The Cambridge Analytica scandal – the firm that has ties with Trump, has done an immense amount of damage to the Facebook brand, sources across the company believe.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal is a political data analytics firm that works to provide election data for political personnel to exploit. The data that is used by Cambridge Analytica comes mainly from Facebook.
The company is accused of using the personal data of 50 million Facebook members to influence the US presidential election in 2016. It is thought that the company sold this data insights to the highest bidder, in this case, who was Donald Trump in 2016.
It will now take a monumental effort to restore public trust in Facebook’s commitment to privacy and data protection. The social media giant will have to find a way to change the way it targets users and thus allows advertisers, (including political groups) to exploit those analytics.
The scandal also highlights a problem that is built into the company’s DNA: Its business is data exploitation. Facebook makes money by, among other things, harvesting your data and selling it to app developers and advertisers.
Cambridge Analytica insists it followed the correct procedures in obtaining and using data, but it was suspended from Facebook last week.
Facebook, meanwhile, said it had hired its own digital forensic team to audit Cambridge Analytica.
On Monday, Channel 4 News broadcast hidden camera footage in which Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix appears to suggest tactics his company could use to discredit politicians online.
Its executives have also been filmed by Channel 4 News suggesting it could use honey traps and potentially bribery to discredit politicians.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg and the rest of the Facebook leadership seem conspicuously absent. Neither Zuckerberg or any of his top executive team have commented publicly on the matter.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal is likely to exacerbate user disenchantment with the network, and the complex algorithm network that is uses every data-point as marketing tool is increasingly being seen as a platform vulnerable to manipulation by political groups, foreign governments, or worse.
[simple-payment id=”8065″]
