Facebook Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Facebook+Cambridge+Analytica+Scandal

Facebook, a social media network that is used by millions of people around the world. This company is ever-green and has been highly successful since it has started. People post their pictures and opinions on Facebook, trusting that it’s all kept in confidentiality, but not anymore. Facebook has come to it’s biggest turning point, and it’s no good one. The personal data of 87 million users was taken by an analytics firm, and they so happen to be advertisers for President Donald Trump. Lawmakers are taking this very seriously, and people are deleting their accounts as well. The very famous, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, has fallen into this unfortunate circumstance. He has been honest with his mistake, telling the public know that even his account was used by the company. The real question is: how did this all go down? Well, it goes like this:

  • Cambridge Analytica is an analytical company that “uses data to change audience behavior,” so they basically use data to see what users like and don’t like.
  • Cambridge Analytica sent an American researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, to gather basic profile information of Facebook users along with what they chose to “Like.”
  • Kogan had Facebook’s permission because he was using it for “commercial use,” but Facebook claims they were tricked by him. Facebook says that Kogan asked to use the data for his own app, and that it was wrong of him to pass it on to the analytical firm.
  • Kogan was paid 800,000 dollars by Cambridge Analytica to do the job.
  • Facebook says they don’t know if all the data has been destroyed yet, and or if it helped President Trump win the election.

In the end, Facebook has been thrown a lot of shade for this incident, and Zuckerberg acknowledges that they will try and make their privacy setting safer and that no one can get the public’s data without full and clear consent.