The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Scandal

April 18, 2018

Over the past year, there has been a vast amount of news reports regarding social media, data, and the manipulation of advertisers from private entities to political parties, candidates, and elected officials. A build-up of controversy stemming from Russian backed political advertising in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and whistleblower Christopher Wylie, co-founder of Cambridge Analytica’s political data mining firm, has shed light on the vulnerabilities Facebook and other platforms have to millions of social media users. As this may be news to some, the internet has been a data collecting machine ever since conception in the late 1990’s. Don’t you think corporations and governments have been using any means necessary to mine consumer information for their benefit? The answer is yes, and they will continue to do so in today’s market to serve a demanding, educated consumer pool. The difference is the ethical method of obtaining information, what we do with it, and the transparency to the public. A simple download from a Facebook app has opened up Pandora’s box and changed the public’s view on social media forever.

One must understand what kind of information these companies are looking for. Since the birth of advertising, marketers have been segmenting customers into groups in hopes of improving their understanding and thus better serving them by predicting future wants and needs. The theory of differentiating consumers into several groupings is called market segmentation. The bases that define segmentation are geographic, demographic, behavioral, and psychographic. Traditionally, geographic and demographic pertain to easily obtainable information such as age, gender, location, income, and religious views; a quantitative approach to measuring factual information. Behavioral and psychographics are much more in-depth and valuable for today’s advertiser by using personal information from the consumer to forecast their needs. Subjective data for these segments will include personality, attitude, usage, loyalty, and benefit. The appeal Facebook has for Cambridge Analytica is that millions of users every day provide this information in real time whether they realize it or not.

Facebook’s network is a goldmine for marketers, providing a brand the capability to reach their targeted audience like never imagined. The only difference is that previously to this scandal, data was held internally by Facebook and would facilitate the reach to target markets. Cambridge Analytica was able to gain this valuable information for themselves by developing apps for Facebook’s platform that provides app developers access to profile data. Designed by an academic psychologist and data scientist, Aleksandr Kogan developed an app called “This Is Your Digital Life” that prompted and incentivized users to answer psychological profiling questions for a small payment. Almost half a million users completed the survey, giving access to profile info, private messages, and all their friend’s data as well. A first estimate concluded Cambridge Analytica had obtained over 50 million users data but was eventually realized surpassing 80 million profiles. Kogan said he was collecting data for researching purposes but violated Facebook policies by passing data to Cambridge Analytica.

The scandal leaves us to wonder if there is a possibility to use a social platform without having any of our data (interests, views, attitudes, lifestyles, etc.) used for advertising purposes. As of today, every social media outlet uses who you follow, what you “like,” “share,” and “retweet” for ad targeting purposes. Many marketers hypothesize that Facebook could start charging users if they don’t want data collection used for advertisement targeting but are unclear about what that cost could be. Leading into the debate of privacy laws and what information corporations should be able to legally obtain factors against what we as consumers are now used to. In an age of desiring only relevant content and the science of targeted advertisement, creating new privacy laws may frustrate consumers. It might be probable to argue as consumers in 2018, we require brands to understand us to keep our attention which we’re willing to give up information about ourselves to be better served.

In conclusion, the scrutiny around Facebook’s privacy policy and the Cambridge Analytica scandal has been an eye opener for millions of Americans. However, the scope in length consumer data has been mined, shared, bought, and sold has been infinite since the earliest periods of advertising. The practice of mining consumer data for political party initiatives may seem unethical to many but, in reality, we have the ultimate say in the products we purchase and the candidates we vote for. The likeliness of firms utilizing loopholes to gather valuable consumer information in the past is a definite truth, and the probability these platforms have sold data to outside entities should not be overlooked. Thankfully, consumer awareness of these tactics is now brought to light giving the end user the choice to continue use of these services or not. It is our responsibility as consumers to conduct our due diligence and vet candidates to decide if a product indeed does fit our needs despite the mediums advertisements are served.