How harvested social data became psychographic targeting — the documented scandal that made surveillance capitalism concrete.
Cambridge Analytica is the case study that turned abstract privacy warnings into headlines. DOCUMENTED [Historical record]: the firm obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users (largely via a personality-quiz app that also scraped friends' data), built 'psychographic' profiles, and used them for political ad targeting; the fallout produced a record $5 billion FTC fine against Facebook and the firm's collapse in 2018. The mechanism is the lesson: your likes, shares, and quiz answers are not trivial — aggregated, they predict personality traits precisely enough to tailor persuasion to your psychological vulnerabilities. CONTESTED [Speculative]: exactly how much the targeting actually swung any given election is genuinely debated — the capability is proven, the decisive electoral impact is not. The durable takeaways: data you give away freely becomes a model of you; 'free' platforms monetize that model; and consent obtained through fine print is not meaningful consent.
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