Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

by Christopher Wylie

Americans check their phones on average fifty-two times per day. Many now sleep with their phones charging beside them—they sleep with their phones more than they sleep with people. The first and last thing they see in their waking hours is a screen. And what people see on that screen can motivate them to commit acts of hatred and, in some cases, acts of extreme violence. There is no such thing as “just online” anymore, and online information—or disinformation—that engages its targets can lead to horrific tragedies. In response, Facebook, like the NRA, evades its moral responsibility by invoking the same kind of “Guns don’t kill people” argument. They throw up their hands and claim they can’t control how their users abuse their products, even when mass murder results. If ethnic cleansing is not enough for them to act, what is? When Facebook goes on yet another apology tour, loudly professing that “we will try harder,” its empty rhetoric is nothing more than the thoughts and prayers of a technology company content to profit from a status quo of inaction. For Facebook, the lives of victims have become an externality of their continued quest to move fast and break things.