The bitter truth buried in recent headlines about how the political consulting company – Cambridge Analytica – used social media and messaging, primarily Facebook and WhatsApp, to try to sway voters in presidential elections in the US and Kenya is simply this: Facebook is the reason why fake news is here to stay. Various news outlets, and former Cambridge Analytica executives themselves, confirmed that the company used campaign speeches, surveys and, of course, social media and social messaging to influence Kenyans in both 2013 and 2017. The media reports also revealed that, working on behalf of US President Donald Trump’s campaign, Cambridge Analytica had got hold of data from at least 50-million Facebook users, which they sliced and diced to come up with "psychometric" profiles of American voters. The political data company’s tactics have drawn scrutiny in the past, so the surprise of these revelations came more from the "how" than the "what". The real stunner was learning how com...
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