(The Washington Post) — “Just you wait,” Nix told Wylie, according to his recollection. “You’re going to leave, but we’re going to be in the White House.”
LONDON — The crisis ravaging Facebook started when a young researcher, regretful over his role in turning data on an estimated tens of millions of U.S. voters into a high-tech political persuasion machine, decided to come forward with his story. And he imagined that Facebook, whose user profiles were part of that effort, could be a partner in helping to exhume this painful truth and perhaps embrace some changes to its privacy policy.
But instead of a joint announcement, Christopher Wylie awoke early Saturday in London, where he lives, to the news that Facebook had published a blog post announcing the suspensions of him, his former employer and one other person for allegedly mishandling Facebook data in an incident that happened in 2014 and had been known to Facebook for more than a year.
That explosive moment last weekend turned Wylie, 28, into an unlikely foil to one of the tech industry’s most powerful and lucrative companies. The onetime student of fashion trends with pink hair and a stubborn streak has delivered revelations that have triggered government investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, sent Facebook’s stock price plunging and pushed long-simmering privacy concerns to a boil.
Click to continue reading. By Craig Timberg, Karla Adam – Mar 21, 2018