Cambridge Analytica & Social Media
Cambridge Analytica, once just a data firm, made headlines for its role in harnessing social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok to influence public opinion and elections. Their methods of sifting through vast amounts of user data raised serious questions about privacy and the power of digital influence.
Social Media, Data Science, And Influence: The Good, Bad, And Ugly
Social media platforms have become important to most people’s everyday lives. Meanwhile, a battle to influence those platforms’ users is raging every day.
That makes it crucial for users to understand the ways that data science can be used — and misused — on social media.
- Good: You can be shown the posts you’d be most interested in seeing, and those that would make a positive contribution to your experience on the app.
- Bad: Shady platform operators or their allies can use data science to tinker with their algorithms, highlighting posts aimed at influencing your opinions and obscuring the truth.
- Ugly: App owners can sell (or fail to protect) data on your surfing activities and preferences, enabling third parties to manipulate what you see on social media and personally target you with their messaging.
This isn’t just theory. It’s both historical and current-day fact.
The Use and Misuse of Social Media in Pursuit of Influence
Most people remember what a well-run, by-the-books social platform looked like. In the early days of social media, the online experience could be somewhat disjointed, random, and even chaotic. Even so, it was also enjoyable, illuminating, and entertaining.
The platforms’ reach and potential, though, attracted all sorts of actors trying to exploit the apps for influence and power.
Some just wanted to increase their social media importance and attract large fan bases, so they could promote products, services, opinions — or themselves. They optimized their profiles and posted compelling content. Then they used services like Twicsy to provide smart data analysis and techniques tailored to boost their presence on their app of choice.
Others, however, pushed the envelope. It’s bad enough that some managed to find ways to coopt the apps into tilting the scale to show users favored posts. That’s still happening on some social platforms today.
Even worse, some were able to acquire enormous sets of user data from the platforms. They then used complex data analytics to profile individuals’ behavior and target those users’ likes, dislikes — and fears.
The most notorious example of the “ugly” in social media, data science, and influence involved a company called Cambridge Analytica (CA), which used data harvested from one of the world’s largest apps in attempts to influence elections around the globe.
The scandal that ensued led to a worldwide debate over privacy, data security, and ethics. New regulations were instituted worldwide, and the company was forced out of business.
Let’s look deeper into this “ugly” use of data science and influence, and then consider an optimal example of how data can be used in “good” ways to build influence on social media.
The Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal
Here are the important facts about Cambridge Analytica, what it did, and how its activities became a worldwide scandal.
What Was Cambridge Analytica?
In 2013, the multinational private intelligence firm SCL Group established a subsidiary called Cambridge Analytica. SCL also identified itself as a “global election management agency,” and conducted business primarily in Britain and the United States. It was connected with nine similar companies that operated under the same umbrella.
SCL and the other companies had focused primarily on elections in smaller and developing nations, but Cambridge Analytica spent most of its time and resources trying to influence elections in Britain and America.
Among SCL and Cambridge Analytica’s ownership and management group were former ministers, members of Parliament, and others with high-level political, royal, and military ties, all members of the British Conservative Party.
Other Cambridge Analytica investors included a number of wealthy Conservative donors; the Mercer family, well-known American billionaire donors to US Republicans; and Republican campaign operative Steve Bannon, later to be named White House chief strategist in the Trump administration.
What Did Cambridge Analytica Do with Data?
The furor over CA’s involvement in political campaigns was wide-ranging, but it essentially involved the use of personal data harvested from social media to profile potential voters who could be the subjects of influence campaigns.
How Cambridge Analytica Acquired Data
Starting in 2014, CA obtained the data of as many as 87 million Facebook users through deceptive means.
A Russian-American citizen working at a British university, Aleksandr Kogan, had developed a seemingly innocuous survey Facebook app for Cambridge Analytica. It was downloaded by more than 250,000 people. Crucially, however, the app was able to mine not only data about its users but about all of their Facebook friends as well.
The users had given permission for the app to acquire their data, but their friends had not. Kogan’s app found a way to exploit Facebook’s systems to collect data from them anyway. Kogan told the platform he was collecting the information for academic purposes, but he gave it to Cambridge Analytica which used it in its electoral influence operations.
Both the premises of collecting the data and CA’s subsequent use of it violated Facebook’s terms of service, which is how Facebook got pulled into the scandal that followed.
What Cambridge Analytica Did with the Data
Combined with information purchased from other data mining companies, the company created what it called “personality models” of voters to be used in appealing to those who would or might vote in elections that CA was working on. For example, “temperamental” voters received different tailored social messages than “timid traditionalists” did.
There’s widespread skepticism about whether the approach worked like the company promised it would, at least in Western elections. Academics have repeatedly confirmed the validity of profiling consumers and voters; there’s an entire discipline known as “psychographics” devoted to the science of using data to classify population groups.
However, there were several important criticisms of the methodology that Cambridge Analytica used.
