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Cambridge Analytica: The Data That Turned the World Upside Down

160 points by lakeeffect 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Lintaris 10y ago
There were several articles on Cambridge Analytics and Trump but none made it to the HN front page, including the English translation of the original German article.
- conistonwater 10y ago
  I think this is an (another?) English translation of that Das Magazin article.
- 1337biz 10y ago
  To be honest the story is actually super boring. Nothing of substance how it actually works. It is for people who apparently have never noticed that it is possible to show different ads to different target groups...
conistonwater 10y ago
I'm loath to uncritically accept the claims of this article. It just tells you what they did and how Cambridge Analytica thought it had an impact. How do they actually know it worked? The claims are pretty strong, yet the article reads a little like marketing copy for the company. After all, a lot of things happened in the election, really a lot. Plus, the whole thing about "shadowy private company relying on subconscious decision-making" does kinda set off my bullshit alarms.
- IsaacL 10y ago
  Yeah, I was recently thinking of applying to work at Cambridge Analytica, so I had reason to do some digging on them. Like a lot of people applying data science to problems, they're riding off hype, buzzwords and clients not fully understanding what they're doing. One reason I didn't end up applying is, though I lean to the right politically, I'm not at all a Trump supporter and couldn't bring myself to work on getting him elected. The second reason is that, even if I was working on a non-Trump project, it wasn't clear that their product added that much value. Some media references to them agreed with this, pointing out that, e.g., their model requires campaigns to create multiple adverts targeting different personality profiles, but most don't have the resources.
- RodericDay 10y ago
  Believing Cambridge Analytica are a bunch of geniuses doesn't only benefit CA, but also to the people that CA defeated. If Trump had a crazy amazing data science team, it means that Clinton and the "Mook Mafia" didn't mess up, they were just outplayed. I think this whole pro-data story is incorrect. Trump's huge unpopularity right now shows that what happened this election was Clinton messing up her own campaign by religiously following data and not doing basic things like visit Wisconsin. And from the journalism end, the NYT telling readers that Clinton had an 80+% chance of winning, sending a loud and clear message: Stay home if you wish to protest vote. Even after massive, massive predictive failures, fortune-tellers always manage to give excuses and stick around.
  - mrmaximus 10y ago
    "Trump's huge unpopularity right now shows..." After watching what happened with the election, I don't think it's safe to say Trump is unpopular. Sure the mainstream media and loud social media voices say so, but that looming "silent majority" are still silent. Assessing his popularity among those willing to speak only tells us how popular he is among that group.
    - dashundchen 10y ago
      He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes. His disapproval rating has eclipsed 50% in record time for a modern president - 8 days. 42 vs 51, approve/disapprove https://www.rt.com/usa/375715-trump-majority-disapproval-8-days/ https://www.rt.com/usa/375715-trump-majority-disapproval-8-d... President Obama had an approval rating twice as large following his inauguration. 84/14 Over 3 million people marched against him just two weeks ago and continue to mobilize. I can't find any evidence that there is some silent majority supporting him. I'm more inclined to think it's a vocal minority.
      - mark_edward 10y ago
        If they repeat it long enough, they hope to make it true. He didn't even get more votes.
      - 10y ago
- pbadg3r 10y ago
  I think the primary evidence is near the end of the article: "Kosinski has observed all of this from his office at Stanford. Following the US election, the university is in turmoil. Kosinski is responding to developments with the sharpest weapon available to a researcher: a scientific analysis. Together with his research colleague Sandra Matz, he has conducted a series of tests, which will soon be published. The initial results are alarming: The study shows the effectiveness of personality targeting by showing that marketers can attract up to 63 percent more clicks and up to 1,400 more conversions in real-life advertising campaigns on Facebook when matching products and marketing messages to consumers' personality characteristics."
- zby 10y ago
