META Meta Platforms Inc

By Jenny Gross 

LONDON -- The academic at the center of a controversy about the misuse of Facebook Inc.'s data played down the effectiveness of his personality-profiling technique, telling a committee of British lawmakers Tuesday that the data he compiled wasn't a useful way to target individuals with advertising.

Aleksandr Kogan, a social psychologist and lecturer at the University of Cambridge, developed an app in which respondents authorized access to their Facebook profiles and to those of their friends, allowing him to harvest data from as many as 87 million of its users.

He later shared the information with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which worked for President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign. Cambridge Analytica has acknowledged it licensed data from Mr. Kogan but said it wasn't used in the U.S. presidential race

Clients of Cambridge Analytica have said the company had trouble delivering on its claims that its personality-profiling would help politicians win votes. Mr. Kogan said the data turned out to be of zero value to the company, and his app was less effective at targeting consumers than Facebook's traditional advertising.

"The idea that this data is accurate, I would say, is scientifically ridiculous," he told a committee of U.K. lawmakers investigating fake news. "The project, quite frankly, if the goal is microtargeting using Facebook ads, makes no sense. It's not what you would do."

In a parliamentary hearing that lasted two hours, Mr. Kogan denied wrongdoing but said he should have been clearer that the information he was collecting from users might be used for political purposes. He said he created the app in part for research into how people express emotions online.

Both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have sought to shift blame to Mr. Kogan for improperly using data. Facebook has banned Mr. Kogan from the social network and deleted his profile, pending further investigation into his use of data for commercial purposes.

Mr. Kogan on Tuesday said Facebook had unfairly singled him out and denied breaking Facebook's rules, saying that the company doesn't have a valid policy for app developers.

"Fundamentally, I made a mistake by not being critical about this and trusting the advice of another company," he said, adding that Cambridge Analytica had assured him nothing he did was in violation of the network's policies.

Cambridge Analytica sold its services to prospective clients by saying it would design ads to target specific personality types. For example, it would deliver an emotional ad to someone whose personality would resonate with that type of message. Cambridge Analytica spokesman Clarence Mitchell said their personality profiling was legitimate and called the information Mr. Kogan provided useless.

The controversy, first reported by the U.K.'s Observer and the New York Times, has shone an uncomfortable spotlight on Facebook, which has sought to repair trust with regulators and members of the public in recent weeks. Damian Collins, the committee's chair, said at the hearing that he didn't believe Facebook had been clear about what it did with users' data.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 24, 2018 13:45 ET (17:45 GMT)

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