Cambridge Analytica And Facebook: Here's What You Need To Know (Video)

The past week's headlines were dominated by new revelations on the shadowy data analytics company Cambridge Analytica, and its use of Facebook data to influence politics, including the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum.

In case you have no time for reading but still want to catch up, here's Al Jazeera's Listening Post video, the most comprehensive summary of the scandal that I've come across so far. Clocking in at only ten minutes, the video manages to fit a lot in, featuring commentary from experts representing different disciplinary perspectives, including journalists, an academic and a civil society actor. It also develops a relevant and critical story angle. Instead of focusing predominantly on Cambridge Analytica, it centres more on Facebook's mass surveillance for profit tactics. Al Jazeera's argument is cautionary in tone: "Cambridge Analytica is only the tip of the privacy breach iceberg".

If you have more time to spare, I'd obviously advise you to go directly to the source and watch Britain’s Channel 4 exposé on Cambridge Analytica, packaged as four 15 to 20-minute-long videos. It features, among others, undercover footage showing the company executives bragging about using bribes, ex-spies, sex workers and fake news to influence elections across the world, filmed at a series of meetings, where an undercover reporter posed as a representative of a wealthy Sri Lankan seeking political influence. Together with articles by the New York Times and the Guardian's Observer, it was Channel 4's investigation that prompted a search warrant from the UK data protection watchdog and a suspension of Cambridge Analytica's chief executive Alexander Nix.