  Cory Doctorow agrees: https://boingboing.net/2017/02/01/trumps-big-data-secret-sau.html https://boingboing.net/2017/02/01/trumps-big-data-secret-sau... And a more thorough debunking: http://civichall.org/civicist/will-the-real-psychometric-targeters-please-stand-up/ http://civichall.org/civicist/will-the-real-psychometric-tar... With this quote: "I have described them as the Theranos of political data: I think they have a tremendous marketing department, coupled with a team of research scientists who provide on virtually none of those marketing promises." :) But on a second thought. Planting this story is a masterpiece of promotion - and isn't this kind of similar to promoting a politician?
  - edjw 10y ago
    It looks like it's more that Cory Doctorow agrees with Cathy O'Neil https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-secret-sauce-is-just-more-ketchup https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-s...
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  The subject of big data and the role of data brokers in elections seems to be trendy. I've seen a few pieces around on Cambridge Analytica due to Trump ending up POTU but also on the bigger players: Experian, Equifax, Epsilon, Acxiom. Those are very real and do play a role in influencing targeted voters in elections, but the question is not about who do what and how it works. It is about how this way of campaigning is changing the way candidates convince voters ( I was gonna say democracy but there are no actual democracy anywhere right now ). https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-what-data-brokers-know-about-you https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-...
petercooper 10y ago
Is this title just the six most used words in the article? :-D
- jat850 10y ago
  It's incomprehensible to me - after some time I just started parsing it as "Big Data, Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, Trump". It'd be better if it was just re-titled to use the article headline, I think.
- traek 10y ago
  It's words from the URL. I'm guessing they were used because the article headline isn't very descriptive.
- sctb 10y ago
  We've updated the title from “Big Data Cambridge Analytica Brexit Trump”, but we're happy to change it again if someone can suggest something less click-baitey than the article's title.
harshaw 10y ago
The impression I got when I originally read this article was that: 1) Trump outsmarted Clinton (and the presumed technology advantage she inherited from the Obama campaign apparatus) with psychometric local targeted propaganda / communication 2) Some of that communication may have been deliberately targeted at discouraging democratic voters by putting negative articles about Clinton in their social media feed. This is interesting in the context that Trump only won by a 70K voter advantage split over three states.
- Retric 10y ago
  Clinton was predicted to win which really hurt her turnout. She was also relatively unpopular as her numbers would often drop after a personal apearance. While she won the popular vote by 3 or so million people, trump's message was very targeted to areas that mattered. A republican with the slogan 'your fired' ended up being the pro worker candidate in many areas. That takes very skillful image manipulation and a gullible electorate. PS: Don't forget he was predicted to have around a 40% win chance. That's far from negligible despite what people where thinking.
  - anonbanker 10y ago
    > Clinton was predicted to win which really hurt her turnout. I'm not sure this claim can be backed up by data.
    - Retric 10y ago
      http://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-non-voters-who-decided-the-election-trump-won-because-of-lower-democratic-turnout/#631fc6fa40a1 http://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-non... Is some support for turnout being a problem. "Wisconsin tells the same numbers story, even more dramatically. Trump got no new votes. He received exactly the same number of votes in America’s Dairyland as Romney did in 2012. Both received 1,409,000 votes. But Clinton again could not spark many Obama voters to turn out for her: she tallied 230,000 votes less than Obama did in 2012. This is how a 200,000-vote victory margin for Obama in the Badger State became a 30,000-vote defeat for Clinton." My thoughts where people would have been more willing to hold their noses and vote for her if they thought it was going to be a very close election. Few democrats in Michigan really thought the state was up for grabs at something like 78.9% vs 21.1% https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/michigan/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/... More support for this is new-hampshire (70-30) was predicted as a closer state than Pennsylvania (77-23), but ended-up very comfortably with Clinton. Remember, Pennsylvania (20) + Wisconsin (10) + Michigan (16) + 227 = 273 and a win. Now, I am not saying the effect was huge, but in tight elections it does not take much. Further, both the Senate +2 and House +6 shifted toward democrats though maintaining republican leaning.
