January 25, 2021

The Cambridge Analytica Controversy: A Privacy Tipping Point

How did Cambridge Analytica collect data of millions of Facebook users? Dan Arel breaks what happened between Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

Dan Arel is a privacy and digital rights activist, founder and curator of ThinkPrivacy.ch, as well as an award-winning journalist, and best-selling author. His work has appeared in the Huff Post, OpenSource, Hacker Noon, Time Magazine, and more. You can follow him on Twitter @danarel.

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There are some moments that change the paradigm of society forever. For instance, the invention of the personal computer. Or, internet access in our homes. Together, these two would come to change almost everything about the world we lived in. This is the age we live in now, one where the internet connects all things, our friendships, our devices, our cars, even our homes. In other words, almost everything about our lives today connects to the internet somehow.

Inside of that new world, we also see moments that have shaped us. One moment in particular, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, changed how millions of people think about privacy, what they are sharing online, and how that practice may be impacting their lives.

The truth about Cambridge Analytica

For decades we have known that companies such as Google, Facebook, and others collect data on us to serve ads. Or, in their words, to provide us with a more personalized user experience. At this surface level, many people were okay with that. Searching for a vacuum cleaner and seeing ads for those around the web after wasn’t an alarming experience.

However, while some were talking about the possible evils of such technology, the majority of people paid little attention. It was during the 2016 US presidential election that some of those evils were realized. A company called Cambridge Analytica was discovered to have illegally acquired user data of millions of users through Facebook and sold them to political campaigns, including the campaign of then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

The data acquired was used to build psychological profiles of potential voters. Used by the Trump campaign (and others around the world), it micro-targeted users with specific messages designed to compel likely voters.

How did Cambridge Analytica use Facebook data?

The scope of the scandal was brought to light in 2018. The Guardian and New York Times published bombshell articles on just what took place between the company and political campaigns. And, that scope was nearly unbelievable. 87 million Facebook users, 50 million of which were in the US alone, were exposed through a third-party app called thisisyourdigitallife.

The app claimed to be for academic use which is why when Facebook saw millions upon millions of user accounts being accessed, they turned a blind eye. The app was able to gather info not only from those who used the app, but also each users friends. This made the scope of the breach even larger, eventually landing Facebook in hot water with the US government, further throwing this scandal into the national spotlight when CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to defend Facebook’s role in the breach to Congress.

It was then that a national conversation on privacy and how much about our lives can be found online was started. With that, people started thinking about how this information could be used to manipulate us. Worse than simple manipulation, Christopher Wylie, the brave whistleblower who exposed the scope of these Facebook leaks and what Cambridge Analytica was capable of doing, expressed that what the company did was “worse than bullying.”

“Because people don’t necessarily know it’s being done to them,” he told The Guardian. “At least bullying respects the agency of people because they know. So it’s worse, because if you do not respect the agency of people, anything that you’re doing after that point is not conducive to a democracy. And fundamentally, information warfare is not conducive to democracy.”

Reminding the world why privacy is important

It was this leak that inspired the creation of ThinkPrivacy, the online privacy resource I run. I saw a need for easy-to-use, easy-to-access privacy focused resources and apps. With these, internet users can enjoy the internet and everything it offers while being in control of their data. For some, it’s not about stopping all data collection. It’s about limiting what is available and being the owner of that information. And for others, it’s about coming as close to absolute privacy as possible.

For most people in the US and around the world, it was an awakening. They began to understand that what they do online might be used in an attempt to manipulate their behavior. If this one company they had never heard of could do it, what can these multinational corporations with millions, or even billions of users do?

Thanks to Wylie’s bravery, he joins the ranks of those like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning in exposing massive breaches of privacy by both our government and private corporations. It is because of people like this that privacy is now taking on a national conversation and changing how people use the internet.

The revelations also forced larger companies to answer for their privacy violations and take privacy more seriously. Also, it sparked laws not only in the US, but around the globe, that put privacy rights in the hands of users rather than corporations.

People are now becoming more aware of search engine alternatives such as Startpage that put privacy before profit. And, social media alternatives such as Mastodon which allow people around the globe to communicate and have social interactions online without compromising their personal information.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Startpage.