Cambridge Analytica

Saturday

Ben Sixsmith

Mark Zuckerberg’s quest for redemption

Stung by recent criticism, and fearing major regulation, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, has announced the establishment of a kind of ‘Supreme Court’ for his company. Selected and paid by Facebook, the members of this ‘Oversight Board’ will in theory behave as independent adjudicators capable of making rulings over content moderation and other important aspects of the business. No doubt Mr Zuckerberg is looking at the example being set by the US Supreme Court and thinking, ‘What could go wrong?’ It's hard to believe now but in 2017, it seemed plausible that Mark Zuckerberg might become president.

zuckerberg

Sunday

Will Lloyd

Christopher Wylie is a hypocrite

Christopher Wylie burst on to the international scene last year in a series of explosive articles in The Observer and The New York Times. Here was a charismatic, gay, vegan whistleblower for the digital age. Pushed by journalists, academics and tastemakers as the central node in a networked international conspiracy, the Wylie story supposedly showed that democracy could be ‘hacked’ by a coterie of dark money billionaires, Breitbart editors, Russian agents and tech weirdos. It also neatly explained away the problem that so many people voted for Brexit and Trump.

christopher wylie

Saturday

Jamie Bartlett

Big data wants your vote

From the outside it all looked haphazard and frenzied. A campaign that was skidding from scandal to crisis on its way to total defeat. That’s not how it felt inside the ‘Project Alamo’ offices in San Antonio, Texas where Trump’s digital division — led by Brad Parscale, who’d worked previously with Trump’s estate division setting up websites — was running one of the most sophisticated data-led election campaigns ever. Once Trump’s nomination was secured, the Republican Party heavyweights moved in, and so did seconded staff from Facebook and Google, there to help their well-paying clients best use their platforms to reach voters.

Thursday

Jamie Bartlett

Will Mark Zuckerberg now admit that Facebook is anti-social?

Zuck speaks! He’s finally responded to the Cambridge Analytica debacle. To be honest, I could have predicted almost word-for-word this evening’s statement: It wasn’t really our fault; it was mostly their fault; we’re a little bit responsible (‘front-up’ I can imagine a comms person insisting); and here are the steps we’ve taken. In fact, we’d already taken most of these steps in 2014, when all this happened. I sensed a weariness to it. He concluded his penultimate paragraph with the phrase ‘going forward’, which is usually a sign someone’s out of ideas. Still, and I can’t quite believe I’m writing this, I almost feel sorry for Mark.