Examine a Case: Facebook Scandal

Jiecong Chen

General Instructions
1. For each page, synthesize the reading and research by writing in complete sentences in essay format.
a. Use the green instructions in the notes below each page to focus your research and writing.
b. Write about each question, prompt, or process provided in those notes.
c. Write a full page of text with lots of detail (about 250 words).
i. Don’t generalize so much that your writing is devoid of detail.
ii. Don’t repeat yourself.
d. Cite each source by adding a hyperlink in the Title of the Article or law.
e. Do not change the template:
i. Text must be 14 point Lato left-justified type.
ii. Refrain from adding extra margins or double spacing.
iii. Do not bullet the paragraphs. Write in essay format only.
f. Add additional pages if you need more room.
When in doubt,
2. Add all sources to the Bibliography page. write to the instructor
a. Include author, year, title, publisher, and URL. for clarification using
b. Number or bullet them using the list button. the Canvas Inbox.
Historical Timeline
Upon receiving reviews on Turkopticon, a third-party
review website for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk users,
Aleksander Kogan was found to have been asking
users to fill a personality quiz through the app called
This is Your Digital Life. such statements as the app
requesting users to provide the app access to their
Facebook accounts so that they can download some of
their data, including their demographic data, their likes,
their friends list, whether their friends are mutual, and
even some of their private messages were noted (Maz,
2018). Users who reviewed Kogan’s Turkopticon
claimed that it provided Facebook with access to their
data, which was against Mechanical Turk’s privacy
policies
It was established that US Presidential
candidate Donald Trump’s campaign,
which was heavily investing in Facebook
targeted ads was helped by Cambridge
Analytica (Meredith, 2018). Mark
Turnbull, Cambridge Analytica’s managing
director, was quoted saying that his firm
was responsible for such ads as “Defeat
Crooked Hillary” on Facebook.
Facebook’s CEO testified before Senators, the
Judiciary, and Commerce Committees. In his
testimony, Zuckerberg acknowledged that
indeed there was the leakage of data from the
site, but that it was not based on a data-
sharing agreement with Logan. He also issued
an apology for the leak, and promised to have
the company enforce new privacy security
policies for its users. Domonske (2018)
reported on the various topics and issues
addressed before the committees by
Zuckerberg.

