The Cambridge Analytica Scandal: Difference between revisions

:The scandal involved Facebook, Global Science Research (GSR), and Cambridge Analytica (Analytica). It exposed vulnerabilities in social media platforms, the misuse of personal data for political gain, and the lack of regulatory safeguards.

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"

|-

!Name!!Role

|Alexander Nix||Was suspended after boasting of unethical tactics in undercover footage.<ref name=":3" />

|}

===Harvesting===

:In 2013 Aleksandr Kogan, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, developed a Facebook app called "This Is Your Digital Life" under his company, GSR.<ref name=":2" /> The app was presented as a personality quiz and paid users to take psychological surveys. It collected their Facebook data including their friends' information due to Facebook’s permissive API policies at the time. Approximately 270,000 users directly took the quiz , accessing an estimated 87 million profiles because of Facebook’s Open Graph platform.<ref>{{Cite news |date=July 30, 2020 |title=Facebook data privacy scandal: A cheat sheet |url=https://www.techrepublic.com/article/facebook-data-privacy-scandal-a-cheat-sheet/ |url-status=live |access-date=25 Jun 2025 |work=TechRepublic}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite news |last=Cadwalladr |first=Carole |last2=Graham-Harrison |first2=Emma |date=March 17, 2018 |title=Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election |url-status=live |access-date=25 Jun 2025 |work=The Guardian}}</ref> The collected data included likes, location, birth dates, friend networks, and some users' private messages.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Cambridge Analytica |url=https://dig.watch/trends/cambridge-analytica |url-status=live |access-date=25 Jun 2025 |website=dig.watch}}</ref>

:Kogan violated Facebook’s terms by sharing the data with Analytica, a political consulting firm co-founded by Republican donor [[wikipedia:Robert_Mercer|Robert Mercer]] and led by CEO [[wikipedia:Alexander_Nix|Alexander Nix]]. To predict and influence voter behavior Analytica used the data to build psychographic profiles based on the OCEAN (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) model<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Fernando |first=Jason |date=January 28, 2025 |title=Cambridge Analytica: Overview, History, and Examples |url=https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cambridge-analytica.asp |url-status=live |access-date=25 Jun 2025 |website=investopedia}}</ref>

*Ted Cruz’s 2016 Presidential Campaign: Analytica was hired to micro-target voters with tailored ads.<ref name=":1" />

*Donald Trump’s 2016 Campaign: The psychographic models allegedly helped the Trump campaign identify and persuade swing voters.<ref name=":0" />

*Brexit Referendum (2016): Analytica was linked to the pro-Brexit group, Leave EU, though investigations later found no direct evidence of significant involvement.

:In March 2018, former Analytica employee Christopher Wylie exposed the scandal through The Guardian and The New York Times, revealing that Facebook had known about the breach since 2015 but failed to notify affected users or enforce data deletion.

:Facebook dismissed the incident as a "violation of terms" rather than a "data breach".