Facebook and Politics

Derek Willis, writing for the NYT:

The “Custom Managed Audiences” tool works like this: A campaign or group uses its own list of potential voters (or buys one from a state authority or private vendor) and uploads it to Facebook. The company then matches the names to its user base through databases managed by companies, such as Acxiom, that specialize in collecting information about individuals. This process effectively combines the electoral information it already knows about voters with their Facebook profiles: likes, group memberships, issues or even favorites. The process anonymizes the users’ personal identifiers but retains enough information to enable campaigns to target well-defined groups.

Eddy Cue on stage on Tuesday: “We’re not in the business of collecting your data.”

Can you even imagine what Facebook Pay would be like?

★ Thursday, 11 September 2014