frebord 10y ago
We royally fucked up with the internet. I literally have to question my own motives for things, and often wonder if I have been manipulated into my beliefs, opinions, and desires. It is kind of scary to think about! How do we move to a less centralized internet and is it too late?
- frebord 10y ago
  I mean Facebook for example, at its core for an end user it really just mirrors what the Internet was built to do. I can easily host my own profile and allow people to log in to it and talk to me. How did it become so dangerously centralized?
  - mjevans 10y ago
    The average user is lazy, cheep, and unaware of how valuable their freedom is.
    - willemmali 10y ago
      Did you mean "sheep" or "cheap"?
      - tombrossman 10y ago
        I think we've just witnessed the birth of a new technology portmanteau on HN- "Cheep: (noun) Member of one or more online herds of users who are exploited for personal data". I like it. (sadly, cheep.com is already taken or I'd be on that like white on rice...)
  - criddell 10y ago
    > How did it become so dangerously centralized? Network effects and there's nothing out there better than Facebook.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Facebook owns the directory, and the notifications channel. Freestanding sites lack this, and it turns out that behavioural costs matter.
rabboRubble 10y ago
This HN title is word salad.
- rabboRubble 10y ago
  Article's title has been improved. It was baaaad in its first version.
bahatur 10y ago
There are several elements of this article that are refuted by Dominic Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave campaign (a different organization than Leave.EU). You can read a more detailed description by an insider for the software Vote Leave used at his personal blog, here: https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/on-the-referendum-20-the-campaign-physics-and-data-science-vote-leaves-voter-intention-collection-system-vics-now-available-for-all/ https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/on-the-refe...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
danielam 10y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-08/no-big-data-didn-t-win-the-u-s-election https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-08/no-big-da...
- conistonwater 10y ago
  There's another one at https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-secret-sauce-is-just-more-ketchup https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-s...
chkuendig 10y ago
Not again this story. This is a very sensationalist take on the impact of micro-targeting. It probably has some impact, but every political campaign has been doing this for years and there isn't something inherently special about Cambridge Analytica's approach (other then being funded by the Mercers and hence Trumps go-to firm). https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-secret-sauce-is-just-more-ketchup https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-s...
- Raphomet 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Cathy O'Neil is one of the most credible voices in the room when it comes to understanding the unintended consequences of applied big data algorithms. The original post is sensationalistic and massively overstates what's currently possible when it comes to micro-targeting.
crawfordcomeaux 10y ago
Whether or not I agree with the premise of Cambridge Analytics's services directly leading to the Trump campaign emotionally manipulating loads of disparate groups into electing him, it's alarming how easy it is to conceive of someone intentionally doing such a thing at such a scale. YC made a request for startups targeting news and democracy the other day. I'd like to propose additional underlying unmet societal needs: Emotional resiliency & nonviolent communication.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  We've all known that this has been coming for a long, long time. Education won't get the job done. Strong business ethics won't either. No, this shit needs to be regulated into the ground. No more of this opt in bullshit, no more selling data that was never yours to sell, we have to cut out immediately. We MUST limit the amount of datapoints that can be used for advertising and we must limit access to that data with much stronger privacy laws by outlining EXACTLY what data is being collected, providing consumers access to that data, and not allowing business to sell data that to other business. Internal use only, that has to be the rule. Freedom of thought is at stake, we have to act fast or we are totally boned.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    You lose the "freedom of thought" simply because a computer does exactly the same thing that a good salesman would do, simply at scale?
