Comparing Facebook data use by Obama, Cambridge Analytica

As news reports surfaced of Cambridge Analytica and the Donald Trump campaign, conservatives pointed to what seemed a double-standard.

On ABC’s The View, co-host Meghan McCain said former President Barack Obama was met with praise when he used similar Facebook data for his campaign, whereas Trump was met with outrage.

"It happened under Obama and it was lauded by the media as being genius," McCain said. "And now under the Trump campaign — it’s the Cambridge Analytica scandal."

"Was it the same thing?" co-host Joy Behar asked.

"Yeah," McCain said. "It was micro-targeting and data mining."

"I think it’s different, though," said co-host Sunny Hostin.

"It’s not different, though!" McCain exclaimed.

So, was it the same thing?

While the data the two campaigns had access to was largely the same, the way they accessed it, and for what purpose, was very different.

"She was making the point that the Obama re-election campaign used a similar tactic through Facebook to gain access to the personal information of millions of voters," ABC spokeswoman Lauri Hogan clarified.

The data

Under the way Facebook allowed its apps to operate between 2010 and 2015, Obama’s 2012 re-election app and the survey app used by Cambridge Analytica had access not only to their users’ profiles but their friends’ list and their biographical information.

When the user approved it, these apps could access details such as users’ and their friends’ tags, likes and demographics.

Over a million people downloaded the Obama for America app. Around 300,000 people downloaded the personality survey app that ended up sending their data to Cambridge Analytica. The number of users’ data the firm reportedly gained access to (50 million) is much higher because it includes the users’ friends. The number of user data, it follows, was much higher for the Obama campaign, too.

How it was accessed

The real divergence is in the way each campaign accessed the data.