From Donald Trump it has said he mounted a presidential campaign and ascended to the White House to hit of tweet . The real war on social networks, however, was not on Twitter, but on Facebook. A few days after Trump's surprise victory on November 8, 2016, the magazine "Wired" published an extensive report with the headline "This is how Facebook gave the presidency to Trump" , in which he explained the efforts of the Republican campaign in the social network, both to spread your message and to raise funds , a battle that decides any choice.

Since then, Facebook has been in the spotlight because of its influence on the election result: from the spreading of false news by Russian platforms with the aim of tipping the balance in favor of Trump and discrediting the American democratic system to the ability of the republican campaign to overexpose its candidate in the ads of the social network. Mark Zuckerberg , the co-founder and current CEO of Facebook, initially denied that his invention had any impact on the election result. His opinion has changed in the last year, after confirming the Russian activity in the social network and, above all, after the last scandal related to the elections: the use of personal information of users for political purposes.

In recent days, a series of articles in "The Observer" and "The New York Times" have revealed how Cambridge Analytica , a consultancy that investigates electoral preferences, had obtained the information of 50 million Facebook users and had put it in hands of the Trump campaign to disseminate individualized advertisements. Behind the signature were Steve Bannon , the totem of the American extreme right who was Trump's campaign chief and chief strategist of the White House before falling out of favor, and Rebekah and Robert Mercer , two big Republican donors. The information had been obtained by an academic researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, legitimately (through personality questionnaires to which users of the social network submitted voluntarily), but its use by Cambridge Analytica, which sold the data collected to the Trump campaign, was not allowed by Facebook.

There is no evidence that the personal data used by the Trump campaign was decisive in the election results. It is not something new either. But everything that the US president touches It is polemics, as conservative analyst Ben Shapiro has pointed out : "What for Obama was a genius, it is a scandal for Trump . " In fact, the predecessor of the New York billionaire was the great innovator in the use of personal data extracted from social networks . In his first election, in 2008, his campaign created a platform My.BarackObama.com, which encouraged its two million members to register with their Facebook data. In 2012, the machinery was much more ambitious and sophisticated, with a registry of millions of voters who could be presented with individualized information and relevant to their characteristics.

The difference between what the Obama campaign and Cambridge Analytica did for Trump is that the former accessed that personal data with the consent of the users, while the latter used it directly , without the users' or Facebook's permission.

Purchase of information

The purchase of personal data is still prior to Obama and Trump. Already in the election of the year 2000, the one that George W. Bush won by the minimum to Al Gore , there were voting consultants like Aristotle who bought personal information packages from millions of people to companies like Acxiom. The objective, like the one that is pursued with access to the data: to know the voter better, what information is relevant, what excites him, what angers him and to adapt the message as much as possible.

The biggest problem with Cambridge Analytica is not that I would have used personal information to get to know the voter better and try to influence their vote, but Facebook would allow it . Politicians will continue to try to reach the voter with maximum effectiveness, but Facebook will have to prevent the private information of its users from being used for it. Zuckerberg has acknowledged this week that the Cambride Analytica scandal is "a serious breach of our trust" and has vowed to prevent it from happening again. The decisive fall legislative elections will be your next exam.

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