Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook has made it official early this month that his company did share details of its 87 million US users with British Political Consulting Firm Cambridge Analytica. He also testified his statement before the Congress and added that he and his company will from now on follow strict rules when it comes to protecting the privacy of users and will never-ever allow companies play with its user data in near future.
Now, a report published in ‘The Sunday Telegraph’ suggests that another popular social networking website named ‘Twitter’ also shared its user data with the political consultancy firm in 2015.
University of Cambridge former professor Aleksander Kogan who was then in-charge of Cambridge Analytica said that Twitter supported his company’s ‘Global Science Research(GSR) by supplying info related to tweets, usernames, photos, profile pictures and location data for over a 5-month period i.e between December 2014 and April 2015.
Note 1- Normally Twitter charges very heavily for sharing data of users en masse. But in this case, the info relating to the financial gains is still being maintained as a secret.
However, Kogan added that the data was used to create brand reports and survey extender tools and the info was never used against the policies of Twitter.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Cambridge Analytica said that the company did use the information shared by Twitter for political advertising. But insisted that it never participated in the GSR or any such campaign mentioned by Kogan.
Note 2- Cambridge Analytica(CA) in the name of GSR developed a Facebook app named “This is your Digital Life” that reportedly collected data from the people in the name of supporting a research program for psychologists. Around 270,000 Facebook users in America is said to have downloaded the app and gave permission to it to access data from their respective profiles including their likes and friends list. But in reality, the data was used by CA to know the pulse of US voters in the upcoming US 2016 elections.
Now news is out that Twitter also shared the data of its users in support to the campaign and this news was leaked out on last weekend to The Sunday Telegraph.
Note 3- An undercover interview of Cambridge Analytica’s suspended CEO Alexander Nix was about to be aired by Channel 4 in November 2017. But the broadcast was blocked by some top-notch politicians from the trump administration at the last minute.
Yet another article from the Sunday Telegraph which accuses Trump getting onto the presidential chair in a wrong way.
But isn’t the media reporting too much of negativity on Trump?
Aren’t the US populace getting vexed with all these reports?
Maybe we deserve a break guys!
Report something authentic and which helps in building the future of America; making it ‘Great’.
Because we are least bothered by what has happened in the past………
