They weren't told that their answers would become part of a psychological profile used by
a voter profiling company, Cambridge Analytica — first to assess how they might vote and second to design personalized advertising for the purpose of changing their political views or their likelihood of voting, all to favor the agenda of Cambridge Analytica's funders and clients.
That information was eventually paid for by Cambridge Analytica,
the voter profiling company that worked with the Trump campaign.
Many Facebook members reportedly have shuttered their accounts in the wake of reports that Cambridge Analytica,
a voter profiling company working...
Many Facebook members reportedly have shuttered their accounts in the wake of reports that Cambridge Analytica,
a voter profiling company working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, harvested data from 50 million users, unbeknownst to them.
Alexander Nix, the CEO of the London - based
voter profiling company Cambridge Analytica — which harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission to analyze their voter behavior — has been suspended from his job.
If President Donald Trump taps John Bolton as his next national security adviser, the former U.N. ambassador will be forced to reckon with the fate of his political empire, which includes a super PAC that has spent heavily on the services of embattled
voter profiling company Cambridge Analytica.
Alexander Nix, the CEO of the London - based
voter profiling company Cambridge Analytica — which harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission to analyze their voter behavior — has been suspended from his job.
That information was eventually paid for by Cambridge Analytica,
the voter profiling company that worked with the Trump campaign.
Not exact matches
The
company boasted it could develop psychological
profiles of consumers and
voters which was a «secret sauce» it used to sway them more effectively than traditional advertising could.
Cambridge's website describes using the
company's «unique data - rich
voter file» to build high - tech
profiles for all North Carolina
voters that were used to increase turnout and help Tillis unseat Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.
Company leaders — including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer — have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news and the disclosure over the weekend that 50 million of its user profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a voter - profiling c
Company leaders — including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer — have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news and the disclosure over the weekend that 50 million of its user
profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a
voter -
profiling companycompany.
The global firestorm over allegations that the British
company Cambridge Analytica was able to download reams of personal data from Facebook to create detailed
profiles of
voters continues to rage.
WASHINGTON — The political action committee founded by John R. Bolton, President Trump's incoming national security adviser, was one of the earliest customers of Cambridge Analytica, which it hired specifically to develop psychological
profiles of
voters with data harvested from tens of millions of Facebook
profiles, according to former Cambridge employees and
company documents.
The project is detailed in the contract as a seven step process — with Kogan's
company, GSR, generating an initial seed sample (though it does not specify how large this is here) using «online panels»; analyzing this seed training data using its own «psychometric inventories» to try to determine personality categories; the next step is Kogan's personality quiz app being deployed on Facebook to gather the full dataset from respondents and also to scrape a subset of data from their Facebook friends (here it notes: «upon consent of the respondent, the GS Technology scrapes and retains the respondent's Facebook
profile and a quantity of data on that respondent's Facebook friends»); step 4 involves the psychometric data from the seed sample, plus the Facebook
profile data and friend data all being run through proprietary modeling algorithms — which the contract specifies are based on using Facebook likes to predict personality scores, with the stated aim of predicting the «psychological, dispositional and / or attitudinal facets of each Facebook record»; this then generates a series of scores per Facebook
profile; step 6 is to match these psychometrically scored
profiles with
voter record data held by SCL — with the goal of matching (and thus scoring) at least 2M
voter records for targeting
voters across the 11 states; the final step is for matched records to be returned to SCL, which would then be in a position to craft messages to
voters based on their modeled psychometric scores.
Revelations that a
voter -
profiling company that worked Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign harvested private information from 50 million Facebook
profiles have many people wondering: What, if anything, can they do to protect their data connected to the social network?
A
voter -
profiling company was able to harvest data of 50 million Facebook
profiles even though only about 270,000 users agreed to hand over their information.
Cambridge's website says the
company's «unique data - rich
voter file» was used to build high - tech
profiles for all North Carolina
voters and increase turnout, helping Tillis unseat Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.
We should sue Cambridge Analytica to take back control of our data from the
company, which compiled complex
profiles of 50 million Americans and used them to target
voters.
Dubbed Facebook's «collapse» of public trust, the double revelation that Cambridge Analytica, ostensibly a
voter -
profiling company, collected the data of 50 million Facebook accounts without user permission, and that thousands of third - party developers built apps on Facebook's platform to gather private information has spurred international outrage.
Isikoff then dived into the controversy about Russia's role in the election and the role specifically of Cambridge Analytica, a London - based
company that uses data mining and data analysis to create so - called psychographic
profiles of
voters to predict their vote — and which Parscale had hired during the campaign.
Reports that Facebook harvested and abused users» data for political purposes emerged Friday, as the
company's former partnership with the
voter -
profiling company Cambridge Analytica was exposed.
The
company has said its «psychometric
profiles» could predict the personality and political leanings of most U.S.
voters.