    - someguydave 10y ago
      Indeed if the security of control of your government is fragile enough that a fancy telemarketer can acquire significant power perhaps a bit of governmental re-architecture is in order.
      - mirimir 10y ago
        Well, what's problematic is democracy. Representative government doesn't protect against this sort of data-driven populism. If people can be manipulated so efficiently, how can democracy be workable?
TeMPOraL 10y ago
I wonder if this isn't some kind of mass denial happening in some subset of the world. I've been seeing a lot of theories abot why Trump won, including mass manipulation and Russian influence. But what about the simplest explanation - that he won because people voted for him (usual vote counting shenanigans that happen every election aside)? Is this fact so scary people need to rationalize it away?
- nocoder 10y ago
  I think if you are ideologically opposed to Trump then you find it tough to accept something like this. Please also note that HN by nature tends to be more on the liberal spectrum. Like everything else, it is a bit of everything. It's Clinton complacency with Trump's strong messaging + democrats backstabbing their own voters by sabotaging Sanders. Being someone from marketing, it is easy for me to see that "MAGA" is much catchy & better slogan than "Stronger together" (what does it even mean?), it is difficult of any American to argue against MAGA vs. Stronger together since you will be considered "unamerican" & nationalism is currently a theme globally. Trump kept things simple and easy to grasp. If you read Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky's work, he basically appealed to our system 1 minds which prefers shortcuts and jumps to conclusion. (which does not mean that people who does this are somehow bigots because we all do this all time, in fact living would be really difficult we were ultra rational and thoughtful about everything)
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  Saying "he won the election because he got more votes" doesn't explain anything. The question is who voted for him, and why. And that's not about Trump specifically, it gets asked after every election.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  That's not how the electoral system works more often than not people do not vote for, they vote against. Things would be different if we actually voted for policies instead of oligarch strawman.
k_sze 10y ago
What if CA could not, in fact, influence the outcome of the election, but instead predict it, and then they just made the bet to approach the winning party and got $$$? And then they just keep doing this at each election or referendum and claim each time to have been influential? What if?
snowwrestler 10y ago
From a satirical article published on Halloween last year: > [Campaign] has also hired a firm specializing in big data and advanced intrapsychologic modeling. [Data firm] then takes data from Cookie Monster and analyzes it using their own proprietary Artificial Intelligence-powered (AI) algorithm, which allows the campaign to not only identify key voters, but to also identify key parts of their brains that are activated by certain messages. > “Most campaigns only look at individual voters. We take it a step further and dig down into key parts of the voter’s subconscious. That way, we can say, ‘This meme penetrated a voter’s volitional association area of their prefrontal cortex — let’s double down on this message.’” https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/every-political-reporters-campaign-tech-article-ever-d46fe7b7e54f#.d1uejpogs https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/every-political-reporters-camp... I'm sure Cambridge Analytica would love us to think they had an unprecedented impact. I haven't seen any actual evidence though.
mirimir 10y ago
So maybe this is an advertorial for CA, or maybe it's Chicken Little clickbait. Or maybe both. But even Kosinski's work alone is frightening. This is one way that AIs will pwn us. Indeed, how AIs are pwning us.
kriro 10y ago
So they received 15 million for being able to influence people on a massive scale (at least that's the claim). The article makes it sound like they can micro-target a solid percentage of the US population into action or non-action. If this were true, 15 million is a ridiculously low amount of money they got for that ability. I mean the money they should be raking in from advertising should be...tons. If they can change the election behavior of millions of people surely they can get millions of people to buy an extra soft drink here and there...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

