The woman who blew open the Cambridge Analytica scandal says Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey are ‘handmaidens to authoritarianism’
Even before the TED 2019 conference in Vancouver, Canada opened on Monday, the event promised to be political. The theme this year, “Bigger Than Us,” focuses on finding solutions to deep-rooted tensions in society.
A main source of that tension — privacy issues surrounding tech companies like Twitter and Facebook— came up on Monday evening, when tech executives found themselves directly in the line of fire.
In a talk, Carole Cadwalladr, the journalist who broke the Cambridge Analytica scandal, called out Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for being “handmaidens to authoritarianism.”
Her comments were especially bold, given that Dorsey is scheduled to appear on the same stage on Tuesday, and may have been in the audience as her speech was being delivered. But the majority of Cadwalladr’s talk focused on criticisms of Facebook.
In 2018, Cadwalladr’s reporting revealed that Facebook had made data on tens of millions of Americans accessible to Cambridge Analytica, an English political consulting firm. The firm then allegedly used this data to influence the 2016 Brexit vote in the UK and the 2016 presidential election in the US. The stories made Cadwalladr a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
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