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CA sound like a bunch of scumbags and I'm glad people are shining light on these kinds of activities. However, I'm not convinced what they did was really all th

CA sound like a bunch of scumbags and I'm glad people are shining light on these kinds of activities. However, I'm not convinced what they did was really all that new or interesting. This is our modern world and it's terrifying. Call it marketing, propaganda, fake news or disinformation, we're being manipulated constantly by numerous unattributable actors. The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called out for it? I'm sure there are numerous groups doing this now both privately and funded directly by states. That doesn't make it right, but it changes the question to; What's special about CA? I've been reading a biography of Allen Dulles called the Devil's Chessboard. Dulles founded the CIA and setup the agency as a prime purveyor of disinformation campaigns. These kinds of Machiavellian tactics likely go back further than The Prince himself. The only thing new here is the level of amplification modern data technology provides, but this is not limited to CA.

enraged_camel 9y ago
>>However, I'm not convinced what they did was really all that new or interesting. You say that as someone who frequents HN. Collectively we are probably the top 0.2% of the population in terms of technology awareness and know-how, to the point where we probably easily recognize this type of propaganda (then again, maybe not!) and understand how it works. The same cannot be said for the overwhelming majority of the population though. In fact, I'd go so far as to claim that the majority of Facebook users don't even understand how Facebook makes money (even though the answer is so obvious to us).
- noir_lord 9y ago
  I get that feeling a lot. I was around on the internet back in the 90's and the stuff that came out in the Snowden revelations wasn't that suprising (Echelon was widely known back then but unconfirmed), We (meaning techies) have had the suspicion that they where doing this shit under the "just because they could, they would" approach. Where Snowden was incredibly useful was that it confirmed it in a way that was hard to deny since it was straight from the horses mouth. We might suspect that CA was doing shady shit but stuff like the C4 investigation confirms it and the confirmation is a valuable thing.
- weego 9y ago
  "We're smart enough to not fall for it but the proles stand no chance" doesn't pass the smell test as anecdotal evidence. What they are doing is what marketing people have done for years, only we know from years of data and experience that these "profile and target" ad campaigns are barely above baseline for RoI. The classic one is people who move house are more likely to go on to buy a new car in 12-24 months so they buy house sale data and target you with car info. Supermarkets do tons of profiling based on your CC and purchase history. None of this is to say that trying isn't scummy, but we shouldn't lose sight of the possibility that CA could be peddling snake oil.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    >>"We're smart enough to not fall for it but the proles stand no chance" doesn't pass the smell test as anecdotal evidence. That's why I said "then again, maybe not". >>What they are doing is what marketing people have done for years, only we know from years of data and experience that these "profile and target" ad campaigns are barely above baseline for RoI. This is completely irrelevant in the current context, because for people with deep pockets, the ROI of a single project doesn't matter if it leads to huge gains further down the line. Case in point: CA is owned by the Mercers, who just got a huge tax cut thanks to Trump.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    Of course. But there's also the possibility that in this case the snake oil actually delivered an election result. RoI is actually irrelevant. The two bigger issues are that this shouldn't be being attempted, and - more importantly in a genuine democracy - it shouldn't even be possible.
    - andrepd 9y ago
      >more importantly in a genuine democracy - it shouldn't even be possible. My point exactly. "Democracy" on paper doesn't really matter if the elites are successfully and massively deceiving the voters.
colordrops 9y ago
> The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called out for it? I mentioned this in another thread and got immediately downvoted, which I predicted would happen. I will add more context here to perhaps avoid that. What I said was: "What changed is that an attack vector has been found to take out Cambridge Analytica. The Democrats are in full political warfare with the Trump regime, and this is just another salvo." To be clear, I am not a Trump supporter, and identify as a far-left progressive, so I'm only stating what I see to be happening, and not attacking the Democrats. Secondly, I used to work at a gaming company that was the largest 3rd party integration with Facebook, and saw that this type of data leakage has been the norm and not the exception for at least 8 years. Trump has been under a (mostly deserved) multi-pronged attack by various left-wing media, political, corporate, and voter organizations since he got into office. What is happening is that many, if not most, upwellings of public sentiment against his presidency are actually engineered through the very same sorts of PR firms as Cambridge Analytical, even though most people think the that it's organic. There is obviously organic disgust for Trump, but it's being fed and amplified and warped and guided using the same social media techniques that Cambridge Analytica uses, which is ironic.
- karmelapple 9y ago
  Did the gaming company you work for represent themselves in inaccurate ways? This seems to be what CA did - fraudulent identities, putting out news that they knew was not truthful, and not identifying their ads and output as part of a political campaign. That's one of the problems for me in all of this; a group that is lying, or perhaps breaking campaign disclosure laws, is acting wildly different than a gaming company.
- mhneu 9y ago
  There's just a ton more money on the right - the Koch network and GOP billionaire donors dwarf the spending by progressives. So it's a lot easier for right-wing purchased media and social media and purchased think tanks (Cato/Koch) and foundations (Bradley, DeVos) and right-wing news outlets to spread propaganda. Because they have more money to spend. So I think rightfully, people feel that the bigger threat is from the right. It's not a coincidence that CA was heavily funded by a GOP billionaire who wants to damage gov't services to cut his own taxes (Mercer is in an $8B dispute with the IRS). I think the real problem is what Zeynep Tufeksi has been writing about: informed consent. Even if some tiny print says it's ok in a click-contract where they have a majority of the negotiating power, Facebook is releasing data on its uses without their informed consent. That's what we as a society need to re-evaluate.
partiallypro 9y ago
They aren't just scumbags they are snake oil salesmen. No one in the political world thinks of them as anything but snake oil salesmen. Their company is about tricking people into buying their service and never delivering any results. Look at their track record. A lot of people will point to them and say "see, this is how Trump won the election" but that's just not even remotely close to the truth, and honestly just melds their marketing of snake oil with their shadiness. Many political people have paid them and subsequently dropped them because they didn't deliver. This was no different. The abuse of Facebook's API/Graph is much less of a story about a secret genius agency (far from the truth) and more about how Facebook policies are lax on privacy of users. Facebook knew about this for a while, and sat on it. Facebook also acknowledge it was not a "breach" it was just exploiting things Facebook had already allowed through their shifting privacy policies and permissions.
- mhneu 9y ago
  Yes, you've put your finger on the core of it - the way Facebook compromises privacy. It's about informed consent on sharing data - we need companies to get informed consent.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- b1daly 9y ago
  How would you know this? Given that Trump won on the slimmest of margins, if CA’s work resulted in a net increase in Trump’s margin, the “ROI” is huge.
  - setr 9y ago
    Trump may have won on a slim margin, but he was supposed to lose on a huge one, by most predictions. If CA merely granted a net positive, then it likely paled in comparison to whatever else substantially affected results.
  - partiallypro 9y ago
    Trump didn't win by a slim margin at all, he lost the popular vote, but only largely because of California. He had early calls in several states that Hillary was supposed to win. Hillary lost states she never stepped foot in, she was just not a strong candidate, she didn't campaign, she had little ground game and conceded states simply because they were a "firewall." Trump should have never been within spitting distance of any Democratic candidate, especially after Obama who was fairly popular among moderates.
Ataraxy 9y ago
Not only was it not new or interesting, it was previously reported on last year and no one cared then. That, is what I find interesting.
kaycebasques 9y ago
> Call it marketing, propaganda, fake news or disinformation, we're being manipulated constantly by numerous unattributable actors. “The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” Joseph Schumpeter —Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1947)

