The firm used the data to identify the personalities of American voters and better target them with digital ads. The data were harvested as early as June 2014 through an app developed by a researcher who worked with Cambridge Analytica and who was originally granted access to user information by Facebook for academic purposes. Within 10 days of the news reports, the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into Facebook's data practices, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify in front of Congress, and the price of Facebook stock fell 16%.