The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal: Scholars have been sounding the alarm about data-harvesting firms for nearly a decade. The latest Cambridge Analytica scandal shows it may be too late to stop them: “Is the problem with privacy-obviating social networks, psychological profiling, and political micro-targeting that some researcher violated Facebook’s terms of service? Or is it that this controversy estranges the whole enterprise, providing a route to approach the almost unthinkable changes that have come to democratic processes in the Facebook era?”

+ In The Guardian a 28-year-old coder goes on the record to discuss his role in hijacking the profiles of millions of Facebook users in order to target the US electorate. “As Wylie describes it, he was the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating ‘Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindf-ck tool.'”

+ “Facebook was being used as it’s designed, and that’s the problem.” NY Mag: What You Need to Understand About Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. And here’s a good explainer from WaPo: Everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook debacle.