Facebook suspends Cambridge Analytica that aided recent USA and Brexit campaigns

Facebook suspended the profile of Cambridge Analytica, a well-known, British data analytics firm. The profiles of Strategic Communication Laboratories, Cambridge University psychologist Aleksander Kogan and the head of Eunoia Technologies, Christopher Wylie, were also suspended.

Paul Grewal, Vice President of Facebook confirmed that Professor Kogan in 2015 had violated policies by passing data to Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica is partly owned by Robert Mercer, big supporter of Trump. It is believed that the company had an important role during the American elections and the Brexit referendum.

Kogan's app, thisisyourdigitallife, proposed a predictive personality test, describing on the social network as "a search app used by psychologists". The app got the information legitimately, but it violated Facebook's platform policies" passing the information to SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Eunoia Technologies. The app also collected other information, such as "likes" and personal data from the Facebook accounts, but also from the friends of those who were doing the test. An algorithm then interwoven the results of the personality test with other public data on the social network, to draw extremely accurate profiles of users and their preferences. These people received targeted electoral propaganda messages, based on their personal profiles. Grewal also added that, contrary to the documents they were given, not all data had been destroyed. Facebook ensured that the data will be deleted once and for all.

For Cambridge Analytica it all started in 2014, with a $15 million loan from American hedge-fund billionaire and Republican donor Robert Mercer. Then the company attracted the attention of Steve Bannon with a promise to provide Trump with tools to identify the personality of American voters and perhaps to affect their behaviours. Cambridge Analytica, through its CEO Alexander Nix, has reiterated that data from Facebook was never obtained. Later, responsibility was given to Alexander Kogan, a Moldovan-American academic, who passed the data. In Great Britain, Cambridge Analytica is being investigated by UK privacy watchdog for possible privacy violations and it is suspected it has worked illegally on the Brexit campaign.

In the electoral challenges, as noted by the New York Times and The Guardian, Cambridge Analytica always plays on the same side, that of populists. In addition to the Trump's campaign, the Brexit referendum campaign and Marine Le Pen's Elysee presidential race are also studied. On the website, where over one hundred election campaigns are cited on five continents in 25 years, despite the fact that the company was founded just 5 years ago, Italy is also highlighted among the successful practices. See the link.

The history of the company

It began in 1990, when Nigel Oakes, who had previously been the producer of Tele Montecarlo and then a manager of the advertising communication company Saatchi & Saatchi, founded a research institute to study people's behaviours. The goal was to study the way to understand those behaviours. In 1993 Oakes founded SCL, the Strategic Communication Laboratories. Since 1994, 25 electoral campaigns in various countries of the world (especially developing countries) have been followed aiming to condition public opinion using social media and tools to persuade the advertising world. Here Alexander Nix becomes a key member of the company. At the end of 2013 he is at the Palace Hotel in New York, toasting with his team. He has just convinced two prominent American businessmen to use SCL techniques to influence American elections and therefore to establish Cambridge Analytica. The two Americans are Steve Bannon and Bob Mercer. Bob Mercer is not just a billionaire.  He is a mathematician. He worked at IBM, the Watson artificial intelligent project and later at the Renaissance Technologies fund. The last one is not just any hedge fund: it uses data and artificial intelligence to decide investments and over time guarantees a return that, according to some, reaches 40%. That's how Mercer became a billionaire: With maths and finance. However his passion is politics, he is a convinced Repubblican and he dreams of using data to influence politics. He is persuaded to finance the birth of Cambridge Analytica. A million and half dollars for the test project: Virginia's governor elections. The Republican candidate loses, but Mercer and Bannon - who in the meantime take the lead of Cambridge Analytica - decide to insist. The race for the presidential election to the White House is about to start and Nix has a problem: in order to work, the Cambridge Analytica models need data such as millions of profiles of Facebook users. And here another protagonist comes on stage: Aleksander Kogan.

Kogan is a researcher at Cambridge University - UK. He is an expert in big data, analysis of social behaviour and neuroscience. His curriculum is impeccable: degree at Berkeley, master in Hong Kong, several academic publications. Apparently, he has the idea to solve the Cambridge Analytica problems and to collect Facebook users data. Initially he creates Global Science Research and he does tests through Amazon. The Mechanical Turk platform is used, where for some digital jobs users are paid with a few cents. Money is offered to those who fill out an online questionnaire with their personal data. For a while it works but Amazon notices and the operation is blocked. Facebook is then used. Kogan accumulates data, officially for scientific purposes, actually to pass it to Cambridge Analytica. There is another issue. The data is too big and Facebook after some time limits access. According to the Guardian, Kogan gets the app to work again. He explains that "he spoke to an engineer". It is believed that this job allowed access of 50 millions voters, to model on each of them a subtle and effective propaganda campaign.

Translated and summarized by Giuseppe Loporchio

Source:La Stampa - Bruno Ruffilli