Facebook Advertising Following the Cambridge Analytica Scandal

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If you haven’t heard the news, a scandal is currently dominating discussions concerning Facebook. Here’s a quick run-down if you missed the news: Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm, was recently exposed by whistleblower and former employee Christopher Wylie for harvesting data for political purposes from more than 87 million Facebook users (the numbers have been climbing since the news broke, hence the varying numbers about how many were affected throughout the cited sources).

Before we wade too much into the discussion, here are two things you should know:

Whether this was a data breach is a murky subject. According to HubSpot, “While it can be argued that this personal data was used for less-than-savory purposes, one of the biggest misconceptions of this story is that it was a breach or hack of Facebook that allowed Cambridge Analytica to obtain the personal data of 50 million users. However, that’s not what tunisia country code happened.” According to Facebook VP & Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal, “the claim that this is a data breach is completely false. Aleksandr Kogan [data scientist] requested and gained access to information from users who chose to sign up to his app, and everyone involved gave their consent. People knowingly provided their information, no systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked.” The data was collected through an app called “thisisyourdigitallife,” which offered a personality test. Kogan then passed the data to Cambridge Analytica. The New York Times, however, reports that “the data Cambridge collected from profiles, a portion of which was viewed by The Times, included details on users’ identities, friend networks and ‘likes.’ Only a tiny fraction of the users had agreed to release their information to a third party.” The rest of the people who were affected were friends of those who gave the app permission to have their information.