Mindf*ck

Christopher Wylie has been called “the millennials’ first great whistleblower” and “a pink-haired, nose-ringed oracle sent from the future.” He is known for his role in setting up—and then taking down—Cambridge Analytica. His revelations exposing the rampant misuse of data rocked Silicon Valley and led to some of the largest multinational investigations into data crime ever. Born in British Columbia, Canada, he studied law at the London School of Economics before moving into cultural data science and fashion trend forecasting. He lives in London, England.

Merits close attention, as it goes a long way to making sense of the current political landscape ... a devastating indictment of a political culture out of control
Fascinating and hugely readable ... valuable and revelatory
Freewheeling and profane ... Wylie covers plenty of ground, explaining in illuminating and often scary detail how Cambridge Analytica exploited the data to create Facebook pages that would needle "neurotic, conspiratorial citizens," propagating an outraged solidarity.
If you want to understand the darker side of the digital revolution - and what a threat to democracy it is - you must read this book. As we watch our own democracy wavering in a blizzard of online dirty tricks I can think of nothing more relevant right now. In this astonishing insider story Wylie explains how the 'Trump revolution' and the 'Brexit Shock' were achieved by often-illegal manipulation - and proposes a series of safeguards of the digital commons for the future. I hope every citizen reads this.
MindF*ck demonstrates how digital influence operations, when they converged with the nasty business of politics, managed to hollow out democracies... And his personal story, woven into the book's narrative, illustrates the confusion of our current political era as well as the challenge to Wylie's fellow members of the social media generation as they seek identities real and imagined, physical and virtual.
Merits close attention, as it goes a long way to making sense of the current political landscape ... a devastating indictment of a political culture out of control

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Christopher Wylie was twenty-four when he helped found Cambridge Analytica — the data firm that harvested millions of Facebook profiles and used them to build a psychological warfare tool aimed at voters. When he realised what he'd built, he blew the whistle and brought down a billion-dollar operation backed by Steve Bannon and the Mercer family.

Mindf*ck is Wylie's electrifying first-person account: how a gay Canadian kid from British Columbia ended up at the centre of the biggest data scandal in history, why he decided to go public, and what it cost him. It's a story about the collision of technology, politics, and money — and a warning about how easily democracy can be hacked.