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Back in early 2014, hundreds of thousands of Facebook users gave their data over to ‘thisisyourdigitallife’: an app which they were told was for psychological research. That info pool jumped to some 50 million people when the app starting collecting data from those users’ friends.
That info was then passed on to Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm… and a company whose Vice President was Steve Bannon - the guy who would later go on to run Trump’s Campaign. By June 2016, the Trump campaign was paying Bannon’s old company millions to tell them how to target ads and win voters.
Now Christopher Wylie, one of the company’s former employees, has lifted the lid on the data analysis.
‘It was a grossly unethical experiment’ he told The Guardian, ‘because you are playing with an entire country, the psychology of a country without their consent or awareness.’
The Trump campaign claims they only used Republican Party data, while Cambridge Analytica has denied any wrongdoing.
They say the fault lies with the app maker who harvested the data. Facebook, meanwhile, is trying to rid itself of any responsibility, but lawmakers in both the United States and United Kingdom have demanded that CEO Mark Zuckerberg explain himself.
Once upon a time, a good tv ad was all the political pundits needed –but more and more, the electoral battleground is shifting onto social media. So the (pretty heavy) question is: if our Facebook profiles make it so easy for us to be manipulated to vote one way or another … does social media pose a threat to democracy?
