Innovation or deceit? It depends on who's behind it.
In 2012, in the glow of re-election victory, the Barack Obama campaign talked about its Facebook data mining as a "game-changer" and "the most groundbreaking piece of technology developed for the campaign."
The campaign had encouraged backers of the president to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, would unleash information such as birthdates, locations and "likes" about the user and the user's friends.
The president's organization said more than 1 million people downloaded the app that - multiplied by the average 190-person friend list - meant that they had information on 190 million people. Such information is used by candidates to determine, for example, where campaign money ought to be spent and who exactly is supportive of the campaign. While the app users may have been clear that their information would be used, their friends didn't know anything about it.
In recent days, a "whistle-blower" revealed that a consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, that later worked with the Trump campaign had paid for similar information mined from a Facebook app that involved a personality quiz, "thisisyourdigitallife." The approximately 270,000 quiz takers knew their information and that of their friends would be accessed for what was said to be academic purposes, but the friends didn't know it. And none of them knew the information might later be used by the Trump campaign.
Is it a distinction without a difference?
In terms of the Obama campaign's use, some 189 million people didn't know their information would be used and used up through the general election. In terms of the Trump campaign's use, tens of millions of people didn't know their information would be used, though it was only used in the primary campaign. Indeed, according to CBS News, the Trump campaign found that information it gleaned from the Republican National Committee was much more accurate than that from Cambridge Analytica.
Yet, while members of the Obama team were hailed as geniuses and heroes in collecting data on especially important young voters, members of the Trump campaign have been seen as sinister and perhaps even linked to Russian attempts to steal the 2016 election. The words "exploited," "scam" and data breach have been thrown around.
The hypocrisy couldn't be more evident.
Put all that aside for a moment, though. If you're a user of social media today, from millennials to members of the Greatest Generation, you have to know that your data is being mined. Not just by Facebook but by Amazon, Google, Twitter and other sites you use.
The book you sought reviews on at Amazon.com? There's a reason it shows up as an advertisement on your Facebook feed. The candidate you checked out on Google? Yeah, you're going to see unsolicited information on her again.
Oh, sure, each of the social media sites have ways you can opt out of things. And, sure, you would avoid all that if you didn't use social media.
But way before social media, businesses, corporations and nonprofit organizations were selling your name, address and preferences. The more things you were involved in, after all, the more mail - the kind delivered by the U.S. Postal Service - you got.
Facebook, which tightened its privacy rules on data app sharing in 2015, now professes to be both shocked and embarrassed about the recent revelation.
But, as Investor's Business Daily quoted a tweet from a former Obama campaign director, "Facebook [in 2012] 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."
Indeed, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg invited outside developers to build their businesses off the social network site's data as early as 2007. So whenever users agreed to "log-in through Facebook" or download an app, your information and that of your friends was accessed. The social network site allowed the data to be stored on developers' databases as long as they wanted it.
"The model was to build and grow and figure out monetization," Sandy Parakilas, a former Facebook operations manager who oversaw developers' privacy practices until 2012, told Syracuse.com. "Protecting users did not fit into that."
Facebook did not conduct a single audit of developers during her tenure (which lasted until 2016), she said.
Now, Washington lawmakers who weren't concerned with the Obama team's work in 2012 are troubled. They wonder whether Congress should take action to protect people's private information.
As much as we like to think we could protect our private information, the thought of Congress regulating it may be even more scary.
Facebook, it is clear, both wanted to assure its users it was safe but also wanted to monetize the information that could be gleaned. But, first and foremost, the user should beware. Second, if something is OK for one user, it's OK for another. Or if it's not for one, it's not for another. There should be no double standard, either for Facebook in general in how it operates or for the candidates with which it deals.