According to whistle-blower Chris Wylie, Cambridge Analytica came up with “drain the swamp” and “deep state” after its Facebook research.
Even though Mark Zuckerberg has finally apologized, the ongoing Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal continues to reveal information about the right-wing data harvesting operating and its effect on the 2016 presidential election. According to a former employee, Cambridge Analytica is responsible for several of the Trump campaign’s biggest talking points and it’s all thanks to none other than his former campaign chairman and chief strategist, Steve Bannon.
Per the Washington Post, prior to his time working for the Trump campaign — and with the backing of the wealthy conservative Mercer Family — Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s efforts to collect Facebook data and build profiles of probable voters:
Bannon and Rebekah Mercer were both present during conference calls in which Cambridge Analytica’s data-collection scheme was discussed. Moreover, strategies like that could only be approved by Bannon. The data collection started before Trump had officially declared his candidacy, but Wylie says they found the framework for Trump’s campaign in their early examinations of Facebook data finding “a high level of alienation among young, white Americans with a conservative bent.”
As Atlantic writer Natasha Bertrand points out, the research also found a burgeoning Vladimir Putin fandom.
There’s honestly no telling which way this story will go next.
(Via Washington Post)
