2 results for "Internet"

Targeted: my inside story of Cambridge Analytica and how Trump, Brexit and Facebook broke democracy

Kaiser, Brittany
In this explosive memoir, a political consultant and technology whistleblower reveals the disturbing truth about the multi-billion-dollar data industry, revealing to the public how companies are getting richer using our personal information and exposing how Cambridge Analytica exploited weaknesses in privacy laws to help elect Donald Trump. When Brittany Kaiser joined Cambridge Analytica – the UK-based political consulting firm funded by conservative billionaire and Donald Trump patron Robert Mercer – she was an idealistic young professional working on her fourth degree in human rights law and international relations. A veteran of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, Kaiser's goal was to utilize data for humanitarian purposes, most notably to prevent genocide and human rights abuses. But her experience inside Cambridge Analytica opened her eyes to the tremendous risks that this unregulated industry poses to privacy and democracy. Targeted is Kaiser's eyewitness chronicle of the dramatic and disturbing story of the rise and fall of Cambridge Analytica. She reveals to the public how Facebook's lax policies and lack of sufficient national laws allowed voters to be manipulated in both Britain and the United States, where personal data was weaponised to spread fake news and racist messaging during the Brexit vote and the 2016 election. But the damage isn't done Kaiser warns; the 2020 election can be compromised as well if we continue to do nothing. In the aftermath of the U.S. election, as she became aware of the horrifying reality of what Cambridge Analytica had done in support of Donald Trump, Kaiser made the difficult choice to expose the truth. Risking her career, relationships, and personal safety, she told authorities about the data industry's unethical business practices, eventually testifying before Parliament.
HarperCollinsPublishers 2019 392 pages

Fault lines: a history of the United States since 1974

Kruse, Kevin Michael,Zelizer, Julian E.
Two award-winning historians explore the origins of a divided America. If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: you might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right. For leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, it all starts in 1974. In that one year, the nation was rocked by one major event after another: The Watergate crisis and the departure of President Richard Nixon, the first and only U.S. President to resign; the winding down of the Vietnam War and rising doubts about America’s military might; the fallout from the OPEC oil embargo that paralyzed America with the greatest energy crisis in its history; and the desegregation busing riots in South Boston that showed a horrified nation that our efforts to end institutional racism were failing. In the years that followed, the story of our own lifetimes would be written. Longstanding historical fault lines over income inequality, racial division, and a revolution in gender roles and sexual norms would deepen and fuel a polarized political landscape. In Fault Lines , Kruse and Zelizer reveal how the divisions of the present day began almost five decades ago, and how they were widened thanks to profound changes in our political system as well as a fracturing media landscape that was repeatedly transformed with the rise of cable TV, the internet, and social media. How did the United States become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer.
W.W. Norton & Company 2019 428 pages