Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee who exposed Facebook’s data practices this month, claimed President Trump’s election made him speak out.
“I wouldn’t say it was just because of Donald Trump, but Donald Trump makes it click in your head that this actually has a much wider impact,” declared Wylie to UK lawmakers on Tuesday. “I don’t think that military-style information operations is conducive for any democratic process.”
In their own article on Tuesday, financial blog Zero Hedge criticized Wylie for attributing the election of President Trump as one of the reasons to expose data mishandling.
“In other words, if Hillary had won, the general public would remain oblivious to Facebook’s (and other social media giants) massive data-gathering efforts,” Zero Hedge proclaimed. “And Mark Zuckerberg would still be the 4th richest person in the world (instead of 8th!).”
Twitter users and celebrities threatened to boycott Facebook and delete their accounts in response to allegations of user data mishandling last week, which one former employee claimed was “horrifying” and routine at Facebook.
“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” declared Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in response. “This was a major breach of trust, and I’m really sorry that this happened. We have a basic responsibility to protect peoples’ data.”
Despite admitting that the platform had let its users down, Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook would investigate and audit itself.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.
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