enraged_camel 9y ago

>>However, I'm not convinced what they did was really all that new or interesting. You say that as someone who frequents HN. Collectively we are probably the top 0.2% of the population in terms of technology awareness and know-how, to the point where we probably easily recognize this type of propaganda (then again, maybe not!) and understand how it works. The same cannot be said for the overwhelming majority of the population though. In fact, I'd go so far as to claim that the majority of Facebook users don't even understand how Facebook makes money (even though the answer is so obvious to us).

noir_lord 9y ago
I get that feeling a lot. I was around on the internet back in the 90's and the stuff that came out in the Snowden revelations wasn't that suprising (Echelon was widely known back then but unconfirmed), We (meaning techies) have had the suspicion that they where doing this shit under the "just because they could, they would" approach. Where Snowden was incredibly useful was that it confirmed it in a way that was hard to deny since it was straight from the horses mouth. We might suspect that CA was doing shady shit but stuff like the C4 investigation confirms it and the confirmation is a valuable thing.
weego 9y ago
"We're smart enough to not fall for it but the proles stand no chance" doesn't pass the smell test as anecdotal evidence. What they are doing is what marketing people have done for years, only we know from years of data and experience that these "profile and target" ad campaigns are barely above baseline for RoI. The classic one is people who move house are more likely to go on to buy a new car in 12-24 months so they buy house sale data and target you with car info. Supermarkets do tons of profiling based on your CC and purchase history. None of this is to say that trying isn't scummy, but we shouldn't lose sight of the possibility that CA could be peddling snake oil.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  >>"We're smart enough to not fall for it but the proles stand no chance" doesn't pass the smell test as anecdotal evidence. That's why I said "then again, maybe not". >>What they are doing is what marketing people have done for years, only we know from years of data and experience that these "profile and target" ad campaigns are barely above baseline for RoI. This is completely irrelevant in the current context, because for people with deep pockets, the ROI of a single project doesn't matter if it leads to huge gains further down the line. Case in point: CA is owned by the Mercers, who just got a huge tax cut thanks to Trump.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  Of course. But there's also the possibility that in this case the snake oil actually delivered an election result. RoI is actually irrelevant. The two bigger issues are that this shouldn't be being attempted, and - more importantly in a genuine democracy - it shouldn't even be possible.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    >more importantly in a genuine democracy - it shouldn't even be possible. My point exactly. "Democracy" on paper doesn't really matter if the elites are successfully and massively deceiving the voters.

