Recent findings by Facebook has revealed how Cambridge Analytica, the data analysis firm that helped Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, maliciously converted 50 million profiles from social platform.
Facebook apparently must have been gamed by the data firm as they immediately suspended accounts of its parent organization, Strategic Communication Laboratories, as well as those of University of Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan and Christopher Wylie, who runs Eunoia Technologies.
Cambridge Analytica specializes in what’s called “psychographic” profiling, meaning they use data collected online to create personality profiles for voters. They then take that information and target individuals with specifically tailored content.
“In 2015, we learned that … Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe,” Facebook said in a posting late Friday by its vice president and deputy general counsel Paul Grewal.
Cambridge Analytica connection with Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign and Russia
So far there’s been a lot of speculation about the potential links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and most of the stories have orbited around the financial dealings of the Trump family and people like Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. But this story is specifically about how team Trump, with the help of this data company, might have facilitated Russia’s meddling in the US presidential election.
