5 ms·

Don't dismiss a (even much) smaller amount; if properly targeted it can be a lot more effective than the crop dusting approach that traditional advertising take

Don't dismiss a (even much) smaller amount; if properly targeted it can be a lot more effective than the crop dusting approach that traditional advertising takes.

corporateslave2 9y ago
Do you really believe this? You really think 100k stands up to 1Billion?
- dlp211 9y ago
  Traditional media buys versus well targeted ads on Facebook. You don't need to sway everyone. That 100k stands up a lot more than one would think just comparing the two numbers.
  - corporateslave2 9y ago
    How do you know? Have you ever worked in online advertising? Most companies easily spend 100k a month. Are you aware you are being manipulated by the media on this story?
- askvictor 9y ago
  Sure it can. If it can't then startups shouldn't bother, and revolutionaries, insurgents and freedom fighters should just surrender. I don't know enough about what happened in this case, but you can't dismiss the entire argument purely on the spend amount.
mc32 9y ago
That's ridiculous. There is no way that a crack Russian/Ukranian team understand or have better info on the American public than American "pundits" and campaign professionals. Why couldn't Bernie buy 200k of highly targeted ads and beat Hillary or why couldn't a very well connected Hillary (who has good connections to Russia as well) not buy highly targeted and effective ads? I don't buy that narrative. There is no way a rag-tag team with $100k beats a political machine with real connections in DC, Wall Street, etc. which happened to also spend over $1billion. It's a ridiculous assertion. Why don't we, the US, buy these highly targeted ads in a place like Venezuela and get people to vote against Maduro (or any other gov't we don't like). It just does not work that way. Or, if it were to, the likes of FB and Google are doomed. Whoever this band of propagandists are they can undercut Madison ave and rake in the money for pennies on the dollar from corporate America.
- blatherard 9y ago
  One of the questions being investigated is how such targeting might have been achieved. There just happened to be a data operation run by Jared Kushner, who is at the center of Mueller's investigation.
  - dmach 9y ago
    I also like to direct people to the following https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great... Also "no way a rag-tag team beats.." is straight from the plot of the movie Moneyball which is what we're talking about here. Also no-one is talking about GDPR which could stop this (please see below).
    - mc32 9y ago
      We're talking several orders of magnitude here. It's not comparable to the moneyball sitch. The thing is, if that team has a secret sauce to convince people to change their minds, they are in the wrong game and would rake in billions serving corporate America and unseating Google and Facebook at their game. It's a tempest in a teapot.
      - dmach 9y ago
        I think you're right just wanted to highlight that some seriously impressive tech was applied. Any suggestion that it was a exclusively Russia/Ukrainian team that did everything could be a distraction so that the whole issue can be lumped into the popular dialogue. I'm sure there was a Russian or two on the real team.
- adventured 9y ago
  Sure, it's a fake prop to enable tighter political regulations online. The entire thing is a sham that Facebook and Google are gleefully willingly going along with. There is a long, disgusting history of powerful corporations in the US working with politicians to achieve mutually beneficial goals that relate to carving up the economic or political spheres. The sums are laughably trivial, precisely because anything larger would be too difficult to set the fraud up for (anything that could be considered business significant, millions of dollars, would be too easy to tightly audit; plus the smaller sums play to the angle that it's easy for it to get lost in the overall, so the company doesn't look too extremely negligent; no doubt that was part of the deal Facebook and Google made in helping with the setup).

Don't dismiss a (even much) smaller amount; if properly targeted it can be a lot more effective than the crop dusting approach that traditional advertising takes.

corporateslave2 9y ago

Do you really believe this? You really think 100k stands up to 1Billion?

dlp211 9y ago
Traditional media buys versus well targeted ads on Facebook. You don't need to sway everyone. That 100k stands up a lot more than one would think just comparing the two numbers.
- corporateslave2 9y ago
  How do you know? Have you ever worked in online advertising? Most companies easily spend 100k a month. Are you aware you are being manipulated by the media on this story?
askvictor 9y ago
Sure it can. If it can't then startups shouldn't bother, and revolutionaries, insurgents and freedom fighters should just surrender. I don't know enough about what happened in this case, but you can't dismiss the entire argument purely on the spend amount.

mc32 9y ago

That's ridiculous. There is no way that a crack Russian/Ukranian team understand or have better info on the American public than American "pundits" and campaign professionals. Why couldn't Bernie buy 200k of highly targeted ads and beat Hillary or why couldn't a very well connected Hillary (who has good connections to Russia as well) not buy highly targeted and effective ads? I don't buy that narrative. There is no way a rag-tag team with $100k beats a political machine with real connections in DC, Wall Street, etc. which happened to also spend over $1billion. It's a ridiculous assertion. Why don't we, the US, buy these highly targeted ads in a place like Venezuela and get people to vote against Maduro (or any other gov't we don't like). It just does not work that way. Or, if it were to, the likes of FB and Google are doomed. Whoever this band of propagandists are they can undercut Madison ave and rake in the money for pennies on the dollar from corporate America.

blatherard 9y ago
One of the questions being investigated is how such targeting might have been achieved. There just happened to be a data operation run by Jared Kushner, who is at the center of Mueller's investigation.
- dmach 9y ago
  I also like to direct people to the following https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great... Also "no way a rag-tag team beats.." is straight from the plot of the movie Moneyball which is what we're talking about here. Also no-one is talking about GDPR which could stop this (please see below).
  - mc32 9y ago
    We're talking several orders of magnitude here. It's not comparable to the moneyball sitch. The thing is, if that team has a secret sauce to convince people to change their minds, they are in the wrong game and would rake in billions serving corporate America and unseating Google and Facebook at their game. It's a tempest in a teapot.
    - dmach 9y ago
      I think you're right just wanted to highlight that some seriously impressive tech was applied. Any suggestion that it was a exclusively Russia/Ukrainian team that did everything could be a distraction so that the whole issue can be lumped into the popular dialogue. I'm sure there was a Russian or two on the real team.
adventured 9y ago
Sure, it's a fake prop to enable tighter political regulations online. The entire thing is a sham that Facebook and Google are gleefully willingly going along with. There is a long, disgusting history of powerful corporations in the US working with politicians to achieve mutually beneficial goals that relate to carving up the economic or political spheres. The sums are laughably trivial, precisely because anything larger would be too difficult to set the fraud up for (anything that could be considered business significant, millions of dollars, would be too easy to tightly audit; plus the smaller sums play to the angle that it's easy for it to get lost in the overall, so the company doesn't look too extremely negligent; no doubt that was part of the deal Facebook and Google made in helping with the setup).