The Connector
The Connector
Illustration by Shravani Kulkarni

Since mid-March, Facebook has been sucked into a vacuum of scandal with British political consultancy and voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica.

The company allegedly mined 50 million user profiles from Facebook illegally using a quiz app to influence voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and ultimately, to shape election results. With volumes of dark secrets revealed by The New York Times and British Newspaper Observer, testimonies from former Cambridge Analytica employees and exposés from Channel 4’s undercover investigation videos, the dark side of user data collection quickly unfolded on an international stage and gave way to the birth of Twitter’s #deletefacebook hashtags.

As students who are active online, we need to pay attention to potential minefields on social media.

Here’s a breakdown of the drama. From a list of key players to a timeline of how this scandal was conceived and exploded, and finally a Q&A section to address some blind spots and burning questions.  

 

Key Players: Who’s who, and what you need to know about them

News Outlets

  • The New York Times
    The New York Times published an exposé on March 17 about how Cambridge Analytica teamed up with the Trump election campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election.
  • The Observer/Guardian
    A UK newspaper also published an exposé similar to The New York Times on March 17.
  • Channel 4
    A UK TV Channel that published a three-part investigation about Cambridge Analytica. For four months, journalists went undercover as political consultants to seek help for Sri Lanka’s election from Alexander Nix and Mark Turnball.

Other Players

  • Facebook
    Social media giant learned in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had collected user’s personal data through professor Kogan’s quiz app. 

Companies

  • Strategic Communication Laboratories Group – SCL Group
    Founded in 1993 (British PR firm that works for British political party). Headed by Alexander Nix, who serves as Chief Executive.
  • Cambridge Analytica
    A British voter-profiling company that established key strategies to win voters for the 2016 Trump campaign. The company microtargeted users by creating digital content (advertisements, blogs, fake news, etc.) specifically catered to users’ personalities, hobbies and political leanings. The company paid psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan $7 million to mine data from Facebook illegally (Facebook called it “a breach of trust” rather than illegal.)

    Cambridge Analytica was founded in 2013 by Steven Bannon, President Trump’s former White House Chief Strategist and head of Breitbart News. It was also founded and funded by hedge fund billionaires and GOP megadonors Robert and Rebekah Mercer. 

Minds of Cambridge Analytica

  • Alexander Nix
    SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica Chief Executive, who in 2016 told Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica played a major part in the Trump campaign.
  • Mark Turnbull
    Cambridge Analytica’s managing director, who was caught on camera by Channel 4 exposing the company’s role in influencing elections, including the 2017 Kenyan presidential election.
  • Christopher Wylie
    27 year-old former Cambridge Analytica research director and whistleblower. 
  • Aleksander Kogan
    Cambridge psychology professor and founder of the UK research center Global Science Research. He came up with methods of data mining using Facebook profiles. Kogan developed the Facebook app, Thisismydigitallife. He sold the collected data to Cambridge Analytica against Facebook’s policy.
  • ‘Thisismydigitallife’
    A Facebook quiz app that collects users’ data without their knowledge or consent. Wylie claimed the app collected a total of 50 million user profiles.
  • Steve Bannon
    Founder and Vice President of Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Bannon introduced Cambridge Analytica to the Trump campaign. He’s also President Trump’s former White House Chief Strategist and head of Breitbart News.
  • Robert and Rebekah Mercer
    Hedge fund father and daughter duo and GOP donors who funded Cambridge Analytica with $15 million.

 

How the drama unfolds — timeline

Late 2013

According to The New York Times exposé, inside SCL group, Alexander Nix and Christopher Wylie already experimented their strategies on influencing politics through user profiles to affect voters’ behavior, perception and choices abroad, including the Caribbean and Africa. The technique was called “psychographic” profiling. According to Wylie, based on user profiles the company created content — blogs, advertisement, misinformation, fake news, old videos disguised as new to micro-target users, purposed to win them over for certain political campaigns. Captured by Channel 4’s Part 2 exposé, Mark Turnball said, “it has to happen without anyone thinking that’s propaganda … so we have to be very subtle.”

