Facebook in 'PR crisis mode' over Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook’s claims to be outraged over the Cambridge Analytica scandal were simply hollow words in “PR crisis mode”, the academic at the centre of the dispute has told parliament.

Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University researcher whose Facebook app, GSR, extracted the data of millions of users from the platform, said he thought it was reasonable for the social network to continue to employ his former business partner and co-founder, Joseph Chancellor, because they do not “actually think” that his previous work was problematic.

“I think they realise that their platform has been mined left and right by thousands of others and I was just the unlucky person that ended up somehow linked to the Trump campaign, and we are where we are,” Kogan told Damian Collins, the chair of the culture, media and sports select committee, in a parliamentary hearing.

“I think they realise all this, but PR is PR and they’re trying to manage the crisis, and it’s convenient to point the finger at a single entity and try to paint the picture this is a rogue agent.”

Kogan and Chancellor set up GSR in 2014, and took data from the social network for use by Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Elections. Chancellor left in 2015 to join Facebook, shortly before Kogan’s relationship with SCL ended and GSR was wound up.

Collins asked Kogan about Facebook’s response to the scandal, querying why Kogan had been attacked by the company even though his former partner continued to be employed by it.

“When Facebook’s response from their deputy general counsel describing your work as ‘a scam and a fraud’, data harvesting, and they singled you out to say that ‘you’d lied to us and violated our platform policies’, those remarks must apply to Joseph Chancellor as well,” Collins asked.

“If you want me to push on the spirit, I would agree,” Kogan replied. “I’m personally very glad that they have not moved on Joe. I think it would be petty, personally.”

Kogan also argued that his firm did not need ethics approval from Cambridge University, still his primary employer, since “there’s no real mechanism for a company to seek ethics approval for a commercial deal.

“I’ve never heard of anybody who runs a company trying to get ethics approval for a dataset whose primary function was really a commercial enterprise. Our primary deliverable here, first and foremost was the obligation in regards to SCL. Secondary purposes come later when you try and bring the work in for the university.”

Kogan admitted that, in transferring the data he had harvested from Facebook, he had acted against the specific words of its developer agreement. But, in a bizarre exchange with Labour’s Paul Farrelly, he argued that he had not broken the policy, because Facebook’s document did not amount to a policy.

“For you to break a policy it has to exist and really be their policy,” Kogan said. “But the reality is that Facebook’s policy is unlikely to be their policy.”

Farrelly asked: “What’s in black and white, do you accept that you broke the terms and conditions of Facebook as laid down in black and white?

“I do not,” Kogan replied. “I just don’t believe that’s their policy. If somebody has a document that isn’t their policy, you can’t break something that isn’t really your policy. I would agree my actions were inconsistent with the language of this document, but that’s slightly different than what I think you’re asking.”

Kogan also accused the former Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix of “total fabrication” in the latter’s evidence to parliament. Nix had claimed that GSR had not supplied Cambridge Analytica with data or information, and that none of the company’s data had come from GSR – claims that Kogan dismissed vehemently.

In written evidence submitted to the committee, Kogan also claimed that Facebook’s in-house advertising system was a more effective way of targeting individuals than using the personality data his company had collected.

“I believe the project we did makes little to no sense if the goal is to run targeted ads on Facebook,” he said. “The Facebook ads platform provides tools and capability to run targeted ads with little need for our work – 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.”