Pedestrians pass the shared building which houses the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London on March 21, 2018. AFP / Daniel Leal-Olivas
Cambridge Analytica, the data mining firm involved in swiping the data of more than 50 million Facebook users to sway elections and under criticism from US and British lawmakers, was involved in anti-Qatar campaign, too.
The US data firm, whose work for Donald Trump's campaign attracted the interest of US investigators, had admitted that it was paid money by the UAE to spread negative information about Qatar.
NBC News reported that the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, SCL Social Limited, filed documents with the US Justice Department's Foreign Agents Registration Unit disclosing $333,000 in payments by the UAE for a 2017 social media campaign linking Qatar to terrorism.
The data firm filed paperwork showing it had helped spread negative information about Qatar.
According to NBC, the flood of new filings provides a small window into the long-opaque industry of foreign lobbying in Washington who get money from foreign governments to sway the opinions of the American officials and public against their adversaries.
Many UAE-sponsored media outlets were at the forefront of the negative campaign against Qatar.
They also spread fake news against Doha.
But those attempts were called out by international organisations and prominent persons such as Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.
The $333,000 contract between SCL Social Limited and the National Media Council of the UAE included creating multiple ads on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites with the hashtag #boycottqatar, drawing ties between terrorism and Qatar, NBC said in its report.
Many Qatari officials had said the UAE is paying for advertisements that are targeting Qatar with fake information and insinuations.
SCL Social Limited spread the negative ads during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September also.
