NOTE: This is the best article to describe, in simple terms, how Cambridge Analytica developed the algorithms to target American voters. Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower, details how they built the program, step by step. This is how our personal data is being used by people who are trying to influence our decisions, without telling us their intentions.
How do 87m records scraped from Facebook become an advertising campaign that could help swing an election? What does gathering that much data actually involve? And what does that data tell us about ourselves?
The Cambridge Analytica scandal has raised question after question, but for many, the technological USP of the company, which announced last week that it was closing its operations, remains a mystery.
For those 87 million people probably wondering what was actually done with their data, I went back to Christopher Wylie, the ex-Cambridge Analytica employee who blew the whistle on the company’s problematic operations in the Observer. According to Wylie, all you need to know is a little bit about data science, a little bit about bored rich women, and a little bit about human psychology…
