CASS R. SUNSTEIN: How your Facebook data ended up in the wrong hands
Offering a personality prediction, the app described itself on Facebook as 'a research app used by psychologists'
The horrendous actions by Cambridge Analytica, a voter profiling company, and Aleksander Kogan, a Russian-American researcher, raise serious questions about privacy, social media, democracy and fraud. Amidst the justified furor, one temptation should be firmly resisted: for public and private institutions to lock their data down, blocking researchers and developers from providing the many benefits that it promises – for health, safety, and democracy itself. The precise facts remain disputed, but according to reports, here’s what happened. Kogan worked as a lecturer at Cambridge University, which has a Psychometrics Centre. The Centre purports to be able to use data from Facebook (including "likes'') to ascertain people’s personality traits. Cambridge Analytica and one of its founders, Christopher Wylie, attempted to work with the Centre for purposes of vote profiling. It refused, but Kogan accepted the offer. Without disclosing his relationship to Cambridge Analytica, Kogan entered ...
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