From social isolation comes the raw material of both conspiracism and populism: mistrust. Cambridge Analytica was the inevitable product of this balkanised cyberspace. The company was able to get its targets addicted to rage only because there was nothing to prevent it from doing so – and so, unimpeded, the company drowned them in a maelstrom of disinformation, with predictably disastrous results. But simply stopping CA is not enough. Our newfound crisis of perception will only continue to worsen until we address the underlying architectures that got us here.