Also note that
companies like Catalist and NGPVAN don't just sell the
voter file; they typically add additional data, for instance by cross-referencing
voter information with consumer databases to build up demographic
profiles of individual citizens.
Cambridge Analytica claims on its website that it's able create psychological
profiles to «effectively engage and persuade
voters using specially tailored language and visual ad combinations» that appeal to each person on an emotional level,» and that the
company has «up to 5,000 data points on over 230 million American
voters.»
But Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge Analytica and develop the
company's
voter -
profiling technology, said Lukoil showed interest in how the
company used data to tailor messaging to American
voters.
Part of the work that Cambridge Analytica performed for Bolton's super PAC was psychographic
voter targeting, which the
company claimed could
profile voters on the basis of certain characteristics.
The
company has said its «psychometric
profiles» could predict the personality and political leanings of most U.S.
voters.
But Wylie has been outspoken about how Cambridge Analytica — a
company he helped build, according to a
profile in the Guardian — planned to use the Facebook users» data and an algorithm to build «psychographic»
profiles that could be used to predict the political leanings of every potential American
voter.
EPIC said that «It has become increasingly clear that even as we are asked to give up our privacy,
companies have become ever more secretive about how they
profile and target
voters.»
The
company boasted it could develop psychological
profiles of consumers and
voters which was a «secret sauce» it used to sway them more effectively than traditional advertising could.
Kogan provided that private database, containing information about 50 million Facebook users, to the
voter -
profiling company Cambridge Analytica.
On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into how Cambridge Analytica, ostensibly a
voter -
profiling company, accessed data about 50 million Facebook users, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Christopher Wylie helped found Cambridge Analytica and develop the
company's
voter -
profiling technology.
Company leaders — including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer — have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news and the disclosure over the weekend that 50 million of its user profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a voter - profiling c
Company leaders — including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer — have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news and the disclosure over the weekend that 50 million of its user
profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a
voter -
profiling companycompany.
And now, thanks to a whistleblower and two stunning reports in the Observer and the New York Times, we know that one of those developers siphoned data on more than 50 million Facebook users and shared them with the Trump campaign's
voter targeting firm, Cambridge Analytica — a
company that has bragged it has psychological
profiles on 230 million American
voters, which it uses to target people online with emotionally precise digital messaging to influence elections.
The
company, which burst onto the American political scene in 2012, boasts of its ability to assemble so - called psychographic
profiles of American
voters based on five dominant personality traits — openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism — and to target them with uniquely crafted messages based on their unconscious biases.
The suspension of the two
companies came a day before a pair of reports in the The New York Times and The Observer about how Cambridge Analytica obtained and used the personal information of 50 million users to design
voter profiles to target political advertising during the 2016 election.
In another case, in the late stages of the November election, Schweickert said the
company acquired data on
voters who voted early — data it collected from local counties and states — and linked the information to individual Facebook
profiles.
But Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge Analytica and develop the
company's
voter -
profiling technology, said Lukoil showed interest in how the
company used data to tailor messaging to American
voters.
It claims to be able to create psychological
profiles to «effectively engage and persuade
voters using specially tailored language and visual ad combinations» that appeal to each person on an emotional level, according to its website, which also says the
company can leverage «up to 5,000 data points on over 230 million American
voters.»
The
company has said its «psychometric
profiles» could predict the personality and political leanings of most U.S.
voters.
The Observer revealed this week that the
company had harvested millions of Facebook
profiles of US
voters, in one of the tech giant's biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.
But Wylie has been outspoken about how Cambridge Analytica — a
company he helped build, according to a
profile in the Guardian — planned to use the Facebook users» data and an algorithm to build «psychographic»
profiles that could be used to predict the political leanings of every potential American
voter.
Cruz is building an aggressive
voter targeting operation, bringing in a pro-Republican
company specializing in personality
profiling that has been paid millions by Mercer - backed political committees.
Jonathan Albright, research director for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, said that the
company used psychological
profiles to appeal to
voters» negative emotions, providing just enough of a nudge that they act on them in some way, even if that meant staying home instead of voting.
The data analysis
company, which uses a massive database of consumer and demographic information to
profile and target
voters, has come under the scrutiny of congressional investigators who are examining the Trump campaign.
The
company revealed that as many as 87 million people — 30 million more people than were originally estimated — may have had their personal data misappropriated by the
voter profiling firm Cambridge Analytica and used for political influence.
The Mercer family also owns a piece of Cambridge Analytica, a data science
company that was used by the Trump campaign and has been subject to scrutiny in the United Kingdom for psychological
profiling voters using Facebook data.
In October 2013, five years before he came clean on Cambridge Analytica, the
voter -
profiling company he helped create, Wylie was pitching what may have been its sister
company.
Cambridge then blends those
profiles with commercial data and voting histories, revealing «hidden
voter trends and behavioral triggers,» according to a 2016
company brochure.