160 points by lakeeffect 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

There were several articles on Cambridge Analytics and Trump but none made it to the HN front page, including the English translation of the original German article.

conistonwater 10y ago
I think this is an (another?) English translation of that Das Magazin article.
1337biz 10y ago
To be honest the story is actually super boring. Nothing of substance how it actually works. It is for people who apparently have never noticed that it is possible to show different ads to different target groups...

conistonwater 10y ago

I'm loath to uncritically accept the claims of this article. It just tells you what they did and how Cambridge Analytica thought it had an impact. How do they actually know it worked? The claims are pretty strong, yet the article reads a little like marketing copy for the company. After all, a lot of things happened in the election, really a lot. Plus, the whole thing about "shadowy private company relying on subconscious decision-making" does kinda set off my bullshit alarms.

IsaacL 10y ago
Yeah, I was recently thinking of applying to work at Cambridge Analytica, so I had reason to do some digging on them. Like a lot of people applying data science to problems, they're riding off hype, buzzwords and clients not fully understanding what they're doing. One reason I didn't end up applying is, though I lean to the right politically, I'm not at all a Trump supporter and couldn't bring myself to work on getting him elected. The second reason is that, even if I was working on a non-Trump project, it wasn't clear that their product added that much value. Some media references to them agreed with this, pointing out that, e.g., their model requires campaigns to create multiple adverts targeting different personality profiles, but most don't have the resources.
RodericDay 10y ago
Believing Cambridge Analytica are a bunch of geniuses doesn't only benefit CA, but also to the people that CA defeated. If Trump had a crazy amazing data science team, it means that Clinton and the "Mook Mafia" didn't mess up, they were just outplayed. I think this whole pro-data story is incorrect. Trump's huge unpopularity right now shows that what happened this election was Clinton messing up her own campaign by religiously following data and not doing basic things like visit Wisconsin. And from the journalism end, the NYT telling readers that Clinton had an 80+% chance of winning, sending a loud and clear message: Stay home if you wish to protest vote. Even after massive, massive predictive failures, fortune-tellers always manage to give excuses and stick around.
- mrmaximus 10y ago
  "Trump's huge unpopularity right now shows..." After watching what happened with the election, I don't think it's safe to say Trump is unpopular. Sure the mainstream media and loud social media voices say so, but that looming "silent majority" are still silent. Assessing his popularity among those willing to speak only tells us how popular he is among that group.
  - dashundchen 10y ago
    He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes. His disapproval rating has eclipsed 50% in record time for a modern president - 8 days. 42 vs 51, approve/disapprove https://www.rt.com/usa/375715-trump-majority-disapproval-8-days/ https://www.rt.com/usa/375715-trump-majority-disapproval-8-d... President Obama had an approval rating twice as large following his inauguration. 84/14 Over 3 million people marched against him just two weeks ago and continue to mobilize. I can't find any evidence that there is some silent majority supporting him. I'm more inclined to think it's a vocal minority.
    - mark_edward 10y ago
      If they repeat it long enough, they hope to make it true. He didn't even get more votes.
    - 10y ago
pbadg3r 10y ago
I think the primary evidence is near the end of the article: "Kosinski has observed all of this from his office at Stanford. Following the US election, the university is in turmoil. Kosinski is responding to developments with the sharpest weapon available to a researcher: a scientific analysis. Together with his research colleague Sandra Matz, he has conducted a series of tests, which will soon be published. The initial results are alarming: The study shows the effectiveness of personality targeting by showing that marketers can attract up to 63 percent more clicks and up to 1,400 more conversions in real-life advertising campaigns on Facebook when matching products and marketing messages to consumers' personality characteristics."
zby 10y ago
Cory Doctorow agrees: https://boingboing.net/2017/02/01/trumps-big-data-secret-sau.html https://boingboing.net/2017/02/01/trumps-big-data-secret-sau... And a more thorough debunking: http://civichall.org/civicist/will-the-real-psychometric-targeters-please-stand-up/ http://civichall.org/civicist/will-the-real-psychometric-tar... With this quote: "I have described them as the Theranos of political data: I think they have a tremendous marketing department, coupled with a team of research scientists who provide on virtually none of those marketing promises." :) But on a second thought. Planting this story is a masterpiece of promotion - and isn't this kind of similar to promoting a politician?
- edjw 10y ago
  It looks like it's more that Cory Doctorow agrees with Cathy O'Neil https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-secret-sauce-is-just-more-ketchup https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-s...
bigbugbag 10y ago
The subject of big data and the role of data brokers in elections seems to be trendy. I've seen a few pieces around on Cambridge Analytica due to Trump ending up POTU but also on the bigger players: Experian, Equifax, Epsilon, Acxiom. Those are very real and do play a role in influencing targeted voters in elections, but the question is not about who do what and how it works. It is about how this way of campaigning is changing the way candidates convince voters ( I was gonna say democracy but there are no actual democracy anywhere right now ). https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-what-data-brokers-know-about-you https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-...

petercooper 10y ago

Is this title just the six most used words in the article? :-D

jat850 10y ago
It's incomprehensible to me - after some time I just started parsing it as "Big Data, Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, Trump". It'd be better if it was just re-titled to use the article headline, I think.
traek 10y ago
It's words from the URL. I'm guessing they were used because the article headline isn't very descriptive.
sctb 10y ago
We've updated the title from “Big Data Cambridge Analytica Brexit Trump”, but we're happy to change it again if someone can suggest something less click-baitey than the article's title.

harshaw 10y ago

The impression I got when I originally read this article was that: 1) Trump outsmarted Clinton (and the presumed technology advantage she inherited from the Obama campaign apparatus) with psychometric local targeted propaganda / communication 2) Some of that communication may have been deliberately targeted at discouraging democratic voters by putting negative articles about Clinton in their social media feed. This is interesting in the context that Trump only won by a 70K voter advantage split over three states.

