Facebook Sues Analytics Company in New 'Cambridge Analytica' Case
Facebook announced on Friday that another Cambridge Analytica may have come to light.
"Today Facebook filed a lawsuit in California state court against Rankwave, a South Korean data analytics company that ran apps on the Facebook platform," the company announced, under the heading "Enforcing Our Platform Policies."
Facebook said it was investigating Rankwave’s data practices in relation to its advertising and marketing services, and that Rankwave "failed to cooperate with our efforts to verify their compliance with our policies, which we require of all developers using our platform."
Rankwave helps businesses build a Facebook authorization step into their apps so they can pass all the user data to Rankwave, which then analyzes biographic and behavioral traits to supply user contact info and ad targeting assistance to the
Rankwave's business model has echoes of Cambridge Analytica, where personality quizzes were used to build complex algorithms that targeted users and their circles of friends with highly-targeted ads. These ads were designed to shape voting behavior, amongst other things.
Facebook has accused Rankwave of using multiple apps to track and analyze comments and likes. They also have an app to track the popularity of a user's posts, calculating a 'social influence score'.
"By filing the lawsuit," Facebook said on Friday, "we are sending a message to developers that Facebook is serious about enforcing our policies, including requiring developers to cooperate with us during an investigation."
Facebook says it has already suspended apps and accounts associated with Rankwave, and the suit asks the court to enforce the basic cooperation terms that Rankwave agreed to in exchange for the opportunity to operate apps on the platform.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal is at the heart of the expected multi-billion-dollar FTC fine and the various criminal investigations taking place in the U.S.