Cambridge Analytica Had Exclusive Rights to Breitbart Data, Says Ex-Director

A former Cambridge Analytica director has claimed that the company had exclusive access to Breitbart’s engagement data. Breitbart, the far-right news outlet formerly run by top Trump adviser Steve Bannon, allegedly gave exclusive access to Cambridge Analytica to resell data about what its users were reading. Brittany Kaiser, former director of program development at Cambridge Analytica, gave evidence to a British parliament committee about the arrangement during a hearing Tuesday. In her written statement, Kaiser revealed: “One of Cambridge Analytica’s competitive advantages in the U.S. marketplace in 2016, and a key part of our pitch to Republican clients, was that we had secured exclusive rights to resell Breitbart engagement data. This meant that we had at least some access to what tens of millions of Americans were reading on Breitbart, and could feed this data into our campaign models to help predict resonant issues—and to influence behavior. Breitbart became one of the biggest media platforms in the U.S. in 2016, and its stories often went viral on Facebook.”