This article takes a look at the latest scandal that has Donald Trump through the establishment Cambridge Analytica (CA). This is a British firm which uses data to influence and change audience behavior. CA commercial focuses on redefining the relationship between data and marketing by finding customers and moving them into action through their ‘data-driven marketing’ techniques. This is done through analyzing the data collected on individuals and behavioral science to understand every individual. While CA Political focuses on finding voters and moving them to action by redefining the relationship between data and campaigns through their ‘data-driven campaigns’. CA Political has more than 25 years experience, has supported more than a hundred campaigns across five continents.
During Donald Trump’s campaign, CA harvested and used personal data from more than 50 million people’s Facebook accounts, without permission in order to specifically target them with political advertising based on their psychological profiles built/ generated from the information harvested.
Facebook has known about this since 2015 but it was all swept under the rug , also prior to this the organisation had received some warnings about its data security policies which were left unaddressed. Facebook only reacted to this after this scandal broke by firing the Cambridge university researcher who was responsible for harvesting this data. As a result Facebook has and still stands to lose billions of dollars in the stock market- investors are concerned and wary, and there is a #deleteFacebook movement.
In conclusion an abuse of power took place and that resulted in people’s privacy being violated which is scary and a cause for concern. Every one has the right to privacy and now people can’t even use their phones without thinking twice – asking themselves if someone could be listening in to the conversation or reading the messages. Everyone deserves and has the right to privacy and to feeling safe and secure especially in their own homes.
https://www.ft.com/content/bee3298c-e304-11e6-9645-c9357a75844a
https://ca-commercial.com/news/did-donalds-data-trump-hillary
Cambridgeanalytica.org. (2018). Cambridge Analytica – Data drives all that we do.. [online] Available at: https://cambridgeanalytica.org/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2018].
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