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Posted by
Zainub Nisar April 9, 2018 -
Filed in
Arts & Culture
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839 views
Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a British firm for data mining and data analysis with a political strategy that was involved in many political campaigns including; the Donald Trump's presidential campaign as well as the Brexit.
The firm obtained data of people through an app called ‘This Is Your Digital Life’. Around 270,000 people used this app. The question which arises here is that, how did 270,000 people become 50 million? This happened in 2014 when Facebook gave this firm access to users as well as to people added as their friends (according to the information provided by Christopher Wylie, who worked with CA until 2014). Facebook tried to deal with it silently.
This firm basically observed what posts and pages people like on Facebook and what their social network activities are, to understand their personality and then targeted political advertisement to them according to their taste. Despite that, the company has been alleged to spread fake news and advertisements just to gain peoples’ interest and attention.
Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica from advertising on its platform. CA still is a subject of many ongoing criminal investigations.
Recently, some news broke out which stated that the hacking democracy – Cambridge Analytica has turned to Pakistan and went on to say that Nawaz Sharif (Pakistan’s former Prime Minister) has used this foreign firm to meddle in elections and slander judiciary. However, none of the articles provided any stout proof to support their claims.
CA turned out to be a huge threat to Facebook. In the aftermath of peoples’ personal information being exposed to CA, many users have quit Facebook.
If this exploitation of information continues to occur in the future then Facebook will inevitably face much more huge losses since this would not only result in their privacy’s being disturbed but would also be a great menace to the sovereignty of nations, especially Pakistan.
