Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The collapse of the Cambridge Analytica conspiracy theory

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix (photo: Getty)

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’.

What’s more, Denham and her office found no evidence to back up one of the key stories about CA – that it colluded with Russia to shift Brits towards Leave. Denham, in her letter to MPs outlining the findings of her investigation, says her staff uncovered no ‘additional evidence’ of Russian involvement in the referendum on the Cambridge Analytica computer servers they pored over.

There was always a whiff of desperation to the Cambridge Analytica obsession

Oh dear. It is difficult to recall the last time a theory collapsed so spectacularly. All those stories we were told about Cambridge Analytica — that it virtually puppeteered the electorate, that it was the shadowy force behind Brexit, that it cosied up to the Ruskies — have fallen apart. There is no hard evidence for these wild takes about CA.

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’.

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