Zuckerberg Defends Obama Campaign Using Facebook to Scrape Data Like Cambridge Analytica

Embattled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the Obama 2012 campaign for using Facebook to harvest data the way Cambridge Analytica did in 2014. 

After the Guardian reported on Cambridge Analytica using Facebook to gain access to the data on more than 80 million Americans, Facebook banned the company from the platform.

Meanwhile, the former director of Obama for America's Integration and Media Analytics, Carol Davidsen, candidly admitted that Facebook acknowledged letting their campaign improperly access its users data. 

"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," Davidsen wrote Sunday night after news of Cambridge Analytica broke. "They came to 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."

Zuckerberg on Wednesday defended the Obama campaign, drawing a distinction between the Cambridge Analytica case, which procured its data through a third party, and the Obama campaign, which harvested the data itself. 

"The big difference between these cases is that in the Kogan case, people signed into that app expecting to share the data with Kogan and then he turned around and in violation of our policies and in violation of people’s expectations sold it to a third party firm, to Cambridge Analytica in this case," Zuckerberg told Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.). “I think that we were very clear about how the platform worked at the time, that anyone could sign into an app and they would be able to bring their information if they wanted and some information from their friends. People had control over that. So if you wanted, you could turn off the ability to sign into apps or turn off the ability for your friends to be able to bring your information. The platform worked the way that we had designed it at the time. I think we now know that we should have a more restrictive platform where people cannot also bring information from their friends and can only bring their own information, but that’s the way that the system worked at the time.”

Here's a transcript of the exchange: 

HARPER: “Okay. Now, according to politifact.com and this is a quote, the Obama campaign and Cambridge Analytica both gained access to huge amounts of information about Facebook users and their friends and in neither case did the friends of app users consent, closed quote. This data that Cambridge Analytica acquired was used to target voters with political messages much as the same type of data was used by the Obama campaign to target voters in 2012. Would that be correct?”

ZUCKERBERG: “Congressman, the big difference between these cases is that in the Kogan case, people signed into that app expecting to share the data with Kogan and then he turned around and in violation of our policies and in violation of people’s expectations sold it to a third party firm, to Cambridge Analytica in this case.”

HARPER: “Sure.”

ZUCKERBERG: “I think that we were very clear about how the platform worked at the time, that anyone could sign into an app and they would be able to bring their information if they wanted and some information from their friends. People had control over that. So if you wanted, you could turn off the ability to sign into apps or turn off the ability for your friends to be able to bring your information. The platform worked the way that we had designed it at the time. I think we now know that we should have a more restrictive platform where people cannot also bring information from their friends and can only bring their own information, but that’s the way that the system worked at the time.”

HARPER: “And whether in violation of the agreement or not, you agree that users have an expectation that their information would be protected and remained private and not be sold and so that’s something — the reason that we are here today. You know, I can certainly understand the general public’s outrage if they are concerned regarding the way Cambridge Analytica required their information, but if people are outraged because they used that for political reasons, would that be hypocritical? Shouldn’t they be equally outraged that the Obama campaign used the data of Facebook users without their consent in 2012?”

ZUCKERBERG: “Congressman, what I think people are rightfully very upset about is that an app developer that people had shared data with sold it to someone else and frankly we didn’t do enough to prevent that or understand it soon enough.”