Fix Facebook, whether it wants to or not: whistleblower

Eight months after revealing the links between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (CA), whistleblower Christopher Wylie is pushing for the internet giant to be regulated -- whether it wants to or not. He is scathing about Facebook’s “man-child” chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and the arrogance of the company he runs.

“Facebook knew about what happened with Cambridge Analytica, well before the Trump election, well before Brexit, it did nothing about it,” Wylie said. “They knew about Russian disinformation campaigns on their platform, but to preserve the integrity of their reputation, they place their company above their country.” Last March, Wylie revealed that data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica took millions of Facebook users’ data to build psychological profiles of users. He knew because he had worked as the company’s research director.

Targeted political campaign messages were used both in the US presidential election and in the run-up to Britain’s 2016 Brexit vote, he said. Zuckerberg, in a statement issued in March, acknowledged the data breach but said it had happened without Facebook’s knowledge or consent. They had acted to ensure it never happened again, he added. It is a bewilderingly complex story. But the important thing, said Wylie, was to stay focused on the key facts. “You’ve got a company like CA whose staff were working in Russia, whose contractors are indicted by Mueller and whose clients were meeting with (the) Russian embassy -- so Russia’s everywhere in this.”