Facebook fined Sh500b for scandal that swept Jubilee to power
Facebook faces a $5 billion fine by the United States regulator over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been investigating since March 2018 allegations that political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained the data of up to 87 million Facebook users.
The investigation focused on whether Facebook had violated a 2011 agreement under which it was required to clearly notify users and gain express consent to share their data.
Cambridge Analytica played a dominant role in the campaigns of President Uhuru Kenyatta the in 2013 and 2017 general elections.
Mark Turnbull, then Managing Director of Cambridge Analytica Political Global, was quoted by CNBC saying they “rebranded the entire (Jubilee) party twice, wrote their manifesto, done two rounds of 50,000 (participant) surveys,”
“Then we’d write all the speeches and we’d stage the whole thing so just about every element of his campaign,” Turnbull added.
ODM leader Raila Odinga accused the consultancy firm of tarnishing his name during the 2017 elections.
“I have been a victim of these fake news. The international community has failed to rein in them,” Mr Odinga told participants in an address at Chatham House.
“Cambridge Analytica was running a platform where anytime you opened a page you would see my picture there with very negative stories. Once the campaigns were over, you could not see those pages, making it difficult to seek legal redress.”