Do you know Facebook has been in the news all week?
Here’s everything you need to know about the scandal. Yes!!! It’s a scandal. And it has a lot to do with YOU.
Just like us, I’m sure you’ve been wondering what the ‘fuss’ is all about. We’ve gone through the World Wide Web. Yes. The entire World Wide Web to ‘harvest’ everything you need to know about the trending saga Facebook seems to be at the center of.
Over the weekend, specifically March 17, the news broke the internet that Cambridge Analytica allegedly influenced the results of the US 2016 presidential election and the Brexit vote through the harvesting and use of 50 million Facebook users personal data.
Both firms have since denied any wrongdoing.
However, Facebook’s shares have dropped more than 9 percent. Cambridge Analytica’s boss, Alexander Nix, has been suspended. And Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, has been called on by a Commons parliamentary committee to give evidence.
Who broke the news?
Christoper Wylie, 28, who went public with the news, tweeted just after mid-day Saturday: “Here we go…” and has since been thrown into an international media glare. Carole Cadwaller, the Observer journalist Wylie has been acting as a source for described him as the millenials’ first great whistleblower.” Check out her indepth profile about him. And read more about Christoper here.
“We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built mode models to exploit about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis that the entire company was buillt on” — Christopher Wylie
Who is Cambridge Analytics?
Cambridge Analytica LLC (CA) is a privately held company that combines data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process. It was created in 2013 as an offshoot of its British parent company SCL Group to participate in American politics. In 2014, CA was involved in 44 US political races. The company is partly owned by the family of Robert Mercer, an American hedge-fund manager who supports many politically conservative causes. The firm maintains offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C.
In 2015, it became known as the data analysis company working initially for Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. In 2016, after Cruz’s campaign had faltered, CA worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and on the Leave. EU-campaign for the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union. CA’s role in those campaigns has been controversial and is the subject of ongoing criminal investigations in both countries. Political scientists dispute CA’s claims about the effectiveness of its methods of targeting voters.
What did they do?
Channel 4 News sent an undercover reporter, who posed as a Sri Lankan businessman, to meet executives from Cambridge Analytica, following reports by the journalist Carole Cadwalladr in the Observer newspaper.
The undercover reporter claimed he wanted to influence a local election.
Cambridge Analytica boss, Alexander Nix was apparently filmed giving examples of how his firm could discredit political rivals by arranging various smear campaigns, including setting up encounters with prostitutes and staging situations in which apparent bribery could be caught on camera.
The firm has since denied these claims, stating that the documentary was “edited and scripted to grossly represent the nature of those conversations”.
“I must emphatically state that Cambridge Analytica does not condone or engage in entrapment, bribes or so-called ‘honey traps’, and nor does it use untrue material for any purpose,” — Alexander Nix
What has Facebook got to do with all these?
According to Wylie, mentioned above, in 2014, Cambridge Analytica gathered information from 50 million Facebook Users via an external app.
This data was allegedly obtained via a personality quiz — named ‘thisisyourdigitalliffe’ — developed by University of Cambridge academic Aleksandr Kogan — (the university has no connections with Cambridge Analytica) which around 270,000 people were paid to take. The quiz pulled in data from their friend’s profiles as well, resulting in an enormous data stack.
This was common as at that time, but Facebook has since changed the amount of data developers can gather this way.
What information did it gather?
Where users lived. The pages they like, etc.
These data was in turn used to create psychological profiles that that analyzed characteristics and personality traits.
Mr Wylie claims this kind of information was later deployed in political campaigns.
Cambridge Analytics denies it.
Was it LEGAL?
British legislation forbids personal data to be sold to a third party without consent.
Facebook has contested whether the information was really taken without consent. It said on Saturday: “People knowingly provided their information, no systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked.”
Also, Kogan could have broken Facebook’s own rules by using the data for commercial rather than strictly academic purposes.
How is Facebook implicated?
Facebook said it removed the Cambridge Analytica quiz app from the platform in 2015 and demanded that Kogan, Wylie, and Cambridge Analytica confirm that they had deleted all the data harvested.
Wylie, however, countered that by claiming Facebook only demanded that he remove all the Facebook data in August 2016, and they were small steps.
He said: “They [Facebook] waited two years and did absolutely nothing to check that the data was deleted. All they asked me to do was tick a box on a form and post it back.”
However, raw copies of the data obtained by Cambridge Analytica are still available online, The New York Times reported.
Business insider also reported that the latest revelations also suggest that Facebook and Cambridge Analytica both misled lawmakers about their actions.
Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, previously denied working with Kogan as well as using Facebook data. “We do not work with Facebook data and we do not have Facebook data,” Nix told British MPs last month, as cited by The Observer.
Facebook has also denied that it gave Cambridge Analytica data.
Simon Milner, the company’s UK director of policy, told British MPs last month: “They [Cambridge Analytica] may have lots of data, but it will not be Facebook user data. It may be data about people who are on Facebook that they have gathered themselves, but it is not data that we have provided.”
Facebook has since suspended Cambridge Analytica, its parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories, and Wylie from its platform. Wylie was also suspended from WhatsApp and Instagram, which are both owned by Facebook, The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr reported.
More on this story in our upcoming articles. Check Back!!!
News Credits: Business Insider. BBC. BloomBerg. CNBC. This article was written and compiled by Shalom Oluwaleke David.
