Personality Quizzes, The Future of Corruption in America
Today, I decided to download all of my personal information collected by Facebook. I was not prepared for the rude awakening I experienced seeing the enormous amount of information that existed. My personal data, sent in a zip folder, held inside all of my user activity on the application dating all the way back to 2010. I now have access to thousands of my interactions with other users spanning an entire decade! Facebook says that the data they collect includes my posts, comments, and likes long since forgotten (Facebook).
What I did not expect was some of the more surprising data in the folder I downloaded. I was surprised to see it included a complete list of all my accepted friends on the app and all the people whose invitations I had declined. Given the breadth of very sensitive information which the notorious social networking site (SNS) stores, the possibility of someone accessing my data for purposes I don’t condone is very concerning. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, or as I like to call it, Analyticagate, happened when a company used a Trojan-horse personality test to siphon personal information from over 50 million Facebook users. This scandal occurred in 2016.
Thankfully, there’s now an easy way to check if your Facebook data has been compromised through Facebook’s updated website. Facebook also now has an updated privacy policy in place which will prevent external programs from siphoning large amounts of user data from the app without the user’s consent (Facebook). Through my partial understanding of the story of Analyticagate, I’ve come to the conclusion that whether or not social media platforms should be responsible for regulating content should be dependent on whether or not data gathered is accurate or has the potential to serve interest groups like political campaigns.
In hearing about the Cambridge Analytica political scandal, my startled response was to check to see if my Facebook data had been compromised. The perpetrators of Analyticagate was Cambridge Analytica, a political advertising and data analytics firm with no relation to Cambridge University, and the test creator Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge University researcher who unwittingly sold the data to Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica then used this data to create psychological profiles of Facebook users that allowed them to create targeted political advertisements to sway voters for the Ted Cruz campaign in 2015, and later for the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016 (Masters). Kogan’s personality quiz was called thisisyourdigitallife. Kogan sold the data of all users who took the quiz and the data of those users’ friends, which the quiz also mined, to Cambridge Analytica, not knowing that the data would be used to drive Republican campaign advertisements. Had he known, Kogan claimed that he would not have sold the data to Cambridge Analytica, He also contends that the data would have had no significant effect on the election due to the test’s inaccuracies. (Weaver). Kogan’s statements conflict with statements made by the former Cambridge Analytica CEO, Alexander Nix, who comments that “we did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign, and our data informed all the strategy” (Masters). I found it difficult to make accurate assumptions on the validity of the test and potential impact of Analyticagate on the 2016 presidential election due to the elusiveness of concrete details and conflicting evidence Nix’s statements or Kogan’s. So, I decided to try out the personality test at the core of the scandal myself to assess the accuracy of the test.
I’m glad that Facebook made clear whose data was used in Analyticagate, and that my account was not one of the many hacked accounts. Even though I felt relieved, I was curious to learn more about the test and what kinds of data could even be collected. Was Kogan right that the data would be non-beneficial to a political campaign? I took a test developed by Cambridge University, made to be very similar in nature to Kogan’s original and now banned Facebook psychoanalytic test, thisisyourdigitallife. This test, Apply Magic Sauce, is meant to give the user an accurate big five personality trait reading, also known as OCEAN, from their social media interactions alone. OCEAN is an acronym which stands for each of the big five personality traits, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. I felt comfortable using Cambridge University’s website because it clearly stated all the ways my data would be used by their site, and they asserted it was solely educational. (Given the very scandal I’m investigating — where people’s data was used without their consent, one might question why I was willing to trust that this site wouldn’t do the same. That’s a study for another blog!)
The limitations of my OCEAN reading from Cambridge University’s test are that I’m no longer an avid user of Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, the three primary SNS through which their test is conducted. However, I have taken Personality Psychology at Juniata College and scored myself on multiple Big Five Personality Trait readings. I would guess that if the test is accurate, then a decade of information from my Facebook account would be sufficient to the University’s test hitting within the ballpark of a semi accurate reading. I was wrong. It was clearly apparent from my results that the data collection was far from accurate for me, because I have always scored high on openness and extraversion, and their test had my score extremely low on my first test. In addition, I took the test twice more, and was given different readings every time from the same Facebook data. I doubt that, if Kogan’s test is anything like that of the University’s similar in nature test, that Analyticagate would be able to provide any useful information for political advertising, at least for people in my age group. It is possible that since a decade of my data spans my psychological development from being a preteen to an adult, it’s not reliable simply because human personalities are still being formed during those years. It’s still possible the data would be more reliable for people whose data is based on fully established, adult personality traits and behavior.
My own research into Cambridge University’s Facebook OCEAN test leads me to believe Kogan’s statements that it is presumptuous to believe the data had a significant impact on the 2016 presidential election (Weaver). Had the test been more accurate, I would argue for stricter regulations, but due to the inaccuracies of the test and Facebook’s updated user privacy protections,(Facebook). Research still needs to be conducted to see if the test has different levels of accuracy for different age groups. For now, though, I think social networking sites are currently taking the appropriate responsibility for Analyticagate and the necessary steps to regulate content. Increased privacy protections and options for users should also serve as a preventative measure to another frightening scare like the Analyticagate. I believe that Facebook and Social Media are sufficiently regulated at this time.
Works Cited
Facebook. “Data Policy.” Facebook, 19 Apr. 2019, www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy.
Masters, Brook, Gapper, John, and Fiona Symon. “Listen: Who or What Is Cambridge Analytica?” Listen: Who or What Is Cambridge Analytica?, Financial Times, 2018.
Weaver, Matthew. “Facebook Scandal: I Am Being Used as Scapegoat — Academic Who Mined Data.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Mar. 2018, www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/facebook-row-i-am-being-used-as-scapegoat-says-academic-aleksandr-kogan-cambridge-analytica.
