After Facebook Row, Now Twitter in Question! Reports Suggest Micro-Blogging Platform Sold Data to Cambridge Analytica

Ever since the Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal came into light, Facebook – a leading social networking platform had always been under the scanner. Impacting the social media website in every possible manner, it doesn’t leave other social network platforms untouched. Another name in question is Twitter wherein is believed that the micro-blogging platform has sold public data access to Cambridge University academic. See More: Facebook Stops Third-Party Apps from Stealing Users Data

Aleksandr Kogan’s personality quiz was harvested on Facebook to gather information which was later used by Cambridge Analytica. He later established his own commercial enterprise - Global Science Research (GSR) that collected without their consent.

Twitter stated in a statement that GSR accessed random sample of public tweets in the year 2015. The one-time API access to the tweets were given for a period in between December 2014 and April 2015.

However, it is still not clear what GSR and Kogan did with the information even though the access window was for a limited period. Various reports mention that the data was accessed for studying general sentiments at that very particular time in spite of targeted campaign. Read More: Facebook Rolls out Recharge Feature: Pre-Paid Mobile Users in India Can Pay Online Via FB

Twitter stated in a statement that, "In 2015, GSR did have access to a random sample of public tweets from a five-month period from December 2014 to April 2015". It also mentioned further that, "Based on the recent reports, we conducted our own internal review and did not find any access to private data about people who use Twitter."

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 30, 2018 01:40 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).