The Cambridge Analytica Scandal

The Cambridge Analytica scan­dal made history.

The scan­dal exposed how Cambridge Analytica, a polit­ic­al con­sult­ing firm, har­ves­ted data from 87 mil­lion Facebook users without con­sent to build psy­cho­lo­gic­al pro­files for tar­geted polit­ic­al advertising. 

Here we go:

The Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Cambridge Analytica was foun­ded in 2013. Their busi­ness mod­el was sim­il­ar to Blue State Digital’s, focus­ing on data min­ing, broker­age, and ana­lys­is — and some con­sult­ing. ¹This is sim­il­ar to the social media intel­li­gence agency Whispr Group, where I served as the COO from 2010 to 2013.

The Cambridge Analytica scan­dal began with Alexsander Kogan, a research­er at the University of Cambridge, who approached Facebook and asked to col­lect data for aca­dem­ic purposes.

For his study, Kogan launched a Facebook app called Your Digital Life. The app was used by 270,000 Americans per­mit­ted to pull data from their friends, which allowed the app to mine data from 87 mil­lion users. ²Cambridge Analytica. (2024, May 13). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​C​a​m​b​r​i​d​g​e​_​A​n​a​l​y​t​ica

Soon, this data ended up in Cambridge Analytica’s database.

Facebook, Targeted Ads, and Data Mining

It wasn’t only the data-min­ing com­pan­ies that could sense poten­tial. So did the social net­work­ing sites.

Segmenting people based on their com­mu­nic­at­ive beha­viour is more power­ful than tra­di­tion­al demo­graph­ic seg­ment­a­tion. ³Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​s​-​i​n​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

As Facebook went pub­lic in 2012, it took the lead and embarked on an aggress­ive jour­ney to mon­et­ise social media usage.

In short, Facebook went hard for the advert­ising dol­lar. It’s not a mod­ern mon­et­isa­tion mod­el, but with so much user data, Facebook trans­formed the pro­gram­mat­ic ad tar­get­ing industry.

With Facebook mov­ing for­ward aggress­ively with loosely reg­u­lated data min­ing prac­tices, Cambridge Analytica decided to take a shortcut.

Trump’s Presidential Bid in 2016

Among Cambridge Analytica’s founders and investors was the con­ser­vat­ive pun­dit Steve Bannon. Bannon divested his hold­ings in the com­pany in April 2017 when he was appoin­ted White House Chief Strategist. Still, at that point, he had already been work­ing as the CEO for Donald Trump’s pres­id­en­tial bid in August 2016.

And what soft­ware did Trump’s cam­paign use to per­suade the American opin­ion to vote for Trump? Cambridge Analytica, of course.

With large data volumes on vari­ous online beha­viours of US cit­izens, Cambridge Analytica pro­filed voters match­ing their psy­cho­graph­ic behaviours.

To run a US pres­id­en­tial cam­paign on the back of illeg­ally (and uneth­ic­ally) acquired data was, of course, a scan­dal in its own right.

The Power of Psychographic Analysis

Psychographic tools (such as Myers-Briggs and The Big Five Aspects Scale) allow people to be assigned to groups based on their past beha­viour and pre­dicted future activity. 

This could have provided the Trump cam­paign answers on who to tar­get and how to trig­ger them psychologically.

“Cambridge Analytica’s use of data ana­lyt­ics and microtar­get­ing in polit­ic­al cam­paigns, com­bined with psy­cho­lo­gic­al tac­tics, helped secure Donald Trump’s vic­tory in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.“
Source: Proceedings of the 1^st Pedagogika International Conference on Educational Innovation ⁴Gatra, A. (2023). The Power of Data Analytics and Microtargeting in Political Campaigns, Cambridge Analytica Strategy, Donald Trump Victory the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Proceedings of … Continue read­ing

In the end, the whole scan­dal sur­round­ing Cambridge Analytica brought the gen­er­al pub­lic and politi­cians one step closer to under­stand­ing the immense power of big data.

The Cambridge Analytica Aftermath

Using a seem­ingly harm­less per­son­al­ity quiz app, Cambridge Analytica col­lec­ted users’ and friends’ data, exploit­ing Facebook’s lax pri­vacy policies. 

The firm, backed by Steve Bannon and fun­ded by bil­lion­aire Robert Mercer, used this data to craft highly per­son­al­ised, manip­u­lat­ive polit­ic­al ads, not­ably aid­ing Donald Trump’s 2016 cam­paign and the Brexit Leave campaign. 

When whis­tleblower Christopher Wylie exposed these prac­tices, glob­al out­rage over Big Tech’s role in elec­tion manip­u­la­tion grew. 

It led to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testi­fy­ing before Congress, a $5 bil­lion fine for Facebook, and a broad­er reck­on­ing on data pri­vacy and digit­al propaganda.

In the wake of the scan­dal, Cambridge Analytica closed its oper­a­tions in 2018. Several exec­ut­ives moved to Emerdata, which is owned by the same par­ent com­pany and resides in the same build­ing in London.

Learn more: The Cambridge Analytica Scandal

The Techlash is Here

With a grow­ing list of social media issues, older gen­er­a­tions (mainly rep­res­en­ted by influ­en­tial legis­lat­ors who remem­ber a time before the Internet), are fight­ing back against com­pan­ies like Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Bytedance — to name a few.

Old-school politi­cians struggle to grasp social media. I can still hear the echo of Mark Zuckerberg’s words, “Senator, we run ads.”

The tech­lash is a war for our minds.

Techlash = the grow­ing pub­lic anim­os­ity towards large Silicon Valley tech­no­logy com­pan­ies and their Chinese equi­val­ents. ⁵Foroohar, R. (2018, December 16). Year in a Word: Techlash. Financial Times; Financial Times. https://​www​.ft​.com/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​7​6​5​7​8​f​b​a​-​f​c​a​1​-​1​1​e​8​-​a​c​0​0​-​5​7​a​2​a​8​2​6​4​23e

The fight over Internet power will likely be the defin­ing battle of the Electronic Age.

I think of Jan Stenbeck (1942 – 2002), the legendary Swedish entre­pren­eur. His busi­ness philo­sophy, as described by bio­graphy author Per Andersson, can be summed up: ⁶Jan Stenbeck. (2023, December 26). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​J​a​n​_​S​t​e​n​b​eck ⁷Per Andersson (journ­al­ist). (2024, January 10). In Wikipedia. https://​sv​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​P​e​r​_​A​n​d​e​r​s​s​o​n​_​(​j​o​u​r​n​a​l​ist)

We can only expect a con­tin­ued power struggle between the big tech com­pan­ies on the one side — and legis­lat­ors and the news media on the other.

Learn more: Techlash: The Great Digital Depression

List of Social Media Issues

Social media isn’t just nyan cats and double rainbows. 

With massive change come new social media issues we must deal with.

Here are a few examples of social media issues:

Read also: The List of Social Media Issues

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