4 ms·

Not necessarily. It should be fairly straightforward to build correlations like "People who like Breitbart are likely to vote Trump" (and less obvious ones) to

by vbo 9y ago

Not necessarily. It should be fairly straightforward to build correlations like "People who like Breitbart are likely to vote Trump" (and less obvious ones) to help target specifically crafted ads to the people who are most likely to respond positively to them. It's not rocket science, but effective. Basically demographics on steroids.

AznHisoka 9y ago
Isnt this just simply marketing/targeted advertising? There is no voodoo or psychographics going on here. Honestly, I think people are giving Cambridge way too much credit. I have seen enough overblown promises in the big data, AI, <insert buzz word> industry to know people just make things sound more innovative than it really is.
- verylittlemeat 9y ago
  I agree with you. People seem to be equating a political profile and targeted advertising with a brain ray that makes people pull the lever for a funded candidate. Just to take one high level example: Facebook was still "thefacebook" and closed to the public by the time George W. Bush was elected to the white house for a second term. How can we honestly winkwink/nudgenudge a "stolen election" at the feet of facebook or CA when clearly liberal politics were defeated in 2000/2004 with standard political rhetoric? Why are we giving facebook/CA credit for having so much political power? I hate to use such a broad lens for the recent incident and I hope I'm communicating what I'm intending to here. I just don't see how somehow this incident "changed everything" or even changed much of anything when you look at the history how campaigns get people to vote for their candidate. People don't want to hear this but targeted memes didn't make people anti-abortion or pro-nazi or whatever conserative boogey-man you pick. Conservative voters are people not a pathology. You may not like their views or the way they vote but this whole "people who don't think the way I do are brainwashed" thing has to go. You're buying that argument at your own peril because conservatives aren't going anywhere.
  - queerfeminist 9y ago
    See you on the other side of climate change, bud.
    - verylittlemeat 9y ago
      FYI I identify and vote as a liberal. Tilting at windmills like facebook/CA feels great for the ego but I'm trying to explain that it has nothing to do with why people vote a certain way. This is all a big sideshow to assuage the tender injury democrats are suffering from a Trump whitehouse. So if you wish then let the sideshow be spectacular. Let facebook be the scapegoat and social media be regulated. When all of that and a smug attitude does nothing to stop global warming or another conservative president in the future don't be surprised.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - RyanZAG 9y ago
    With the new ease of access to people with opinions different from your own, most people now require some self-consistent reason for not interacting with them and their views. The idea that other rational people can have differing views from our own is deeply unsettling as it allows for the possibility that our own views are incorrect. Pre-social media, this was easy enough: the people with different opinions were just less educated or less informed, and once they became informed they would hold the same views that we do. Social media changed all that by bringing those with different views into direct confrontation where you could immediately connect with someone with different views to your own and educate or inform them. This fails to work. As soon as we try that, we quickly realize that those with other views are already informed and have just taken a different judgement. So we're left with the problem: either our views are wrong or their views are wrong. Deeply concerning as it's just as likely to be our own views. The only solution then is to shift the blame - it's not our fault or people with other views at fault: it's that there are 'evil actors' working to 'brainwash' people. Therefore our views are correct, and it's just people with other views who have been brainwashed. Simple and clean, no need for self reflection or difficult questions.
- namdas 9y ago
  I think part of the issue is the way FB allows you to use 'dark' posts that are hidden from public view, and also to set up multiple anonymous pages for your ad campaigns. Together this means you can not only use laser targeted advertising, but show ads to one group you know will appeal, without a second group who would be put off by the message ever being aware of it. There is also the potential to break rules on election advertising and false claims as the only people to see your ad are the small, well targeted group and an FB reviewer who is checking the ad against their own T&Cs, not the electoral rules of the country the campaign is in.
  - 220V_USKettle 9y ago
    Excellent points.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    The second point is interesting and worth looking at further, but I'm less sympathetic to the arguments about this that boil down to "the Trump campaign was more clever than us and made better use of the tools!" You could have some level of legal oversight (we've never had 100% perfect coverage) without eliminating the use of programmatic targeting.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- edf13 9y ago
  It is targeted advertising... but more than that... It was targeted miss-information - directly at the people they needed to vote.
- pohl 9y ago
  The OCEAN model mentioned by the CA exec (Nix) was originally based on factor analysis, not ML. The key criticism of factor analysis is just that one can’t infer causality, but in an application like this no one cares about causation — only what works. I’m inclined to to think the Mercers got some ROI here.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
You can also use the old fashioned stuff in combination with social media data. >In focus groups arranged to test messages for the 2014 midterms, these voters responded to calls for building a new wall to block the entry of illegal immigrants, to reforms intended the “drain the swamp” of Washington’s entrenched political community and to thinly veiled forms of racism toward African Americans called “race realism,” he recounted. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-oversaw-cambridge-analyticas-collection-of-facebook-data-according-to-former-employee/2018/03/20/8fb369a6-2c55-11e8-b0b0-f706877db618_story.html?utm_term=.9f65091aea7d https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-oversaw-cambr...
weego 9y ago
Thats kind of my point I guess though I didn't expand on it. They are pitching this like the scraping etc was 'subverting democracy' blah blah... but my contention is they were just doing the kinds of marketing that people know has terrible accuracy and return on investment. Maybe it's the bribery and hookers that were the bits that worked.

