(NBC NEWS) — “It weighs on me that I played a pivotal role in setting up a company that I think has done a lot of harm to the democratic process in a lot of countries,” Wylie said.
Cambridge Analytica, a company that profiled voters for Donald Trump’s campaign, allegedly harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook profiles, which they used to influence and wage a “culture war” during the 2016 election.
Whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge Analytica and served as their director of research until 2014, told NBC News’ U.K. partner ITN Channel 4 News that the company helped develop an application on Facebook that paid individuals to take a survey. If users had not adjusted their privacy settings on the social media outlet, however, the app didn’t just capture the survey responses — it also gathered as much data from each account as possible.
That data included information from Facebook users’ friends and contacts, as well.
Click to continue reading. By Phil McCausland and Anna R. Schecter – Mar 17, 2018.