Thread by @profcarroll

Facebook sends its attack dogs against the NYU Ad Observatory for its essential work studying effects of ad targeting on the political process. This is disgusting, especially knowing there are actual data abusers out there actually selling Facebook data to political operatives.

https://twitter.com/AlexanderAbdo/status/1319761452832534531

Why isn’t Facebook going after Bridgetree!? They’ve been flagrantly *selling* scraped Facebook profiles for years! Is it because Bridgetree services the GOP and Facebook is afraid to give Joel Kaplan heartburn? Better attack the academics instead. Facebook is a malign force.

Here is head of Bridgetree boasting to Cambridge Analytica of its “very large scraping capabilities” and this a month after Facebook’s Allison Hendrix asked Alexander Nix to delete the Kogan data. So they went shopping for Facebook data elsewhere! But Facebook will do nothing.

Here is Facebook’s Allison Hendrix politely nudging Cambridge Analytica to delete their illicit data *and its derivations*. Would you be so kind to check the backup directory oh sure I’ll just rm -rf that for you — next month they called Bridgetree for fresh Facebook data.

From the now-famed ICO letter (often mistakenly referred to as a final report) which indicates that Cambridge Analytica bungled the data deletion that Facebook politely requested. Then, in 2016 Facebook worked side-by-side with Cambridge Analytica, embedded in the Trump campaign.

Bridgetree boasts about its data scraping on its website. When is Facebook going to sue them out of existence? And get a load of their privacy statement! Bridgetree clients get privacy. The rest of us can fuck right off.

So when Fb says its going after NYU Ad Observatory to protect the privacy of its users, now you know it’s full of shit.

We will stand up to Facebook’s double-standard where data brokers scrape and sell Facebook profiles to the GOP and get away with it while rigorous academics legitimately recruit volunteers to study ad targeting get bullied because they help reveal to the public how Facebook works

https://twitter.com/lauraedelson2/status/1319777874543562752

It’s a faustian bargain anyway. Facebook is clearly hostile to political advertising research and friendly to political operatives who sell scraped data. Academia should flat-out boycott Facebook funding until they prove otherwise.

https://twitter.com/emilybell/status/1319829725171355653

I’d wager Bridgetree has supplied scraped Facebook data to the 2020 Trump campaign. My sources tell me Matt Oczkowski and Tom Boschwitz are tight and until last week, Bridgetree was not on anyone’s radar. archive.org/details/ca-doc…

I’d wager Facebook will take no action against Bridgetree. Thiel and/or Kaplan call the shots on this one.

https://twitter.com/rmac18/status/1319833161560281089

Facebook was cozy with Kogan until bad press. They asked CA to kindly delete. Then they worked side-by-side with CA for Trump in ‘16. Did they help with the *effective* campaign to deter Black voters from participating? Why did Zuck dodge Senator Cantwell? miamiherald.com/news/politics-…