The consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which was at the center of the scandal regarding the protection of Facebook users’ private data, is closing down, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Facebook has faced a crisis of trust among users, advertisers, employees, and investors after admitting that data on approximately 87 million people, mostly from the United States, fell into the hands of Cambridge Analytica, which used it in political campaigns. According to the newspaper, the closure of the company was confirmed by Nigel Oakes, the founder of the British SCL Group, the owner of Cambridge Analytica.
Citing an unnamed source, WSJ writes that this decision was made because the company is losing clients and facing enormous legal costs in the Facebook investigation.
Following the outbreak of the scandal, several official investigations were opened in America and Europe, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologized several times for violating the privacy of users of the world’s largest social network.
Cambridge Analytica obtained data on 87 million Facebook users in 2014 through a psychological questionnaire answered by 270,000 individuals. This allowed the British company to create a valuable database before it was hired by Donald Trump’s campaign team.
Personal data is at the core of the business model of Facebook and other tech groups like Twitter and Google, as it enables better targeting of advertising, commercial, or political content.
