New York: Steve Bannon, former chief strategist of US President Donald Trump has said that that he did not know about Cambridge Analytica’s data mining from Facebook, said a report in the CNBC.
Bannon, who was once an executive with the firm, said that whatever happened there was between Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and “the professor” – meaning Aleksandr Kogan, who reportedly shared data harvested from his psychological test Facebook app with Cambridge Analytica.
Bannon has accused the social network giant of selling people’s data. while speaking at a conference held by the Financial Times newspaper he said, “They take your stuff for free. They sell it and monetise it for huge margins. That’s why the companies trade for such high valuations,” Bannon was quoted as saying.
“Then they write algorithms and control your life,” he added.
Cambridge Analytica, which worked with Trump’s election team, was accused of harvesting millions of Facebook profiles of US voters. The firm has allegedly been using Facebook users’ data to unfairly influence election results by psychological manipulation, entrapment techniques and fake news campaigns.
According to a report in the Guardian, Bannon later said outside the conference room that he “did not remember” being part of any scheme to buy data that came from Facebook and divert it to use for election propaganda.
He claimed that neither he nor Cambridge Analytica had anything to do with “dirty tricks” in the use of information harvested from Facebook to make computer models to sway elections.
He blamed any “dirty tricks” on Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL).
“Facebook data is for sale all over the world,” Bannon told the Guardian.
On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg while admitting the leak said that he was really sorry that it happened.
