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In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
users was collected without their consent by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, predominantly to be used for
political advertising In politics, campaign advertising is the use of an advertising campaign through the media to influence a political debate, and ultimately, voters. These ads are designed by political consultants and political campaign staff. Many countries res ...
. The data was collected through an app called "This Is Your Digital Life", developed by data scientist Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research in 2013. The app consisted of a series of questions to build psychological profiles on users, and collected the personal data of the users’ Facebook friends via Facebook's Open Graph platform. The app harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook profiles. Cambridge Analytica used the data to provide analytical assistance to the 2016 presidential campaigns of
Ted Cruz Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (; born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas fro ...
and
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
. Cambridge Analytica was also widely accused of interfering with the
Brexit referendum The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum, took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate whether the country shoul ...
, although the official investigation recognised that the company was not involved "beyond some initial enquiries" and that "no significant breaches" took place. Information about the data misuse was disclosed in 2018 by Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, in interviews with ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'' and ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. In response, Facebook apologized for their role in the data harvesting and their CEO
Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of ...
testified in front of
Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
. In July 2019, it was announced that Facebook was to be fined $5 billion by the
Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction o ...
due to its privacy violations. In October 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a £500,000 fine to the UK
Information Commissioner's Office The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is a non-departmental public body which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). It is the independ ...
for exposing the data of its users to a "serious risk of harm". In May 2018, Cambridge Analytica filed for
Chapter 7 bankruptcy Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the United States Code (Bankruptcy Code) governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States, in contrast to Chapters 11 and 13, which govern the process of ''reorganization'' of a debto ...
. Other advertising agencies have been implementing various forms of psychological targeting for years and Facebook had patented a similar technology in 2012. Nevertheless, Cambridge Analytica’s openness about their methods and the caliber of their clients — including the Trump presidential campaign and the UK’s
Vote Leave Vote Leave was a campaigning organisation that supported a "Leave" vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. On 13 April 2016 it was designated by the Electoral Commission as the official campaign in favour of leav ...
campaign — brought the challenges of psychological targeting that scholars have been warning against to public awareness. The scandal sparked an increased public interest in privacy and social media's influence on politics. The online movement #DeleteFacebook trended on
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
.


