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Facebook faces fresh questions over when it knew of data harvesting

Author: Carole Cadwalladr / Source: the Guardian

Marc Andreessen

Facebook is facing explosive new questions about when senior executives knew of Cambridge Analytica’s abuse of users’ data, one year on from when the scandal first broke, as federal prosecutors investigate claims that the social media giant has covered up the extent of its relationship with the firm.

The Observer has also learned that a Facebook board member and confidant of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg met Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, in the summer of 2016 just as the data firm started working for the Trump campaign.

Facebook has repeatedly refused to say when its senior executives, including Zuckerberg, learned of how Cambridge Analytica had used harvested data from millions of people across the world to target them with political messages without their consent. But Silicon Valley insiders have told the Observer that Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, the founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley, attended a meeting with Wylie held in Andreessen Horowitz’s office two years before he came forward as a whistleblower.

It marks the end of one of the worst weeks in Facebook’s history. News of more criminal investigations and senior executives leaving the firm was topped by the shocking revelation on Friday that a gunman who killed 49 people at prayer in New Zealand livestreamed the massacre on Facebook. In the hours that followed, Facebook and Google failed to stop the footage going viral with hundreds of thousands of people viewing the video.

But the Observer’s revelations about Facebook open up a new angle on the year-long scandal, raising questions that go right up to board level.

Individuals who attended the meeting with Wylie and Andreessen claim it was set up to learn what Cambridge Analytica was doing with Facebook’s data and how technologists could work to “fix” it. It is unclear in what capacity Andreesen Horowitz hosted and who attened the meeting but it is nonetheless a hugely embarrassing revelation for Facebook, which was revealed last week to be the subject of a criminal investigation into whether it had covered up the extent of its involvement with Cambridge Analytica.

Timeline

Cambridge Analytica

Key events in the row over the political data analytics firm

December 2015 First hint of the scandal

The Guardian reports that political data firm Cambridge Analytica was helping Ted Cruz‘s presidential campaign, suggesting the Republican candidate was using psychological data based on research into tens of millions of Facebook users in an attempt to gain an advantage over his political rivals

June 2016 Firm works with Trump campaign

Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy firm of which Steve Bannon is vice-president, starts working with Trump campaign aide Brad Parscale in San Antonio, alongside employees from Facebook and Google. Two months later, Donald Trump sacks Paul Manafort as his campaign manager and appoints Bannon. The campaign spends $6m on Cambridge Analytica’s services

17 March 2018 Wylie reveals harvest

Christopher Wylie, a co-founder of Cambridge Analytica, claims in the Observer and the New York Times that the firm used 50 million harvested Facebook profiles in a major data scandal. This number was later revised by Facebook to 87 million. Wylie claimed the data sold to Cambridge Analytica was then used to develop “psychographic” profiles of people and deliver pro-Trump material to them online

21 March 2018 Zuckerberg apologises

After four days of refusing to comment, Mark Zuckerberg publishes a Facebook post apologising for the data breach. The Facebook CEO responds to the continued fallout over the data scandal, saying: “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again”

25 March 2018 The ‘sorry’ ads

Zuckerberg takes out full-page ads in a number of British and American newspapers to apologise for a “breach…

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