Sunday, March 18, 2018

The Christopher Wylie story is fascinating but isn't really bombshell news: Ted Cruz used the same firm Wylie worked for

We reported on the story about Cruz from WaPo here already in December 2015.

The really hysterically funny thing about it all, once again, is how Facebook and its millions of idiot users are the real chumps. 

From the story here:

. . . Wylie offers a unique, worm’s-eye view of the events of 2016. Of how Facebook was hijacked, repurposed to become a theatre of war: how it became a launchpad for what seems to be an extraordinary attack on the US’s democratic process.

Wylie oversaw what may have been the first critical breach. Aged 24, while studying for a PhD in fashion trend forecasting, he came up with a plan to harvest the Facebook profiles of millions of people in the US, and to use their private and personal information to create sophisticated psychological and political profiles. And then target them with political ads designed to work on their particular psychological makeup.

“We ‘broke’ Facebook,” he says.

And he did it on behalf of his new boss, Steve Bannon.

“Is it fair to say you ‘hacked’ Facebook?” I ask him one night.

He hesitates. “I’ll point out that I assumed it was entirely legal and above board.”