A famous case surrounding a consulting company that specialized in using data science methodologies to support political campaigns. The company declared bankruptcy in 2018 following legal and political fallout from its use of personal data obtained from roughly 90 million Facebook users. In 2018, the company became the subject of widespread criticism following reports that it purchased data from a British academic concerning the personal psychological profile of roughly 270,000 Facebook users. Due to the terms and conditions of the Facebook platform at that time, the company was able to indirectly access data from the Facebook friends of those users.6 In this manner, Cambridge Analytica was able to access a far larger pool of data concerning 87 million users—without the knowledge or consent of almost any of them. Cambridge Analytica was able to use the data points it collected to build models that allowed psychological profiling of the variety of users, including the political affinities of the user, whether they were extroverts or introverts, and how they would react to certain campaigns. Using these profile-based models, the company managed to run different campaigns suitable for different kinds of users, which allegedly influenced election choices.
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