Overview

Aleksandr Kogan, a data scientist at the
University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, was hired by Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of
SCL Group SCL Group (formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories) was a private British behavioural research and strategic communication company that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving its subsidiaries ...
, to develop an app called "This Is Your Digital Life" (sometimes stylized as "thisisyourdigitallife"). Cambridge Analytica then arranged an
informed consent Informed consent is a principle in medical ethics and medical law, that a patient must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about their medical care. Pertinent information may include risks and benefits of treat ...
process for research in which several hundred thousand Facebook users would agree to complete a survey for payment that was only for academic use. However, Facebook allowed this app not only to collect personal information from survey respondents but also from respondents’ Facebook friends. In this way, Cambridge Analytica acquired data from millions of Facebook users. The collection of personal data by Cambridge Analytica was first reported in December 2015 by Harry Davies, a journalist for ''The Guardian''. He reported that Cambridge Analytica was working for United States Senator
Ted Cruz Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (; born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas fro ...
using data harvested from millions of people's Facebook accounts without their consent. Further reports followed in November 2016 by McKenzie Funk for the ''New York Times Sunday Review'', December 2016 by Hannes Grasseger and Mikael Krogerus for the Swiss publication '' Das Magazin'' (later translated and published by ''
Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character t ...
''), in February 2017 by
Carole Cadwalladr Carole Jane Cadwalladr (; born 1969) is a British author, investigative journalist and features writer. She is a features writer for ''The Observer'' and formerly worked at ''The Daily Telegraph''. Cadwalladr rose to international prominence in ...
for ''The Guardian'' (starting in February 2017), and in March 2017 by Mattathias Schwartz for ''
The Intercept ''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing news website founded by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras and funded by billionaire eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. Its current editor is Betsy Reed. The publication initially report ...
''. According to
PolitiFact PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times ...
, in his
2016 presidential campaign This national electoral calendar for 2016 lists the national/ federal elections held in 2016 in all sovereign states and their dependent territories. By-elections are excluded, though national referendums are included. January *7 January: Kiri ...
, Trump paid Cambridge Analytica in September, October, and November for data on Americans and their political preferences. Information on the data breach came to a head in March 2018 with the emergence of a whistleblower, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie. He had been an anonymous source for an article in 2017 in ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'' by Cadwalladr, headlined "The Great British
Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the Withdrawal from the European Union, withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 Greenwich Mean Time, GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 Central Eur ...
Robbery". Cadwalladr worked with Wylie for a year to coax him to come forward as a whistleblower. She later brought in
Channel 4 News ''Channel 4 News'' is the main news programme on British television broadcaster Channel 4. It is produced by ITN, and has been in operation since Channel 4's launch in November 1982. Current productions ''Channel 4 News'' ''Channel 4 News'' ...
in the UK and ''The New York Times'' due to legal threats against ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'' by Cambridge Analytica. Kogan's name change to Aleksandr Spectre, which resulted in the ominous "Dr. Spectre", added to the intrigue and popular appeal of the story. ''The Guardian'' and ''The New York Times'' published articles simultaneously on March 17, 2018. More than $100 billion was knocked off Facebook's market capitalization in days and politicians in the US and UK demanded answers from Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of ...
. The negative public response to the media coverage eventually led to him agreeing to testify in front of the
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...
.
Meghan McCain Meghan Marguerite McCain (born October 23, 1984) is an American television personality, columnist, and author. She has worked for ABC News, Fox News, and MSNBC. The daughter of politician John McCain and diplomat Cindy McCain, she has been a ...
drew an equivalence between the use of data by Cambridge Analytica and Barack Obama's 2012 presidential campaign;
PolitiFact PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times ...
, however, alleged that this data was not used in an unethical way, since Obama's campaign used this data to “have their supporters contact their most persuadable friends” rather than using this data for highly targeted digital ads on websites such as Facebook.


Data characteristics


Numbers

''
Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...
'', ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', and ''The Observer'' reported that the data-set had included information on 50 million Facebook users. While Cambridge Analytica claimed it had only collected 30 million Facebook user profiles, Facebook later confirmed that it actually had data on potentially over 87 million users, with 70.6 million of those people from the United States. Facebook estimated that
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
was the most affected U.S. state, with 6.7 million impacted users, followed by
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
, with 5.6 million, and
Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...
, with 4.3 million. Data was collected on 87 million users while only 270,000 people downloaded the app.


Information

Facebook sent a message to those users believed to be affected, saying the information likely included one's "public profile, page likes, birthday and current city". Some of the app's users gave the app permission to access their
News Feed On the World Wide Web, a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors '' syndicate'' a web feed, thereby allowing users to ''subscribe'' a channel to it by adding the fee ...
, timeline, and messages. The data was detailed enough for Cambridge Analytica to create psychographic profiles of the subjects of the data. The data also included the locations of each person. For a given political campaign, each profile's information suggested what type of advertisement would be most effective to persuade a particular person in a particular location for some political event.


Data use


Ted Cruz campaign

In 2016, American senator
Ted Cruz Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (; born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas fro ...
hired Cambridge Analytica to aid his
presidential campaign President most commonly refers to: * President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
. The
Federal Election Commission The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency of the United States whose purpose is to enforce campaign finance law in United States federal elections. Created in 1974 through amendments to the Federal Election Cam ...
reported that Cruz paid the company $5.8 million in services. Although Cambridge Analytica was not well known at the time, this is when it started to create individual psychographic profiles. This data was then used to create tailored advertisements for each person to sway them into voting for Cruz.


