Cambridge Analytica misuses Facebook information

An emerging story that’s happening right now is the Cambridge Analytica’s misappropriation of Facebook user’s information. The Rolling Stone gives a recap on what we know so far in this story. So far, during the time of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, his election team hired Cambridge Analytica and gathered 50 million Facebook profiles.

The reason that has been said for the gathering of these profiles was to use the information to identify U.S voters to target them with personalized political advertisements.

Back in early 2017, Cambridge head of products, Matt Oczkowski, said in a postelection Google panel that the Trump campaign didn’t use psychographics.

This isn’t the first time that this has happened. Back in 2015, presidential candidate Ted Cruz did the exact same method. Cruz’s campaign paid researchers at Cambridge University to gather Facebook profiles.

Author: Ashley Apostol

Ashley Apostol is a sophomore at the University of Michigan - Dearborn majoring in Instructional Technology. She has always had an interest in using and learning about technology and knew that it was something she wanted to do in her life. View all posts by Ashley Apostol