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It may already feel like a distant memory, but Cambridge Analytica was once implicated in one of the biggest social media scandals in history.
Back in March 2018, journalists at The Observer and The New York Times revealed that the little-known data analytics firm had improperly harvested the Facebook data of tens of millions of users without their consent. Owned by billionaire Robert Mercer and operated by Donald Trump’s die-hard operative Steve Bannon, Cambridge Analytica had used the massive trove of personal data to target voters with attacks against Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the 2016 presidential election. Executives at the company were even caught bragging that their underhanded methods had pushed Trump into office.
The explosive incident forced a mass reckoning over privacy and surveillance in the social media age. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before Congress, and his company’s reputation has never fully recovered. Cambridge Analytica itself shut down just months after the revelations.
Fast forward to today, though, and Cambridge Analytica has somehow returned. And its resurrection comes in an almost comically 2026 way: CambridgeAnalytica.org, the firm’s former website, is now an AI-powered content farm.
Rebranded as CA Privacy Watch, the site’s new owners are using the husk of the defunct data company’s domain to churn out content about data, privacy, AI, and — in a puzzling departure from theme — pop psychology. The articles it publishes are riddled with extensive plagiarism, we found, and it’s used at least one entirely fake writer to byline them.
This zombie version of Cambridge Analytica is designed to look and feel like a news site. On an “About Us” page, it claims to “examine how data, algorithms, and modern technologies shape public life, influence human behavior, and redefine power in the digital age” by way of “in-depth reporting and clear explanations.” It also explicitly promised that “all articles are written and edited by human journalists and researchers,” and that it does “not publish AI-generated or automated articles without full editorial review.” A disclaimer in the site’s footer, meanwhile, notes that the new site is “not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the former Cambridge Analytica Ltd or any of its successors.”
But the closer you look, the more the site’s Potemkin veneer unravels.
The most glaring issue is the obvious plagiarism. Consider an article published July 22, titled “My town just voted for more Flock cameras than cops — and the false arrests nobody’s talking about convinced them anyway.” The piece describes the dystopian fallout that occurred in a South Carolina town after it deployed cameras made by the controversial surveillance company Flock.
There’s a lot that’s weird about this article. The byline attached to it, Miora Danielle Raveloarison, appears to be a real person who lives in Madagascar, not South Carolina; Madagascar has installed zero Flock cameras, and Raveloarison didn’t respond to a request for comment. Though the headline is written in first-person, the body of the piece isn’t. And a quick search showed that the Cambridge Analytica story is, in fact, a clear rip-off of a recent story by 404 Media journalist Matthew Gault. Titled “What Happened When Flock Came to My Town,” Gault’s piece was published on July 22, just hours before CA Privacy Watch pumped out its plagiarized version.
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