Facebook announced Friday that it is suspending a data analytics firm that reportedly worked with President Donald Trump’s campaign team and utilized the social media platform in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Arguing that Strategic Communication Laboratories, particularly its subsidiary Cambridge Analytica and some others, violated agreement terms, Facebook says the disbarment is necessary for its attempts to ensure people’s information is protected and user data isn’t being manipulated.
Paul Grewal, Facebook’s vice president and deputy general counsel, describes the situation in a blog post:
In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe. He also passed that data to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, Inc.
Like all app developers, Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app. His app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.” Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app. In so doing, they gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, or content they had liked, as well as more limited information about friends who had their privacy settings set to allow it.
It seems that Facebook allowed Kogan’s app to collect data on friends, and based on features such as “likes,” because it comported with their efforts to cultivate an environment of increased engagement. But by doing so, Facebook inadvertently gave Kogan powers with unintended consequences, and upon figuring out his tactics and purposes, it barred the aforementioned alleged violators. Kogan was reportedly able to create more than 50 million profiles using the trend and characteristics data before providing them to Cambridge. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [contentcards url=”https://www.westernjournal.com/facebook-suspends-company-that-allegedly-helped-trump-win-in-2016/” target=”_blank”]