(by Massimiliano D'Elia) The diatribe between Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica company demonstrates what exists behind social networks and how they can influence the opinion of unsuspecting users. Let's go into the details of the story to discover the unimaginable.
Facebook said it had suspended political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica from the network, working for President Donald Trump's election campaign in 2016 after finding out that data privacy policies had been violated.
Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica and its core Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) group after receiving reports indicating that they had not deleted information about Facebook users who had been shared inappropriately.
Cambridge Analytica was not immediately available for comment. Facebook did not mention Trump's campaign or any political campaign in his statement, made by the deputy general councilor of the company Paul Grewal.
"We will take legal action if necessary for those responsible for any wrongdoing," Facebook said, adding that it was continuing to investigate.
Cambridge Analytica worked for US Senator Ted Cruz's failed presidential campaign and then Donald Trump's presidential campaign. On its website, it states that it "provided the Donald J. Trump for President campaign with the skills and insights that helped President Trump win the White House election."
Brad Parscale, who managed Trump's digital ad operation in 2016 and is his 2020 campaign manager, declined to comment on the affair.
In previous interviews with Reuters, Parscale said Cambridge Analytica played a secondary role as a contractor in the 2016 Trump campaign and that the campaign used voter data from a Republican affiliate rather than Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook's Grewal said the company was taking the unusual step of announcing the suspension "given the public relevance" of Cambridge Analytica and its parent organization.
The suspension means that Cambridge Analytica and SCL can not buy ads on the largest social media network in the world or administer customer pages, said Andrew Bosworth, one of Facebook's vice-presidents in a Twitter post.
Trump's campaign took over Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 and paid it over $ 6,2 million, according to Federal Election Commission documents.
Cambridge Analytica claims to use “behavioral microtargeting,” or combining analysis of people's personalities with demographics, to predict and influence mass behavior. He says he has data on 220 million Americans, two thirds of the US population.
He has worked on other campaigns in the United States and other countries, and is funded by Robert Mercer, an important supporter of conservative political groups.
Facebook in its statement described a strange relationship with Cambridge Analytica and two individuals dating back to the 2015.
That year, Facebook said, it learned that Cambridge University professor Aleksandr Kogan lied to the company and violated its policies by sharing the captured data with a so-called "search app" that used the login system. of Facebook.
Kogan was not immediately available for comment.
The app was downloaded by around 270.000 people. Facebook claimed that Kogan obtained access to the profile and other information "legitimately" but "subsequently failed to comply with our rules" when he passed the data to SCL / Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies.
Eunoia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Facebook said it cut ties with Kogan's app when it learned of the breach in 2015, and requested certification from Kogan and all parties to whom it had provided data that the information had been destroyed.
Although all have certified that it has destroyed the data, Facebook said it has received reports in recent days that "not all data has been deleted", prompting the suspension announced yesterday.