Here is a brief background: Researcher Aleksandr Kogan obtained Facebook data without user consent and subsequently sold it to Cambridge for analysis. Kogan also visited some of Twitter's data.
Twitter confirmed over the weekend that Kogan received public tweets from the end of 2014 to the beginning of 2015, but stated that no 'private' data was accessed.
The following is the company's statement: 'Based on recent reports, we conducted an internal review and did not find that the user's personal data on Twitter was accessed by others. Unlike many other services, Twitter is essentially public. People are public on our platform. To speak, you can browse and search for public Tweets. During the five months from December 2014 to April 2015, GSR did use a one-time API to extract public tweets immediately.
This is actually not a big problem, because the sale of public tweets is also within the scope of Twitter's business. But on Cambridge's analysis of this matter, Twitter's moratorium on the latter’s advertising campaign is really intriguing.
'Twitter has made a policy decision to suspend advertising for all accounts owned and operated by Cambridge Analytics,' the company spokesperson said. 'The decision is based on our belief that there is an inherent relationship between the business model used by Cambridge Analytics and Twitter's advertising practice. Conflict. '
It is unclear as to how Cambridge analysis violates Twitter's policies.
Cambridge analysis stated that the company has never received any Twitter data from Kogan or its research company GSR.