Sorry, I Controlled Your Brain

In March 2018, Facebook was exposed to a data leak scandal. A data company that helped Trump win the US presidential election in 2016 illegally obtained the information of 87 million Facebook users. A "Delete Facebook" campaign was launched online. A week later, Facebook's stock price plummeted 18%, wiping out $80 billion in market value. Christopher Wylie, the author of this book, is the "whistleblower" of this scandal. He was a data scientist at Cambridge Analytica, the psychological warfare consulting firm at the center of the storm. In the book, he tells the story of how he joined "Cambridge Analytica", participated in research based on data mining to obtain social network user profiles, predict and guide their behavior, built an algorithm system that can be used in propaganda wars, and then became involved in a series of events such as Facebook, WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign and Brexit. After Wylie discovered that the company he worked for had gradually turned into a tool to manipulate public opinion, thereby harming society and undermining democracy, he stood up and reported everything, and joined the press to warn the public: people's identities and behaviors have become commodities in data transactions. The powerful corporations that control information in today's world are manipulating the minds of the public in ways that were previously unimaginable. It is difficult for anyone to escape the control of the algorithm. Wylie's whistleblower sparked the largest data crimes investigation in history. His story not only exposes the inherent apathy of many companies driven by the traffic economy, but also exposes the fragility of democratic systems.