Social media giant's 'internal mistake' gave Democrat orgs user data on Republican voters

Democrats reportedly tapped into a treasure trove of data on Republican voters after a "slip up" at a major social media platform allowed Democrats to access the data.

What happened?

Social media platforms allow advertisers to hyper-specify who sees their ads, thus giving them the best possible return on investments. To accomplish this, advertisers rely on information collected by data firms, which sell the data to wanting customers.

Two of the leading firms that provide data to advertisers on Snapchat are TargetSmart, a Democrat-leaning organization, and i360, a Republican-leaning firm. Each company allows political organizations to purchase its data, but reserves such transactions for groups that share its partisan views.