Academic dismisses claims over data from Facebook

THE CAMBRIDGE academic at the centre of a row over the use of Facebook users’ private data has dismissed claims the information could have been used to influence voters.

Dr Aleksandr Kogan, who gave the personal information of millions of Facebook users to controversial election consultancy Cambridge Analytica in 2014, told MPs that personality scores he gave to the company were “highly inaccurate” and “made little sense” for political advertising.

“The idea that this data is accurate, I would say, is scientifically ridiculous. The idea that even if you had a lot more data you could make it super accurate is also pretty silly,” he said, appearing before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee yesterday. Dr Kogan insisted that Facebook’s tools were capable of helping campaign groups send targeted advertising without the need for more specific information about people’s personalities.

In written evidence supplied to the committee before his appearance he wrote: “The Facebook ads platform provides tools and capability to run targeted ads with little need for our work – in fact, the platform’s tools provide companies a far more effective pathway to target people based on their personalities than using scores from users from our work.”

CA parent company SCL paid Dr Kogan hundreds of thousands of pounds to harvest data from Facebook using a personality survey, which he then processed to make predictions about personality under the company name Global Science Research.

Asked what the value of the work he did for SCL was, Dr Kogan replied: “Based on what we know now, nothing.”

Facebook’s chief technical officer Mike Schroepfer will give evidence to the inquiry tomorrow.