of Afrin, Facebook blocked many voices inside the city who were showing massacres by Turkish government.<p>10 years ago FB came after kurds and you said not my problem. Today they are coming after all of u

Why are people calling this a data breach? As I understand it, CA just scraped the data from users who authorized their app to do so. Am I missing something here?

This has bigger implications than just data breaches, it goes to campaign finance violations of the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica shared an address in Beverley Hills with Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon&#x27;s political consulting company called Glittering Steel. The implication is that GS used Cambridge&#x27;s data to target users on Facebook with political ads for Trump all while being paid by a PAC called Make America 1 that was believed to be funded by Robert Mercer and his family.<p>This Twitter user has numerous posts about this. Not sure exactly who they are, but they have multiple sources of information about this story. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;emlas&#x2F;status&#x2F;975138624911151104" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;emlas&#x2F;status&#x2F;975138624911151104</a>

I was so terrified about how India was almost serious about letting Facebook Zero &#x2F; free basics or whatever happen.<p>I feel extremely concerned also that new generations are growing up without knowing how the web was intended to be de-centralised and &quot;free&quot; and self-correcting.<p>Maybe that doesn&#x27;t work at scale and things need regulation, but I feel like there was a chance to set culture and tone so that even when a large number of people would come on to the Internet, it would be more with a Wikipedia like attitude perhaps.<p>Now imagine if the first introduction to the Internet for a billion-ish people in India (current penetration is 460mil) would have been through Facebook&#x27;s internet.org. Imagine if that happened in a country as large as India set that precedent for other countries with low internet penetration.<p>I used to scoff in university at a batchmate who told me over lunch that he doesn&#x27;t use gmail because Google is too large and could become evil. I&#x27;m not scoffing anymore I guess.

Reporting that I read said they suspended him because he wouldn&#x27;t sign what I inferred was an NDA to advise them on how to understand and mitigate the problem.

In about 20 minutes, an explosive documentary about this will be airing on Channel 4 BBC.

Yahoo just delivered a full-screen, &quot;Your computer has been infected with digital ebola&quot; page when I visited that link.

Guys, you suspended the wrong account.

Damage Control.

Watch how they say it was an error, if this blows up. Just watch.

Given how the guy took data then refused to cooperate when asked, I think his account being suspended makes sense...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;boz&#x2F;posts&#x2F;10104702799873151" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;boz&#x2F;posts&#x2F;10104702799873151</a>

This is arguably correct. While it may be more pragmatic to practice lenience with wistleblowers, there is no moral principle to shield them from all consequences of their actions.<p>This guy was not just an observer of unethical practices. He was the technical lead for this behavior.<p>Whistleblower protections usually shield you from retribution by your employer. What people argue for when they criticize Facebook over this is more akin to immunity.