The group met with Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer. Bannon expressed his interests in a “cultural weapon” that could use academic research on profiling people’s personalities from Facebook data and use it on a national scale, influencing and mold voter preferences in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Mercer provided $1.5 million to pilot this project for SCL group.

Quickly developing and gathering data that was impactful enough to influence voters wasn’t easy. The team met Kogan, who had done legal user data profiling on Facebook. Kogan came up with a new method to achieve Cambridge Analytica’s goals. He paid users to download Thisismydigitallife and answer a personality survey. The app secretly gathered profile data on users, which Kogan sold to Cambridge Analytica against Facebook’s policies.

270,000 users gave their consent to participate in the survey. In the end, the app gathered 50 million profiles within a few months — a quarter of potential U.S voters. Seeing the results, Mercer funded a further $15 million to SCL to form an American division under the name Cambridge Analytica. The company worked first on Ted Cruz’s campaign.

End of 2015

The Guardian published a report on Cambridge Analytica’s work on Cruz’s campaign using private Facebook data. By then, most were still oblivious to the scale of this project. Facebook sent a letter to Wylie asking to delete all data collected through Thisismydigitallife. Facebook sought to confirm the deletion by having Wylie to sign a form, nothing else. Wylie said to the Observer, “That to me was the most astonishing thing. They waited two years and did absolutely nothing to check that the data was deleted. All they asked me to do was tick a box on a form and post it back.”

Early 2016

Steve Bannon introduced Cambridge Analytica to the Trump campaign. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported Trump Campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $5.9 million for their service.

In an interview with Channel 4, Alexander Nix showed how psychographic profiling helped them micro-target different personality types. The technique was to create emotionally resonant messages and release it onto the target’s social media feed in order to influence their behavior. “Someone who is neurotic is someone who’s quite emotional and might respond in this case to a stimulus of fear”, Nix said. They could create and expose to users videos that had texts that read, “Destroy the 1st Amendment…this is just something Hillary Clinton has in store…that will make this country unrecognizable.” The video was part of the “Defeat Crooked Hillary” campaign, released by  “Make America No. 1,” a Mercer-funded independent organization.  Wylie said this data helped him, “anticipate what are your mental vulnerabilities, what cognitive biases might you display in certain situations.”

 

The Scandal Exploded in Mid-March

March 16:

Facebook released a statement saying they suspended CA and SCL group from their platform.

March 17:

The Observer and The New York Times published exposés on how Cambridge Analytica mined and sold data from Facebook illegally.

March 18:

US Congressional investigators called for Cambridge Analytica to testify. Facebook lost $59 Billion in value.

March 19:

Channel 4’s released three-part Nix exposé.

March 20:

UK’s Members of Parliament summoned Mark Zuckerberg to testify. News broke that the FTC was investigating Facebook. Cambridge Analytica suspended Nix after Channel 4’s exposé.

March 22:

Mark Zuckerberg made his first public comment after Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook stock plummeted.

March 23:

UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office raided Cambridge Analytica’s London office

March 29:

Facebook announced new privacy settings.

Questions & Answers

  • How effective are “psychographic” profiles, exactly?
    According to a Vox article, the effects of using psychographic profiles to change people’s political view is mixed. Researchers found almost no evidence that these advertisements created based on these profiles can influence political opinions and behaviors. According to another Vox article & The New York Times report, many Republican political professionals claimed that CA’s service was overpriced and useless, and that Nix exaggerated CA’s effectiveness.
  • What is the meaning of this, then?
    The scandal shows the dark arts of monetizing personal digital data. As a Vox article put it, “this highlights a larger debate over how much users can trust Facebook with their data. Facebook allowed a third-party developer to engineer an application for the sole purpose of gathering data. And the developer was able to exploit a loophole to gather information on not only people who used the app but all their friends — without them knowing.”