colordrops 9y ago

> The more interesting question to me is why is CA being called out for it? I mentioned this in another thread and got immediately downvoted, which I predicted would happen. I will add more context here to perhaps avoid that. What I said was: "What changed is that an attack vector has been found to take out Cambridge Analytica. The Democrats are in full political warfare with the Trump regime, and this is just another salvo." To be clear, I am not a Trump supporter, and identify as a far-left progressive, so I'm only stating what I see to be happening, and not attacking the Democrats. Secondly, I used to work at a gaming company that was the largest 3rd party integration with Facebook, and saw that this type of data leakage has been the norm and not the exception for at least 8 years. Trump has been under a (mostly deserved) multi-pronged attack by various left-wing media, political, corporate, and voter organizations since he got into office. What is happening is that many, if not most, upwellings of public sentiment against his presidency are actually engineered through the very same sorts of PR firms as Cambridge Analytical, even though most people think the that it's organic. There is obviously organic disgust for Trump, but it's being fed and amplified and warped and guided using the same social media techniques that Cambridge Analytica uses, which is ironic.

karmelapple 9y ago
Did the gaming company you work for represent themselves in inaccurate ways? This seems to be what CA did - fraudulent identities, putting out news that they knew was not truthful, and not identifying their ads and output as part of a political campaign. That's one of the problems for me in all of this; a group that is lying, or perhaps breaking campaign disclosure laws, is acting wildly different than a gaming company.
mhneu 9y ago
There's just a ton more money on the right - the Koch network and GOP billionaire donors dwarf the spending by progressives. So it's a lot easier for right-wing purchased media and social media and purchased think tanks (Cato/Koch) and foundations (Bradley, DeVos) and right-wing news outlets to spread propaganda. Because they have more money to spend. So I think rightfully, people feel that the bigger threat is from the right. It's not a coincidence that CA was heavily funded by a GOP billionaire who wants to damage gov't services to cut his own taxes (Mercer is in an $8B dispute with the IRS). I think the real problem is what Zeynep Tufeksi has been writing about: informed consent. Even if some tiny print says it's ok in a click-contract where they have a majority of the negotiating power, Facebook is releasing data on its uses without their informed consent. That's what we as a society need to re-evaluate.

partiallypro 9y ago

They aren't just scumbags they are snake oil salesmen. No one in the political world thinks of them as anything but snake oil salesmen. Their company is about tricking people into buying their service and never delivering any results. Look at their track record. A lot of people will point to them and say "see, this is how Trump won the election" but that's just not even remotely close to the truth, and honestly just melds their marketing of snake oil with their shadiness. Many political people have paid them and subsequently dropped them because they didn't deliver. This was no different. The abuse of Facebook's API/Graph is much less of a story about a secret genius agency (far from the truth) and more about how Facebook policies are lax on privacy of users. Facebook knew about this for a while, and sat on it. Facebook also acknowledge it was not a "breach" it was just exploiting things Facebook had already allowed through their shifting privacy policies and permissions.

mhneu 9y ago
Yes, you've put your finger on the core of it - the way Facebook compromises privacy. It's about informed consent on sharing data - we need companies to get informed consent.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
b1daly 9y ago
How would you know this? Given that Trump won on the slimmest of margins, if CA’s work resulted in a net increase in Trump’s margin, the “ROI” is huge.
- setr 9y ago
  Trump may have won on a slim margin, but he was supposed to lose on a huge one, by most predictions. If CA merely granted a net positive, then it likely paled in comparison to whatever else substantially affected results.
- partiallypro 9y ago
  Trump didn't win by a slim margin at all, he lost the popular vote, but only largely because of California. He had early calls in several states that Hillary was supposed to win. Hillary lost states she never stepped foot in, she was just not a strong candidate, she didn't campaign, she had little ground game and conceded states simply because they were a "firewall." Trump should have never been within spitting distance of any Democratic candidate, especially after Obama who was fairly popular among moderates.

Ataraxy 9y ago

Not only was it not new or interesting, it was previously reported on last year and no one cared then. That, is what I find interesting.

kaycebasques 9y ago

> Call it marketing, propaganda, fake news or disinformation, we're being manipulated constantly by numerous unattributable actors. “The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” Joseph Schumpeter —Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1947)