Donald Trump campaign

Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign used the harvested data to build psychographic profiles, determining users' personality traits based on their Facebook activity. The campaign team used this information as a micro-targeting technique, displaying customized messages about Trump to different US voters on various digital platforms. Ads were segmented into different categories, mainly based on whether individuals were Trump supporters or potential
swing vote A swing vote is a vote that is seen as potentially going to any of a number of candidates in an election, or, in a two-party system, may go to either of the two dominant political parties. Such votes are usually sought after in election campaign ...
s. As described by Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, the key was to identify those who might be enticed to vote for their client or be discouraged to vote for their opponent. Supporters of Trump received triumphant visuals of him, as well as information regarding polling stations. Swing voters were instead often shown images of Trump’s more notable supporters and negative graphics or ideas about his opponent,
Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
. For example, the collected data was specifically used by “
Make America Number 1 Make America Number 1 is a right-wing super PAC (political action committee) that supported the presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election. During the primary campaign, the super PAC was kn ...
Super PAC” to attack Clinton through constructed advertisements that accused Clinton of corruption as a way of propping up Trump as a better candidate for the presidency. However, a former Cambridge Analytica employee claims that the use of the illicitly-obtained data by the Trump campaign has not been proven. Brittany Kaiser was asked "Is it absolutely proven that the Trump campaign relied on the data that had been illicitly obtained from Facebook?" She responded: "It has not been proven, because the difficult thing about proving a situation like that is that you need to do a forensic analysis of the database".


Potential usage


Russia

In 2018, the
Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprem ...
questioned SCL Group director Alexander Nix in a hearing about Cambridge Analytica's connections with Russian oil company,
Lukoil The PJSC Lukoil Oil Company ( stylized as LUKOIL or ЛУКОЙЛ in Cyrillic script) is a Russian multinational energy corporation headquartered in Moscow, specializing in the business of extraction, production, transport, and sale of petrol ...
. Nix stated he had no connections to the two companies despite concerns that the oil company was interested in how the company's data was used to target American voters. Cambridge Analytica had become a point of focus in politics since its involvement in Trump's campaign at this point. Democratic officials made it a point of emphasis for improved investigation over concerns of Russian ties with Cambridge Analytica. It was later confirmed by Christopher Wylie that Lukoil was interested in the company's data regarding political targeting.


Brexit

Cambridge Analytica was allegedly hired as a consultant company for Leave.EU and the
UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...
during 2016, as an effort to convince people to support
Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the Withdrawal from the European Union, withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 Greenwich Mean Time, GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 Central Eur ...
. These rumors were the result of the leaked internal emails that were shared with the British parliament. Brittany Kaiser declared that the datasets that Leave.EU used to create databases were provided by Cambridge Analytica. These datasets composed of the data obtained from Facebook were said to be work done as an initial job deliverable for them. Although Arron Banks, co-founder of Leave.EU, denied any involvement with the company, he later declared “When we said we’d hired Cambridge Analytica, maybe a better choice of words could have been deployed." The official investigation by the UK Information Commissioner found that Cambridge Analytica was not involved "beyond some initial enquiries" and the regulator did not identify any "significant breaches" of data protection legislation or privacy or marketing regulations "which met the threshold for formal regulatory action".


Responses


Facebook and other companies

Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of ...
first apologized for the situation with Cambridge Analytica on CNN, calling it an "issue", a "mistake" and a "breach of trust". He explained that he was responding to the Facebook community's concerns and that the company's initial focus on data portability had shifted to locking down data; he also reminded the platform's users of their
right of access to personal data The right of access, also referred to as right to access and (data) subject access, is one of the most fundamental rights in data protection laws around the world. For instance, the United States, Singapore, Brazil, and countries in Europe have all ...
. Other Facebook officials argued against calling it a "data breach," arguing those who took the personality quiz originally consented to give away their information. Zuckerberg pledged to make changes and reforms in Facebook policy to prevent similar breaches. On March 25, 2018, Zuckerberg published a personal letter in various newspapers apologizing on behalf of Facebook. In April, Facebook decided to implement the EU's
General Data Protection Regulation The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union regulation on data protection and privacy in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of EU privacy law and of human rights law, in par ...
in all areas of operation and not just the EU. In April 2018, Facebook established Social Science One as a response to the event. On April 25, 2018, Facebook released their first earnings report since the scandal was reported. Revenue fell since the last quarter, but this is usual as it followed the holiday season quote. The quarter revenue was the highest for a first quarter, and the second overall.
Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
said that they suspended Cambridge Analytica from using their
Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide d ...
when they learned in 2015 that their service was collecting personal information. The Italian banking company
UniCredit UniCredit S.p.A. is an international banking group headquartered in Milan. It is Italy's only systemically important bank (according to the list provided by the Financial Stability Board in 2022) and the world's 34th largest by assets. It was fo ...
stopped advertising and marketing on Facebook in August 2018.


