Using Fakebook to create a database is either horrible or brilliant; depends on which party does it

Yesterday Elizabeth Harrington in the Washington Free Beacon wrote about the current wailing about how a company hired by Trump used Fakebook data to reach potential voters.  Harrington realized that the REAL story was the total reversal between how the Lying Media reported this story compared with how they praised Team Obama when they did exactly the same thing in 2012.

When the Obama campaign did it, the media fell all over itself praising the brilliance, calling the techies behind it "digital wizards" at the "forefront of campaign technology."

The media expressed starry-eyed admiration that Obama had the head of Google recruiting talent, choosing technology, and coaching Obama's campaign manager.  Another article praised Team Obama for having Facebook on their "side."

Time magazine gushed over the brilliance.

So when liberal Democrat Obama did it, the Lying Media couldn't do enough to praise the cleverness.

But when the media learns that a consulting firm hired by the Trump campaign itself—did essentially the same thing, the media screams that this is a terrible thing that calls for a criminal investigation.

The media described Obama's Fakebook-fueled database as a "powerful tool."  By sharp contrast, they describe Cambridge Analytica as "harvesting your personal information" and "data abuse."

When the Obama campaign did it, the media described data as being "crunched."  Now they describe the same data as "stolen."

When the Obama campaign did it, the media said Facebook was the "ideal way" to reach voters.  Now they say Fakebook has been "weaponized."  What the media gushingly described as "genius" when done by Team Obama in 2012 was now called "evil genius."

Let me give my college students some background:  Back in 2012 y'all were 12 or 13 years old, so you don't know any of the history.  Without that, you can't really appreciate how outrageous the Lying Media's reversal is.

In 2012 the Obama campaign used "sophisticated computer programs" to mine data from social media, to create a "massive computer database containing personal data on millions of American voters."  Naturally you can't believe this, because for the media to be howling that the use of Fakebook data by Trump's campaign is, like, totally outrageous, when they praised Obama for doing the same thing just 4 years earlier would make them totally hypocritical, right?

And yet that's exactly what's happened.  NBC News explained how the Democrat operation worked:

Anybody who contacted the campaign through Facebook had their friends and ‘likes' downloaded.  If they contacted the campaign's website through mobile apps, cellphone numbers and address books were downloaded. Computer ‘cookies' captured Web browsing and online spending habits.

A left-wing paper was positively gleeful about this coup.  In a story headlined "Obama, Facebook and the power of friendship" they wrote

Every time an individual volunteers to help out—for instance by offering to host a fundraising party for the president—he or she will be asked to log onto the re-election website with their Facebook credentials.

That in turn will engage Facebook Connect, the digital interface that shares a user's personal information with a third party. 

[This transfers] all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page—home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends—directly into the central Obama database.

Fast-forward: Cambridge Analytica, the data company hired by the Trump campaign, paid Facebook users to take a personality test via a third party app.  The app then pulled personal data from all of the test-taker's linked Facebook friends without their consent--just as the Obama campaign did.

Short answer:  Using Fakebook data to compile a vast database of voters is brilliant; pure genius; innovative.  Unless, of course, a Republican campaign does it--in which case the Lying Media claim it's, like, totally awful.