H&M recruits Facebook whistleblower Christopher Wylie

H&M has recruited the whistleblower behind Facebook’s data scandal as adviser.

Christopher Wylie has been working for the company as research director since December, the Swedish fashion chain told German Press Agency (DPA) on Wednesday. His work focuses on helping H&M Group improve its consumer, product and market analysis capabilities. He is also supporting the group’s work towards sustainable and ethical forms of artificial intelligence.

Wylie is a former employee of the collapsed Cambridge Analytica, which was at the centre of the Facebook data scandal. The company is understood to have systematically collected and used the personal data of millions of online users for targeted political ads, influencing among other things the US election in 2016. Canadian citizen Wylie was revealed as a whistleblower in the fall of 2018.

Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter was the first to report on his collaboration with H&M.