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I have been highlighting this article on Obama's election, every time these stories come up: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-

I have been highlighting this article on Obama's election, every time these stories come up: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-data-to-rally-voters/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-us... He was lauded for using "big data" and "data science" to run a successful campaign. The social media companies picked on this and ran with it. Now this seems to have backfired. Then there has been the culture of "attack ads", a lot of them based on misrepresenting facts to put it mildly. So, now Congress and politicians want to do some posturing on Russian "interference". In case they do pass laws banning RT or some special interests from buying ads/bots etc. What then? The can of worms is already open. People will find a way around. It can be as simple as registering a LLC and then having the Russian "data scientists" work through that. Or even American companies knowingly engaging in this. The root problem here is the data collection being run by every other company out there. It helps companies and invariably advertisers identify people based on their tastes. So, will Congress and the politicians actually ban outright data collection? My guess is they wont. Posturing this as a Russian and a commie problem gets them enough brownie points.

Eridrus 9y ago
I've come to the conclusion is that politicians have decided that tech is a safe punching bag for both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans can punch up on tech companies to seem like they care about Russian interference without beating up their own candidate, or examining their own advertising practices, and Democrats are still angry that the election was so close and tech seems like something they can just keep punching unlike Comey or Clinton. We basically need to weather the storm here and act contrite since no one has come to this topic with good intentions of actually trying to fix our elections.
CryptoPunk 9y ago
A concrete step that Congress could take is to publicly fund privacy technology. This is a classic public good that government is ideally situated to subsidize. Unfortunately this technology would conflict with numerous mandates relating to government data collection for national security (e.g. National Security Letters requiring email servers that provide tools for client side encryption of emails to place a backdoor in their software) and taxation purposes.
nl 9y ago
Forcing disclosure of online political advertising seems a reasonable thing. It isn't a restriction on speech, and what legitimate reason would a group want to hide the way they are running a campaign?

Eridrus 9y ago

I've come to the conclusion is that politicians have decided that tech is a safe punching bag for both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans can punch up on tech companies to seem like they care about Russian interference without beating up their own candidate, or examining their own advertising practices, and Democrats are still angry that the election was so close and tech seems like something they can just keep punching unlike Comey or Clinton. We basically need to weather the storm here and act contrite since no one has come to this topic with good intentions of actually trying to fix our elections.

CryptoPunk 9y ago

A concrete step that Congress could take is to publicly fund privacy technology. This is a classic public good that government is ideally situated to subsidize. Unfortunately this technology would conflict with numerous mandates relating to government data collection for national security (e.g. National Security Letters requiring email servers that provide tools for client side encryption of emails to place a backdoor in their software) and taxation purposes.

nl 9y ago

Forcing disclosure of online political advertising seems a reasonable thing. It isn't a restriction on speech, and what legitimate reason would a group want to hide the way they are running a campaign?