Cambridge Analytica claims to not use Facebook data in voter profiles, perhaps because the models it built from 2014 data do not require more data from Facebook
Last week Reuters reported on the Harris Brand Survey: Casey Johnston / The Outline : Cambridge Analytica's leak shouldn't surprise you, but it should scare you Todd Haselton / CNBC : How to control what people can see about you on Facebook Waqas / HackRead : Facebook Secretly Provided Analytic Firm Access to Million of Profiles Damon Beres / Mashable : It's time to protect yourself — and your friends — from Facebook Sharath Ravishankar / Neowin : EU to investigate Cambridge Analytica's alleged misuse of Facebook users' private data MacDailyNews : It's past time for you to STOP USING FACEBOOK Henry T. Casey / Tom's Guide : Facebook Privacy Tips: How to Protect Yourself Now Tom Krazit / GeekWire : As Congress considers the CLOUD (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data) Act, backed by Microsoft and other big tech firms, human rights groups raise concerns Gareth Halfacree / bit-tech.net : Facebook under fire over Cambridge Analytica data abuse Simon Sharwood / The Register : Facebook suspends account of Cambridge Analytica whistle-blower David Hamilton / Associated Press : Facebook suspends data company that helped Trump get elected Jennifer Hansler / CNN : Massachusetts AG to investigate Facebook, Cambridge Analytica Amit Chowdhry / Forbes : Social Media Roundup: New YouTube Features, Facebook Bans Racist Pages, Snapchat's Awful Rihanna Ad Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch : Facebook has suspended the account of the whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica Luis Sanchez / The Hill : Cambridge Analytica working to stop undercover report on its practices from airing: report Steven Musil / CNET : Facebook probes employee's ties to Cambridge Analytica Firstpost : Republican lawmakers express concerns about privacy violations by Facebook after reports of alleged data misuse emerge Nathan Bomey / USA Today : Buzz60 — CONNECT — Facebook critics are questioning … Emily Price / Lifehacker : Now Is a Good Time to Check What Third-Party Apps You Have Connected to Facebook Brian Stelter / CNNMoney : Facebook is again having to account for its role in 2016 election Financial Times : Facebook in storm over Cambridge Analytica scandal Caroline Linton / CBS News : Facebook says it won't lift account suspension for Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie because of his admitted ToS violations New York Times : Sources and documents reveal how Cambridge Analytica used harvested personal information from 50M Facebook users to build psychological profiles of US voters Facebook: Melinda Carroll : Cambridge Analytica, the data firm alleged to have used … Tweets: @yonatanzunger : This thread very much echoes my feelings: Wylie built a weapon, understanding what uses its buyers had in mind, and it did exactly what was intended. And he hasn't come to a full moral reckoning with that. 1/ http://twitter.com/... Porg Marbach / @fastfrwrd : Engineers, always consider the morality of the thing you're building and the morality of the environment you're building it in. “This is a cool problem” is meaningless. They can't do it without you, meaning you are responsible for it. Say something BEFORE you ship the thing. http://twitter.com/... Monty Boa / @montyboa99 : Cambridge Analytica employed foreign nationals (Canadians and Britons) to work on multiple campaigns in the U.S., which violates the law. They even gave employees a letter to show ICE officials declaring that they *weren't* working on a political campaign. 1/ http://twitter.com/... Tristan Harris / @tristanharris : Countering claims by those who shrug off Fbook/CA by saying “we've always had propaganda, what's the big deal?” These co's have enabled a whole new *SPECIES* of persuasion - 1) civilization-scale, 2) hyper-personalized/targeted, 3) social-enhanced, 4) self-optimizing with AI. https://twitter.com/... Matthew Garrahan / @mattgarrahan : SCOOP: Cambridge Analytica's Alexander Nix tells me why he didn't tell parliament that the company had access to the data of 50m Facebook users. “They didn't ask me.” https://www.ft.com/... pic.twitter.com/4EPu7V81CZ @theatlantic : Scholars have warned about firms harvesting data on Facebook for nearly a decade. The latest Cambridge Analytica scandal shows it now may be too late to stop them, writes @alexismadrigal: http://www.theatlantic.com/... http://twitter.com/... Simon Cox / @simonfrcox : Facebook here putting a lot of weight on its standard contract clauses. Which EU Court will soon be looking at > http://www.mccannfitzgerald.com/ ... http://twitter.com/... Naked Security / @nakedsecurity : Facebook suspends Cambridge Analytica for violating its platform policies. Statement from UK Information Commissioner's Office: http://ico.org.uk/... Joseph Menn / @josephmenn : One problem with front-running journalists like this is that you are teaching them to give you less time to respond. http://twitter.com/... MediaMaven / @mediadissector : “Facebook might never reveal the names in an audience to advertisers or political campaigns, but the effects are the same.” http://www.theatlantic.com/... James Wallbank / @accessjames : Facebook: “You lied to us! We demand you delete the data you dishonestly acquired.” Cambrdge Analytica: “Fair cop. We've deleted it.” Facebook: “Fine. We believe you.” This sort of wilful naivety is about reducing liability, NOT about protecting users. http://twitter.com/... Alice Stollmeyer / @stollmeyereu : Read & follow @profcarroll, who just filed a legal claim in the UK against #CambridgeAnalytica, and who calls on us to #TakeBackOurVoterData. #DefendingDemocracy http://twitter.com/... @wired : In a 2016 interview with WIRED, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica specifically denied using this Facebook user data, a denial that directly contradicts the company's own statement on Friday http://www.wired.com/... @dhh : Facebook allowed political marketers posing as researchers to scrape deeply personal data of users. That data built psychological profiles which campaigns then used to micro-target political ads with. Facebook is mortified that their biz model works! https://www.nytimes.com/... @auroberjo : “a powerful software program” HA! if(person.postsRacistShitOnFB) { TargetForTrump(person); } That's it. Done. http://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Cambridge Analytica's denial that it uses Facebook data in voter profiles arrives a week after Facebook suspended its accounts over the harvest of tens of millions of users' information, with the EU, Congress, and state attorneys general all opening inquiries. The company's defense is technical rather than exculpatory: psychological models built from 2014-era data keep working without any fresh feed from Facebook.
First-order effects
- Regulators weighing whether Facebook broke its 2011 FTC privacy consent decree now have to judge harm at the point of collection, not ongoing use — Cambridge Analytica's claim, if true, means the violation was completed years ago and cannot be stopped by cutting API access today.
Second-order effects
- Facebook's response machinery is already straining: the digital forensics audit it commissioned had to stand down at the UK ICO's request, so the platform cannot even independently verify what Cambridge Analytica retained or deleted while politicians demand answers from Zuckerberg personally.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform liability shifts from live data access to historical model training — the durable question becomes who owns and can audit the inferences baked into models built during an era of loose permissions, which is exactly the developer-oversight gap Zuckerberg's 'we didn't know' framing tries to contain.
The trend: Political data operations are moving from harvesting fresh platform data to exploiting models trained on past harvests, putting the enforcement burden on regulators who must police datasets they cannot inspect.