The Controversy Between Facebook And Cambridge Analytica

The Controversy Between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: Was Facebook's Terms of Service Breached by Cambridge Analytica?

A report that was released on February 2018 by The New York Times and The Observer revealed how Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics organization, breached Facebook's terms of service that govern users and organizations who decide to use its services.

According to The New York Times and The Observer, Cambridge Analytics had fetched over 50 million Facebook's users data (profile) which it used to influence Trump's campaign. The New York Times states, "So the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission..." Thus, "The breach allowed the company to exploit

"Those changes include rewriting Facebook's terms of service and severely cutting access to the types of data third-party developers can collect from the company," states Recode.

Cambridge Analytica is denying it breached the terms of service, declaring it followed the rules governing users in the use of Facebook's service. As noted by CNBC, the company maintained it fully complied with Facebook's terms of service. "Cambridge Analytica's commercial and political divisions use social media platforms for outward marketing, delivering data-led and creative content to targeted audiences. They do not use or hold data from Facebook profiles," the firm said, as it sought to distance itself from a company it originally contracted to mine information."

The company that was tasked with mining data was Global Science Research (GSR). CNBC notes the company further states "The company, Global Science Research (GSR), was contractually committed to us to only obtain data in accordance with the U.K. Data Protection Act and to seek the informed consent of each respondent." The company further remarked that when they found out the data obtained by GSR was not in line with Facebook's terms of service, the company deleted the data it received from the said

They assert over 270,000 users willingly consented to the developer’s request to access their data. What was unbeknown to the users who agreed to the developer’s request to access their data was that their friends’ data was also harvested. Facebook notes, "In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends' data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends' data."

Kogan accessed the data legally since at that time Facebook allowed apps to access users' friends’ information. The illegality arose when Kogan mishandled the data it had gathered by handing it over to Cambridge Analytica. "Of course, critics point out that Kogan was able to do what he allegedly did because Facebook allowed app developers to request and receive access to the data of users' friends. Facebook changed that policy in 2015, prohibiting the practice," CNET