The Great Hack

Remember when Mark Zuckerberg was interrogated by 44 senators?

Believe it or not but there was a lot of relevancy with digital marketing. Long story short, it was a major political scandal in early 2018, when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a data marketing firm had harvested personal data of millions of people’s Facebook profile without their consent and used it for political advertising purposes. The company says it “uses data to change audience behaviour”.

Christopher Wylie, a former employee had only recently come forward to expose its practices. It was revealed that Cambridge Analytica was using Facebook data to stream a population of approximately 100,000 individuals that allowed them to access their friend’s and family’s data, eventually having access to the majority of America’s population.

Cambridge Analytica took that data and identified target voter groups, and designed targeted messaging to influence opinion. They knew what kinds of messaging you would be susceptible to, and where you’re going to consume that, and how many times they need to touch you with that information, in order to change how you think about something. It was a political propaganda that helped Donald Trump win the US presidency.

It is hard to swallow the reality that consumers are so willing to give information about themselves, especially when signing up for membership with retailers. Although you can’t expect that data would be used improperly against you in the near future, it should be taken with due diligence when posting personal information about yourself on the Internet. How much of yourself have you sold online? What implications did it have?