Cambridge Analytica Alum: Social Media Is Like Bad, You Know
April 4, 2020
A voice of (in)experience describes how tech companies can be dangerous when left unchecked. Channel News Asia reports, “Tech Must Be Regulated Like Tobacco, says Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower.” Christopher Wylie is the data scientist who exposed Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data to manipulate the 2016 presidential election, among others. He declares society has yet to learn the lesson of that scandal. Yes, Facebook was fined a substantial sum, but it and other tech giants continue to operate with little to no oversight. The article states:
“Wylie details in his book how personality profiles mined from Facebook were weaponised to ‘radicalise’ individuals through psychographic profiling and targeting techniques. So great is their potential power over society and people’s lives that tech professionals need to be subject to the same codes of ethics as doctors and lawyers, he told AFP as his book was published in France. ‘Profiling work that we were doing to look at who was most vulnerable to being radicalised … was used to identify people in the US who were susceptible to radicalisation so that they could be encouraged and catalysed on that path,’ he said. ‘You are being intentionally monitored so that your unique biases, your anxieties, your weaknesses, your needs, your desires can be quantified in such a way that a company can seek to exploit that for profit,’ said the 30-year-old. Wylie, who blew the whistle to British newspaper, The Guardian, in Mar 2018, said at least people now realise how powerful data can be.”
As in any industry, tech companies are made up of humans, some of whom are willing to put money over morality. And as in other consequential industries like construction, engineering, medicine, and law, Wylie argues, regulations are required to protect consumers from that which they do not understand.
Cynthia Murrell, April 4, 2020
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