5 ms·

I don't think that's really the problem. I mean, Obama's 2012 campaign scraped the data of Facebook friends of people who'd signed into the campaign website in

by makomk 9y ago

I don't think that's really the problem. I mean, Obama's 2012 campaign scraped the data of Facebook friends of people who'd signed into the campaign website in order to figure out the most effective way to convince those friends to vote for him via microtargeting and other techniques, in particular working out which friends their volunteers could most easily convince to vote for him. We're not just talking about general profile information, but photos and feed activity. Apparently they were so aggressive about this it tripped Facebook's internal alerts. The New York Times spun all this as some clever, sophisticated breakthrough that marketers could take advantage of: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaig... (While they were more honest about getting those users' permission than Cambridge Analytica, they didn't have any kind of permission from the friends they were hoping to profile and target, much like CA didn't. The viral tweet doing the rounds attacking CA for comparing the two is misleading.) The main problem Facebook seem to have is that the wrong candidate won the 2016 presidential election and the press need someone else to blame. Incidentally, based on the reporting come out of the Trump campaign, it's not clear they were even doing much or anything in this area. Their campaign leaned heavily on exactly the kind of "political gut instinct" that article decries - used as an input to models rather than directly, and augmented with stuff like A/B testing, but still nothing like the data-guzzling microtargeting machine of Obama 2012. There doesn't seem to have been much sign of CA involvement aside from the initial check the campaign wrote them and their attempts to use Trump's victory in their marketing.

oh-kumudo 9y ago
What you talk about Trump campaign is clearly far from the reality: https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4 https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4 Starting around 11:00 The CA person clearly shows, from the screenshots, they have personal level targeting to predict whether a person is neurotic or not, what ads should be used to exploit that.
- scoggs 9y ago
  Here's a timestamp for anybody who needs it: https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4?t=10m33s https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4?t=10m33s (10:33)
- makomk 9y ago
  That was (and still is) CA's supposed selling point. What's doubtful is that the Trump campaign were convinced this worked, or that there's any reason why anyone else should be. It just doesn't match up with the reporting I've seen based on campaign sources talking about how they designed ads and targetted people. It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psychological classification on someone based on what they post online, but actually use that to work out how to manipulate their minds. It's hard enough designing a repeatable and meaningful personality classification with the full co-operation of the test subjects. Not only that, the one campaign we can confirm did use CA's tech - Ted Cruz in the primaries - flopped, and it certainly didn't get rave reports on its accuracy, ability to convince, and understanding of how they thought from those it was targetting. Edit: Brad Parscale's actually on video saying that the campaign didn't use psychographics because they didn't think it actually worked: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/secret-weapon/ https://www.cbsnews.com/video/secret-weapon/ (6:35ish).
  - dmix 9y ago
    > It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psychological classification on someone based on what they post online, but actually use that to work out how to manipulate their minds. This is not dissimilar to the idea that Russia spending a few million dollars on Facebook ads and automated Twitter bots somehow played a defining role in influencing an election. Even within the context of 1.5yrs+ of 24/7 mainstream TV/internet news coverage, billions of dollars in marketing spend by both parties, the personal influence of two of the most famous celebrities in American history (Clintons and Trumps), a multi-decade legacy of highly partisan politics, etc, etc. It seems measuring the real-world impact of these tools and tactics is completely ignored in favour of believing we're living in some fantasy scifi world where bots and pseudosciencey psychological profiles can make anyone president. Has anyone asked how much impact these tools have had on the sales of consumer products over the last decade? If they've hardly revolutionized online advertising of consumer products to make people buy products they didn't want (which AFAIK it hasn't), I highly highly doubt it played a huge role in the election of someone a portion of the voting populace didn't want.
- Clanan 9y ago
  That was their pitch. The campaign considered using them as a hedge against the RNC not providing its data, but ultimately did not use CA for the general election. Source: ABC News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-of-cambridge-analytica-data-before-election/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-o...
tmuir 9y ago
Ah yes, that old classic, whataboutism. You'd have us believe Cambridge Analytica was some vendor the Trump Campaign used sparingly, had very loose connections with, and saw limited success with. Yet Cambridge Analytica is a Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon outfit. Steve Bannon, the campaign manager, and senior adviser to the president. Or at least it was during the time period in question. Steve Bannon was THE integral player who essentially managed the creation of the tool. Here's a video of Brad Parscale gushing about the software tool they were able to use to glean insights that lead them to spend heavily in the states that mattered, but we're not in the conventional wisdom. https://youtu.be/_fFbVwuU8bM https://youtu.be/_fFbVwuU8bM While your at it, here's the story from the software developer turned whistle blower himself: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...
- darawk 9y ago
  He didn't claim it wasn't affiliated with Trump, he said they didn't rely on it that much. And the appeal to 'whataboutism' is a complete non-sequitur, as there is no whataboutism in the parent comment.
  - tmuir 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism Claiming that Obama's campaigns were the true microtargeters, and that if we are angry at the actions of generic people, we must then be angry at Obama, because he did these very things. That is the Whataboutism, or tu quoque fallacy. In lieu of anything to back that claim up, I'll just stick with Hutchins Razor, and reply "Nuh Uh."
    - darawk 9y ago
      > Claiming that Obama's campaigns were the true microtargeters, and that if we are angry at the actions of generic people, we must then be angry at Obama, because he did these very things. That is the Whataboutism, or tu quoque fallacy. Obama's campaigns were pretty well known to be engaged in extensive microtargeting. Here: https://www.mediavillage.com/article/how-data-and-micro-targeting-won-the-2012-election-for-obama-antony-young-mindshare-north-america/ https://www.mediavillage.com/article/how-data-and-micro-targ...
dillondoyle 9y ago
One significant difference is the authorized app. Obama's version of friend graph collection was owned by OFA and API creds to campaign. The data collection discussed today used API creds granted to an academic who then used the data he collected through the lens of academic survey for commercial gain, passing it to a 3rd party (CA) not listed in the FB app/api and this seems to be the crux of the violation.

