WHAT WAS REALLY HAPPEN BETWEEN CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA AND FACEBOOK?
Since 2004, Facebook has taken hill throughout the world when it comes to Social Media. Marc Zuckerberg’s team seemed to well-manage not only their applications but also their users data. This last becomes important for them so that they keep it as the most delicate matter among all their datas. The proof is that they currently show up private/personal news first on the profil’s page. One of the reason why Facebook is more sensible to these datas and declares Cambridge Analytica to get more than 50 billions of their users informations illegally.
This declaration rises many questions to all people all over the world especially those who is involved in the issue that are americans and english ones. The question that needs to be answer will be : « what was really happen between Cambridge Analytica and Facebook ? »
As Facebook is already well-known, it deserves to know about Cambridge Analytica first to respond to this matter.
CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA’S ACTIVITIES
This company was created in 2013 by Robert Mercer. At that time, it was kept secret due to the fact that their activities related to personal data and above all to politics. The company is specialised in collecting as well as analysing data online to undertake an election campaign. They aim to advise their customers for applying communication strategies for a targetted marketing. It means that they use personal data to make their business. All their activities are online as internet is the best way to influence people and to get more results instantly within the time.
Cambridge Analytica company begins to be get off their nest during Donald Trump election because they participated entirely in the election campaign in 2016. One of their employee was working on Trump’s Campaign to help this one to get the more possible vote.
This partnership between Trump and Cambridge Analytica prompted the doubt and suspected fact to some media entities.
THE REAL FACT
New York Times and London’s Observer made an investigation some years after Trump’s election. Thay search deeply how Trump had done to win election so easily. Through their inquiries, they showed up that more than 50 billion of Facebook users’data has been obtained by Cambridge Analytica illegally. They said that it might be the means that Trump was used to get more polls.
According to them, by the mean of a third person who is Aleksandr Kogan from Global Science Research, the company begged his service to collecte these informations. It is useful to know that Aleksandr Kogan created an application of personality test for university use. The application works like this : a person go to the test (survey), he/she fills the form and responds to the test. Once they finished, at the end the application requests their Facebook account namely the access. It is such as a chain because one person may abet another one and so on and so forth. Consequently, many access will be collected. These datas will be transfer to Cambridge Analytica afterwards from Aleksandr Koga’s application.
They said also that the collected informations were been spread during Donald Trump election Campaign to catch elector’s opinions. Since the aim is to analyse data, the process of collecting these datas had been done through entertainment, adverstisment and event so that people can use it and do not have difficulties to respond to the survey.
Due to this situation, Facebook engaged specialised investigator to find the thruthfulness of this information. By the way , they admitted that Aleksandr Kogan had a legal agreement to collecte Facebook users information, however, they said that he did not maintain the platform rules by sharing the information to Cambridge Analytica. Thus, Facebook has suspended all data access to him as well as to the company Cambridge Analytica.
In the meantime, it seems to be an unsual fact that the great CEO of Facebook, Marc Zuckerberg and his trusted colleague Sheryl Sandberg remained silent although this nasty situation.
THE OUTCOME
Cambridge Analytica informed that they ignore the fact that Aleksandr Kogan has access to their platform. Moreover, they said that all data collected during that time were deleted when Facebook cancelled this application from their platform.
The accusation was on March 25th, after a deep research by their investigator it seems that Facebook were wrong. The information said by New York Times so as the one by London’s Observer did not stand up. Facebook has made an error by accepting and believing to their declarations even though they engaged an investigator to this matter.
Facebook only made their excuses last Tuesday, April 2nd. They realised that it was not true. They were obliged to organise a media conference to expose their arguments and to apologise before the whole world of these « fake news » that they should dig deeply before taking such matter.
Marc Zuckerberg has been called by European Parliament to bring explanation about the false compaint his company has made. Once again, he recognises their fault and admit it as big as it is. He does apologise twice after overhelming the truth.
Facebook has taken mesures now to update their security concerns. Marc affirmed that they will double check their politics from now on. It induces private data and they will take high this part of information as delicate as it should be. He highlighted also that the follow-up will be done systematically in order to manage their datas and above all to avoid this kind of situation to appear in the future.
It is sure Facebook will lost lots of money after this unpleasant situation but it is not really affected other users from other countries. It remains the number one among all of the social media existing all over the world.
Furthermore, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) has already appeared to regulate and protect personal data or information. In that case, all information related to a person should be declared before use. Facebook will resolve in half their problem by using it.