Cambridge Analytica

Ah OK. And this leads to the whole fake news thing, i.e. Targeted Adversting = smear campaign.
 
You know something is afoot when most of the American news organisations have this Cambridge story right at the top of their news, except for Fox News - where it’s literally buried 3/4s of the way down the page, next to an article on fishing :D
 
I'm both surprised and shocked that people find this revelation both surprising and shocking. I'm not a member of the tinfoil hat brigade but even I recognise the control the media has over peoples minds. Whilst CA have undoubtedly crossed several lines in both harvesting the data and the way in which they have then used that data, I personally believe that the parties who have then used their services need to be investigated and brought to justice as well.

106False statements as to candidates.
(1)A person who, or any director of any body or association corporate which—

(a)before or during an election,

(b)for the purpose of affecting the return of any candidate at the election,

makes or publishes any false statement of fact in relation to the candidate’s personal character or conduct shall be guilty of an illegal practice, unless he can show that he had reasonable grounds for believing, and did believe, that statement to be true.

(2)A candidate shall not be liable nor shall his election be avoided for any illegal practice under subsection (1) above committed by his agent other than his election agent unless—

(a)it can be shown that the candidate or his election agent has authorised or consented to the committing of the illegal practice by the other agent or has paid for the circulation of the false statement constituting the illegal practice; or

(b)an election court find and report that the election of the candidate was procured or materially assisted in consequence of the making or publishing of such false statements.

(3)A person making or publishing any false statement of fact as mentioned above may be restrained by interim or perpetual injunction by the High Court or the county court from any repetition of that false statement or of a false statement of a similar character in relation to the candidate and, for the purpose of granting an interim injunction, prima facie proof of the falsity of the statement shall be sufficient.
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The marketeers plainly think this works and are no doubt charging a premium for it, as a great way to liberate those Super PAC advertising budgets. But does it really work? Are they actually targeting people who might be swung with messages that will swing them, consider me sceptical?
 
PlacidCasual said:
The marketeers plainly think this works and are no doubt charging a premium for it, as a great way to liberate those Super PAC advertising budgets. But does it really work? Are they actually targeting people who might be swung with messages that will swing them, consider me sceptical?
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There is ample research on this area. It typically works by for example, finding out someone goes hunting and sending them fake news about how the opponent wants to take your guns away.

They don;t need a high sucess rate, they only need to swing a certain percentage to have a large effect. Remember, Brexit was only around a ~1% swing form having a the opposite outocme,, in the US elections Trump only won due to 1-3% swing in a few key states.
 
Domo said:
Ah OK. And this leads to the whole fake news thing, i.e. Targeted Adversting = smear campaign.
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Not necessarily, it just means they can more efficiently reach the type of people they want to reach in order to influence particular key areas during the campaign.

The alternative is to be less efficient and spend much more money on advertising in order to achieve the same.

The issue here, if you ignore the silliness in the hidden recording, concerns data protection and whether Facebook data was used illegally. CA has a model that can predict various things about someone based on their Facebook likes, using that model isn't breaking any rules but if they've been passed the original survey data harvested to construct it then they and the firm owned by the Cambridge academic they contracted might well have broken the rules.
 
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will the USA let Facebook off, as the inncocent party/stooge though ?

Is there really any line to be drawn between this data breech to CA and the targetted marketting facilities they provide to other clients;
although the accused CA data use in the election, may be illegal; at what point is other non-declared targetted marketting insidious, when targetted folks do not realise they are being manipulated.
The earlier Shazam comment is interesting, the app that is always listening and facilitiates targetted music advertising in your favourite restaurants/shops/radio-stations


Someone needs to come up with a pithy hashtag for a facebook protest to match #metoo (how has that tag been exploited for targetted marketting ?)
 
dowie said:
Not necessarily, it just means they can more efficiently reach the type of people they want to reach in order to influence particular key areas during the campaign.

The alternative is to be less efficient and spend much more money on advertising in order to achieve the same.

The issue here, if you ignore the silliness in the hidden recording, concerns data protection and whether Facebook data was used illegally. CA has a model that can predict various things about someone based on their Facebook likes, using that model isn't breaking any rules but if they've been passed the original survey data harvested to construct it then they and the firm owned by the Cambridge academic they contracted might well have broken the rules.
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True Geordie has done a podcast with one of the guys behind youporn. He said that their analytical algorithm was so good that after watching 5 videos they could predict which video your were going to watch, 15 potential videos out of 100,000s of videos (numbers are estimated, can't remember off the top if my head). Some parts he went in to detail with user analysis and making money off it, it was quite interesting.
 
Domo said:
How does collecting Facebook user data help Trump get elected? Genuine question.
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You use the data to identify people who could be encouraged to vote the way you want them to. You anticipate the hopes and fears of these people, based on the dataset. And then you target advertising at them, based on those hopes and fears, with the intention of encouraging them to either not vote, or vote for your customer.

You could also target their friends, who may already support your customer. Hit them with stories that confirm their existing bias. Encourage them to share those stories. Basically, you want swing voters to drop any thought of voting for your customer's opponent.

In the case of the US election, this could mean identifying democrats who aren't keen on Hilary, who worry that she is dishonest, along with undecided voters who share the same opinion. Target their Trump-supporting friends with negative stories about Hilary, specifically the email scandal, and any other occasion you think you could use to convince people that's she's a compulsive liar. Encourage them to like and share those stories; "get the word out". Then target the identified swing voters with adverts that echo the message they've seen their friends share. You don't need these people to become huge Donald Trump fans. You just need them to become wary enough of Hilary Clinton to not vote for her, or vote against her.

Then there's all of the other stuff; the blatant admission that they are happy to target people with fake news in order to influence opinions. The suggestion that they will run smear campaigns against political opponents, even going so far as to traffick sex workers around the world in order to set up a honeytrap.

Two different issues really. The first is about the business and industry as a whole, and whether or not something needs to be done to reduce the potency of this type of targeted advertising. The other is about whether or not senior figures within Cambridge Analytica acted in illegal and immoral ways in service to their clients.

When it comes to Facebook, I can't help but think people need to be saved from their own lazy stupidity.
 
Uther said:
So it wasn't the Russians, it was the British after all.
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There are still questions regarding Russian money. They did a major pitch to Lucas Oil, a company which at face value has little need for targeted Facebook advertising, but may have been a front for the Russian government wanting to know about it.
 
As for smear/fake/targeted

It has have been happening since print was invented (take a look at the bible peeps), The rise of newspapers..... The rise of TV... The rise of Apple/Google/Facebook

So until we make all our politicians actually want to do better for the people instead of money, nothing is going to change.
 
Evangelion said:
Targeted advertising.
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But isn't that what advertising does in general?

The cookies stored on your own computer from visiting Amazon and doing a specific search for a new vacuum cleaner allows other sites to promote that targeted advertising towards you.

I really can't understand what this whole upheaval is about, i just feel they're making a mountain out of a molehill about it all.

So basically this 3rd party company has data mined publicly available information (afterall if people are posting things to their FB pages and don't make their profiles private, then that information is now private), and are using it to target specific agendas to certain demographics to promote their own message.

How exactly is that any different from the likes of the daily fail promoting anti-immigration articles to their readers to push them towards voting parties like UKIP who were renowned for their anti-immigration views.

Yes granted Cambridge Analytica have done all this at a much more advanced level, but with the information that people are publicly making available and how easy data mining is, and how easy it is to make use of targeted advertising, i would bet that there's millions of companies around the world that are doing this sort of thing to some degree.
 
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