Christopher Wylie

“We need new narratives in culture, and to do a better job of showing more diversity.”

“You will be a far more effective whistleblower if you operate within a legal framework.”

“Data is powerful and if it's put in the wrong hands, it becomes a weapon. And we have to understand that companies like Facebook, and platforms like Facebook or Twitter, are not just social networking sites. They're opportunities for information warfare.”

“I didn't fully appreciate the impact of what I helped create until 2016 happened. Very soon after that, I started working for The Guardian, originally as an anonymous source.”

“When you talk to people in fashion, it's like, people wear clothes because it's who they are and what they like. It's as simple as that. It's just about creating a way of measuring that.”

“You are being intentionally monitored so that your unique biases, your anxieties, your weaknesses, your needs, your desires can be quantified in such a way that a company can seek to exploit that for profit.”

“At first it was interesting, we worked with the military to identify people susceptible to radicalization, but then Steve Bannon approached us and things changed. We renamed Cambridge Analytica, and we began to approach voters as much as potential terrorists.”

“There are not sufficient regulatory frameworks to handle the amount of power that companies like Facebook have, particularly in the United States.”

“It weighs on me that I played a pivotal role in setting up a company that I think has done a lot of harm to the democratic process in a lot of countries.”

“What people forget is that no one pays you to go and be a champion for democracy. A girl's got to make rent. I didn't have a job for two years.”

“What makes clothing so potent is that people incorporate the fashion that they're wearing into their identity. It becomes part of you and how you show yourself to the world.”

“When you're, like, writing a Python script, it doesn't feel like you're doing something to someone. You just don't think, 'How could this actually harm people?'”

“Different kinds of people have different motivations for filling out surveys. Sometimes you would have a group of people who just would fill it out because they're bored, and they don't have anything to do. Or they would just genuinely want to know what is their personality.”

“If we want to prevent another Cambridge Analytica from happening... that starts with regulating big tech beyond just data protection issues, but also looking at whether or not we want as a society to tolerate manipulative design.”

“If you look at how much information you put out, even just on your phone, on Facebook, on Google, whatever, you essentially create a clone of yourself online. And that's at the disposal of these large American tech companies.”

“Steve Bannon, you know, discovered that there's nothing more powerful than a humiliated man.”

“In Britain, we have strict spending limits for elections. It's what has kept Britain from following the path of American politics, where elections are the sport of billionaires and corporate interests.”

“I don't think that military-style information operations is conducive for any democratic process.”

“We've never met before and I start telling you how much I love your favorite musicians, how I watch the same TV as you do, etc. You realize the reason I'm so perfect for you is because I spent the last two years going through your photo albums, reading your text messages and talking to your friends. Facebook is that stalker.”

“I don't believe in data-driven anything, it's the most stupid phrase. Data should always serve people, people should never serve data.”