CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA SCANDAL, EFFECTS ON DATA-PRIVACY IN SOCIAL MEDIA

The Cambridge Analytica data scandal has sparked a widespread privacy debate and put Facebook in the eye of a PR storm. Automatically this raises questions from an advertisers perspective. ‘Should we gear up for an audience decrease and reshuffle budget?’ Not really. No advertiser data has been affected and this is mainly an issue on user level, so Facebook already implemented actions to solidify the privacy of its users which is a benefit for advertisers too.

It was a former staff member who claimed that Cambridge Analytica mined personal information of approximately 50 million people in the US in 2014. The data were strategically used through Facebook’s API during the 2016 presidential race (in support of its eventual winner).

Even though this story was previously published in 2017, it has recently become breaking news, although it quickly evolved into a rather one-dimensional discussion without proper fact checks.