Trump’s Big-Data Gurus Scout Presidential Candidate in Mexico

  • Cambridge Analytica joins Mexico phone app to mine data
  • Pig.gi offers free airtime in exchange for ads on lock screens
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
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Cambridge Analytica, the big-data firm that advised President Donald Trump in his successful election campaign, is turning to Mexico in search of a new presidential candidate to get behind.

Cambridge is partnering with Pig.gi, a phone app in Mexico and Colombia that gives 200,000 active users free service in exchange for watching ads, reading stories and taking surveys. The analytics firm is hoping to use data mined from Pig.gi to help a candidate in Mexico’s July 2018 presidential election, and several political parties have already expressed interest, according to both companies.