http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2018/05/03/what-the-life-and-death-of-cambridge-analytica-tells-us-about-politics-and-ourselves/

The demise of Cambridge Analytica this week may bring a fleeting sense of relief to those worried about personal data being used to shape how they vote, or even the outcome of entire elections. But the larger lesson of the scandal that brought down one of President Trump’s campaign vendors is that politics and data are now inextricably linked — with or without Cambridge Analytica in the picture.

Cambridge Analytica, as it made clear in its farewell news release on Wednesday, was part of a much broader development in politics  — a world increasingly fueled by vast troves of personal data that billions of Internet users emit every day. The company said it was being unfairly singled out for for doing things that are “widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arenas.”