Facebook’s data disaster
Mark Zuckerberg’s social network is under mounting pressure after news broke that a shady company mined its data to affect the outcomes of elections
WHEN you look at him you struggle to join the dots. Christopher Wylie has pink hair and a nose ring and describes himself as a “gay, vegan liberal” with an interest in fashion trend forecasting. He seems harmless. Is this really the geek behind one of the biggest data breaches in internet history?
It’s a scandal that’s tarnished Facebook’s reputation, causing once faithful users to desert it in droves and its share price to tumble. People feel duped – they never dreamt the social-media giant would give conniving third parties access to their sensitive personal information and allow them to use it in any way they saw fit.
The latest crop of damning revelations has caused users to rethink the network. It might seem like an innocent space where people share random snippets about their daily lives but in the background things are going on. Data is being collected with the express purpose of devising methods to manipulate users into behaving in certain ways. And the result can change the fortunes of an entire country and shape the world.
It may sound like the plot of some farfetched science fiction movie but this is exactly what happened. By taking an innocentlooking online psychology test, hundreds of thousands of Facebook users were tricked into sharing not only their own information but also granting instant access to all their friends’ profiles. In this way more than 50 million Facebook profiles were breached.
The geeks at Cambridge Analytica, where Wylie worked, weren’t interested in finding out what colour socks people wear or what coffee they drink in the morning. They wanted to know how they were likely to vote and this treasure trove of data told them exactly that and more.
Of course they were aware they were crossing a big ethical and legal boundary – but for the CEO of the company, Alexander Nix, it was an opportunity too good to pass up. It’s thought that by using these sneaky tactics Analytica may have affected the outcome of two of the biggest elections in recent years: the British referendum in 2016 which brought about Brexit, Britain’s decision to quit the European Union; and the American presidential election in the same year which led to Donald Trump’s surprise victory.
But there was one thing Nix never took into account: that his clever sidekick Wylie (28) had a conscience. After leaving the company in 2014 the Canadian data genius watched in horror as political events unfolded. Sickened by the monster he’d helped create, Wylie decided to blow the whistle.
Now the chickens have come home to roost and Facebook is bearing the brunt of the fallout. Many users are asking the same question: how could something like this ever have been allowed to happen?
WHAT IS CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA?
On its website it claims to have supported more than 100 electoral campaigns across five continents, and says it “uses data to change audience behaviour”. But Wylie branded what the company does as “a full-service propaganda machine”.
“We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew of them and target their inner demons,” he says.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
Analytica originally used the data to help conservative investor Robert Mercer’s preferred candidate, Ted Cruz, in the Republican presidential primary. But when he fell out of the race it threw its weight behind the Trump campaign. There’s also suspicion some of the data might have been used to manipulate British people into voting for Brexit.
Going before a British parliamentary inquiry, Nix has sworn the company didn’t have access to Facebook data, but Wylie says this is untrue.
“The company itself was founded on using Facebook data,” Wylie says. “We’d know what types of messaging you’re susceptible to and where you’re going to consume that, and then how many times we’re going to have to touch you with that in order to change how you think about something.”
Although Analytica has downplayed its role in the US elections, when Nix and his colleagues were interviewed by reporters from British TV network Channel 4 – posing as businessmen interested in affecting the outcome of the Sri Lankan elections – they bragged that their digital efforts had sealed Trump’s victory.
In the interview Nix admitted many of the messages they posted on Facebook were lies aimed at putting people off voting for rival candidate Hillary Clinton.
“It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed,” he said.
He was also filmed bragging that his company did far more than just target voters – he said Analytica was willing to dig up dirt on opponents or discredit them by using Ukrainian call girls to entice them into sex scandals.
Nix has since been suspended from Analytica. Facebook’s response to the scandal? “This was a major breach of trust, and I’m really sorry this happened,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with CNN.
He said since 2014 Facebook has put policies in place to limit the amount of data made available to third parties. He’s also promised the company will investigate apps that had access to “large amounts of information” before this change and will inform all users whose data was “misused”, including people who were directly affected by the Analytica data-mining operation.
But for many it’s too little too late. Zuckerberg has been summoned to appear before an American congressional hearing to face more hard questions.
“The buck stops with him,” Republican congressman Greg Walden says.