Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal
[3][4] Cambridge Analytica was also widely accused of interfering with the Brexit referendum, although the official investigation recognised that the company was not involved "beyond some initial enquiries" and that "no significant breaches" took place.
[5][6] In interviews with The Guardian and The New York Times, information about the data misuse was disclosed in 2018 by Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee.
[8] In October 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a £500,000 fine to the UK Information Commissioner's Office for exposing the data of its users to a "serious risk of harm".
[14][15] Cambridge Analytica then arranged an informed consent process for research in which several hundred thousand Facebook users would agree to complete a survey for payment that was only for academic use.
He reported that Cambridge Analytica was working for United States Senator Ted Cruz using data harvested from millions of people's Facebook accounts without their consent.
[21] According to PolitiFact, in his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump paid Cambridge Analytica in September, October, and November for data on Americans and their political preferences.
[23] She later brought in Channel 4 News in the UK and The New York Times due to legal threats against The Guardian and The Observer by Cambridge Analytica.
The negative public response to the media coverage eventually led to him agreeing to testify in front of the United States Congress.
[44] Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign used the harvested data to build psychographic profiles, determining users' personality traits based on their Facebook activity.
[45] The campaign team used this information as a micro-targeting technique, displaying customized messages about Trump to different US voters on various digital platforms.
[46] Swing voters were instead often shown images of Trump's more notable supporters and negative graphics or ideas about his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
[22] However, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, Brittany Kaiser, was asked "Is it absolutely proven that the Trump campaign relied on the data that had been illicitly obtained from Facebook?"
[48] In 2018, the Parliament of the United Kingdom questioned SCL Group director Alexander Nix in a hearing about Cambridge Analytica's connections with Russian oil company, Lukoil.
[49] Cambridge Analytica was allegedly hired as a consultant company for Leave.EU and the UK Independence Party during 2016, as an effort to convince people to support Brexit.
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.
[5][6] Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg first apologized for the situation with Cambridge Analytica on CNN,[58] calling it an "issue", a "mistake" and a "breach of trust".
[73] In March 2019, a court filing by the U.S. Attorney General for the District of Columbia alleged that Facebook knew of Cambridge Analytica's "improper data-gathering practices" months before they were first publicly reported in December 2015.
[74] In July 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted 3-2 to approve fining Facebook $5 billion to finally settle the investigation into the data breach.
[77] 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".
[78] 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.
[81] The public reacted to the data privacy breach by initiating the campaign #DeleteFacebook with the aim of starting a movement to boycott Facebook.
[89] 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.
[91] 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.
[98] 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.
He detailed to Congress how Cambridge Analytica used Facebook's data to categorize people into groups based on political ideology.
[105] Christopher Wylie also testified about Russian contact with Cambridge Analytica and the campaign, voter disengagement, and his thoughts on Facebook's response.
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.
David Carroll, an American professor who sued Cambridge, stated that Emerdata was aiming to conceal the scandals and minimize further criticism.
[107] 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.
[109] 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.
