I like how people change Alex to Aleksandr when they’re trying to make a point about the big scary Russians, despite Alex being a fully American citizen.
Of course it’s much easier to blame muh Russia than it is to blame Facebook, who created the platform and by definition set its boundaries. They literally gave all the information to Aleksandr. All he did was read their documentation and query their API endpoints as designed and officially documented.
He literally followed Facebook’s instructions to get the data they offered to him. And yet here you are using weirdly ethnic overtones to denigrate him as some evil hacker that victimized Facebook by pilfering some nebulous “private” information that Facebook worked so hard to protect.
You're reaching a bit. His Wikipedia page lists his name as "Aleksandr Kogan". The OP didn't mention Russia at all, nor did he mention anything about him being evil. It's true that Facebook instructions to get the data - that was the whole point. The app users were installing never said that the data would be used in the way it ended up being used.
It might be a reach to ascribe malice to OP in this case. But the pattern persists, and the fact he’s known more as Aleksandr than Alex is more the result of agenda pushing in the “reliable sources” than of a common policy to use full names. I’m sure you will find many instances of the same sources using nicknames for people they like.
It’s the same reason Fox News says “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” instead of the more common “AOC.”
His page on the Cambridge website, as well as his Twitter account, also use "Aleksandr". So far, there are multiple examples shared on this thread of him being referred to as Aleksandr and none of "Alex". Do you have _any_ source indicating that he prefers to go by the latter, let alone enough to conclude that there's a racist conspiracy afoot?
> It’s the same reason Fox News says “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” instead of the more common “AOC.”
Wouldn't you expect a news organization to use the full name for a politician instead of a colloquial term, regardless of how they feel about them? They don't say RBG either for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, despite the fact that Internet conversations use it heavily.
I know this is a radical viewpoint these days, but it turns out that not literally everything is about race.
Of course it’s much easier to blame muh Russia than it is to blame Facebook, who created the platform and by definition set its boundaries. They literally gave all the information to Aleksandr. All he did was read their documentation and query their API endpoints as designed and officially documented.
He literally followed Facebook’s instructions to get the data they offered to him. And yet here you are using weirdly ethnic overtones to denigrate him as some evil hacker that victimized Facebook by pilfering some nebulous “private” information that Facebook worked so hard to protect.