something like fifty million people all of this data ended up in this data services firm called cambridge analytical as we heard they worked for president donald trump's campaign and at the time the company was headed by steve benen who ended up working for donald trump as these top political advisor now according to a whistleblower the company harvested this dot and then created software to target voters with ads and stories what we don't know one of the many questions we don't know in this whole story is whether that had any effect on the election at all what we do know is that facebook is being heavily criticized for its reaction one of the main points is that they didn't tell the users that were affected that this happened but that really make that much of a difference will it should because facebook knew in twenty fifteen that it's dosh was being used in this way and all it did at the time was still the companies involved please delete the dot of didn't actually check up as to whether they were