Advertising in the Wake of Facebook: Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal

Advertising Name: Institution: Date: Advertising in the Wake of Facebook–Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal Historically, advertising industry has heavily relied on technology to develop effective strategies to achieve their goals. In the last decade, there has been unprecedented growth of the social media industry and more private tech companies have been collecting user’s data for various reasons. The social media industry has changed the advertising industry and it has toppled traditional media as the best platform for advertising. According to CITATION Mar17 \l 1033 (Marketing Charts, 2017), Online advertising has already overtaken TV advertising in size and the trend seems irreversible in the foreseeable future. However, some players in the media industry have started to use the new platforms to engage in unethical practices. The law hasn’t yet caught up with the pace of technological development and advancement and therefore most of these unethical practices are conducted within lawful provisions but not in the interest of the public. One of the recently unearthed case of companies collaborating with the private tech firms who have collected public data to target the public and influence their behavior was the 2016 presidential elections in the United States. How it was carried out Cambridge Analytica developed a tool that could harvest the psychographic data of Facebook users and use it to target them with messages. The app used for collecting the data was known as ‘thisisyourdigitallife’ that paid users to take a personality test but it was a mask to request the users to grant it permission to access their information. The users unknowingly allowed the app to harvest their personal information including their current location, phone numbers, messages, birthday etc. The app went on to collect over 87 million psychographic profiles of Facebook users according to CITATION CNB18 \l 1033 (CNBC, 2018). Facebook denied knowing the intentions of this app from the beginning and it claims it suspended it but it was only after the story broke. This app did not violate any of Facebook’s data or privacy policies. The data collected was used to create a virtual profile of the user and target information to them depending on their likely political inclination. The firm targeted the public in two ways; for example, if you are pro-Trump, the firm pushed messages and advertisements which painted him in the positive light and showed that indeed he was the right choice for the president. On the other hand, if you are anti-Trump, the firm used subliminal seduction by showing you the ‘bad side’ of Clinton. Mostly, it was just but fake news created and propagated by these firms. For example, they would even create ads which showed that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton was sick and could not execute the duties of presidency effectively. They used fake news and manufactured stories to paint the opponent in a bad light. Succinctly, their news feed would be flooded by pro-Trump information. Additionally, Cambridge Analytica has also been linked to pro-Brexit campaigns and Kenyan presidential campaign in 2017. The same strategy was used in Kenya and in the Brexit campaigns which showed the opponent was a danger to the countr...