“The collapse of the Cambridge Analytica conspiracy theory”

This is from The Spectator in the UK. I know nothing about the credibility of the U.K. Information Commission that undertook this three-year study, nor do I endorse The Spectator’s rhetoric. But I think readers will want to be aware of this report:

So there you have it. Cambridge Analytica was ‘not involved’ in the 2016 EU referendum. The digital marketing firm that Remainers love to hate did not swing the British electorate towards Leave, as we were constantly told. In the words of the Guardian, no doubt uttered through gritted teeth, Cambridge Analytica did not ‘directly misuse data to influence the Brexit referendum’.

These are the conclusions of the Information Commissioner’s extensive three-year investigation into Cambridge Analytica. Throwing a big bucket of cold water on the chattering-class belief that Cambridge Analytica stealthily and probably illegally harvested people’s online data in order to manipulate our minds and make us vote Leave, the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said yesterday that, in truth, CA was not a significant player in the referendum, ‘beyond some initial enquiries’. . . .

Indeed, the Information Commissioner’s Office concludes that CA used online data in a fairly standard way. ‘On examination’, it says, CA’s methods were ‘well-recognised processes using commonly available technology’. That was always one of the most striking things about the anti-CA hysteria of the past four years – it struck many of us that this company was only doing what other political campaigns, including Barack Obama’s, had done, in terms of tapping into online data in order to build up potential audiences for political messages.

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