In this jam-packed edition of the Perpetual Notion Machine, we look into the science of Cambridge Analytica and the likelihood of more data breaches involving social media like Facebook and Twitter. Cambridge Analytica has been in the news lately for their connection in obtaining data and private personal information of over 50 million Facebook users. So, in the first half of PNM, we broadcast a clip from an episode of A Public Affair, where host Esty Dinur interviews Young Mie Kim, from UW-Madison’s Journalism and Mass Communication and the Department of Political Science, and is currently Scholar-In-Residence at Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C. They discuss some of the background into how this happened and what data was involved.
Then PNM’s Kai Brito talks with Elissa Redmiles, a PhD student in computer science at the University of Maryland. They discuss how new developments in virtual reality technology may transform social media, and could also open the door even wider to more data breaches in the future. Her research interests include security issues regarding social media, and how users can protect themselves.
The A Public Affair episode originally aired on March 23, 2018. Click on the following link to go to the show’s webpage post: A Cambridge Analytica Briefing.
UPDATE: On May 2, 2018, news broke that Cambridge Analytica will declare bankruptcy and shutdown. Here’s a New York Times article on the news.