First, they used “snapshots” of data instead of tracking voters’ attitudes over time. Second, the data came from fewer than 5% of Facebook’s users, a random and not statistically valid sample. Many political scientists also say it’s difficult to draw political conclusions from personality traits.
Some analysts believe the CA model might have been of some use in swinging elections or fomenting dissent in developing nations, but would have been largely useless in larger elections in countries like Britain and the US. Even some of the “first adopters” of CA’s services in American election fights became disillusioned with the results and stopped using them.
It now appears that the brief, widespread success of the company’s supposedly revolutionary services was more a product of aggressive marketing to conservative groups looking for an election edge, rather than a response to CA’s performance and results.
That didn’t prevent Cambridge Analytica from becoming embroiled in scandal for its roles — or apparent roles — in several high-profile elections.
Cambridge Analytica’s Major Campaigns
Cambridge Analytica later said that it (or its parent company) had been involved in more than 200 elections all over the globe, in nations as disparate as India and Italy, Nigeria and the Philippines, Colombia and the Czech Republic. A vast release of documents by a CA whistleblower detailed the company’s work in countries including Brazil, Malaysia, and Kenya.
Most of the company’s attention, though, was apparently focused on Britain and the US.
Cambridge Analytica and Brexit
The controversial campaign over whether Britain should leave or remain in the European Union (“Brexit”) culminated in 2016 with a narrow victory for “Leave” forces.
A year later, two major UK newspapers reported that Cambridge Analytica was heavily involved with “Leave” forces, more specifically with the group Leave.EU. The following year, published reports claimed CA had produced a document claiming the company could single out likely “Leave” voters, donors, journalists, and others simply by analyzing their social media data.
There was no direct evidence of Cambridge Analytica being paid by Leave.EU, no reports listing cash or “in kind” (donated) campaign contributions were filed with British authorities (as required by law), and both CA and Brexit-supporting organizations deny that any work was done for them by the company.
However, the whistleblower, CA’s former head of business development, alleged in parliamentary hearings that the company supplied datasets to Leave.EU allowing them to target voters and influence public opinion on the referendum — and that it was “chargeable” work.
She also presented internal documents showing links between the two, including strategy discussions and planning for a dinner with Brexit leader Nigel Farage.
A former LEAVE.EU official, who’d previously said the group had hired Cambridge Analytica, testified to Parliament that he should have said they “deployed” the company since no contract was ever signed and no payment was ever made.
The British hearings led to an in-depth, three-year investigation led by Britain’s Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham. The final scorecard on the CA-Brexit story:
- Facebook was fined £500,000 for exposing users’ data to a “serious risk of harm.”
- Leave.EU and another pro-Brexit group, Vote Leave, were fined £15,000 and £40,000, respectively.
- Cambridge Analytica shut down (although sister companies have taken over some of its operations) and its CEO was banned from being a director of any British company for seven years.
However, the fines for Leave.EU and Vote Leave were for sending spam texts, not for dealing with CA.
Most importantly, Denham concluded that even though the investigation found “systemic vulnerabilities in our democratic systems,” neither group had committed any violations of British regulations serious enough to warrant action. She also declared that Cambridge Analytica was not involved in the Brexit fight “beyond some initial enquiries.”
The biggest byproduct of the whole mess, according to Denham, is that the British government is updating its guidance for those involved in political campaigning.
Cambridge Analytica and US Republican Campaigns
Cambridge Analytica’s American work began with state, congressional, and senate campaigns in 2014, with mixed results but some major senatorial successes.
The first American presidential campaign to utilize CA’s services was that of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who was running for president in the Republican primaries leading up to the 2016 election. Another candidate, Ben Carson, also used the company for data management and web services.
Cruz won America’s first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus, and Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix took much of the credit in a round of media interviews. The Cruz campaign became increasingly dissatisfied with the company’s work, though, and stopped using CA’s data profiles about a month later. Cruz dropped out of the race shortly after that.
Enter Donald Trump.
Cruz’s major financial backers, the Mercer family, threw their support to Trump after Cruz left the race. And since the Mercers were investors in Cambridge Analytica (as was Trump advisor Steve Bannon), it was no surprise that CA began working with the Trump campaign around the same time. Company staff was quickly embedded with the campaign’s digital operations team.
They weren’t doing the same work that they had for Cruz, though. The Trump campaign was reportedly so deficient in electoral basics like digital outreach, online fundraising, and turning out core voters that Cambridge Analytica was tied up with handling those duties crucial to a modern campaign.
Trump spokesmen claimed CA data was never used during the Republican’s 2016 run to the presidency. Trump’s repeated assertions that he thought “data” was overrated might give some credence to the claim, even though the company had improperly acquired the data of tens of millions of US citizens before the campaign.
However, Nix often claimed after the fact that his company was instrumental in Trump’s victory, and Trump digital media manager Brad Pascale told interviewers that the campaign used Facebook to target specific groups of voters to receive Trump messaging while denying that CA’s data played a role.