by makomk 9y ago

oh-kumudo 9y ago

What you talk about Trump campaign is clearly far from the reality: https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4 https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4 Starting around 11:00 The CA person clearly shows, from the screenshots, they have personal level targeting to predict whether a person is neurotic or not, what ads should be used to exploit that.

scoggs 9y ago
Here's a timestamp for anybody who needs it: https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4?t=10m33s https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4?t=10m33s (10:33)
makomk 9y ago
That was (and still is) CA's supposed selling point. What's doubtful is that the Trump campaign were convinced this worked, or that there's any reason why anyone else should be. It just doesn't match up with the reporting I've seen based on campaign sources talking about how they designed ads and targetted people. It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psychological classification on someone based on what they post online, but actually use that to work out how to manipulate their minds. It's hard enough designing a repeatable and meaningful personality classification with the full co-operation of the test subjects. Not only that, the one campaign we can confirm did use CA's tech - Ted Cruz in the primaries - flopped, and it certainly didn't get rave reports on its accuracy, ability to convince, and understanding of how they thought from those it was targetting. Edit: Brad Parscale's actually on video saying that the campaign didn't use psychographics because they didn't think it actually worked: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/secret-weapon/ https://www.cbsnews.com/video/secret-weapon/ (6:35ish).
- dmix 9y ago
  > It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psychological classification on someone based on what they post online, but actually use that to work out how to manipulate their minds. This is not dissimilar to the idea that Russia spending a few million dollars on Facebook ads and automated Twitter bots somehow played a defining role in influencing an election. Even within the context of 1.5yrs+ of 24/7 mainstream TV/internet news coverage, billions of dollars in marketing spend by both parties, the personal influence of two of the most famous celebrities in American history (Clintons and Trumps), a multi-decade legacy of highly partisan politics, etc, etc. It seems measuring the real-world impact of these tools and tactics is completely ignored in favour of believing we're living in some fantasy scifi world where bots and pseudosciencey psychological profiles can make anyone president. Has anyone asked how much impact these tools have had on the sales of consumer products over the last decade? If they've hardly revolutionized online advertising of consumer products to make people buy products they didn't want (which AFAIK it hasn't), I highly highly doubt it played a huge role in the election of someone a portion of the voting populace didn't want.
Clanan 9y ago
That was their pitch. The campaign considered using them as a hedge against the RNC not providing its data, but ultimately did not use CA for the general election. Source: ABC News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-of-cambridge-analytica-data-before-election/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-o...

tmuir 9y ago

Ah yes, that old classic, whataboutism. You'd have us believe Cambridge Analytica was some vendor the Trump Campaign used sparingly, had very loose connections with, and saw limited success with. Yet Cambridge Analytica is a Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon outfit. Steve Bannon, the campaign manager, and senior adviser to the president. Or at least it was during the time period in question. Steve Bannon was THE integral player who essentially managed the creation of the tool. Here's a video of Brad Parscale gushing about the software tool they were able to use to glean insights that lead them to spend heavily in the states that mattered, but we're not in the conventional wisdom. https://youtu.be/_fFbVwuU8bM https://youtu.be/_fFbVwuU8bM While your at it, here's the story from the software developer turned whistle blower himself: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...

darawk 9y ago
He didn't claim it wasn't affiliated with Trump, he said they didn't rely on it that much. And the appeal to 'whataboutism' is a complete non-sequitur, as there is no whataboutism in the parent comment.
- tmuir 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism Claiming that Obama's campaigns were the true microtargeters, and that if we are angry at the actions of generic people, we must then be angry at Obama, because he did these very things. That is the Whataboutism, or tu quoque fallacy. In lieu of anything to back that claim up, I'll just stick with Hutchins Razor, and reply "Nuh Uh."
  - darawk 9y ago
    > Claiming that Obama's campaigns were the true microtargeters, and that if we are angry at the actions of generic people, we must then be angry at Obama, because he did these very things. That is the Whataboutism, or tu quoque fallacy. Obama's campaigns were pretty well known to be engaged in extensive microtargeting. Here: https://www.mediavillage.com/article/how-data-and-micro-targeting-won-the-2012-election-for-obama-antony-young-mindshare-north-america/ https://www.mediavillage.com/article/how-data-and-micro-targ...

dillondoyle 9y ago

One significant difference is the authorized app. Obama's version of friend graph collection was owned by OFA and API creds to campaign. The data collection discussed today used API creds granted to an academic who then used the data he collected through the lens of academic survey for commercial gain, passing it to a 3rd party (CA) not listed in the FB app/api and this seems to be the crux of the violation.