
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower used same Facebook dataset for own startup - AJRF
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/cambridge-analytica-chris-wylie-eunoia-trump-campaign
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JohnTClark
I don't know why I don't trust this Christopher Wylie. They way he is
pictured, filmed etc. looks over produced, like he is trying to lie to me. I
can't put it in words but something is fishy about him. In one of his
interviews I found out that CA has sue him, so he did not care about anything,
he did something wrong to CA, they sue, he blows the whistle to save his __*.
Is not about "oh, I care so much about the data of millions of people and I
can't live any more with the guilt", its about his own skin. If its your own
skin that you care about please don't picture in a victim/tormented soul, it
makes me hate you just for that.

~~~
iamleppert
Agreed. And did you see how he died his hair and changed his look to be more
edgy when he got all this media attention? It's like he is playing some role
and maximizing his media exposure. This is the behavior of a sociopath.

It really is looking more and more like the real story here is about a guy
that tried to usurp his puppet masters with a technique that was likely
oversold and probably couldn't really deliver what he claimed it could do,
based on his limited understanding of machine learning and statistics.

The next best thing in his twisted mind is to become a "national hero",
probably taking a card from Julian Assange and various other whistleblowers. I
do think that most whistleblowers have positive intentions and what they do,
they are doing for public good, not for notoriety or personal celebrity.
However, I don't really feel that to be the case with Christopher Wylie. In
his interviews he definitely gives me a strange gut feeling and I'm glad to
see I'm not alone in this sentiment. I'm sure we will find out more facts
about him as this whole thing continues to unfold, but I'm not holding my
breath as to his intentions.

The silver lining in all of this is that Facebook and others will be forced to
treat privacy seriously for a change, and its always good to have this
conversation front and center for a change.

~~~
totalZero
To be fair, it is wise to think critically about one's own appearance when
faced with a large amount of media attention.

~~~
jacquesm
I don't think he thought critically.

~~~
kbenson
Or, he thought critically, just not about the stuff we would think a good
actor would think about. Which is sort of the problem, and would explain why
people are put off.

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jacquesm
And that is why you _never_ let such data off your premises in the first
place. Who knows how many copies there have been made by now. Remember that
AOL stuff that was online for a couple of hours? It will never go away.

A pretty good source of very interesting information is the OpenRTB interface
to your average advertising bidding platform or company. A couple of bucks and
you too could be bidding for ads. If you bid low you will get _all_ the data
you could possibly imagine and you can keep it even if you lose the bid. All
you need is a good story and a couple of bucks to keep the exchanges
satisfied.

~~~
djrogers
> And that is why you never let such data off your premises in the first
> place.

I find it a much more defensible policy to _not collect_ such data in the
first place. Regardless of who you share it with, the fact that _you_ have the
data trove is dangerous enough.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, totally agreed, that's the preferred approach. Unfortunately most start-
ups seem to be under the impression that more data is better because that
worked so well for everybody else. But let's hope it is not too late to turn
the tide on that. Between Equifax and Facebook some people are waking up. Not
enough of them yet but who knows.

Start-ups should start to see data as a liability instead of as an asset.

~~~
snowwrestler
Equifax and Facebook may have PR black eyes right now, but they have made a
shitload of money with their data and they continue to make money.

It's going to be really hard to convince businesses that data is a liability
when the costs of data problems have not typically come anywhere close to
offsetting the revenue made with that data.

Data might be better thought of like a type of inventory, in that it is an
asset on the balance sheet, but has costs and risk that must be managed very
carefully to maximize profitability. Because these costs and risks show up in
the paperwork, manufacturers work to minimize their inventory even though it
is technically an asset.

Or maybe another way to think about it might be a hazardous natural material,
like oil or mine tailings. Accidental release is always a PR problem, but the
only way direct costs are imposed on the business is via lawsuits or a
regulatory enforcement regime. Otherwise the public just soaks up the costs of
the breach.

Ultimately I think that the way data enables revenue is a new thing in
business and although we can find analogies, the best way of accounting (I
mean in the technical financial sense) for data is yet to be determined. I
just think it's unlikely to be considered a straight liability.