by vbo 9y ago

AznHisoka 9y ago

Isnt this just simply marketing/targeted advertising? There is no voodoo or psychographics going on here. Honestly, I think people are giving Cambridge way too much credit. I have seen enough overblown promises in the big data, AI, <insert buzz word> industry to know people just make things sound more innovative than it really is.

verylittlemeat 9y ago
I agree with you. People seem to be equating a political profile and targeted advertising with a brain ray that makes people pull the lever for a funded candidate. Just to take one high level example: Facebook was still "thefacebook" and closed to the public by the time George W. Bush was elected to the white house for a second term. How can we honestly winkwink/nudgenudge a "stolen election" at the feet of facebook or CA when clearly liberal politics were defeated in 2000/2004 with standard political rhetoric? Why are we giving facebook/CA credit for having so much political power? I hate to use such a broad lens for the recent incident and I hope I'm communicating what I'm intending to here. I just don't see how somehow this incident "changed everything" or even changed much of anything when you look at the history how campaigns get people to vote for their candidate. People don't want to hear this but targeted memes didn't make people anti-abortion or pro-nazi or whatever conserative boogey-man you pick. Conservative voters are people not a pathology. You may not like their views or the way they vote but this whole "people who don't think the way I do are brainwashed" thing has to go. You're buying that argument at your own peril because conservatives aren't going anywhere.
- queerfeminist 9y ago
  See you on the other side of climate change, bud.
  - verylittlemeat 9y ago
    FYI I identify and vote as a liberal. Tilting at windmills like facebook/CA feels great for the ego but I'm trying to explain that it has nothing to do with why people vote a certain way. This is all a big sideshow to assuage the tender injury democrats are suffering from a Trump whitehouse. So if you wish then let the sideshow be spectacular. Let facebook be the scapegoat and social media be regulated. When all of that and a smug attitude does nothing to stop global warming or another conservative president in the future don't be surprised.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- RyanZAG 9y ago
  With the new ease of access to people with opinions different from your own, most people now require some self-consistent reason for not interacting with them and their views. The idea that other rational people can have differing views from our own is deeply unsettling as it allows for the possibility that our own views are incorrect. Pre-social media, this was easy enough: the people with different opinions were just less educated or less informed, and once they became informed they would hold the same views that we do. Social media changed all that by bringing those with different views into direct confrontation where you could immediately connect with someone with different views to your own and educate or inform them. This fails to work. As soon as we try that, we quickly realize that those with other views are already informed and have just taken a different judgement. So we're left with the problem: either our views are wrong or their views are wrong. Deeply concerning as it's just as likely to be our own views. The only solution then is to shift the blame - it's not our fault or people with other views at fault: it's that there are 'evil actors' working to 'brainwash' people. Therefore our views are correct, and it's just people with other views who have been brainwashed. Simple and clean, no need for self reflection or difficult questions.
namdas 9y ago
I think part of the issue is the way FB allows you to use 'dark' posts that are hidden from public view, and also to set up multiple anonymous pages for your ad campaigns. Together this means you can not only use laser targeted advertising, but show ads to one group you know will appeal, without a second group who would be put off by the message ever being aware of it. There is also the potential to break rules on election advertising and false claims as the only people to see your ad are the small, well targeted group and an FB reviewer who is checking the ad against their own T&Cs, not the electoral rules of the country the campaign is in.
- 220V_USKettle 9y ago
  Excellent points.
- majormajor 9y ago
  The second point is interesting and worth looking at further, but I'm less sympathetic to the arguments about this that boil down to "the Trump campaign was more clever than us and made better use of the tools!" You could have some level of legal oversight (we've never had 100% perfect coverage) without eliminating the use of programmatic targeting.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
edf13 9y ago
It is targeted advertising... but more than that... It was targeted miss-information - directly at the people they needed to vote.
pohl 9y ago
The OCEAN model mentioned by the CA exec (Nix) was originally based on factor analysis, not ML. The key criticism of factor analysis is just that one can’t infer causality, but in an application like this no one cares about causation — only what works. I’m inclined to to think the Mercers got some ROI here.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

You can also use the old fashioned stuff in combination with social media data. >In focus groups arranged to test messages for the 2014 midterms, these voters responded to calls for building a new wall to block the entry of illegal immigrants, to reforms intended the “drain the swamp” of Washington’s entrenched political community and to thinly veiled forms of racism toward African Americans called “race realism,” he recounted. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-oversaw-cambridge-analyticas-collection-of-facebook-data-according-to-former-employee/2018/03/20/8fb369a6-2c55-11e8-b0b0-f706877db618_story.html?utm_term=.9f65091aea7d https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-oversaw-cambr...

weego 9y ago

Thats kind of my point I guess though I didn't expand on it. They are pitching this like the scraping etc was 'subverting democracy' blah blah... but my contention is they were just doing the kinds of marketing that people know has terrible accuracy and return on investment. Maybe it's the bribery and hookers that were the bits that worked.