Christopher Wylie

Mindf*ck

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For the first time, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower tells the inside story of the data mining and psychological manipulation behind the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum, connecting Facebook, WikiLeaks, Russian intelligence, and international hackers.
Mindf*ck goes deep inside Cambridge Analytica's “American operations,” which were driven by Steve Bannon's vision to remake America and fueled by mysterious billionaire Robert Mercer's money, as it weaponized and wielded the massive store of data it had harvested on individuals—in excess of 87 million—to disunite the United States and set Americans against each other. Bannon had long sensed that deep within America's soul lurked an explosive tension. Cambridge Analytica had the data to prove it, and in 2016 Bannon had a presidential campaign to use as his proving ground.
Christopher Wylie might have seemed an unlikely figure to be at the center of such an operation. Canadian…
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384 printed pages
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Quotes

  • Sergei Jdanovhas quoted4 years ago
    When the obligatory British small talk concluded, one of them said, “So tell us about the Voter Activation Network.”

    After Obama’s 2008 victory, parties all over the world were becoming interested in this new “American-style campaign,” powered by national targeting databases and big digital operations. Behind the campaign was the emerging practice of microtargeting, where machine-learning algorithms ingest large amounts of voter data to divide the electorate into narrow segments and predict which individual voters are the best targets to persuade or turn out in an election.
  • Sergei Jdanovhas quoted4 years ago
    Soon we were sharing personal information without the slightest hesitation. This was encouraged, in part, by a new vocabulary. What were in effect privately owned surveillance networks became “communities,” the people these networks used for profit were “users,” and addictive design was promoted as “user experience” or “engagement.” People’s identities began to be profiled from their “data exhaust” or “digital breadcrumbs.”
  • Sergei Jdanovhas quoted4 years ago
    More data led to more profits, and so design patterns were implemented to encourage users to share more and more about themselves. Platforms started to mimic casinos, with innovations like the infinite scroll and addictive features aimed at the brain’s reward systems. Services such as Gmail began trawling through our correspondence in a way that would land a traditional postal courier in jail. Live geo-tracking, once reserved for convicts’ ankle bracelets, was added to our phones, and what would have been called wiretapping in years past became a standard feature of countless applications.

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