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stevefeinstein
What's the point of this article, to try to discredit him? He's already
discredited. The whistleblowing doesn't require his trust, it's true or it's
not. We already know he's not trustworthy, and surprise, he did it (at least)
twice.

~~~
tmuir
I posit that its a beautiful piece of artwork designed as a honeypot. The
sweetness that will draw certain people in is all of the conflicting, and
therefore inherently controversial information that can be used to paint
Facebook and Christopher Wylie as the true problem here, and the incredible
Donald is just the poor guy caught up in the middle.

This is evidenced by the conservative media's discrediting of all of the
people telling the story. I don't even contend that Buzzfeed is conservative
or liberal, so I think Buzzfeed is either an unwitting accomplice in this
honeypot, or perhaps it is their pot. Time will tell.

My thesis is that, just like actual honeypots, the sweetness is coverfire for
the trap lying inside. That trap is to frame this whole story as if the most
heinous part of the story is just Facebook losing control of the data. Once
the key players admit to the microtargetting, but claim everybody does it, the
jaws of the trap will spring shut.

Some of those players have already made their confessions, literally on Fox
News, a week after the election, and they couldnt contain their joy:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fFbVwuU8bM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fFbVwuU8bM)

It is obvious that Donald Trump intuitively understands the general concepts
at play in microtargetting, but also just as obvious that he doesn't
understand its mechanics.

Microtargetting is literally a deep learning algorithm, and Cambridge
Analytica is a Robert Mercer affiliated outfit. You may remember Robert Mercer
from such travesties as high frequency trading. After all, he invented it, and
used it to become a billionaire. Microtargeting is to humans as high frequency
trading is to investment markets.

The underlying principle is the same. If you can glean information about your
target faster than your competitors, you can act upon that information to your
own gain. Microtargeting is literally a computer evolving its algorithm to
influence the targetted. It is A/B testing what will unite one half of an
electorate with the reddest of red meat policies, which by definition induce
panic in the other half of the electorate.

Cambridge Analytica has cracked the code on how to divide or unite people with
an algorithm. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which
one they are aiming for.

~~~
rdtsc
> I posit that its a beautiful piece of artwork designed as a honeypot.

Ok, but designed by whom? It seems interesting but tbh sounds a bit
conspiratorial. Who is setting this elaborate honeytrap the CIA, the British,
Buzzfeed, Mueller?

------
21
In the original whistle-blowing interview the whistle-blower (Wylie) says that
he was the one which initiated this whole project:

> At 24, he came up with an idea that led to the foundation of a company
> called Cambridge Analytica

> It was Wylie who came up with that idea and oversaw its realisation.

> Alexander Nix, then CEO of SCL Elections, made Wylie an offer he couldn’t
> resist. “He said: ‘We’ll give you total freedom. Experiment. Come and test
> out all your crazy ideas.’”

> But Wylie wasn’t just talking about fashion. He had recently been exposed to
> a new discipline: “information operations”, which ranks alongside land, sea,
> air and space in the US military’s doctrine of the “five-dimensional battle
> space”

~~~
IAmEveryone
Yeah... There's a certain imprecision with the use of the term "whistleblower"
here.

It's far closer to the immunity a mobster informant might get (although it's
obviously not (yet) playing out as a criminal matter)

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ahuxley2013
I have a sneaking suspicion this guy is a plant or something for the C.I.A. or
NSA. The interviews I have heard, he starts to ramble on about Russia, and
making bizarre connections. There is such lust for a ward with Russia it is
nuts.

~~~
wruwew8uu9
CA would have identified that you clearly have a combination of "openness" and
"neurotisism" that predisposes you to conspiratorial thinking

------
danso
I haven't been following this stuff super closely, but hasn't there been
ongoing counternarrative of how CA data analysis and its 50 million profiles
may not have been very useful, period? Because there's a concurrent (and
legitimate) narrative of Facebook's questionable data practices, I've been
wondering whether CA has been an overhyped antagonist in our media's rush to
find the true villains.

Yesterday Drudge Report (still one of our biggest news drivers) had a headline
[A] that almost made my eyes roll through the back of my head. It was
"WHISTLEBLOWER: FACEBOOK CAN HEAR YOU!" But the linked story [B] contained
nothing more than Wylie speculating how it was physically possible for
Facebook (and other apps) to do this, but they probably weren't, but if they
_were_ , it could lead into some bad shit or something.

