FACEBOOK &

CAMBRIDGE
ANALYTICA
SCANDAL
About Cambridge
Analytica
• Cambridge Analytica is a data analytics
firm, its parent organization being
Strategic communication Laboratories.
• The firm combines multiple data
sources for profiling the voters and
eventually predict their behavior.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

 • Facebook released a
statement that CA
received user data from
Aleksandr Kogan, who
built an app which
procured the private
data of the Facebook
users in the garb of
research for psychology
• The data of the people
The Scandal who took a survey along
with their friends in
Facebook (who didn’t
take any survey) were
compromised which is
said to have an impact
on US elections and
Brexit.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

 Timeline
2016
Trump’s
2010 campaigns 20 March
Facebook 2014 heavy 2018
launches Rule changed to investment FTC 25 March 2018
open limit developers on Facebook Launches Facebook apologises
graph access to data ads enquiry publicly

2013 2015 17 March 21 March 2018

‘Thisisyourdig Ted Cruz was 2018 Facebook takes 10 April
itallife’ app is reported to The CA- responsibility of 2018
created. being Facebook the data breach Facebook
helped by scandal is testifies
Cambridge exposed. in front
Analytica of the
judiciary
 • Donald Trump, the eventual winner of 2016 US elections,
was able to achieve this by hiring CA which gave the
personal information of 87 million Facebook users.
• During the Brexit referendum a firm linked to Cambridge
Impacts Analytica received a heavy amount by the pro-leave
campaign. This was against the rules of referendum
spending rules
 • Facebook showed negligence when it comes to the most
important asset to their company, data
• The business model of Facebook works in such a way that it

Ethical encourages them to gather as much data as possible and

give it to third party.

Implications • Section 8 of Facebook’s code of conduct that employee is

authorized to access data to the extent it is required for
their job. In 2015, higher-ups shot down an employee
when this breach was raised.
 • First statement : All the companies should access and
exploit data only if the user is giving an explicit permission
to do so.
• Second statement : Making sure that customers are aware
of data collection is essential for reducing the risk of
Ethics in Data friction

Conclusion
Mining
• Third statement : All the platforms manipulating data
should be transparent in their communications with the
users.
For example, users should be able to change the privacy settings easily,
which is currently not the case of Facebook
• Concrete example : RGPD European Measures could be
extended at a worldwide scale. Having an authority to
check if companies are respecting or not the user data and
distributing fines to those which are stealing them.
 • “We have the responsibility to protect your data, and if we
can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you” – Mark
Zuckerberg on a statement on his Facebook page, few days
after the scandal was revealed.
• After the scandal of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook took 9
measures to reduce access to personal data. For example,
Facebook would alert people who have had their data
shared with suspicious third-party apps.
Mitigation • Those measures were criticized because very similar to

Steps each other and not really changing the situation

• Regularly, we find out new scandals on Facebook’s data
leak. It seems a lot of enterprises still have access to users
personal data.
• WhatsApp’s new conditions of use on data sharing with
Facebook (02/2021) has revived the debate on data
protection.
 • The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal highlights
the implications of inadequate regulation of private user
data.
• With little government supervision, Facebook had little
incentive to be proactive in their relationship with

Conclusion Cambridge Analytica

• Facebook’s negligence in following their own policies and
code of conduct was a primary factor amongst the many
unethical actions that led to this scandal.