House of cards and then some.

Data and the alleged misuse of is in the news again. The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (CA) story looks to be growing and I’m not betting anything on where it could lead. From what I can make out, a Cambridge University academic, Aleksandr Kogan, whom the media say is of Russian origin, came up with a Facebook app to pay users in their hundreds of thousands to take a physiological test, which they shared with their friends. We’ve all seen the like.

Reports say that Kogan sold the database to CA, a violation of Facebook policies according to the social media giant, the app that could be used to build physiological profiles was not for commercial use UK publications have mentioned that somewhere along the line, Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon may have been involved.

The upshot looks like, using the profiles of 50 million U.S. Facebook users, these people could have been targeted with political messages. How effective it was we can only guess at. Given how tight the U.S. election was it’s possible that this activity could have made a difference. Facebook has some serious egg on its face and at the time of writing its stock had gone south. I’ve also read that Facebook security chief, Alex Stamos is leaving, reportedly because he disagreed with how the spread of disinformation should be handled. He did apparently tweet that he was still employed. We’ll see I guess. CNBC was calling the affair “The Russian disinformation scandal.” At the time of writing Facebook stock had some US$40 billion wiped off its capital value.

The story has now moved on with the suspension of CA CEO, Alexander Nix pending investigation. Channel Four TV in the UK has broadcast secretly recorded clips of Nix saying that CA played a major role in securing the Presidency for Donald Trump, including “all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting.” In addition, Nix was said to have admitted that CA used emails with a “self destruct timer,” to make detection more difficult. Channel Four say that Nix’s comments were made to a reporter posing as a wealthy potential client.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. Is this the straw that will break the camel’s back? This is going to make a great movie someday. I really get a gut feeling now that we may be entering an end game, but I can’t see how it pans out. The end of Trump’s presidency? Facebook badly damaged or worse? Tracing back to Russia? I’ve never been a fan of those social media quiz things. I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.