Christopher Wylie, described in a new Guardian profile as “the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating ‘Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mindfuck tool'” used by Cambridge Analytica, which mined Facebook user data to create an exploitable profile to target American voters, is speaking out in a lengthy, fascinating, and frankly terrifying interview about how that data is being used.
Wylie also talks about his journey which ultimately found him working for Bannon and Republican donor Robert Mercer, a series of job decisions and chance encounters which resulted in the creation of the data firm after it negotiated the use of a database created by Aleksandr Kogan of Global Science Research (GSR). GSR had successfully mined Facebook's user data.
It was Bannon's interest in culture as war that ignited Wylie's intellectual concept. But it was Robert Mercer's millions that created a firestorm. Kogan was able to throw money at the hard problem of acquiring personal data: he advertised for people who were willing to be paid to take a personality quiz on Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Qualtrics. At the end of which Kogan's app, called thisismydigitallife, gave him permission to access their Facebook profiles. And not just theirs, but their friends' too. On average, each “seeder” – the people who had taken the personality test, around 320,000 in total – unwittingly gave access to at least 160 other people's profiles, none of whom would have known or had reason to suspect.
What the email correspondence between Cambridge Analytica employees and Kogan shows is that Kogan had collected millions of profiles in a matter of weeks. But neither Wylie nor anyone else at Cambridge Analytica had checked that it was legal. It certainly wasn't authorised. Kogan did have permission to pull Facebook data, but for academic purposes only. What's more, under British data protection laws, it's illegal for personal data to be sold to a third party without consent.
“Facebook could see it was happening,” says Wylie. “Their security protocols were triggered because Kogan's apps were pulling this enormous amount of data, but apparently Kogan told them it was for academic use. So they were like, ‘Fine'.”
Kogan maintains that everything he did was legal and he had a “close working relationship” with Facebook, which had granted him permission for his apps.
Cambridge Analytica had its data. This was the foundation of everything it did next – how it extracted psychological insights from the “seeders” and then built an algorithm to profile millions more.
Wylie also revealed that his sexual orientation played a role in the group being receptive to his ideas.
It was Bannon who took this idea to the Mercers: Robert Mercer – the co-CEO of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, who used his billions to pursue a rightwing agenda, donating to Republican causes and supporting Republican candidates – and his daughter Rebekah.
Nix and Wylie flew to New York to meet the Mercers in Rebekah's Manhattan apartment.
“She loved me. She was like, ‘Oh we need more of your type on our side!'”
Your type?
“The gays. She loved the gays. So did Steve [Bannon]. He saw us as early adopters. He figured, if you can get the gays on board, everyone else will follow. It's why he was so into the whole Milo [Yiannopoulos] thing.”
Watch a video interview with Wylie above, and read the full profile HERE.
RELATED: Facebook Breach: How to Check Which Apps Have Your Data
Cambridge Analytica responded to The Guardian's story in a series of tweets:
We told @nytimes & @guardian that Mr. Wylie was a contractor for CA. He was not a founder. https://t.co/OI7ZmN8RA4
— Cambridge Analytica (@CamAnalytica) March 17, 2018
We refute these mischaracterizations and false allegations, and we are responding — watch our Twitter feed for more.
— Cambridge Analytica (@CamAnalytica) March 17, 2018
Wylie has been suspended by Facebook. The author of The Guardian's profile noted that she had received a phone call from Wylie saying he's also been banned by other services.
Plaintive phone call from Chris: he's also banned from WhatsApp.
And – outraged voice! – Instagram.
"But how am I going to curate my online identity?" he says.
The Millennials' first great whistleblower? And @facebook hitting him where it hurts https://t.co/abjfh4td4g— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) March 18, 2018
https://twitter.com/chrisinsilico/status/975335430043389952
https://twitter.com/chrisinsilico/status/975670888824803329
Facebook released a statement regarding Wylie's suspension:
“Mr. Wylie has refused to cooperate with us until we lift the suspension on his account. Given he said he ‘exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles,' we cannot do this at this time.
“We are in the process of conducting a comprehensive internal and external review as we work to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists. That is where our focus lies as we remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information.”