February 2014 December 2015 2016 March 2018 April 2018

Facebook first learned about Kogan’s data generation and that he had
shared Facebook user’s data with Cambridge Analytica. Zuckerberg,
Facebook’s CEO later pointed out that the social media site had banned
Kogan’s app from the platform, using the words, “It is against our policies
for developers to share data without people’s consent, so we immediately
banned Kogan’s app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and
Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly
acquired data” (Salinas, 2018). He further asserted that the two had
provided the required specification
In an expose by The Guardian and The New York Times, it was
revealed that there had been the harvesting of data by
Facebook from more than 50 million of its user’s profiles, a
number that was later revealed to have been 87 million profiles
(Meredith, 2018). This was based on a recollection of events by
Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower who was a co-founder of
the political data analytics firm. Upon this expose, the FTC
officially launched an investigation into the accusation that
Facebook had actually violated its user privacy protections.
Who did what , how, and why?
The expose on The Guardian by Hern & Cadwalladr (2018), revealed that Kogan with his This is Your Digital Life
app had collected direct messages from Facebook users at around 2013, and that he may have then handed over the
data to Cambridge Analytica without the Facebook users’ permission. This echoed the claims by the Cambridge
Analytica whisteblower, Christopher Wylie who had revealed that Kogan had given data from his app’s users to the
company. Kogan, however, refuted claims that he had not exposed these private messages away from the intended
purpose of collecting them for his Global Science Research (GSR) business purposes.
Steve Bannon, who was the chief strategist to Trump during the 2016 US presidential elections campaign, was
another person who was highly involved in the use of the user’s profiles and data to campaign for Trump. Cambridge
Analytica was, through its parent company, SCL, connected to Steve Bannon at the US State Department, which is
why the presidential campaign for Trump was linked to him before he was fired later in 2017. Even as Facebook
pointed out that it had prohibited the use of Kogan’s data by Cambridge Analytica for campaign purposes, it was
clear that the company, Steve Bannon, and Kogan, were all bad actors who exposed and used Facebook user’s
profiles and data against their consent and privacy guidelines, creating the privacy problem with Facebook at the
center of it. Considering that the Data Protection Act of the United States prohibits the exposure of such data and
profiles, therefore, the problem that was the result of these bad actors’ actions was the breach of user’s personal
data and privacy against the Act (Hern & Pegg, 2018).
Major Players
Aleksandr Kogan
It was alleged that he leaked the private information of approximately 87 million Facebook users from the US to Cambridge Analytica
when doing research as a UC Berkeley graduate using the app This is Your Digital Life in 2014 (Hern & Cadwalladr, 2018).
Christopher Wylie
He was a former employee at Cambridge Analytica, and revealed that he saw a lot that was going in during the handing over of
Facebook users’ data by his employer to Trump’s campaign team (Cadwalladr, 2018). He was a whistleblower and the first person to
reveal that there had been a misuse of users’ data by Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.
Steve Bannon
As a senior adviser to Trump during the 2016 presidential elections, he allegedly used Cambridge Analytica’s data for the campaign on
Facebook. He was linked to the data breach during the elections because he is among the founders of Cambridge Analytica, a political
consulting firm he took part in creating and which he introduced to Trump in 2016.
Alexander Nix
While Steve Bannon was the vice president and co-founder of Cambridge Analytica , Nix was the company’s CEO. He was also an
affiliate of the Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) Group, companies that were pointed out to have been at the center of the
Facebook data scandal during the 2016 presidential elections. Nix was CA’s CEO when it acquired the data from Kogan who was an
employee at the University of Cambridge, according to Wylie (Chang, 2018).
Countries Affected
United States of America
The USA was affected because it was the data of more than 50-70 million US citizens that was accessed from their Facebook profiles by
Kogan’s This is Your Digital Life when they were participating in a research for him. In Wylie’s revelation to the Observer about CA and
Steve Bannon, Trump’s key adviser during the 2016 presidential elections, the user profiles of more than 50 million US citizens were
accessed without their authorization. The profiles were said to have been targeted with personalized political advertisements by CA
during the campaign period (Cadwalladr & Graham – Harrison, 2018).
The Philippines
More than 1.2 million Filipine residents on Facebook had their user profiles accessed by Cambridge Analytica, according to a report on
Facebook’s blogpost, “An Update on Our Plans to Restrict Data Access on Facebook.” Documents accessed by Quartz also stated that
SCL helped in the rebranding of an incumbent candidate during national elections in 2015. Nix, SCL’s and CA’s CEO had been part of a
research trip during which he pointed out that technology was changing how campaigning was being done in Philippines’ National Press
Club (Horwitz, 2018).
Indonesia
Indonesia also had approximately 1.1 million of its Facebook users’ profiles accessed by Cambridge Analytica during the data breach.
SCL, the company connected to CA and the data breach between 2013 and 2016, was said to have possibly played a role during the
national elections campaign season that began in September, 2018, which is why Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and
Information Technology was threatening to block Facebook during that period in case it was established that the citizens’ had their data
unlawfully collected (Nugraha & DW, 2018).
Consequences
The scandal that involved the breach of Facebook user’s data by Cambridge Analytica through Kogan’s app This is
Your Digital Life at around 2013-2014 resulted in the access of more than 87 million Facebook users’ profiles. After
the exposure of the scandal by Wylie in 2018 on the Observer and The Guardian, the US Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) launched an inquiry into whether Facebook had violated a settlement it had made with it over user privacy
protections in 2011. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded in March 2018 in a Facebook post clarifying that
the company was looking into the breach and improving its privacy protection (Meredith, 2018). On April, 2018,
Zuckerberg testified before the Senate, where he indicated that Facebook’s users’ data had been breached, but that
it had been against its privacy protections. He apologized for it and assured the Senate that Facebook was working
to enforce further privacy policies. Facebook was fined £500,000 by the UK government for the breach, and $1.1
million by Italy for the data misuse by Cambridge Analytica (Lomas, 2019). Facebook then suspended more than
200 apps like Cambridge Analytica to prevent further data breaches, starting with MyPersonality group which was
not audited as the company investigated the breach (Grigonis, 2018).
Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections Ltd, its parent company, filed for insolvency proceedings and closed
operations in May 2018, even though some of its former employees formed a similar company meant to influence
politics, Auspex International (Allen, 2018). Overall, there are more regulations by companies like Facebook
regarding the privacy of its users’ profiles and data since the scandal.
Illustration
Description

© Facebook
Facebook released these versions of
the messages it sends to users based
on whether they had been affected
by the app “This is Your Digital Life”
which was at the center of the leak of
users’ data to Cambridge Analytica .
Analyze using an ethical theory
The Facebook Scandal during which millions of users’ profiles and data were breached and used for political reasons
beyond research by Cambridge Analytica through Kogan was a grossly unethical experiment. Kogan’s intentions for
accessing the users who had downloaded his app This is Your Digital Life were morally justified because users gave
their own permission to have their accounts and information on their friends accessed. However, his act of handing
over the data to Cambridge Analytica was unethical, as was the latters’ access of the information. Based on the
social contract theory , through which there are rules that are enforced by authorities such as the government and
privacy protections and regulations enforced by the same and by companies, Kogan, Nix and Steve Bannon, and
Trump’s campaign team led by Bannon all acted unethically and their actions are not morally justified because they
were not above the rules in accessing others’ information without their consent (Crash Course, 2016).
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