Facebook Says That it’s Suspended ‘Tens of Thousands’ of Apps in Post-Cambridge Analytica Investigation
Facebook Says That it’s Suspended ‘Tens of Thousands’ of Apps in Post-Cambridge Analytica Investigation
Early last year, when the Cambridge Analytica scandal first broke, Facebook announced a full review of every app which could have possibly been granted the same data access that Cambridge Analytica had, in order to ensure that it plugged all the loopholes and addressed all the security issues which had enabled CA to essentially weaponize Facebook’s personal data insights for political gain.
This week, Facebook has provided an update on the state of this investigation, which again underlines the scope of the issue.
As per Facebook:
“Our App Developer Investigation is by no means finished. But there is meaningful progress to report so far. To date, this investigation has addressed millions of apps. Of those, tens of thousands have been suspended for a variety of reasons while we continue to investigate.”
‘Tens of thousands’ is a lot, but that’s also not surprising, given the way in which Facebook’s developer system had been structured before The Social Network implemented security changes back in 2014.
As a refresher, Cambridge Analytica, under the guise of academic research, gained access to Facebook’s massive database of user insights, which it then used to build a psychological profiling system for voters in the US and UK (and potentially other nations). With this, CA was then able to formulate political advertising which would work to each individual’s personal psychological leanings, playing on their fears and stoking division, in order to influence the outcomes of elections.