Yeah, Wylie can't control what linkbaiters write about him. Or what
politicians ask him in a public hearing. But because he was a whistleblower
about CA's abuse of FB's data, he's been considered an expert/whistleblower in
domains far beyond what he actually has experience in. Being a good data
analyst and having a bunch of FB scraped data is still not enough to remotely
guarantee success in the startup scene.

In terms of the election, what's the most substantive discussion/proof that CA
and its magic data was any more a game changer than, say, Brad Pascale [0]?
And I also haven't read out CA's insights were a gamechanger in boosting the
Russians' alleged propaganda and fake news bots schemes. I haven't yet read a
better reporter on this angle than the New Yorker's Adrian Chen, and his
relative reluctance to blame big data/bot schemes has perhaps made me too
skeptical every time I read media stories about CA's magical mind-bending
dataset [1].

[A]
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZVzHctU8AAZBxa.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZVzHctU8AAZBxa.jpg:large)

[B]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20180328111429/https://pjmedia.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180328111429/https://pjmedia.com/trending/cambridge-
analytica-whistleblower-facebook-may-listening-home-work/)

[0]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/27/t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/27/trumps-
facebook-advertising-advantage-explained/)

[1] [https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-so-called-
experts-...](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-so-called-experts-
uneasy-dive-into-the-trump-russia-frenzy)

~~~
IAmEveryone
The doubts about CA's real-world effectiveness are actually well-represented
in the media, as your example or [0] show. This actually closely follows the a
similar news cycle right after the election. I distinctly remember reading
several articles casting doubt on CA's effectiveness in The New York Times and
The Atlantic.

I also don't think many reports actually assert that CA was responsible for,
say, a 10% swing. Why people are taking this serious is, I believe, because we
now know that it's possible to get such data and we have seen the sort of
feats that machine learning can do today. It's doubtful that CA was the
company to successfully combine those two ingredients. But without changes
it's all but guaranteed that _someone_ will soon will.

Plus there is the fact that the election just happened to be incredibly close.
You can make a list with about ten possible reasons for the result, from
people being tired of Hillary, to the FBI's strange moves regarding the e-mail
investigation, third-party candidates, russian trolls, the free media Trump
got, Cambridge Analytica, and probably the weather in eastern Ohio. It's
possible that the absence of any two or three of these would have changed the
outcome.

[0]: example: [https://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2018/3/23/17152564/ca...](https://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2018/3/23/17152564/cambridge-analytica-psychographic-microtargeting-
what)

~~~
tmuir
Lets imagine you developed a Deep Learning algorithm that proved beyond a
shadow of a doubt to be able to pull off what CA pulled off. Why on god's
green earth would you ever tell people that you have the algorithm, if you
could instead use it for your own benefit? Why would you ever publish?

~~~
mmirate
Answer A: in the case that you think you can publish at just the right time
such that every political party would have enough time to master the tech
before the next election cycle.

Answer B: in the case that you can charge exorbitantly for access to the
published algorithm, and that - being a rational actor without nationalistic
pride - you don't give two hoots and a holler what happens to the nation where
you publish, so long as you can walk away with a fat paycheck.

~~~
tmuir
The true power in microtargeting lies in the iteration speed achievable by
computers. As with any effective weapon, if you can wield yours faster than
your opponent, you will emerge victorious in the normal case. This is the same
principle at play in High Frequency Trading. And just like High Frequency
Trading, which was pioneered by the chairman of Cambridge Analytica, Robert
Mercer, the less competition you have, the less entities that can usurp your
temporal advantage. There is no "mastery" of this technique, only being able
to do it faster than everyone else. Thus, there is no balance lent by
proliferating the algorithm, as I see it.

I guess as an irrational actor, which we all are as humans, I would either
seek one of two outcomes, neither of which resulted in giving away the
algorithm. If I felt no moral qualms empowering someone else with this
ability, then that is the same lack of qualms to use the ability for myself.
If I were so inclined, I could use this technique to make that fat paycheck,
and never have to walk away. This technique is effective in many fields beyond
elections. In the situation I'd walk away, it would only be to suppress the
work, in the hopes it stays undiscovered.

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sngz
any source thats more reliable than buzzfeed?

~~~
tmuir
Do you have context to add to the story, or just more reasons to look
somewhere else, preferably away from this story?

~~~
sngz
i don't like giving buzzfeed clicks and when i share stories with people i
like to give sources that preferably isn't buzzfeed. kinda makes it less
credible.

