Another Silicon Valley Mistake: Clicking ‘Accidentally’ Gave Democratic Campaigners Access to Republican Voter Data

Social media giant Snap has reportedly made a “mistake” by giving top Democratic campaign and party committees access to large amounts of Republican voter data, allowing them to tailor their ad hoc announcements.

Axios reports that social media giant Snap claims it made a mistake by allowing top Democratic campaign and party committees to tap into a large store of Republican voter data, allowing them to hone and tailor their ad hoc announcements.

Snap said it’s working to fix the issue and prevent it from happening again. However, the situation reveals weaknesses in Snap’s internal systems and exposure to a large amount of voter data.

At Snap and other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, political advertisers can target their ads to specific user segments, and they often rely on data brokers to gather information about these interests, actions, spending habits, and various other voter metrics.

Snap’s archive of political ads shows that several Democratic and progressive groups are able to target their ads using data powered by Republican firm i360. The firm is linked to the political network founded by billionaire Charles Koch.

This data was used to target Snapchat ads by groups like the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senator Campaign Committee, the Parenting Planning Action Fund, and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’s governor’s campaign.

i360 and its democratic counterpart, TargetSmart, make the data available to all advertisers on the platform, but restrict access to a pre-approved list of organizations. “Unfortunately, due to an internal error, we did not follow this normal process, resulting in the use of these two companies’ services by advertisers outside of the process, affecting a small number of ads,” a Snap spokesperson told Axios.

The spokesperson added: “We take full responsibility for this error and, as soon as we became aware of it, we took action to correct the problem, notifying the two suppliers and working to correct the payments made to each. We are also taking steps to ensure that this does not happen again.”

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