Cambridge Analytica data scandal

Platforms like Facebook, twitter and whatsapp are important tool for politician just like everyone else to get the word out. But this tools can be used a lot more than making appeals. Because in politics influencing voters is the most crucial step.

What is Cambridge Analytica?

The U.K. headquarters of Cambridge Analytica 

Cambridge Analytica(CA) is a data analytics firm with political and marketing divisions, and offices in New York, Washington, London, Brazil, and Malaysia. According to valid sources CA’s CEO Alexander Nix is seen boasting that his data-mining firm played a major role in securing Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential elections.

CA was funded by Trump supporter and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and former Trump senior adviser Stephen Bannon once sat on its board. CA which began working for the Trump campaign in June 2016, promised that its so-called “psychographic” profiles could predict the personality and political leanings of every adult in the United States.

What is role of “thisisyourdigitallife” ?

Mr Aleksandr Kogan

In 2013 Mr Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research created an facebook app called "thisisyourdigitallife". The app prompted users to answer questions for a psychological profile  This was used to develop” psychographic" profiles of people and deliver pro-Trump material to them online.

In 2015 Mr Kogan sold data this data to CA. According to Zuckerberg this has violated the platform policies. This prompted Facebook to ban Kogan’s app. Facebook asked both i.e Mr Kogan and CA to certify that they had deleted the acquired data. However, appropriate confirmations were not received by Facebook except ambiguous assurance.

Almost 300,000 users were thought to have been paid to take the psychological test (paid $3 to $5 for taking quiz )— with the app then harvesting their personal data. Now here comes the crucial information It not only collected data from people who took the quiz, but it exposed a loophole in Facebook API that allowed it to collect data from the Facebook friends of the quiz takers as well.

How this was used in US election 2016

From politician’s point of view he/she would like to know more about target voters. Every election has voters that had not made up their mind. Facebook allows good degree of target for advertising which based on age, location and interest. CA claimed to found those voters for its client i.e Mr Trump.