An unusual survey that was connected to Facebook has appeared on internet message boards back in 2014. Many freelance workers that were bidding on “human intelligence tasks” have visited these boards. These freelancers were a part of Mechanical Turk, an online marketplace controlled by Amazon. The jobs that these “turkers” would perform were pretty repetitive, and they included digging for email addresses in search engine results or the flagging of pornographic images. These jobs received low pay but helped with issues like paying the rent.
One of the tasks posted was to complete an online survey, with a few more requirements as well. It was posted by “Global Science Research”, and they were interested only in American freelancers. Also, another requirement was that the turkers had to download a Facebook app in order to get paid. The app was supposed to “download some information about you and your network … basic demographics and likes of categories, places, famous people, etc. from you and your friends,” as Global Science Research explained.
A spokesman for Amazon said that the requestor was suspended for violating the terms of service as soon as they learned about this activity.
Even though the early Facebook had closed, exclusive networks, over the years, they led users to agree to increasingly permissive terms of service. Eventually, the designers of every app the user downloaded could see the same amount of your information as your Facebook friends, and some of the turkers noticed that the job poster Global Science Researcher was taking advantage of this. Then later, when the survey shut down, The Guardian exposed who the turkers worked for.
Turns out that behind Global Science Research was Aleksandr Kogan, one of the younger lecturers of Cambridge University. He founded Global Science Research back in 2014 because the university refused to allow him access to its own data pool. Apparently, Kogan collected the data on behalf of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), a military contractor.
SCL has a growing company called Cambridge Analytica. This company has apparently received millions of dollars by Donald Trump’s campaign and has ties to several of his officials, including Trump’s senior advisor Stephen K. Bannon. A lot of the money also came from the committees funded by billionaire Robert Mercer, who refused to comment.
Five people familiar with Kogan’s work were interviewed, but all decided to remain anonymous. Two of the sources said that Kogan had arrangements for more than 100,000 people to complete his survey and download the app. Another source claimed that Kogan obtained data from 185,000 participants and their Facebook friends. This way, over 30 million profiles were used for data harvesting.
Kogan refused to comment as well. Global Science Research’s public filings showed about 145,111 British pounds in its bank account.
Kogan’s job was to develop a new algorithm, according to a document that was signed by one of SCL’s employees. This algorithm was to be used for the “national profiling capacity of American citizens”.
Cambridge Analytica’s spokesperson, Lindsey Platts, stated that “We do not do any work with Facebook likes,” and that “The company currently has no relationship with GSR.” She then added that the company doesn’t comment on specific clients or projects.
The Guardian noticed that the company used the data harvested by tens of millions of Facebook users without their permission. Kogan denied this and stated that his surveyors collected only a couple of thousand responses. It’s known that Kogan, besides Mechanical Turk, used a data company in order to harvest the needed data. It’s not known how much of it was collected through
Mechanical Turk and how much through the data company, but all of the five sources confirmed that Kogan’s work collected the data from users that were not aware they’re a part of his study.
Alexander Nix, Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, stated that the goal was to create a “model to predict the personality of every single adult in the United States of America.”
After the Guardian’s article was published in 2015, Facebook demanded that the Global Science Research immediately deletes the data taken from Facebook users. Their policies give them the right to request this if it negatively affects the platform, and it’s believed that Kogan and SCL complied with this request. It is unknown whether the algorithm was completed and used in
Trump’s campaign, or what actually happened with all the data.
Facebook’s public statement says was that their investigation hasn’t uncovered any wrongdoings and that everything that occurred during the elections was “business as usual”. They don’t seem to consider this data collecting a serious ethical lapse. In fact, one of Kogan’s collaborators, Joseph Chancellor, is now employed by Facebook Research, and Facebook said that his work before joining has nothing to do with the work he does now. Chancellor refused to give a comment.
Cambridge Analytica revealed to have used a voters classification called OCEAN, which stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. The same model is apparently used by the Cambridge University. It’s still unknown whether OCEAN made any difference during the elections. Many claims that data analytics is the key to predicting the elections and many are also skeptical. It’s proven that analysis of Facebook likes can predict race results with 95% accuracy. Less clear, however, is if this can be used to influence users, and there are several theories on how this can be done and with what results.
Director of the Knight Center at Arizona State University, Dan Gillmor has stated that he’s skeptical of the idea that Trump campaign got the lead because of data analysis, but he believes that such techniques might be possible in the future. Trump’s circle openly admitted about using Facebook in order to influence the vote on several occasions.
After the election, Cambridge Analytica claimed that it was their massive database that helped the Trump campaign.
British government’s Information Commissioner’s Office is looking into this and other similar companies and whether they are a risk to voter’s rights. Their biggest inquiry was triggered by the possibility of similar company influencing British voters to vote on leaving the EU. Cambridge Analytica denies any role in influencing the British voters.
In the US, there is no investigation concerning this matter. It’s said that Cambridge Analytica is connected to several federal agencies and that its parent company, SCL, has a few officers near the White House.
Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, tried to address privacy concerns several years before this incident. The Beacon program, that is used to quietly funneled data between outside sites and
Facebook, does so without Facebook users being aware of it. Zuckerberg said that he regretted making Beacon an opt-out system instead of opt-in.
Then, in 2014, Facebook announces a new review process. This was done in order to ensure that the apps will only ask for data they would actually need and use. The apps were given a year to apply the new process, but by then, Global Science Research already had the data they wanted.
