I’m having a hard time figuring out why everyone is so worked up about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica these days.

My understanding of Facebook is that when I am logged in as me, I can see assorted things that my friends posted and can jump to conclusions about my friends based what they have posted and liked on the site. When an app is logged in as me, it can do the same thing but much more quickly and efficiently. Scraping the web for information is not new and surprising. Heck, if the information on a page is highly structured (particularly if it is XML), even I can write the code to do it. Whenever I’ve connected an app to Facebook, it has given me a long list of things that it might do on my behalf, and “creep on your friends” does not seem to be out of the ordinary.

Or is Facebook just jealous because Cambridge Analytica seems to be so much better than they are at making sense of the data and targeting their ads? I get a heck of a lot of Facebook ads for children’s clothing consignment and pre-schools, despite the fact that Gwen and Sophie are both cats (not human children). Today I got an ad for a prescription medication to help people stop smoking (I do not smoke).