Governmental actions

The governments of India and Brazil demanded that Cambridge Analytica report how anyone used data from the breach in political campaigning, and various regional governments in the United States have lawsuits in their court systems from citizens affected by the data breach. In early July 2018, the United Kingdom's
Information Commissioner's Office The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is a non-departmental public body which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). It is the independ ...
announced it intended to fine Facebook £500,000 ($663,000) over the data breach, this being the maximum fine allowed at the time of the breach, saying Facebook "contravened the law by failing to safeguard people's information". In March 2019, a court filing by the U.S.
Attorney General for the District of Columbia The Attorney General for the District of Columbia is the chief legal officer of the District of Columbia. While attorneys general previously were appointed by the mayor, District of Columbia voters approved a charter amendment in 2010 that ...
alleged that Facebook knew of Cambridge Analytica's "improper data-gathering practices" months before they were first publicly reported in December 2015. In July 2019, the
Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction o ...
voted to approve fining Facebook around $5 billion to finally settle the investigation into the data breach, with a 3–2 vote. The record-breaking settlement was one of the largest penalties ever assessed by the U.S. government for any violation. Again, in July 2019, Facebook has agreed to pay $100 million to settle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for "misleading investors about the risks it faced from misuse of user data". The SEC's complaint alleged that Facebook did not correct its existing disclosure for more than two years despite discovering the misuse of its users’ information in 2015.


Impact on Facebook users and investors

Since April 2018, the first full month since the breaking of the Cambridge Analytica data breach, the number of likes, posts and shares on the site had decreased by almost 20%, and has decreased ever since, with the aforementioned activity only momentarily increasing during the summer and during the 2018 US midterm elections. Despite this, user growth of the site has increased in the period since increased media coverage, increasing by 1.8% during the final quarter of 2018. On March 26, 2018, a little after a week after the story was initially published, Facebook stock fell by about 24%, equivalent to $134 billion. By May 10, Wall Street reported that the company recovered their losses.


#DeleteFacebook movement

The public reacted to the data privacy breach by initiating the campaign #DeleteFacebook with the aim of starting a movement to boycott Facebook. The co-founder of
WhatsApp WhatsApp (also called WhatsApp Messenger) is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by American company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). It allows use ...
, which is owned by Facebook, joined in on the movement by declaring it was time to delete the platform. The hashtag was tweeted almost 400,000 times on
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
within a 30-day period after news of the data breach. 93% of the mentions of the hashtag actually appeared on Twitter, making it the main social media platform used to share the hashtag.Data source: Google Trends
)
However, a survey by investment firm
Raymond James Raymond James Financial, Inc. is an American multinational independent investment bank and financial services company providing financial services to individuals, corporations, and municipalities through its subsidiary companies that engage prim ...
found that although approximately 84% of Facebook users were concerned about how the app used their data, about 48% of those surveyed claimed they wouldn't actually cut back on their usage of the social media network. Additionally, in 2018, Mark Zuckerberg commented that he didn't think the company had seen "a meaningful number of people act" on deleting Facebook. An additional campaign and hashtag, #OwnYourData, was coined by Brittany Kaiser. The hashtag was created by Kaiser as a Facebook campaign that pushed for increased transparency on the platform. #OwnYourData was also used in Kaiser's petition for Facebook to alter their policies and give users increased power and control over their data, which she refers to as users’ assets and property. In addition to the hashtag, Kaiser also created the Own Your Data Foundation to promote increased digital intelligence education.


