Your digital data or online footprint is now a commodity to be bought and sold at the 'right' price. It is indeed now a million if not a billion dollar industry. The title above may seem somewhat alarmist but if you have been opportune to watch the documentary title 'the great hack' you might likely have a contrary opinion. Quick question, what do the following items below have in common?
Project Alamo
Trump campaign
Ted Cruz campaign
Leave.eu
Brexit
The bad boys of brexit
The answer is Cambridge Analytica. It was a British political consulting firm under the SCL group. Being a political consulting firm ought not to be a villainous venture but its methods to ensuring its clients success turned out to be anything but ethical. They stood out from the pack because of how they manipulated big data.
They harnessed big data & big data analytics including but not limited to
Machine learning, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics to provide tools for the interested parties such as individuals or organisations to derive useful and actionable insights about their target audience. Their misuse of big data exposed the infringement on the data rights of individuals that could occur which were previously not possible.
In some instances big data and tools associated with it can be utilized in psychological warfare. When this is done it could serve the purpose of a weapons grade communications technique which can be used to target an entire country or a particular segment of a country. The danger this portends is that it has the potential to be used to swing public opinion or the outcomes of elections especially where the results are determined by the votes of particular group of the electorate.
Data is collected and analysed to be unleashed on the electorate as targeted ads to modify their behaviour and ultimately influence the decision they will likely make at the polls. This was exactly what Cambridge Analytica did with the The Ted Cruz and Trump Campaigns in the run up to the 2016 Presidential elections.
During the campaigns for the election, Facebook admitted providing the Trump campaign with user data. To be more specific the data was given to Cambridge Analytica. Although the Facebook founder claimed that he was unaware that Facebook staff gave the data to Cambridge Analytica during his appearance before the US Congressional hearing on allegations of data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica in which the tech giant was fingered .
Cambridge analytica execs bragged about how they had aided the Trump campaign with online campaigns to discredit his main democratic opponent in an undercover video released by Channel 4 News. They specifically mentioned a particular catch phrase which they had developed against the democratic contender and how they saturated the internet with the unbranded and untraceable ads to manipulate the voting public.
These ad campaigns were used to target the U.S. electorate based on analytics of data obtained without due consent from them. This was a clear cut case of weaponising the data of the electorate against them with the intent of influencing how they vote.
Who will be the next Cambridge Analytica, as it is only a matter of time before someone steps in to fill the void left by their demise, that is if this hasn't happened already as the potential revenue from harnessing big data has steadily increased on an annual basis.
With Blockchain based social media platforms now emerging, it is hoped that they will do a better job in handling and securing user data as well as privacy when compared to likes of Facebook et al., only time will tell if they will.
Shukran
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Спасибо
for reading.
