Facebook data collected by Cambridge Analytica was most probably not used to help Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign, stated the academic Aleksandr Kogan, who is in the center of the data scandal surrounding the social network, CNBC informed.
The researcher at Cambridge University made the claim to U.K. lawmakers at a committee on fake news and data protection on Tuesday. Kogan’s company Global Science Research shared data on millions of Facebook users — and their friends — with Cambridge Analytica.
“I think it is unlikely,” he said of claims that Facebook data he shared with Cambridge Analytica was used to help Trump’s campaign.
Cambridge Analytica, which is backed by Republican donor Robert Mercer, initially worked for Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign but switched to help Trump’s campaign after Cruz backed out of the race.
Kogan said Cruz’s campaign team was “unhappy” with the micro-targeting product that was used by Cambridge Analytica to influence voters.
“The reason I think it’s unlikely is my understanding from talking to others who knew a bit more — because this is much after my time — but my understanding is the Ted Cruz campaign was quite unhappy with the product that SCL (Cambridge Analytica’s parent company) delivered to them.
“And also SCL at this point is under enormous pressure from Facebook to clean up their act and delete all the data. If I’m a company, I don’t know if I would risk the legal liability of Facebook suing me to keep a data set that has apparently failed with the last client it was used for.”
Kogan said that it was difficult to distinguish between SCL and Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica and Facebook were not immediately available when contacted by CNBC.
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