The former director of program development at Cambridge Analytica, Brittany Kaiser, went before a British parliament committee on Tuesday with alleged evidence that the tech company had been given exclusive access to resell user data from Breitbart — at the time run by Steve Bannon. Likewise, we now know that Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s efforts to collect Facebook data and build voter profiles, which helped with the development of Trump’s “drain the swamp” and deep state” rallying cries.
In a written statement to British Parliament, Kaiser describes the symbiotic relationship between Cambridge Analytica and Breitbart:
One of Cambridge Analytica’s competitive advantages in the US marketplace in 2016, and a key part of our pitch to Republican clients, was that we had secured exclusive rights to resell Breitbart engagement data. This meant that we had at least some access to what tens of millions of Americans were reading on Breitbart, and could feed this data into our campaign models to help predict resonant issues – and to influence behaviour. Breitbart became one of the biggest media platforms in the US in 2016, and its stories often went viral on Facebook.
Kaiser continues that she was not aware of any agreement or data sharing in relation to Breitbart London, in particular, or if U.S. data tracking tags had been set in place to collect data on what stories Brits were reading on Breitbart or other right-wing websites.
(Via The Guardian, Daily Beast)