bigdataart

It’s about Christopher Wylie who is 28 and has a phd in fashion trends. This article talks about how fashion trends can be associated with politics. The way in which data can be used not only for aesthetics purposes but political too.

Christopher tells the story of how he hijacked the profiles of facebook users so that he can target the US electorate. He was actually the one who came up with the idea of Cambridge Analytica (a data analytics firm), which was very important in the Leave campaign during Brexit times and eventually became involved in Donald Trump’s election campaign.

There is also personal information shared about Wylie, which presents him as a hero in a way. The article mentions that he was diagnosed with ADHD and Dyslexia when he was really young and could not finish school,yet at 17 ended up working in the office of the leader of Canadian opposition and just walked up the ladder since then.

It is talked about different “tests” you can take on facebook about what is your personality like, which led them to thinking that they could find their future voters through this test. But there were also tests like “You Are What You Like”, which really was for collecting information from the users profiles after they had given permission in order to take some ridiculous test.

Then came in place Kogan company who are actually the ones doing the very illegal work. Kogan’s apps were pulling an enormous amount of data and facebook knew that but Kogan said it was for academic use only. There is further information of “low quality” about the owner of Kogan.com, Dr Kogan, such as grants from the Russian government, a Russian oil company wanting information on American voters and many more.

Overall the article does not only connect fashion trends and politics but it shows how though that connection can also come exploitation. The article raises problems on a global scale such as cyberweapons.