Facebook representatives told Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign that they had been allowed to use the platform in ways that would have otherwise been prohibited, because Facebook was “on our side,” according to explosive claims from Obama’s former director for media analytics, Carol Davidsen.
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.
— Carol Davidsen (@cld276) March 19, 2018
In a series of tweets, Davidsen that Facebook was “surprised” that the Obama campaign was able to “suck out the entire social graph” (the “social graph” is an individual’s network of friends on Facebook), but did nothing to stop them once they found out.
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.
— Carol Davidsen (@cld276) March 19, 2018
Davidsen also linked to a talk from 2015 in which she explained how Facebook’s privacy policies in 2012 allowed them to harvest data on friend networks across America.
Davidsen says that this gave the Democrats a massive advantage, as the Republicans did not gain access to the same data before Facebook shut off the feature.
“The privacy policies on Facebook were … if they opted in, they could tell us who all their friends were. So they told us who all their friends were…We were actually able to ingest the entire social network of the U.S. that’s on Facebook, which is most people.”
“Where this gets complicated is that freaks Facebook out. So they shut off the feature.”
“The Republicans never built an app to do that. So the data’s out there — you can’t take it back. The Democrats have this information, so when they look at a voter file and someone comes to them, they can immediately be like ‘Oh, here are all the other people that they know, and here are people they can help us persuade, because they’re really good friends with that person.'”
“The Republicans do not have that information and will not get that information. I’m a Democrat, so maybe I could argue that’s a great thing, but really it’s not, in the overall process. That wasn’t thought all the way through and now there’s a disadvantage of information that to me seems unfair. But I’m not Facebook…”
According to Davidsen, the Obama campaign used that data to target voters through their friend networks, and motivate people to vote.
An example of how we used that data to append to our email lists. pic.twitter.com/VHhSukvXDY
— Carol Davidsen (@cld276) March 19, 2018
“I worked on all of the data integration projects at OFA” said Davidsen. “This was the only one that felt creepy.”
I worked on all of the data integration projects at OFA. This was the only one that felt creepy, even though we played by the rules, and didn’t do anything I felt was ugly, with the data.
— Carol Davidsen (@cld276) March 19, 2018
Breitbart News asked Facebook for comment but they did not reply.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter, Gab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
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