The academic behind an app that harvested data from millions of Facebook users said Wednesday he was being scapegoated in an online privacy row that has rocked the world's biggest social network. British data firm Cambridge Analytica and Facebook are accused of improperly using the information for US President Donald Trump's election 2016 campaign. The scandal, which has seen the suspension of CA's chief executive, wiped out $60 billion of Facebook's market value since the start of the week, Bloomberg news reported Wednesday.
However, both firms have denied any wrongdoing and instead blamed the app's inventor, Aleksandr Kogan, for misusing the data. But Kogan hit back Wednesday, saying that CA had assured him his activities were above board.
"I'm being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica," he said. "We thought we were acting perfectly appropriately. We thought we were doing something that was really normal.
"We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal and within the terms of service" of Facebook. The University of Cambridge psychologist behind the personality survey This Is Your Digital Life told the BBC that around 200,000 people used his app and around 30 million US Facebook users' details were harvested.
The app's vast reach beyond its users happened by scooping up data from their friends on Facebook, which says the details were taken without its knowledge. Kogan said CA approached him to do the work, but did not know how the firm would use the personal data collected, leaving him "stunned" by the allegations against him.
Kogan said he strongly regretted not asking more questions about the work he did for CA.
"My motivation was to get a dataset I could do research on; I have never profited from this in any way personally," he added. The scandal erupted over the weekend, after a CA whistleblower said the firm was able to create psychological profiles on 50 million Facebook users via a personality prediction app developed by Kogan and downloaded by 270,000 people.
Lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic have demanded answers in the scandal, which has ratcheted up the pressure on Facebook - already under fire for allowing fake news to proliferate on its platform during the US presidential election. Kogan said he would be prepared to appear before British or US lawmakers if requested.
A Facebook whistleblower testified Wednesday that the firm turned a blind eye to what happened to its data handed to third parties. "Facebook was allowing developers to access the data of people who hadn't explicitly authorised that," said Sandy Parakilas, who worked in data protection and policy compliance for apps at the company between 2011 and 2012.
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