Watch Guardian’s Stunning Interview With Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower: ‘A Grossly Unethical Experiment’
A 27-year-old data scientist named Christopher Wylie revealed extraordinary information about his time working for Cambridge Analytica in an interview with The Guardian published Saturday.
The controversial company harvested 50 million Facebook users’ personal information in an attempt to “build a psychological profile of each voter” throughout the United States, Wylie said. Among other charges, the whistleblower said the company was capable of pulling users’ private information without their consent, including status updates and direct messages.
He also directly contradicted statements made by Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Group, who denied the use of Facebook data in a testimony before Parliament.
“That’s just fundamentally not true because we spent a million dollars harvesting tens of millions of Facebook profiles, and those profiles were used as the basis of the algorithms that became the foundation of Cambridge Analytica,” Wylie said. “The company was founded using Facebook data.”
https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/974817340939358208
The stunning interview arrives the same day Facebook announced it was barring the data firm from using the social media platform. “We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information,” Facebook’s Vice President Paul Grewal said in a statement. “We will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens. We will take legal action if necessary to hold them responsible and accountable for any unlawful behavior.”
Reports also broke Saturday indicating Cambridge Analytica had ties to Russian interests, specifically relating to how it targeted U.S. voters, despite Nix’s denials the company had “any relationship with Russia or Russian individuals” during his testimony.
Watch the revealing interview via The Guardian above.
[image via screengrab]
—
