This prompted the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal,[3][4] which triggered multiple government investigations and raised wider concerns about privacy, the unchecked power of Big Tech, and Western democracy's vulnerability to disinformation.

[15] After leaving school, Wylie moved to Ottawa, where he began volunteering for "a short stint" in the parliamentary office of his Member of Parliament, Keith Martin.

[19] During his contract, Wylie begun developing strategies on how to capitalize data harvested through social media for political gain.

[23] His role at Cambridge Analytica was reported by the Parliament of the United Kingdom as its "director of research"[24] and by Time as a "founder,"[7] but a Queen's Counsel (QC) report by Julian Malins disputed those titles, documenting that his employment contract stated he was hired as a part-time "intern" on a student visa, limited to 19 hours of work a week.

[25] Wylie's role at SCL was first revealed in May 2017 by The Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who wrote that "He’s the one who brought data and micro-targeting [individualised political messages] to Cambridge Analytica".

"[32] Wylie has said he did not realize the "potential misuse" of his research at the time, referring to it as his "real failure,"[7] and to the work he did as, "political hackery.

[7] In 2014, Wylie co-founded Eunoia Technologies[13][33] along with former SCL/Cambridge Analytica senior staff Brent Clickard, Mark Gettleson and Tadas Jucikas.

[28] Wylie elaborated on the Eunoia allegations when denying them: "They tried to sue me over their claims that I was somehow trying to steal their clients, or to somehow try to interfere with their contractual relations with other employees, or what have you.

[44] On 1 December 2018, Wylie was hired by H&M as its consulting director of research,[45] eventually being promoted to its head of insight and emerging technologies.

[48] In March 2018, Wylie released a cache of documents to The Guardian centered around Cambridge Analytica's alleged unauthorized possession of personal private data from up to 87 million Facebook user accounts,[49] which was obtained for the purpose of creating targeted digital advertising campaigns.

The campaigns were based on psychological and personality profiles mined from the Facebook data which Wylie had commissioned in a mass-data scraping exercise.

[3] On the 18 March 2018, Wylie gave a series of detailed interviews to The Observer with revelations about his time at SCL/Cambridge Analytica, presenting himself as a "whistleblower".

[14] He subsequently provided testimony and materials to a range of inquiries and legislatures around the world, and his revelations were instrumental in the May 2018 collapse of Cambridge Analytica.

Wylie admitted to having been the principal anonymous source[50] for a May 2017 The Observer article by Carole Cadwalladr, which first drew attention to Cambridge Analytica.

[22] Cadwalladr subsequently related how she had tracked Wylie down via LinkedIn in early 2017, and after finding him "fascinating, funny and brilliant", had spent a year persuading him to go public with his allegations.

[50] On March 27, 2018, Wylie provided evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the UK Parliament that contained further revelations about the practices at Cambridge Analytica and its associated companies.