Details of how Cambridge Analytica’s data mining operation played (or didn’t play) a role in Donald Trump’s victory may be muddy — but that doesn’t mean CA was able to walk away with its reputation unsullied.
Among the leftover problems for the company:
- A number of its employees from Britain and elsewhere had worked on the Trump and other campaigns, potentially putting them in violation of US law as unregistered foreign agents. Michael Flynn, who was briefly Trump’s National Security Advisor before resigning over his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign, had to amend his foreign agent filing to reflect his work with CA.
- Published reports claimed that Cambridge Analytica may have used its supposed microtargeting abilities to distribute Russian propaganda while working with the Trump digital team to promote the campaign’s messaging on Facebook and Twitter.
- During the campaign, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s missing emails became an issue. Cambridge Analytica’s CEO said he had asked Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (allegedly the middleman in the release of information from Russia’s alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee) to help find the emails, apparently to help the Trump campaign. Assange said he had refused the request.
- US Special Counsel Robert Mueller, investigating possible Russian interference with the 2016 election, sought the emails of any Cambridge Analytica employees who worked in the Trump campaign.
- Published reports claimed that CA had used British and Israeli companies to gather intelligence to use in their work to elect Donald Trump.
Despite all of this dirty laundry, the American outcomes of Cambridge Analytica’s work were similar to those seen in Britain: fines and administrative decisions.
The US Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into CA’s acquisition of Facebook data, finding that Cambridge Analytica had used deceptive practices to defraud consumers by harvesting their Facebook information. CA, having gone out of business, did not respond, but its CEO and the creator of its app settled similar FTC allegations.
Facebook was fined $5 billion for its culpability in the Cambridge Analytica case and similar violations of user privacy. The company also paid $100 million to settle a separate Securities and Exchange case for misleading investors about the risks they could face for data misuse.
Facebook stock fell briefly after the scandal but recovered quickly; surveys show a longer-lasting loss of user trust. Facebook also settled third-party suits for data mishandling in the CA and other cases. Not all of the settlements have been publicly divulged, but one was for a total of $725 million.
What happened in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica case? Governments around the world enacted new laws designed to better protect social media users, and social media platforms made at least some changes to their policies, operations, and transparency.
The greatest impact has been seen in the European Union, where new regulations have dealt with the issues of social media microtargeting and the rights of users. In most parts of the world, however, microtargeting and data harvesting continue — albeit in ways other than those used by Cambridge Analytica.
That’s perhaps the “ugliest” use of data science that has become publicly known. Let’s look at one of the “best” ways that data science can help, rather than hurt, social media users.
Twicsy’s Positive Use of Data Analytics
Twicsy is a social media marketing company that has harnessed the power of data science to help clients ethically build their social media influence and importance. Twicsy allows you to boost your social media profiles by giving you the option to buy Instagram followers, Instagram likes, and Instagram comments, as well as TikTok followers and TikTok likes.
The company collects, evaluates, and analyzes public-facing data from platforms like Instagram and TikTok, helping clients determine the best approaches to finding and adding like-minded followers and encouraging engagement with their content. This authentic and organic growth is the key to boosting an account’s presence on social apps.
Twicsy’s methodology is tested and proven, and it doesn’t rely on shady methods of data harvesting that violate users’ privacy. The company’s business model relies on supplying social media followers, as well as engagements including likes, views, and comments, for the client’s content posted on social platforms.
The benefits of using this straightforward, legitimate approach to social media data are impressive.
- The increased engagement and interaction stimulate fast and strong growth in Twicsy clients’ fan bases, and the added activity often helps them turn their videos into viral sensations.
- Businesses have found that Twicsy’s ability to use publicly available data to generate powerful organic growth allows them to build communities of interested consumers, where they can effectively build brands, source leads, and sell products and services with a shockingly high return on investment.
- An enormous number of social media content creators have relied on Twicsy’s data-driven services to build their followings large enough to make them highly paid and well-known influencers on their platform of choice.
Twicsy proves that devious, clandestine, or illegal data harvesting, like the practices used by Cambridge Analytica to influence elections around the world, isn’t necessary to produce outstanding benefits for social media campaigns.
The data readily available to reputable companies can lead to virtually all of the benefits that social media users might seek — as long as those companies understand how to properly analyze the data and how to work with the platforms to provide maximum benefit.
Just as importantly, clients don’t have to spend the millions of dollars that Cambridge Analytica reportedly charged for its services. Companies like Twicsy offer their services for very affordable prices, deliver results quickly, offer comprehensive protection for all client data, and provide robust customer support and satisfaction guarantees.
To learn more about how Twicsy combines data analytics with its robust knowledge and experience, to supercharge clients’ social media presences responsibly, ethically, and effectively, click here to visit Twicsy’s modern and transparent website.
