As the controversy surrounding Facebook’s alleged cooperation with outside entities continues to swirl; new information shows former President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign mined the social network’s user data to help reach likely voters, reports Fox News.
Carol Davidsen, Obama’s former Director of Integration and Media Analytics, confirmed the campaign’s use of Facebook’s “social graphs” -illustrations that map users’ varying connections- on Twitter, saying “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.”
“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,” she added.
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
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’s admission comes as Facebook finds itself in hot-water over their policies permitting outside factors to impact the US electoral system.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department indicted 13 Russian nationals for exploiting Facebook in order to sway American voters.