When I started telling him about Cambridge Analytica’s projects in Africa, Rabkin’s eyes widened. He interjected, “This sounds so twisted and colonial.” Rabkin was the first journalist to use that word with me—“colonial.” Most of the people I told about Cambridge Analytica were fascinated with Trump, Brexit, or Facebook, but whenever I got onto the topic of Africa, I usually was met with shrugs. Shit happens. It’s Africa, after all. But Rabkin got it. What Cambridge Analytica was doing in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria—it was a new era of colonialism, in which powerful Europeans exploited Africans for
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