How Cambridge Analytica used mass data farming to influence Brexit

Whichever side you are on, there is no arguing with the fact that the 2016 Brexit referendum completely and utterly upturned UK politics, to the point where it seems as though things can never be quite the same again. Whether you want a no deal Brexit, Brexit deal, or none of it; there is no getting away from the fact that the UK’s political landscape has had a huge and energy expending shakeup.

It can be tempting to place the blame squarely on political figures like Nigel Farage or Dominic Cummings, but in reality the Brexit vote was massively influenced by something we’re not fans of here at Winzum – mass data farming. We said as much in our article here [The scary world of 21st century online data farming], so give it a read.

It all comes down to a little known company called Cambridge Analytica, who were exposed a few years ago by the Guardian for running a very targeted advertisement campaign aimed at voters sitting on the fence. The Brexit latest can often get infuriating to read, so take some time out and explore how one of the biggest and potentially most damaging political decisions of the 21st century so far came to be.

Who was Cambridge Analytica?

Cambridge Analytica were a shadowy UK based company who were owned by several of the Conservative Party’s richest political donors, and also counted famously right-wing US figures such as Steve Bannon too. They were established in 2013, and rundown operations by 2018, in this time helping to influence the result of various political elections around the world.

This was done through the farming of personal data, predominantly through Facebook. Using and analysing data from millions of individuals, they managed to create accurate user profile groups based on their online behaviour, thereby targeting groups of people who were deemed the most susceptible to various pieces of propaganda and fake news.

How did Cambridge Analytica influence the Brexit result?

In regards to the Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica were pretty instrumental in helping the pro-Brexit forces get their message across to the people that most needed to hear it. Their data farming allowed Leave.EU to send out millions of targeted adverts on Facebook, for example, which would have had a major affect on the general public’s voting intentions.

As Christoper Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, said himself - “If you target a specific amount of people with billions of adverts, this can be enough to win over a sufficient amount of voters”.

Cambridge Analytica: Legitimate or illegitimate?

The question of whether Cambridge Analytica’s behaviour during the Brexit referendum was legitimate or illegitimate is a tricky one, and the answer is generally in line with each person’s political bias. In essence it isn’t illegal to create detailed user profiles from their Facebook behaviour, however many people have argued that the way Cambridge Analytica obtained this information was outside of the law.

Furthermore, the information being sent out in the targeted Brexit adverts was often fake, or bending the truth at the best. Leave.EU also spent a lot more advertising money than is permitted, but managed to hide it through a network of subsidiary companies based in other countries. To put it bluntly, something stinks here.