Video Editor: Rahul Sanpui
Cameraperson: Athar Rather/Abhay Sharma
The month of March 2018 has left an indelible red mark in Mark Zuckerberg’s report card as the whole world came to terms with how vulnerable the social media platform is.
From the data leak of almost 87 million Facebook users to India’s political parties hurling allegations at each other over using the leaked data, the whole Cambridge Analytica fiasco opened a can of worms, affecting those within Facebook’s ecosystem.
But what really happened behind the scenes? What really went down at Cambridge Analytica and how does Facebook play a role in our daily lives? The Quint adds a desi spin to the biggest controversy in recent times.
Cambridge University researcher, Aleksandr Kogan developed an application called ‘This is Your Digital Life’, which mined the data and was accessed by almost 2,70,000 users initially.
The data was shared with Cambridge Analytica to aid the presidential campaign of US president Donald Trump.
An Indian company Ovleno Business Intelligence was also roped into this mess as it was mining Facebook data to aid political campaigns for various elections (as claimed by political parties).
These revelations about the breach were brought forward by Christopher Wylie, a former employee at CA and a whistleblower. From Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the Minister of IT in India Sri Ravi Shankar Prasad, many have come out strongly against this breach and strongly condemned it.
Not long after the news about Facebook's biggest data leak broke out, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a long post on how they had 'screwed up', and admitted that Facebook had made a mistake in the Cambridge Analytica situation. He also added that steps were being taken to prevent a similar situation from being repeated.
The whole fiasco has cost the company almost $60 billion of its total market value so far! But its troubles aren't over yet. Watch this space for more.
Cast (in order of appearance):
Sarkari Facebook Babu: Cyrus John
Researcher: S Aadeetya
The Hand: Abhishek Ranjan Chaudhary
FB User 1: Jaivardhan Singh Channey
FB User 2: Erum Gour
FB User 3: Puneet Bhatia
Security Guard: Tridip Mandal
Cambridge Analytica Rep: Aaqib Raza Khan
(With inputs from Vikram Venkateshwaran)
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