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I always swing back and forth over the CA debacle. On the one hand it seems believable. On the other, it sounds like a bunch of ad guys pitching their product.
At the heart of it though you do have the illegal and immoral use of person data.
hugo7-
With strategies copied from secret agencies/long use government propaganda, I am not too happy about their free run. Even if this didn't swing Brexit, what they learned is useful.
Oh, they were also involved in a dictatorship somewhere.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-43476762In any case, their use of data for political gains w/o telling anybody is very clear cut.
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I err on the side of 'ad guys pitching', but do think the polarising messages neatly dropped into the most relevant / excitable crowd, then optimised, is guaranteed to shift it from 'another ad ignored' to 'ooh, let me share this' - which is where they probably had some sort of impact clogging news feeds.
And, to @JWestland 's point, the complete lack of factual accountability for any of the content allows them to be even more 'appealing'.
JWestland
lookitsluke
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/07/ftc_cambridge_analytica_ruling_facebook/
The US Federal Trade Commission has issued what looks to be a largely symbolic ruling against the remnants of data-harvesting marketers Cambridge Analytica.
In a unanimous 5-0 ruling (PDF) issued on Friday, the trade body declared that the defunct British marketing intelligence operation ran afoul of laws against deceptive business practices and was in violation of the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework.
Horse, stabledoor, bolted...