In July 2018, Elizabeth Denham – the woman in charge of enforcing the UK’s laws on data protection – appeared on the Today programme, and made a stark allegation.

“In 2014 and 2015, the Facebook platform allowed an app… that ended up harvesting 87 million profiles of users around the world that was then used by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 presidential campaign and in the referendum,” she told the show’s seven million listeners.