Is This a Date of Breach?

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Cambridge Analytica used Facebook data to build a database of 50 million users. For every one user, they got 185 additional profiles on the social network. This was not a breach and it's worth pointing out that this was the system working as Facebook designed it to work. There wasn't any malfeasance here in that.

Ben and James discuss Facebook’s current crisis, and why almost everyone misunderstands what the company did wrong: the problem isn’t advertising, it was Facebook’s desire to be a platform.

Presented by WordPress.com: Get 15% off on a new site by visiting WordPress.com/Exponent.

Links

James Allworth: What the F*** Was Facebook Thinking — Medium
Ben Thompson: The Facebook Brand — Stratechery
Ben Thompson: Tim Cook’s Unfair and Unrealistic Privacy Speech — Stratechery
Mark Zuckerberg’s Reckoning: ‘This Is a Major Trust Issue’ — The New York Times
Ben Thompson: Mobile Makes Facebook Just an App; That’s Good News — Stratechery
Nicholas Thompson: Mark Zuckerberg Talks to Wired About Facebook’s Privacy Problem — Wired
Ben Thompson: The Voters Decide — Stratechery