Personality Profile or Psychographic is Driven Through Data
Won’t you be shocked if an anonymous person comes with what’s inside your head?
Plainly speaking, you would be shocked. This is what Cambridge Analytica (CA) did. It’s basically a data mining company that sees data from the cognitive lens of an experienced analyst.
It got inside the head of roughly 7 million people during the US election campaign in 2016. Around one and half billion digital ads became a game changer for Donald Trump.
How did CA make it happened?
Let’s get to know it from the scratch.
How did Cambridge Analytica Mine Data?
As aforesaid, the CA shocked the world with the win of Donald Trump in the US presidential election. What it actually did was data mining. It churned out the most relevant information from millions of voters’ personal records in the US. And then, what happened was in front of all.
It cleverly played with the card of psychological profiling. The CEO of CA, Alexander Nix, many-a-times boasted publicly about his illegal hacks to create an opinion. He revealed the modus operandi of his work wherein the data mining emerged as a key process. He operates in New York, London and Washington. But, his data mining outsourcing in 44 countries, including India, manipulates the voter’s opinion in favour of his client. His target remains the same-that is to implant the positive image of his client in the mind of the target audience.
Now, a question of how it did so successfully might be ticking in your mind. I’ve researched over it and finally, drafted in the next section of this article.
How did Cambridge Analytica (CA) create psychology through outsourced data?
At the core, Alexandr Kogan was the protagonist (lead), who sourced the CA scam. However, what he did was explicitly legal. Yet, exploiting personal information for commercial proposition without any consent of the data subject is a crime. (A data subject is an individual who is the subject or source of the personal information).
In simple words, if you outsource data from someone without any consent of the ones whom that data belong to, then you’re a defaulter. This is what the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) states. Unfortunately, this regulation came into effect this year (2018) on May 25. But the scandal dated back to 2015.
The CA scandal grounded up when Kogan, a scholar, sold an app-driven data to this data mining company. His app-thisisyourdigitallife, extracted sensitive information as where the data subject locates, what it likes and also what its public profile is. Gradually, he got 50 million FB users’ records. Later, he sold those records to the Cambridge Analytica. Consequently, such a huge population of voters compromised its data.
The data mining firm used psychological techniques to change people’s thoughts and their behavior. It had the data to build up campaigns while targeting the technique called psychographics. It manipulated the public opinion of his clients while twisting and turning the statement of the opposition leaders.
“Psychographics create a personality. The latter derives behavior. And, behavior obviously influences how you vote”- this is what the CEO of the miscreant company explained about psychographics. This is what it used to do with the collected data.
What’s the CA Scandal?
If you thoroughly read the above mentioned detail, you would notice that what it did was not illegitimate. It explicitly was lawful. I mean deriving psychographics through outsourced data entry is absolutely an ethical practice.
This data miner openly announced that it has outsourced data from the news channels, magazines and apps. The outsourcing data entry from India, the US, the UK or any other country is absolutely legal. But, if you keep the data subject in the dark over what you’re likely to do about its data, then definitely, you’re a culprit.
The CA scam violated the right to privacy of millions of data subjects in the US. However, its client Donald Trump, as presumed by the CA, came in the good books of the US citizens. As a result, he won the presidential election.
What implications did arise via this scam?
If you think it’s just a violation of the right to privacy, give a second thought to this idea. It’s not just privacy that is at stake, but also it is the safety of citizens.
Assume what will happen if a hacker gets an access of your credit card details. Won’t he use it for extortion? Probably, you won’t be secure. What’s the guarantee that he won’t sell or pass it to other miscreants without your knowledge & consent?
It’s the violation of democracy. When you’re targeted with psychographic data, your opinion doesn’t remain organic. It implies that your behavior is a diplomatic manipulation. Don’t you have a right to choose who is honest genuinely?
What if someone poses a criminal like an honest public figure? Since your psychology is cleverly molded by depicting the truth partially via ads and social messages, you will naturally find that criminal a virtual one. It’s critically a damn serious issue. Public opinion should be genuine & organic. It should be built on facts rather than the fake news.
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