In what Axios reported as a “slip-up,” social media platform Snap (formally known as Snapchat) wound up giving Democrats aligned with various campaigns and organizations information on conservative users on the platform. Said campaigns and organizations used the ill-gotten information to specifically target GOP voters with political ads.

In the September 8th article written by Axios’ Lachlan Markay, it was noted that “Snap allowed leading Democratic campaigns and party committees to unwittingly tap into a vast repository of Republican voter data,” which was reportedly maintained by the Charles Koch-founded firm i360.

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According to the Axios report, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’ campaign were among the groups to have latched on to this GOP voter data in order to shell out targeted ads on the social media platform.

Apparently, GOP voter data wasn’t the only highly-sought political information leaked in this conundrum – although the GOP voter data was the most exploited in the matter. The Democratic equivalent to i360, TargetSmart, also saw their data getting shared with conservative outfits.

Reportedly the Daily Wire was able to tap into Democratic voter data of TargetSmart in order for the conservative outlet to drop some targeted ads on Snap.

For the sake of context, Republican-aligned i360 and their Democratic counterpart TargetSmart make their data available to other advertisers on Snap, but those advertisers with whom they share their data with exist on a preapproved list of organizations (which opposing political outfits aren’t on either’s approved list).

However, Snap claims that somehow unapproved entities were able to dip into these data repositories, thus leading to the advertising fiasco.

A spokesperson for Snap stated in regard to the incident, “Unfortunately, due to an internal mistake, we didn’t follow this usual process — which resulted in these two companies’ services being used by advertisers outside of the process, impacting a small number of ads.”

The spokesperson for the social media company further added that they’ll be “taking steps” to help ensure such sensitive data remains secured moving forward so as to avoid incidents like the aforementioned.

“We take full responsibility for this mistake, and as soon as we became aware of it, we notified the two Democratic and Republican vendors who were equally impacted and took action to correct the issue. We are also taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

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Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist, commented on the debacle, emphasizing that “clients and donors” of i360 are going to “be surprised” when they realize their data wound up falling into the hands of rival political organizations.

“I360’s Republican clients and their donors will be surprised to learn that their data is being used to help Democrats, Planned Parenthood, and other opponents. They should ask if and how their campaign activities were used to enhance the data provided via Snapchat.”

This piece was written by Gregory Hoyt on September 8, 2022. It originally appeared in RedVoiceMedia.com and is used by permission.

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