''The Great Hack''

The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal also received media coverage in the form of a 2019
Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...
documentary, ''
The Great Hack ''The Great Hack'' is a 2019 documentary film about the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, produced and directed by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, both previous documentary Academy Award nominees ( ''The Square'', ''Control Room'', '' ...
''. This is the first feature-length media piece that ties together the various elements of the scandal through a narrative. The documentary provides information on the background information and events related to Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and the 2016 election that resulted in the overall data scandal. ''The Great Hack'' communicates the experiences and personal journeys of multiple individuals that were involved in the event in different ways and through different relationships. These individuals include David Carroll, Brittany Kaiser, and more. David Carroll is a New York professor in the field of media that attempted to navigate the legal system in order to discover what data Cambridge Analytica had in possession about him. Meanwhile, Brittany Kaiser is a former Cambridge Analytica employee that ultimately became a whistleblower for the data scandal.


Witness and expert testimony

The
United States Senate Judiciary Committee The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, informally the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of 22 U.S. senators whose role is to oversee the Department of Justice (DOJ), consider executive and judicial nominations, ...
called witnesses to testify about the data breach and general data privacy. They held two hearings, one focusing on Facebook's role in the breach and privacy on social media, and the other on Cambridge Analytica's role and its impact in data privacy. The former was held on April 10, 2018, where Mark Zuckerberg testified and Senator Chuck Grassley and Senator Dianne Feinstein gave statements. The latter occurred on May 16, 2018, where Professor Eitan Hersh, Dr. Mark Jamison, and Christopher Wylie testified, while Senators Grassley and Feinstein again made statements.


Mark Zuckerberg

During his testimony before Congress on April 10, 2018, Zuckerberg said it was his personal mistake that he did not do enough to prevent Facebook from being used for harm. "That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections and hate speech". During the testimony, Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized for the breach of private data: "It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here". Zuckerberg said that in 2013 Aleksandr Kogan had created a personality quiz app, which was installed by 300,000 people. The app was then able to retrieve Facebook information, including that of the users' friends, and this was obtained by Kogan. It was not until 2015 that Zuckerberg learned that these users' information was shared by Kogan with Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica was subsequently asked to remove all the data. It was later discovered by ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'', ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' and
Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
that the data had in fact not been deleted.


Eitan Hersh

In 2015, Professor Eitan Hersh published ''Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters'', which analyzed the databases used for campaigns between 2008 and 2014. On May 6, 2018, Eitan Hersh, a professor of political science at
Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
testified before Congress as an expert on voter targeting. Hersh claimed that the voter targeting by Cambridge Analytica did not excessively affect the outcome of the 2016 election because the techniques used by Cambridge Analytica were similar to those of presidential campaigns well before 2016. Further, he claimed that the correlation between user “likes” and personality traits were weak and thus the psychological profiling of users were also weak.


Mark Jamison

Dr. Mark Jamison, the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida, testified before Congress on May 6, 2018 as an expert. Jamison reiterated that it was not unusual for presidential campaigns to use data like Facebook's data to profile voters; Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush also used models to micro-target voters. Jamison criticized Facebook for not being “clear and candid with its users” because the users were not aware of the extent that their data would be used. Jamison finished his testimony by saying that if the federal government were to regulate voter targeting to happen on sites like Facebook, it would harm the users of those sites because it would be too restrictive of those sites and would make things worse for regulators.


Christopher Wylie

On May 16, 2018, Christopher Wylie, who is considered the “whistleblower” on Cambridge Analytica and also served as Cambridge Analytica's Director of Research in 2013 and 2014, also testified to the
United States Senate Judiciary Committee The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, informally the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of 22 U.S. senators whose role is to oversee the Department of Justice (DOJ), consider executive and judicial nominations, ...
. He was considered a witness to both British and American authorities, and he claims he decided to whistle-blow to “protect democratic institutions from rogue actors and hostile foreign interference, as well as ensure the safety of Americans online.” He claimed that at Cambridge Analytica “anything goes” and that Cambridge Analytica was “a corrupting force in the world.” He detailed to Congress how Cambridge Analytica used Facebook's data to categorize people into groups based on political ideology. He also claimed that Eitan Hersh contradicted “copious amounts of peer-reviewed literature in top scientific journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science,
Psychological Science ''Psychological Science'', the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), is a monthly, peer-reviewed, scientific journal published by SAGE Publications. Publication scope ''Psychological Science'' publishes research r ...
, and Journal of Personality and Individual Differences” by saying that Facebook's categorizing of people were weak. Christopher Wylie also testified about Russian contact with Cambridge Analytica and the campaign, voter disengagement, and his thoughts on Facebook's response.


