My work was no good for targeted advertising, says researcher in Facebook scandal

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A researcher at the centre of a scandal over the alleged misuse of the data of nearly 100 million Facebook users has told the UK parliament the work he did was not useful for micro-targeted adverts that would be needed to sway an election.
Cambridge Analytica has maintained it did not use Facebook data in the Donald Trump campaign, but its now-suspended CEO boasted in secret recordings that his company was deeply involved in the race. PHOTO: AFP

LONDON (REUTERS, AFP) - The Russian-American academic who developed an app that allowed political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica (CA) to farm the data of 87 million Facebook users said on Tuesday (April 24) that the work he did was not useful for micro-targeted adverts.

Aleksandr Kogan, who teaches at Cambridge University, is at the centre of a controversy over Cambridge Analytica's (CA) use of millions of users' data without their permission after it was hired by Donald Trump for his 2016 election campaign.

Kogan said that the dataset he compiled would be of little help for targeted advertising, and that the data he obtained would not be useful for identifying individuals.

"I believe the project we did makes little to no sense if the goal is to run targeted ads on Facebook," he said in written testimony to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee to explain his relationship with CA.

"In fact, the platform's tools provide companies a far more effective pathway to target people based on their personalities than using scores from users from our work."

Facebook has said that the personal information of about 87 million users may have been improperly shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, after Kogan created a personality quiz app to collect the data.

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have blamed Kogan for alleged data misuse, but he has said that he was being made a scapegoat by the companies for the scandal. Cambridge Analytica will later address Kogan's remarks at a briefing.

Cambridge Analytica is also under scrutiny over campaigning for the 2016 referendum when Britons voted to leave the European Union.

Dr Aleksandr Kogan, a senior researcher in the university's department of psychology, claims he is being targeted by Facebook and CA, saying he did not know his app would be used in political campaigns. PHOTO: UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Kogan, a senior researcher in Cambridge University's department of psychology, claims he is being targeted by Facebook and CA, saying he did not know his app would be used in political campaigns.

Cambridge Analytica has maintained it did not use Facebook data in the Donald Trump campaign, but its now-suspended CEO boasted in secret recordings that his company was deeply involved in the race.

"I'm being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica," Kogan said last month.

"We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal and within the terms of service" of Facebook, he added.

Kogan created a personality prediction app "This Is Your Digital Life" through his commercial company Global Science Research, which offered a small financial payment in return for users filling out a personality test.

"We would collect things like their location, their gender, their birthday, their page 'likes' and similar information for their friends," he said in a recent interview with CBS News's 60 Minutes.

Facebook says it was downloaded by 270,000 people, but it also gave Kogan access to their friends, giving him a wealth of information on 87 million users, according to the social media giant's boss Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg said the figure was calculated taking the maximum number of friends that users could have had while Kogan's app was collecting data.

Kogan said that CA assured him that what he was doing was "perfectly legal and within the terms of service" of the social media giant.

He told the BBC he was "stunned" by the allegations.

"Honestly, we thought we were acting perfectly appropriately. We thought we were doing something that was really normal."

He explained that although contacts of those doing the quiz did not opt in explicitly, the practice was permitted by Facebook, and was in fact "a core feature" of the platform for years.

He claimed "tens of thousands" of apps will have taken advantage of the feature.

It was, however, not part of Facebook's terms for Kogan to transfer or sell data, although he claims that the social media giant appeared not to have a problem at the time.

"I visited their campus many times," he told 60 Minutes. "They had hired my students, I even did a consulting project with Facebook in November of 2015."

Born in Moldova and raised in Russia, before emigrating to the United States at the age of seven, Kogan studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained his doctorate at the University of Hong Kong.

He joined the University of Cambridge's Department of Psychology as a lecturer in 2012.

The scientist also goes by the name Aleksandr Spectre, which he took when he married his Singaporean bride, according to a post he made on Facebook, before he was banned from the service.

"We changed our last name when we got married, and we chose Spectre as a derivative of Spectrum," he wrote.

"We wanted to find a last name tied to light because my wife and I are both scientists and quite religious, and light is a strong symbol in both.

"We are a multi-ethnic family... and we just thought it sounded really cool!"

In 2014, Kogan established his own commercial enterprise, Global Science Research (GSR), whose clients included SCL, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica.

He has also worked with St Petersburg University, as well as reportedly receiving Russian government research grants.

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