Ex-Staffer: Trump-Tied Firm Took 'Fake News To Next Level' With Facebook Data

By Associated Press | March 19, 2018 12:41 pm

NEW YORK (AP) — A Trump-affiliated firm under scrutiny for inappropriately obtaining data on tens of millions of Facebook users created profiling algorithms that “took fake news to the next level,” a former employee said.

Chris Wylie said the firm, Cambridge Analytica, secured personal data in order to learn about individuals and then used it to create an information cocoon to change their perceptions. “This is based on an idea called ‘informational dominance,’ which is the idea that if you can capture every channel of information around a person and then inject content around them, you can change their perception of what’s actually happening,” Wylie said.

In an interview Monday on NBC’s “Today,” Wylie said Cambridge Analytica aimed to “explore mental vulnerabilities of people.” He said the firm “works on creating a web of disinformation online so people start going down the rabbit hole of clicking on blogs, websites etc. that make them think things are happening that may not be.”

This idea of “information dominance,” of propaganda, Wylie told The Guardian newspaper earlier, is the notion that if you can control all of the streams of information to your opponents, “you can influence how they perceive that battle space and you can then influence how they’re going to behave and react.”

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