Mätning: Majoritet orolig för FB-påverkan på valet

Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a British political consulting firm which combines data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process. It was started in 2013 as an offshoot of the SCL Group. The company is partly owned by the family of Robert Mercer, an American hedge-fund manager who supports many politically conservative causes. The firm maintains offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C.. CEO Alexander Nix has said CA was involved in 44 US political races in 2014. In 2015 it performed data analysis services for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign. In 2016 CA worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign as well as the Leave.EU-campaign for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. CA's role in those campaigns has been controversial and is the subject of ongoing criminal investigations in both countries. Political scientists question CA's claims about the effectiveness of its methods of targeting voters. In March 2018, multiple media outlets broke news of Cambridge Analytica's business practices. The New York Times and The Observer reported on the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data breach, in which the company used for political purposes personal information acquired from Facebook, without users' permission, by an external researcher who claimed to be collecting it for academic purposes. Shortly afterwards, Channel 4 News aired undercover investigative videos showing Nix boasting about using prostitutes, bribery sting operations, and honey traps to discredit politicians on whom it conducted opposition research, and saying that the company "ran all of (Donald Trump's) digital campaign". In response to the media reports, the Information Commissioner of the UK pursued a warrant to search the company's servers. Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica from advertising on its platform, saying that it had been deceived. On March 23, 2018, the British High Court granted the Information Commissioner's Office a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica's London offices.