Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again Kindle Edition

Although I had some awareness of the Cambridge Analytica story, I was horrified to learn the enormous and somewhat invisible role they played in the Cruz’ campaign, Trump’s election, Brexit and others. Even more frightening is what big data and corrupt players mean for future elections and, not to be too alarmist, but democracy in general. I so appreciate that Brittany Kaiser has had the courage to be a whistle blower and written this book. I need a few days to think about what I can do to play some small part in helping to address the issue. I do appreciate that she identified suggestions at the back of the book. For starters, I am even more motivated me to get more involved in the 2020 election, particularly on the data side, and certainly will encourage my colleagues to read the book.

Brittany Kaiser worked for Cambridge Analytica (CA) and Alexander Nix from Dec 2014 until March 2018. As a salesperson, she provides a detailed view of the advertising information used to describe CA’s use of technology, especially to elect Donald Trump, and a view of the people who promoted Trump. Her descriptions of the basic methods and processes of CA and their adaptation to campaigns throughout the world adds to our understanding of these new technologies and also, surprise here, some most clever political manipulations of groups and nations based on an understanding of their cultures and societies. However, Kaiser was young, needy, and is a serious narcissist, so her analysis and understanding of technology is flawed by her desire to promote herself and control others. As with most narcissists, since that is socially unacceptable, she has a series of disguises, the liberal caring for world peace, the woman needing a father figure and money, whatever, to hide her inability to see reality and other people independent of her needs and resulting desire to control. The book provides a service in the facts that it reveals, especially as she uses the data on her PC, such as advertising slides and messages, to reveal the different creative adaptations used by CA managers. However, her analysis of people and technology is poor, her views are so slanted by her narcissism that any analysis and her related supposed facts are plain silly. She uses the word whistleblower with no concept of what it might mean, since she deems herself a whistleblower. For example, she equates Daniel Ellsberg who released carefully vetted small amounts of classified information so as to protect our nation with Julian Assange who dumped tens of thousands of US classified documents from Edward Snowden and thus, did untold damage to the world and people. She equates the specific context of John Jones, a British lawyer who defended war criminals, and his views of the necessary neutrality of a lawyer, to a partial explanation for her life during that period. Since she can’t pay attention to outside realities, contexts, and people she can not comprehend a whole view of a complex business organization interacting with powerful, developing technologies. This book is limited to her experiences and doesn’t involve any investigation into the other players at CA, for example, she did not review or understand the testimony of Christopher Wylie but does repeat the company gossip about him. Alexander Nix is a manipulator trying to build a company that sells political manipulations, but her central view of him is how he did or didn’t satisfy her needs. At the end of the book there is an attempt to understand how to modify our global use of technology, but she has no comprehension of the inherent momentum of these technologies and the technical realities of control, we see only her desire to control society and people, thus the legislative list which she provides is a starting point for your own analysis of its possible value.On the level of a novel, it is an interesting book to see the use of manipulation by Alexander Nix and his associates in building his company. The setting begins in Britain with Kaiser’s personal side views of Brexit and expands to the whole world, especially the 2016 Trump campaign and the role of Robert and Rebekah Mercer. It is difficult to wade through the author’s narcissistic world view, but fascinating to see the interactions hidden behind her self-centered observations. This book provides a sense of the new industry of data manipulation of users, especially Facebook and other social media users. There are now hundreds of companies creating, selling, and analyzing data on how to manipulate users through powerful advertising algorithms, here my interest is in the changes of political elections, such as Trump in 2016.

All powerful technologies have the potential for benefit and for harm. Big data analytics is no different, currently being used for medical diagnoses, fraud detection, and climate change predictions, to name but a few. But there are also alarming misuses of massive data mining, well documented in recent books like O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction. Such misuse can (and did) change the course of history, as revealed in Brittany Kaiser’s new expose on Cambridge Analytica’s data gathering and manipulation of public sentiments and political opinions. That this was even possible resulted not only from their overt and covert attempts to influence the US 2016 presidential election (as well as other international elections such as Mexico’s), but also from social media’s lack of oversight and, more concerning, from the general population’s uncaring and willful ignorance about how they are being targeted and directed with misrepresentations and outright lies. Responsible citizenship and exercise of voting rights without improper influence demands an informed electorate that cares about facts and knows how to verify them. Sadly, it seems we no longer live in that world. Read Kaiser’s book to get a disturbing picture of how bad the problem is, but despair of finding quick and easy solutions.

Brittany Kaiser’s book is the best of what has been written about CA, especially from her personal account. A must-read for anyone who want to understand the genesis of the story behind CA and the age of data manipulation and how it resulted in the election of Trump.

This is a good book for those interested in social media, but it is much more about Brittany Kaiser than social media analysis.Brittany Kaiser's story is interesting, I am somewhat disappointed with the book on the whole. I was under the impression that she was much more involved in the analytics and data work at Cambridge Analytics. That was what I really wanted to read more about. Nevertheless, Kaiser's journey is a bizarre coming of age one. As a teenager, she was an unabashed Howard Dean and Barack Obama liberal. As a young adult, she was an American student of human rights law studying in the UK, but for want of money, she falls under the spell of her polished boss, Alexander Nix. In a few years at Cambridge Analytics (CA), she reluctantly becomes a pitchwoman vying for consultancy contracts on conservative political campaigns including those of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump is a bizarre coming of age tale. The book itself is much more about her, her role at CA and her (platonic) relationship with her boss, Alexander Nix.

It was far too personal and lacking a great deal in real discussion or technical specifics. At times, the reader learns far more about the author than the subject. It disappointed, and I would not buy it again.

An education in big data that kept me reading late into the night. Demand to own your own data now!

A MUST READ for anyone who still actually gives a damn about their country.

I've worked on data for many years and understand its power, Britney's book lacks substance. I just felt I'm reading someone's travelling blog and meeting minutes nothing else. There is no in-depth details on usage of data. And I must say I was fairly annoyed by the repetition of the sentence 'I need this job...'.A principled person is one who never bargains her principles, but for Britney it's was quite the opposite. Also she looked quite surprised on the use and power of data which was a surprising fact for me considering her resume.I think Britney should work on the same psycho-ops to analyse her switch.I've now started to read Chris Wylie book hoping I might get better insight.

Christopher wylies book gives a better take of events but kaiser's take is good also

In the last 5 days I’ve barely been able to put this book down angered, enthralled, scared and inspired in equal measure about how society has become the way it is and how so many previously good people have been manipulated onto a path of hatred incited by targeted algorithms created to instil fear and control their intentions. I would highly recommend anyone who cares for the future of society and any form of civility to read this from someone who was entrenched so firmly at the top of those causing the harm to society on a never before seen scale. “It is the duty of every good citizen not to be silent.” #OwnYourData

Very unusual writing style / grammar. Long sentences with lots of connectives, often taking a long time to get to the point. However, fascinating story. Strange narrative to portray as she was entirely complicit throughout the scandal but writes the book from a very apologetic standpoint.

This is a powerful book for each and every millennial. The future of data is in their hands. Learn how to summon it.