Facebook told CNN it is looking into ties between one of its current employees and Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data firm that worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and was suspended by Facebook on Friday.
Joseph Chancellor, now a researcher at Facebook (FB), was a director of Global Science Research, a company that provided data to Cambridge Analytica. The New York Times and The Observer newspaper in London reported Saturday that Cambridge Analytica harvested information on 50 million Facebook users.
The revelations have prompted renewed scrutiny of how Facebook was used to reach and influence voters ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.
“Joseph Chancellor is an employee of Facebook. We are looking into the situation,” a spokesperson for Facebook told CNN.
On Friday, Facebook announced it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and data scientist Aleksandr Kogan, Chancellor’s former business colleague, from using its platform while it investigates.
Facebook said in a blog post that Kogan “lied to us” and “violated” its policies in 2015 “by passing data” to a third party, including Cambridge Analytica.
The nature of Chancellor’s role as a director of Global Science Research and his knowledge of Kogan’s data collection practices are not clear. A spokesperson for Cambridge Analytica said “there was no recollection of any interactions or emails with” Chancellor.
Facebook didn’t mention Global Science Research in its blog post. But Cambridge Analytica said Saturday that it contracted the company in 2014 to “undertake a large scale research project in the United States.”
Global Science Research was incorporated in May 2014 and listed Kogan and Chancellor as directors, according to UK government records. (The records show that Global Science Research was dissolved in October 2017.)
……..
- Discussion
-
Facebook is looking into ties between one of its current employees and Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data firm that worked for Trump's presidential campaign and was suspended by the social media company Friday https://t.co/Ze5bb55O50 pic.twitter.com/ot90KuWgQH
— CNN (@CNN) March 19, 2018
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.