Not Even Cambridge Analytica Believed Its Hype
One can be forgiven for not being quite sure what to think about Channel 4’s expose on Cambridge Analytica, the political-consulting firm linked to Donald Trump and others. On Monday, the British news channel released a story based on hidden-camera videos they took during meetings with CA higher-ups, in which the officials discuss a range of skullduggery, including bribes and sexual entrapment.
That story followed paired scoops in and the British , which focused on how CA’s much-hyped system of targeting voters was premised on data that, according to a whistleblower, was obtained surreptitiously through Facebook. As the put it, CA had made big promises about what it could do, “but it did not have the data to make its new products work.” Instead, it allegedly obtained extensive data from a researcher who had gotten it from Facebook on the premise that the information was for academic purposes. The revelation has placed Facebook in in both the U.S. and Britain.