Retric 10y ago
Clinton was predicted to win which really hurt her turnout. She was also relatively unpopular as her numbers would often drop after a personal apearance. While she won the popular vote by 3 or so million people, trump's message was very targeted to areas that mattered. A republican with the slogan 'your fired' ended up being the pro worker candidate in many areas. That takes very skillful image manipulation and a gullible electorate. PS: Don't forget he was predicted to have around a 40% win chance. That's far from negligible despite what people where thinking.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  > Clinton was predicted to win which really hurt her turnout. I'm not sure this claim can be backed up by data.
  - Retric 10y ago
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-non-voters-who-decided-the-election-trump-won-because-of-lower-democratic-turnout/#631fc6fa40a1 http://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-non... Is some support for turnout being a problem. "Wisconsin tells the same numbers story, even more dramatically. Trump got no new votes. He received exactly the same number of votes in America’s Dairyland as Romney did in 2012. Both received 1,409,000 votes. But Clinton again could not spark many Obama voters to turn out for her: she tallied 230,000 votes less than Obama did in 2012. This is how a 200,000-vote victory margin for Obama in the Badger State became a 30,000-vote defeat for Clinton." My thoughts where people would have been more willing to hold their noses and vote for her if they thought it was going to be a very close election. Few democrats in Michigan really thought the state was up for grabs at something like 78.9% vs 21.1% https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/michigan/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/... More support for this is new-hampshire (70-30) was predicted as a closer state than Pennsylvania (77-23), but ended-up very comfortably with Clinton. Remember, Pennsylvania (20) + Wisconsin (10) + Michigan (16) + 227 = 273 and a win. Now, I am not saying the effect was huge, but in tight elections it does not take much. Further, both the Senate +2 and House +6 shifted toward democrats though maintaining republican leaning.

frebord 10y ago

We royally fucked up with the internet. I literally have to question my own motives for things, and often wonder if I have been manipulated into my beliefs, opinions, and desires. It is kind of scary to think about! How do we move to a less centralized internet and is it too late?

frebord 10y ago
I mean Facebook for example, at its core for an end user it really just mirrors what the Internet was built to do. I can easily host my own profile and allow people to log in to it and talk to me. How did it become so dangerously centralized?
- mjevans 10y ago
  The average user is lazy, cheep, and unaware of how valuable their freedom is.
  - willemmali 10y ago
    Did you mean "sheep" or "cheap"?
    - tombrossman 10y ago
      I think we've just witnessed the birth of a new technology portmanteau on HN- "Cheep: (noun) Member of one or more online herds of users who are exploited for personal data". I like it. (sadly, cheep.com is already taken or I'd be on that like white on rice...)
- criddell 10y ago
  > How did it become so dangerously centralized? Network effects and there's nothing out there better than Facebook.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Facebook owns the directory, and the notifications channel. Freestanding sites lack this, and it turns out that behavioural costs matter.

rabboRubble 10y ago

This HN title is word salad.

rabboRubble 10y ago
Article's title has been improved. It was baaaad in its first version.

bahatur 10y ago

There are several elements of this article that are refuted by Dominic Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave campaign (a different organization than Leave.EU). You can read a more detailed description by an insider for the software Vote Leave used at his personal blog, here: https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/on-the-referendum-20-the-campaign-physics-and-data-science-vote-leaves-voter-intention-collection-system-vics-now-available-for-all/ https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/on-the-refe...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

danielam 10y ago

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-08/no-big-data-didn-t-win-the-u-s-election https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-08/no-big-da...

conistonwater 10y ago
There's another one at https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-secret-sauce-is-just-more-ketchup https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-s...

chkuendig 10y ago

Not again this story. This is a very sensationalist take on the impact of micro-targeting. It probably has some impact, but every political campaign has been doing this for years and there isn't something inherently special about Cambridge Analytica's approach (other then being funded by the Mercers and hence Trumps go-to firm). https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-secret-sauce-is-just-more-ketchup https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-s...

Raphomet 10y ago
Thanks for sharing. Cathy O'Neil is one of the most credible voices in the room when it comes to understanding the unintended consequences of applied big data algorithms. The original post is sensationalistic and massively overstates what's currently possible when it comes to micro-targeting.

crawfordcomeaux 10y ago

Whether or not I agree with the premise of Cambridge Analytics's services directly leading to the Trump campaign emotionally manipulating loads of disparate groups into electing him, it's alarming how easy it is to conceive of someone intentionally doing such a thing at such a scale. YC made a request for startups targeting news and democracy the other day. I'd like to propose additional underlying unmet societal needs: Emotional resiliency & nonviolent communication.

