The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz

[Commentary] For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism “psy ops” work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality quizzes.

Cambridge Analytica also gets a look at their personality scores and, thanks to Facebook, gains access to their profiles and real names. Cambridge Analytica worked on the “Leave” side of the Brexit campaign. In the United States it takes only Republicans as clients: Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the primaries, President-elect Donald Trump in the general election. Cambridge is reportedly backed by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire and a major Republican donor; a key board member is Stephen K. Bannon, the head of Breitbart News who became Trump’s campaign chairman and is set to be his chief strategist in the White House.

[McKenzie Funk, an Open Society fellow, is a founding member of the journalism cooperative Deca.]