Cambridge analytica

In 2008, Michal Kosinsky, a student at Cambridge University, came up with a fellow student at MyPersonality for Facebook . In the application, each user was asked to take an online test. Upon completion, the user received his "psychological portrait", and the creators - the personal data of the people surveyed. In the end, the creators of the application received all the information about thousands and millions of people. Mikhail Kosinsky begins to study the actions of subjects on Facebook : “likes” and “reposts”, as well as their gender, nationality, age and place of residence. ^[12]

In 2012, the scientist improved his model and proved that in order to determine the color of the subject’s skin, 68 Facebook likes are needed. Soon, the model he developed helped to better recognize the subject’s personality with the help of 10 studied “likes”, this made it possible to create a “psychological portrait” that made it possible to reveal all the character traits of the person being studied. When Michal Kosinsky published an article about his model, he received two calls: a complaint and a job offer. Both came from Facebook. The methods for analyzing SA data are largely based on the scientific work of Michal Kosinsky. ^{[13] [14]}

The head of the company is Alexander Nix .

Cambridge Analytica is based on the “three pillars”:

• psychological behavioral analysis based on the "model of the ocean";
• Learning Big Data
• targeted advertising.

In modern psychology, the standard is the so-called “ocean method” (spelled OCEAN , anagram of five dimensions in English). In the 1980s, two psychologists proved that each character trait can be measured using five dimensions. This is the so-called “Big Five” : openness (how much are you ready for a new one?), Honesty (how much are you a perfectionist ?), Extraversion (how do you feel about society?), Goodwill (how friendly and willing to cooperate?) And neuroticism ( how easy it is to get you crazy?) Based on these measurements, you can accurately understand what kind of person you are dealing with, what are your desires and fears, and finally, how they can behave. ^[15]

However, a significant problem arises here: for this type of personality research, a large amount of information about a person (subject) is needed, a lot of testing must be done according to the type of question-answer.

Cambridge Analytica uses the Big Data development, which was created by Michal Kosinsky, a learned psychologist from Cambridge English. This is a system of analysis of the “trace” left by any user in the social. networks and the Internet.

And the third whale on which the success of the company of Alexander Nyx rests is targeted advertising. In form and content it is a product obtained by synthesis of the first two methods. that is, having learned everything about users, having studied his preferences, having become acquainted with his data, an address message will be sent to him with the information to which he will respond as necessary. ^[15]

In the European arena, Cambridge Analytica also managed to win a major victory - convinced the UK population to vote in a referendum for leaving the EU . ^[sixteen]

For three years, Cambridge Analytica has worked in the United States in 44 elections of various significance levels. However, their name only became known in 2016 in connection with the election campaign of Ted Cruise, a Republican candidate for the United States. Thanks to Cambridge Analytica and their promotion technology, for some time he could compete on equal terms with other candidates. After Ted Cruz dropped out of the Republican Party presidential election in May 2016, Robert Mercer (sponsor of CA) began supporting Donald Trump. ^{[17] [18]} by investing $ 15 million. ^[15]

In March 2018, British Channel 4 released an investigation film that showed evidence that the company was involved in interfering in more than 200 elections around the world. A television journalist posed as a client, allegedly seeking to influence the election results in Sri Lanka, and held a series of meetings with Cambridge Analytica employees in London hotels from November 2017 to January 2018. During one of the conversations, the head of the company, Alexander Nix, admitted that his organization interfered in more than 200 elections in various parts of the world, including countries such as Argentina , Kenya , Nigeria and the Czech Republic : “We offered the candidate a large sum to finance his election campaign in exchange for land, for example, we recorded it on a video, and then washed out our person’s face and posted it on the Internet. ” In addition, Knicks said that in order to obtain compromising material, Cambridge Analytica sent prostitutes to the candidates' homes. Along with Knicks, Channel 4 journalist met with Managing Director Mark Turnbull and data expert Alex Tyler. Turnbull said that the company's employees were posting on social networks and on individual sites and compromising information about the candidates. At the request of a client, Cambridge Analytica could conduct its operations on behalf of supposedly “tourists” or “students who carry out academic work at the university” for conspiracy. In turn, a company representative confirmed the facts of meetings of company employees, but at the same time said that what they said was misunderstood. And in the text published on the company’s website the following was stated: “An assessment of legality and reputation risks is of utmost importance to us, we regularly meet with prospective clients to determine unethical and illegal intentions. Two senior Cambridge Analytica executives joked about these issues and actively tried to get the client to reveal their intentions. They left the meeting with serious concerns and never met him again. ” And Knicks declared his deep regret that he agreed to participate in these meetings, and also claims that Cambridge Analytica, as it does not provide false information, does not resort to bribes and does not send prostitutes to anyone. ^[19] .

Earlier in the media it was indicated that Cambridge Analytica, through the development of an algorithm for analyzing the political preferences of voters, was able to collect personal data from users of the social network Facebook , covering a total of more than 50 million people. According to former employees of the company, this algorithm would have an impact on the political preferences of users by sending them political ads . According to a statement by Facebook representatives, in 2015, psychology professor at Cambridge University Alexander Kogan created an application on the platform of this social network, using which Cambridge Analytica sent a large amount of personal data of users. In turn, Facebook made a request to the company and Kogan collaborating with her to delete the data. However, after Facebook found out that not all data was deleted, it imposed a lock on the application on the Cambridge Analytica account ^{[19] [20] [21]}

• Billion Dollar Ban // Euronews
• UK wants to search Cambridge Analytica // RIA Novosti
• Regulators of the USA and Great Britain will check Facebook because of scandal with Cambridge Analytica // Interfax
• How Trump consultants used Facebook data on millions of people // InoSMI.ru , translation from The New York Times
• Cambridge Analytica suspected of interfering in elections around the world // Radio Liberty
• Facebook data leak: what does Cambridge Analytica and Alex Kogan have to do with // Deutsche Welle