Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have been in the headlines for past one month for all the wrong reasons. Now, as per the latest revelation, Twitter is facing flak for selling data to Cambridge Analytica-linked researcher, Aleksandr Kogan.
In a statement to The Telegraph, Twitter has confirmed that Aleksandr Kogan’s commercial enterprise had purchased one-time Twitter API access. As a result, during December 2014 and April 2015, Kogan performed a random sampling of public tweets.
After that, Twitter decided to remove Cambridge Analytica and related entities as Cambridge Analytica operated “using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices.”
It’s worth noting that unlike Facebook, Twitter claims that it didn’t find any access to private information. While this is a sigh of relief, it’s still notable as it shows the extent of Cambridge Analytica’s tentacles.
At the moment, we don’t know what was the exact usage of the data obtained from Twitter. The company has also said that Twitter is public by nature and anyone can view and search the tweets.
Again, Twitter’s case isn’t as dreading as Facebook’s but there are chances that researcher could’ve correlated the users of both platforms. In the recent times, Twitter has tightened its developer platform but further questions are bound to be asked.
What are your views on this extensive data collection by Cambridge Analytica? Let us know your thoughts in comments and keep reading Fossbytes.
