Christopher Deason stumbled upon the psychological questionnaire on June 9, 2014. He was taking a lot of online surveys back then, each one earning him a few dollars to help pay the bills. Nothing about this one, which he saw on an online job platform, struck him as “creepy or […] Read more »
How people feel about what companies do with their data is just as important as what they know about it
It’s been an exciting week for those of us interested in what companies do with people’s data. The revelation that Cambridge Analytica got its hands on 50 million people’s Facebook data and that Facebook, at least until 2015, made this possible, enabling apps to access not only user data but […] Read more »
What The Cambridge Analytica Story Is Really About
In a special episode of FiveThirtyEight’s politics podcast, Jody Avirgan and Clare Malone are joined by Daniel Kreiss of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Kreiss studies how political campaigns use data, and he was the lead guest on our 2016 series on the history of political data. The three […] Read more »
How Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook targeting model really worked — according to the person who built it
How accurately can you be profiled online? Andrew Krasovitckii/Shutterstock.com Matthew Hindman, George Washington University The researcher whose work is at the center of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data analysis and political advertising uproar has revealed that his method worked much like the one Netflix uses to recommend movies. In an email […] Read more »
How Facebook Helps Shady Advertisers Pollute the Internet
They’d come to mingle with thousands of affiliate marketers—middlemen who buy online ad space in bulk, run their campaigns, and earn commissions for each sale they generate. … The Berlin conference was hosted by an online forum called Stack That Money, but a newcomer could be forgiven for wondering if […] Read more »
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: let this be the high-water mark for impunity
The last few days represent more than just the most recent and inevitable controversy emanating from Facebook’s beleaguered offices. The scandal over Cambridge Analytica’s participation in electoral manipulation and gross breaches of privacy have resonated more widely with users than the earlier allegations about fake news and Russian connections. On […] Read more »