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Whistleblower explains how Cambridge Analytica 'exploited' Facebook
Last night Facebook announced bans against Cambridge Analytica, its parent company and several individuals for allegedly sharing and keeping data that they had promised to delete. This data reportedly included information siphoned from hundreds of thousands of Amazon Mechanical Turkers who were paid to use a "personality prediction app" that collected data from them and also anyone they were friends with -- about 50 million accounts. That data reportedly turned into information used by the likes of Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon and the Donald Trump campaign for social media messaging and "micro-targeting" individuals based on shared characteristics. Now, reports by The New York Times and The Guardian reveal what was behind the timing of that Friday night news dump. According to reporters from both outlets, which were collaborating, the social network had downplayed their reporting and even threatened to sue The Guardian, over what they learned from documents and a whistleblower (who Facebook included in its ban list): Christopher Wylie.
Facebook suspends Trump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica (update: response)
Late Friday night, Facebook has announced it's suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) from its site. While you may not have heard of SCL, its political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica has made headlines in the last few years due to work for the Trump campaign and the Brexit initiative. According to former US Magistrate and current Facebook Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal, this move is occurring because an app "thisisyourdigitallife" pulled in personal information of the 270,000 people who used it as well as information from their friends. While this is allowed under its policy, its creator -- a Cambridge psych professor named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan -- passed the data onto other parties including Cambridge Analytica.
