One significant person who helped reveal Cambridge Analytica's data abuse was Christopher Wylie. In addition to the United States and Brexit, the company and its predecessor, SCL Group, were active in many other countries, particularly in developing countries. To influence elections on behalf of their clients, they employed complex strategies.
Think about a fisherman who stretches his net far beyond a single pond. In the same way that a fisherman throws his line into different bodies of water in the hopes of catching more fish, Cambridge Analytica expanded its global reach in an effort to affect political outcomes in various geographical areas. Wylie's statement demonstrates the breadth and depth of the business's operations, which far exceeded what was first acknowledged or reported.
Their work had a major impact because it demonstrated that electoral meddling had global ramifications rather than being limited to a single nation. It brought attention to the larger problem of political data misuse and its capacity to sway democratic processes across the globe. This insight highlighted the significance of protecting individual privacy rights and spurred debates about the need for stronger laws governing the use of personal information by political campaigns.
Wylie emphasizes the worldwide scope of these problems and promotes a more all-encompassing strategy to address them by comparing their actions to the extensive impacts of a fishing net thrown across various bodies of water.