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Christopher Wylie Biography

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“The underlying ideology within social media is not to enhance choice or agency, but rather to narrow, filter, and reduce choice to benefit creators and advertisers. Social media herds the citizenry into surveilled spaces where the architects can track and classify them and use this understanding to influence their behavior. If democracy and capitalism are based on accessible information and free choice, what we are witnessing is their subversion from the inside.”

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Book:Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America
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“The first tool of authoritarian regimes is always informational control—both in the gathering of information on the public through surveillance and the filtration of information to the public through owned media. In its early days, the Internet seemed to pose a challenge to authoritarian regimes, but with the advent of social media, we are watching the construction of architectures that fulfill the needs of every authoritarian regime: surveillance and information control. Authoritarian movements are possible only when the general public becomes habituated to—and numbed by—a new normal.”

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Book:Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America
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“We can already see how algorithms competing to maximize our attention have the capacity to not only transform cultures but redefine the experience of existence. Algorithmically reinforced “engagement” lies at the heart of our outrage politics, call-out culture, selfie-induced vanity, tech addiction, and eroding mental well-being. Targeted users are soaked in content to keep them clicking.”

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Book:Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America
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“We like to think of ourselves as immune from influence or our cognitive biases, because we want to feel like we are in control, but industries like alcohol, tobacco, fast food, and gaming all know we are creatures that are subject to cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities. And tech has caught on to this with its research into “user experience,” “gamification,” “growth hacking,” and “engagement” by activating ludic loops and reinforcement schedules in the same way slot machines do. So far, this gamification has been contained to social media and digital platforms, but what will happen as we further integrate our lives with networked information architectures designed to exploit evolutionary flaws in our cognition? Do we really want to live in a “gamified” environment that engineers our obsessions and plays with our lives as if we are inside its game?”

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