Ever since Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica, an analytics firm that backed Donald Trump in his presidential campaign over violation of privacy policies, the company has been drawn into one mess after another. But rather than taking steps to resolve the issues, Facebook has made another questionable move by suspending the Facebook account of the whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica’s illicit activities.
Christopher Wylie, the architect behind Cambridge Analytica’s suspension from Facebook, now finds himself at the receiving end of Facebook’s misplaced wrath, which is nothing short of surprising. But disabling his Facebook account is just the tip of the iceberg, as the social media behemoth has also locked him out of his accounts on other Facebook properties like WhatsApp and Instagram.
The former Cambridge Analytica employee first tweeted about his Facebook account getting disabled yesterday, and later on, he revealed to a journalist that his WhatsApp and Instagram accounts have also been suspended. In its defense, Facebook released an official statement which says,“Mr. Wylie has refused to cooperate with us until we lift the suspension on his account. Given he said he ‘exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles,’ we cannot do this at this time.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Christopher Wylie revealed himself to be the brains behind Cambridge Analytica’s voter-targeting tool that allegedly used data illegally obtained by the firm which was collected by an app in 2015. As per The Guardian, he is one of the first individuals to provide evidence linking Russia and US presidential elections, and also the first one to expose Cambridge Analytica’s advanced tool that was used to study the social media activity of Facebook users and sway their opinion in favor Donald Trump.
In addition to Facebook, Christopher Wiley’s former employer has also distanced itself from the whistleblower, contradicting his claims by stating that he was just a contractor for Cambridge Analytica, and not a creator of their tool which did NOT harvest user data.
