Christopher Wylie: 'The fashion industry was crucial to the election of Donald Trump'

The Cambridge Analytica whistleblower reveals how certain brands were weaponised during the US election campaign

Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower who exposed the widespread misuse of data by his former employer, Cambridge Analytica, has revealed how the company “weaponised” the fashion industry in the run up to the 2016 US election, which he claims helped Donald Trump get elected.

Speaking at the annual BoF Voices festival in Oxfordshire, Wylie revealed for the first time a matrix based on data collected by the firm which he claims can show how users’ preferences for particular brands on social media platforms – Facebook, in particular – were then used to help target these same users with pro-Trump messaging. He compared the misuse of fashion-based data as one of the campaign’s lesser reported “weapons of mass destruction”.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2BECuT9