Aftermath

Following the downfall of Cambridge Analytica, a number of related companies have been established by people formerly affiliated with Cambridge Analytica, including
Emerdata Limited Emerdata Limited is a political consulting company based in London, formed in 2017 after filing for insolvency of Cambridge Analytica. Former employees of Cambridge Analytica and SCL moved to successor firms, these companies dissolved with acquisit ...
and
Auspex International Auspex International is a company founded in London in 2018 by former Cambridge Analytica staff. It is one of several companies founded by people formerly affiliated with Cambridge Analytica following its downfall in the aftermath of the Faceboo ...
. At first,
Julian Wheatland Julian David Wheatland (born 1961) is a British businessman and Conservative Party (UK) politician known for his involvement with the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. He was chairman of SCL Group, a self-described "behavioral research ...
, the former CEO of Cambridge Analytica and former director of many SCL-connected firms, stated that they did not plan on reestablishing the two companies. Instead, the directors and owners of Cambridge and its London-based parent SCL group strategically positioned themselves to be acquired in the face of bankruptcy procedures and lawsuits. While employees of both companies dispersed to successor firms, Cambridge and SCL were acquired by Emerdata Limited, a data processing company. Wheatland responded to news of this story and emphasized that Emerdata would not inherit SCL companies’ existing data or assets and that this information belongs to the administrators in charge of the SCL companies’ bankruptcy. David Carroll, an American professor who sued Cambridge, stated that Emerdata was aiming to conceal the scandals and minimize further criticism. Carroll's lawyers argued that Cambridge's court administrators were acting unlawfully by liquidating the company's assets prior to a full investigation being performed. While these administrators subjected SCL Group to criminal injury and a $26,000 fine, a U.K. court denied Carroll's lawsuit, allowing SCL to disintegrate without turning over his data. In October 2021, following Facebook employee Frances Haugen
whistleblowing A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...
Facebook activities,
NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
revisited the Cambridge Analytica data scandal by observing that Facebook neither took responsibility for their behavior there nor did consumers get any benefit of reform as a result. In August 2022, Facebook agreed to settle a lawsuit seeking damages in the case for an undisclosed sum. In December 2022, Meta Platforms agreed to pay $725 million to settle a private class-action lawsuit related to the improper user data sharing with Cambridge Analytica and other third-party companies.


See also

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AggregateIQ AggregateIQ (AIQ) previously known as SCL Canada is a Canadian political consultancy and technology company, based in Victoria, British Columbia. History AIQ was founded in 2013 by Zack Massingham, a former university administrator and Jeff Si ...
*
BeLeave BeLeave was a campaign group which campaigned for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union in the 2016 EU referendum. The group was set up to focus on younger voters. Background BeLeave was set up as a "youth-focused pro-Brexit c ...
* ''
The Great Hack ''The Great Hack'' is a 2019 documentary film about the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, produced and directed by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, both previous documentary Academy Award nominees ( ''The Square'', ''Control Room'', '' ...
'', 2019 documentary film *
Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum is a debated subject and remains unproven, though multiple sources argue evidence exists demonstrating that the Russian government attempted to influence British public opinion in favor of leavin ...
*
State-sponsored Internet propaganda State-sponsored Internet propaganda is Internet manipulation and propaganda that is sponsored by a state. Asia-Pacific *: The former government of Afghanistan used a state-sponsored Internet troll army to push their narrative and exaggerate Afgha ...
*
Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2019) The timeline of investigations into Donald Trump and Russia is split into the following pages: November 8, 2016–January 2017 * Timeline of post-election transition following Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections 2017 * Timel ...


References


External links


BBC CoverageThe Guardian CoverageCarole Cadwalladr @TED2019: Facebook's role in Brexit — and the threat to democracyThe Guardian Article; Revealed
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal Data breaches Big data Cambridge Analytica Facebook criticisms and controversies 2018 scandals Political scandals in the United Kingdom Political scandals in the United States Corporate scandals