Was Your Facebook Profile Misused for Trump and Brexit votes? Snowflakes.

Snowflakes on the garden table

There is an unexpected link between Cambridge and the last presidential campaign. Or rather involving Cambridge Analytica. According to an Observer expose, assisted by whistle-blower Christopher Wylie, The company had acquired access to 50 million profiles, about a third of North America's Facebook users.

This was achieved through a personality test app called thisisyourdigitallife, built by academic Aleksandr Kogan (independently of his role at Cambridge University). Users were paid and could benefit from the app in exchange for providing access to their Facebook profiles - and therefore indirectly to those of their Facebook friends. Facebook sought and believed assurances from the company that the information was only for research. However, the data was apparently being offered to clients, including very interested intelligence agencies, as a source for targeted campaigns.

Allegedly, this was recognised as political gold by Steve Bannon and Breitbart, and an opportunity for gaining sophisticated psychological and political profiles to be used for targeted political social media campaigns during the Republican presidential campaign. According to the Federal Election Commission, Trump’s campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 for than $6.2 million. Cambridge Analytica denies that the Facebook info was used.

Facebook has since withdrawn access to its services to Cambridge Analytica.

Articles available here: Reuters and The Guardian

Investigations are also being pursued in the UK to see if the information was used during the Brexit referendum campaign see Business Insider article.

You can check your Facebook activities by downloading your FB archive.
Quite amazing what you find out about what you have been involved in, fortunately no obvious link  to thisisyourdigitallife in my archive.

As previously, the Beast from the East 2 missed dumping significant snow on our region today. There were sufficient light flurries for me to be hopeful of photographing some snow flakes. Howerver, the teperature fluctuated around 0 degC, with surfaces not being quite cold enough for flakes to settle without melting till late afternoon. I then tried taking pictures with the smartphone and a 10x lens attached, with minor success. I hope that there will be more opportunities tomorrow morning.