What happened to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook data theft case
India TodayOn Friday, a report in an international daily, Wall Street Journal, alleged that Facebook was biased in its functioning in India as it ignored its hate speech policy and allowed anti-Muslim posts on its platform. The uproar over Facebook and Cambridge Analytica started in early 2018 when few reports suggested that Facebook data of Indian users was ‘stolen’ to influence the elections. However, two days later, Facebook informed the government, “Data of estimated 562,455 Indians may have been accessed by Cambridge Analytica through installations of the app developed by GSR and installed by Indians.” Whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who first exposed that Cambridge Analytica was gathering data from Facebook, had told a British parliamentary committee in 2018 that the firm worked extensively in India. CBI is also probing if the “stolen” data of lakhs of Indians was used by Cambridge Analytica to influence voters towards a ‘particular party’. Later, on March 13, 2019, the Central Bureau of Investigation revealed that they have received a response from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica in the alleged data theft case.