Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix has been suspended by the
company's board while it conducts an investigation into comments he made regarding the firm's tactics.
The move comes shortly after the UK's Channel 4 reported on questionable strategies used by the firm, which ran parts of President
Trump's 2016 campaign. That report followed closely on the heels of news that Cambridge Analytica harvested data from 50 million Facebook users.
Channel 4 reported that it filmed several
company executives discussing the company's role in the Trump campaign. One Cambridge Analytica executive reportedly discussed using "proxy" groups, including charities and activist organizations, to
disseminate propaganda.
"We just put information into the bloodstream to the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape. And so
this stuff infiltrates the online community and expands but with no branding -- so it’s unattributable, untrackable," he reportedly said.
Nix also reportedly boasted that Cambridge
Analytica “did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting" for the Trump campaign. "We ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all
the strategy," he reportedly said.
Cambridge Analytica denies using "personality profiles" in the presidential
election. "We joined in June. There wasn't time. Building a presidential data program takes campaigns well over a year. So we focused on the core elements of a political data science program," the
company said on Twitter.
The consultancy also denies using Facebook data on Trump's behalf. "We used no data from Facebook in our models," the company tweeted. "We ran a standard political data science program with the same kind of political preference models used by other
presidential campaigns."