History of the Cambridge Analytica Controversy

The Cambridge Analytica scandal exploded into the political class’s consciousness five years ago this week. The idea of political persuasion and data mining suddenly felt very close to every Facebook user, and the aftermath of the scandal included rethinking the ethics of data privacy and the growing impact of social media on electoral politics. Cambridge Analytica still impacts the digital democracy space today.

Anatomy of a Scandal
Cambridge Analytica was founded in 2013. But the company’s ability to microtarget traces back to a 2010 Facebook rollout of open graph that included a new version of its API, which is a tool that allows one application to access the data or features of another. With the API, “developers could now see social connections between people, and see the connections people have based on their interests and likes.”

Some examples of how open graph was used include President Obama’s campaign, which built an app that would connect known Obama supporters to potential supporters. The idea was that these two groups of users–demonstrated supporters and potential ones–had something in common, such as being friends on Facebook or that they both liked a particular sports team. In a non-political context, apps like Farmville would use the API so people could see which of their friends were also playing their game and how users might interact while in the app.

The tool has other practical campaign applications as well. Aleksander Kogan, an academic at the University of Cambridge, used the tool to research Facebook users and determine what might influence their behavior. He eventually gave this data to Cambridge Analytica, a company that provided data-driven services to political campaigns. Cambridge Analytica claimed to be able to use Facebook data for its clients to better target political messages to people that could be influenced, also known as “microtargeting.”

Facebook shut down access for new apps to this API in 2014, and the API access was fully shut down in 2015.

Breaking the Story
On March 17, 2018, the Guardian and New York Times broke the story about a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, saying that the company had utilized 50 million Facebook profiles to do their modeling. Facebook tried to pre-empt the stories by announcing it had suspended access to everything on Facebook for Cambridge Analytica and an affiliate organization – the SCL Group. They also took issue with the media calling it a “data breach,” given the information in question wasn’t hacked or stolen and was indeed provided through the API to developers with users’ consent.

A few days later, Facebook announced new measures to better protect people’s data. CEO Mark Zuckerberg also spoke to numerous media outlets about what happened and what the company was going to do to increase trust and safety. Zuckerberg outlined an investigation and full audit into apps that had access to large amounts of data before the platform was changed in 2015. He also introduced restrictions on developers’ access to data and a tool for users to see which apps they had given access to their data.

The fallout and response from governments, media, civil society, and others worldwide were swift. American and British officials immediately held hearings to question Facebook about what happened. The European Union, Canada, and Indian governments did as well.

Effects of the Scandal
In the years following, the scandal influenced legislative action worldwide, most notably the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act in the European Union. It sparked a conversation around the use of microtargeting for political ads. Some platforms, such as Twitter, decided to ban political ads all together; Google reduced the amount of targeting options; and Facebook gave people the ability to opt out of political ads. Facebook, Google, and other platforms created transparency tools so users could better see all of the ads that campaigns were running. Currently, in the EU, legislation that would severely limit the use of microtargeting for campaigns is moving through Parliament. There has also been a slew of litigation, most recently, Facebook settled a lawsuit on the matter for $725 million.

The Cambridge Analytica controversy profoundly impacted the world of data privacy, political campaigning, and social media. Governments worldwide enacted laws and regulations to protect consumers, and companies needed to adjust their practices in response. Facebook continues to take some steps to protect user data, but not without sacrifice. Some of these steps also hindered the ability for researchers to access data from the company for academic analysis, which could have some effects on transparency measures.

Want to Learn More?
BPC is convening a panel of top technology and political experts on March 29th to discuss if the countless studies, reports, hearings, laws, and products created in the aftermath of Cambridge Analytica have made user data safer. Join Katie, Alex Lundry, the Co-Founder of Tunnl and Deep Root Analytics; Matthew Rosenberg, a Washington-based Correspondent for the New York Times who helped break the story; and, our moderator Justin Hendrix, the CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press.

We’ll discuss:

• How much progress has been made on privacy and political advertising?
• What is the truth about what Cambridge Analytica claimed it could do versus reality?
• What impact did the scandal have on making data more readily available for researchers?

Click here to register for the event, which will be held in person and virtually.