Meta Agrees to Record-Breaking Settlement in Data Privacy Lawsuit

Facebook parent Meta signed on to a $725 million settlement to potentially close out a class-action lawsuit over the sharing of user data with third parties, such as the Trump-aligned campaign consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, according to a Thursday court filing.

The case centers around allegations that the company shared users’ data with third parties without their consent, something the plaintiffs’ lawyers say has been significantly cut back since litigation began, according to the filing. The scandal first broke in 2018, after it was revealed that Facebook had shared roughly 87 million users’ data with Cambridge Analytica via a personality quiz, according to The Verge.

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Commentary: Reaction to Musk Offer Suggests Content Moderation More About Control Than Safety

The reaction among the press and tech communities to Elon Musk’s efforts to purchase Twitter has been nothing short of apocalyptic. A common theme has been that democracy itself would be under threat if unelected billionaire oligarchs controlled what was allowed online. Yet this is precisely how social media works today. The Musk controversy, like the Cambridge Analytica story before it, highlights the real issue: the fight over content moderation is less about online safety and more about who controls the digital public square.

Only a year ago, the media cheered the unilateral decisions by a handful of billionaires to effectively banish then-President Donald Trump from the digital public square. Lawmakers and media outlets alike proclaimed the societal benefits of private companies controlling the digital public square beyond the reach of government. In contrast, the possibility of a libertarian-leaning billionaire like Musk wielding that same power has been presented as nothing short of an attack on democracy itself.

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J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy Author and Early Never Trumper, Likely Candidate for Ohio GOP U.S. Senate Nomination

J.D. Vance is expected to announce his candidacy for the 2022 U.S. Senate in Ohio.

“All signs point to J.D. launching a run in the coming months,” a source told the Washington Times.
In a video sent to The Star, Vance appears to be the first high-profile candidate who will not position himself as a Trump Republican – if his views from 2016 and 2017 remain.

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How Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook Targeting Model Really Worked – According to the Person Who Built It

by Matthew Hindman The researcher whose work is at the center of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data analysis and political advertising uproar has revealed that his method worked much like the one Netflix uses to recommend movies. In an email to me, Cambridge University scholar Aleksandr Kogan explained how his statistical model processed Facebook data for Cambridge Analytica. The accuracy he claims suggests it works about as well as established voter-targeting methods based on demographics like race, age and gender. If confirmed, Kogan’s account would mean the digital modeling Cambridge Analytica used was hardly the virtual crystal ball a few have claimed. Yet the numbers Kogan provides also show what is – and isn’t – actually possible by combining personal data with machine learning for political ends. Regarding one key public concern, though, Kogan’s numbers suggest that information on users’ personalities or “psychographics” was just a modest part of how the model targeted citizens. It was not a personality model strictly speaking, but rather one that boiled down demographics, social influences, personality and everything else into a big correlated lump. This soak-up-all-the-correlation-and-call-it-personality approach seems to have created a valuable campaign tool, even if the product being sold wasn’t quite as it was billed. The promise of personality targeting In the wake of the revelations that Trump…

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