Facebook's Cambridge Analytica Scandal: How We Got Here

Facebook'southward Cambridge Analytica Scandal: How We Got Here

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Similar the proverbial straw that broke the camel'due south back, some four-yr-one-time information that wasn't destroyed when it was supposed to exist perhaps what finally starts to bring internet giant Facebook under the scrutiny of legislators and a previously complacent public. It's helpful to look back at what happened, and at how information technology has diddled upwardly into an international headline story.

Information technology Might Non Have Been a Alienation, But It Was Clearly a Mistake

Until sometime in 2022, Facebook'south default privacy settings immune you to admission information almost your friend'southward friends. And you could do this not but past browsing; at that place was an API (programming interface) and then information technology could be done automatically. This was a pretty amazing capability. When tools like Mathematica incorporated it into their evolution environments, you could await at an extended network of your friends and their friends with simply a couple lines of code. Information technology was pretty cool to encounter who you wound up beingness only two steps removed from. Used that way, it was by and large harmless.

However, researchers realized they could supercharge this adequacy by enlisting people into using an application on Facebook, and thus unknowingly giving them admission to Facebook'southward information well-nigh their friends. At that place is an important stardom here that's glossed over in many printing reports. While the users didn't explicitly allow access, they almost certainly didn't realize Facebook's default privacy settings meantthey had granted permission without realizing it. So the data wasn't technically stolen, or breached (as Facebook is conscientious to bespeak out). Merely no ane was explicitly asked to provide it, either.

Facebook Took a Cavalier Attitude to User Data

Researchers used this feature to build big datasets, which then allowed them to build profiles of users and begin to characterize them (including skin color, sexual orientation, and political amalgamation), all simply based on elements of their Facebook data. Facebook explicitly granted permission to researchers to practice this, although with the proviso that the information was not supposed to exist sold. In hindsight, this seems nuts. Even if y'all think information technology was okay for anyone to have admission to that much private data without people's agile consent, there was no existent organisation in place for controlling access or auditing the data.

The Guardian has had some of the best coverage of the unfolding news, including this interview with a former Facebook insider who explains how common this kind of abuse was.

In the case of Cambridge Analytica, co-ordinate to The New York Times , CA paid $800,000 to a psychology professor, Alexandar Kogan, to create an app to harvest exactly this kind of information. His personality quiz attracted 270,000 users. Thanks to the lax default permissions of Facebook, that meant he could collect not just information about those users, but most their approximately 50 million friends. One clear lesson here, by the way, is Not To E'er Have A Quiz You See On Facebook. Fifty-fifty with tighter privacy settings, you lot're just giving abroad yet more personal data to people you've never met with no idea what they'll apply information technology for.

The next link in the chain is that despite Kogan having told Facebook he was only using the information for research (at to the lowest degree co-ordinate to Facebook — although they don't seem to have done much to verify it), Kogan then shared the data with CA for them to use in ad targeting. Co-ordinate to The Guardian, CA used that data to help with the Ted Cruz'south presidential campaign. That disclosure was in 2022, but peradventure considering Cruz wound upwardly losing, it didn't generate a lot of national attending.

Facebook reacted by getting CA to promise it had later deleted the data. This seems at least as naive as Facebook's original trust that the information was only beingness used for research. Information technology's a little like request a depository financial institution robber to promise they gave the money back. It was the contempo disclosure that the data was non deleted that has lit a large burn nether the scandal. In the interim, CA has gained notoriety for its piece of work on the Trump entrada. Connecting the dots, the assumption is being made that the information on 50 million Facebook users was helpful — perchance instrumental — in the targeted advertising and social media efforts launched by the Trump campaign itself and its supporters.

In fact, it isn't really clear the data was all that effective. CA CEO Nix bragged near its use in the Trump campaign, but it is quite possible he was only bragging without crusade in an effort to make the firm seem cutting-edge to attract new business. The New York Times provides plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Among them are statements from the entrada that more traditional micro-targeting methods were actually more effective, and CA's executives eventually conceded that their psychographics applied science actually didn't get used in the entrada. We'll certainly larn more over time, since United kingdom regulators have now raided CA'southward offices.

Twitter is still pretty generous with its privacy settings. I line of Mathematica code gives y'all a graph of Trump's friends and their friends. The real version has names for each node.

Facebook Was Warned About Information Privacy Years Earlier

It'due south non like Facebook didn't know it needed to be more conscientious with user data. In 2022 it entered into a consent decree with the FTC where information technology promised to better enforce user privacy settings, and that included substantial fines for time to come violations. It is unclear so far whether the CA incident violated that agreement. But it certainly meant that Facebook knew information technology needed to do amend, years before the CA-related data debacle unfolded.

The big picture isn't actually about the CA data or how it was used. Information technology's about how much of the internet is built around a small number of increasingly large companies consolidating, marketing, using, and abusing our personal data without constructive regulation or transparency. CA's use of Facebook data is but a tiny window into how that system can be abused, and neglect to safeguard our privacy.

Micro-targeting Isn't New; Nosotros're Under a Microscope Already

Another important takeaway from this story is that there are many ways to manipulate audiences. The ad industry has come a long way from obvious thirty-second TV spots. CA itself, and firms that compete with it, like TargetPoint, already cull through massive troves of data to build profiles of individual voters and various groups of voters that can exist directly influenced with customized messages. Tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Netflix, among many others, do this on a massive calibration. Historically, this data has been used primarily for marketing of consumer products and services. But offset with the 2008 Obama campaign political organizations started to do more precise targeting of their letters using social media and demographics. Over the ensuing decade, the efforts take become more advanced, and have expanded into additional realms of manipulation.

Early on Facebook investor Roger McNamee was one of the starting time to explain that it isn't necessary to hack Facebook to have this manipulation to new levels. Equally he points out, Facebook's business concern model and platform are designed to permit advertisers to do exactly that. With a few clicks, an advertiser can micro-target past group membership, interests, age, region, income, and more than. The simply additional element needed was to aim those tools at the sphere of politics. McNamee is further quick to note that, unlike more traditional media, there are virtually no regulations on politically related advertising, posts, or groups on Facebook. In fact, Facebook won't even acknowledge it's a media company or publisher. So far, it's insisting it'southward just a platform.

Where Do We Get From Here

First, there will be a much more than serious set of hearings in the US and Europe where Facebook executives volition get asked some hard questions. Whether that generates new laws or regulations, or what they will expect like, is unclear. Personally, I look the Eu, which is already way ahead of the United states of america in privacy regulations, to be more than aggressive than our current federal government.

UPDATE 3/21 1pm Pacific: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has posted his and Facebook's response to the situation, including the following: "This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Simply it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with united states and expect united states of america to protect it. We need to prepare that." He then outlines a series of steps the company is (finally) taking to tighten up the way apps can use your data. This is a small-scale and belated gesture, but is definitely a step in the right management.

In the meantime, McNamee, former Google Pattern Ethicist Tristan Harris, and others take formed the Eye for Humane Technology to help bulldoze both policy reform and more than user-centered software designs. In addition to responding to the specific issues similar the misuse of Facebook data, they're working on the larger problems inherent in the current internet business model of creating addictions to increment profits.

While McNamee yet believes in the potential of the Facebook platform, WhatsApp co-founder and Facebook-made billionaire Brian Acton has gone further and launched a #deletefacebook campaign. Whether y'all desire to get that far or non, we think y'all should make sure y'all understand your privacy settings, be conscientious what you share, be skeptical of what yous read, and utilise best practices for protecting your privacy online.

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