The Cambridge Analytica and Facebook Scandal
The news has been all over the most recent social media scandal concerning Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, however, the team here at Internet Marketing Questions recognise that the information may be rather dense for the marketing newbie to understand. After all, a connection to the Trump campaign and administration is all rather confusing. Luckily we have decided to cover all the details you need to know in a simple and concise article. Read on to find out more…
The Definitions
Facebook is a popular social networking website created by Mark Zuckerburg in 2004 in order to help people around the world make meaningful connections and interactions with their friends and family. Statistics suggest that around 1.4 billion users log onto the site every single day.
On the other hand, Cambridge Analytica is a British political consulting firm that uses data analysis and data mining for the purpose of elections in order to assess and ‘change audience behaviours’. The company was started by a handful of individuals including Steve Bannon, who once worked for Donald Trump.
The Scandal
It was revealed that the social networking site allowed a researcher who worked at Cambridge Analytica to use data from over 50 million Facebook profiles. Since the data company had links with the presidential campaign of Donald Trump many have called into question whether the information was used maliciously or not. In fact, it has also raised concerns about whether the personal data that users place onto the social site is as safe as people once thought it was.
It is said that Cambridge Analytica got its data from Facebook through a Russian American researcher called Aleksandr Kogan who was working at the University of Cambridge. Kogan allegedly built a quiz app that allowed the data from everyone who took the quiz and their friends to be collected. It is wise to point out that Facebook prohibits selling data collected this way, however, Cambridge Analytica did it regardless.
Here at Internet Marketing Questions, we recognise that social media marketing plays a very important role in the entirety of internet marketing as a whole. After all, in a society where social media is so well recognised it would be folly to not take advantage of it. With this said, the privacy violations of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal has caused some people to quit the social media platform all together which suggests that social media as a marketing tool could be on a decline. What do you think? Get in contact with the IMQ team today and let us know your thoughts on whether the scandal could affect internet marketing!