Fast Company

Facebook has been rocked by reports of a massive data scrape carried out by Cambridge Analytica and one of its then-contractors, a Cambridge University academic named Aleksandr Kogan. Kogan claims that the data he collected from thousands of Facebook users and their friends—amounting to data on over 50 million users—abided by Facebook’s terms; Cambridge Analytica promises it deleted the data; and Facebook is auditing everyone it can for signs of the data. But while Facebook provided the original data, it wasn’t the only vehicle for Kogan’s app.

In 2012 the Obama campaign was desperate to reach twentysomethings who were hard to access because they had only cell phones. So it sought to reach them on Facebook. Two GOP campaign analytics sources said the Obama camp used a common Facebook developer API – the same one used to access the data for Cambridge Analytica – to create a Facebook app that could capture the personal data not only of the app user, but also of all that person’s friends.

On Dec 14, the Federal Communications Commission voted to abolish network neutrality regulations. The same day, California State Senator Scott Wiener (D-CA-11) released a video saying that he wanted to revive those policies in state law. Now his bill, SB822, hits the California legislature, with co-sponsors – all of whom are Democrats – in the Senate and Assembly. If the legislation passes, and allies in states like New York and New Jersey also introduce bills, a huge chunk of the US population and economy would be subject to regulations that the federal government adamantly opposes.