The British firm has been accused of exploiting the personal data of over 50 million Facebook users to influence the US elections. But one of the controversies centers on how they collected the data and influenced the voters.
According to reports In the New York Times, Cambridge gathered personal information of voters through an app with misleading advertisements. They asked various types of questions some of which seem very simple yet influence human behavior at the same time.
The app targeted colleges students and political party leaders. They also included personality assessment questions to generate personality profiles. The app had the ability to collect data from across multiple social media platforms, capturing user behavior patterns like their likes and comments.
They had hired top-notch data scientists who figured out how to harvest and analyze vast quantities of data. They created algorithms, marketing strategies and ran political campaigns that influenced voters during the US elections.
They created a toolbox that is an impressive mix of machine learning, statistics, robust programming skills and both artificial and natural intelligence. It used to fetch details of human behavior and influence it in targeted ways.