wheelerwj 10y ago
We've all known that this has been coming for a long, long time. Education won't get the job done. Strong business ethics won't either. No, this shit needs to be regulated into the ground. No more of this opt in bullshit, no more selling data that was never yours to sell, we have to cut out immediately. We MUST limit the amount of datapoints that can be used for advertising and we must limit access to that data with much stronger privacy laws by outlining EXACTLY what data is being collected, providing consumers access to that data, and not allowing business to sell data that to other business. Internal use only, that has to be the rule. Freedom of thought is at stake, we have to act fast or we are totally boned.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  You lose the "freedom of thought" simply because a computer does exactly the same thing that a good salesman would do, simply at scale?
  - someguydave 10y ago
    Indeed if the security of control of your government is fragile enough that a fancy telemarketer can acquire significant power perhaps a bit of governmental re-architecture is in order.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      Well, what's problematic is democracy. Representative government doesn't protect against this sort of data-driven populism. If people can be manipulated so efficiently, how can democracy be workable?

TeMPOraL 10y ago

I wonder if this isn't some kind of mass denial happening in some subset of the world. I've been seeing a lot of theories abot why Trump won, including mass manipulation and Russian influence. But what about the simplest explanation - that he won because people voted for him (usual vote counting shenanigans that happen every election aside)? Is this fact so scary people need to rationalize it away?

nocoder 10y ago
I think if you are ideologically opposed to Trump then you find it tough to accept something like this. Please also note that HN by nature tends to be more on the liberal spectrum. Like everything else, it is a bit of everything. It's Clinton complacency with Trump's strong messaging + democrats backstabbing their own voters by sabotaging Sanders. Being someone from marketing, it is easy for me to see that "MAGA" is much catchy & better slogan than "Stronger together" (what does it even mean?), it is difficult of any American to argue against MAGA vs. Stronger together since you will be considered "unamerican" & nationalism is currently a theme globally. Trump kept things simple and easy to grasp. If you read Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky's work, he basically appealed to our system 1 minds which prefers shortcuts and jumps to conclusion. (which does not mean that people who does this are somehow bigots because we all do this all time, in fact living would be really difficult we were ultra rational and thoughtful about everything)
snowwrestler 10y ago
Saying "he won the election because he got more votes" doesn't explain anything. The question is who voted for him, and why. And that's not about Trump specifically, it gets asked after every election.
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bigbugbag 10y ago
That's not how the electoral system works more often than not people do not vote for, they vote against. Things would be different if we actually voted for policies instead of oligarch strawman.

k_sze 10y ago

What if CA could not, in fact, influence the outcome of the election, but instead predict it, and then they just made the bet to approach the winning party and got $$$? And then they just keep doing this at each election or referendum and claim each time to have been influential? What if?

snowwrestler 10y ago

From a satirical article published on Halloween last year: > [Campaign] has also hired a firm specializing in big data and advanced intrapsychologic modeling. [Data firm] then takes data from Cookie Monster and analyzes it using their own proprietary Artificial Intelligence-powered (AI) algorithm, which allows the campaign to not only identify key voters, but to also identify key parts of their brains that are activated by certain messages. > “Most campaigns only look at individual voters. We take it a step further and dig down into key parts of the voter’s subconscious. That way, we can say, ‘This meme penetrated a voter’s volitional association area of their prefrontal cortex — let’s double down on this message.’” https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/every-political-reporters-campaign-tech-article-ever-d46fe7b7e54f#.d1uejpogs https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/every-political-reporters-camp... I'm sure Cambridge Analytica would love us to think they had an unprecedented impact. I haven't seen any actual evidence though.

mirimir 10y ago

So maybe this is an advertorial for CA, or maybe it's Chicken Little clickbait. Or maybe both. But even Kosinski's work alone is frightening. This is one way that AIs will pwn us. Indeed, how AIs are pwning us.

kriro 10y ago

So they received 15 million for being able to influence people on a massive scale (at least that's the claim). The article makes it sound like they can micro-target a solid percentage of the US population into action or non-action. If this were true, 15 million is a ridiculously low amount of money they got for that ability. I mean the money they should be raking in from advertising should be...tons. If they can change the election behavior of millions of people surely they can get millions of people to buy an extra soft drink here and there...

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