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Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters
- resters 8y agoThis is how marketing works. They could have used music taste or religious affiliation or nearly any of the data add-ons Experian sells. This isn’t sinister in any way, merely clever as it seems marketers had been behind the times. There are entire magazines and television shows that have equally strong affiliation. If spend on fashion related stuff was smart, it was because it was a bargain compared to the many other methods.
- mswen 8y ago>"Marketers have been behind the times" I have to laugh. I learned psychographics from Bill Wells back in the mid 1990s. He had come back into academia in after spending years at DDB Needham creating one of the first psychographic initiatives/programs that had teams of statisticians, social scientists and used mainframes for statistical analysis in support of product design, message refinement and targeted marketing and advertising based on "personas". One of the fascinating things to me was that Bill told of doing a summer project during his own graduate school experience at Stanford in which it took him a whole summer to manually (using a mechanical calculator) calculate a Principle Components Analysis on some consumer data. It boggles my mind in some ways that we have a bunch of CS trained start-up guys who are rediscovering both techniques and consumer behavior research that is sometimes 30 or 40 years old and think they have invented something new! OK, I am sounding like an old fart. Now, I will admit that many marketing executives I have met over the years were not really comfortable with quantitative approaches but there is a whole subset that have been applying data science types of approaches for a very long time.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoPeople who buy Wrangler and LL Bean might vote conservative. Hard hitting stuff right there. I suppose as per the article we could make a guess about the people that buy green hair dye?
- happytoexplain 8y agoI thought it was interesting. What's the stance you're taking with the anger?
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoThere is no anger. The obviousness is the issue. If anything I wonder if this article is just some NYT’s writer admitting they have no idea what people outside of cities do, wear, eat, think.
- seem_2211 8y agoOf course we can make guesses about people who buy green hair dye.
- axaxs 8y agoNot sure why downvoted, I agree. A 'western' and 'outdoorsy' company tends to have conservative customers, I think any 12 year old could tell you that. I'd rather see unexpected/unexplained trends, things the average person wouldn't already assume.
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- elliekelly 8y agoI think it actually goes a bit deeper than using certain brands to identify political leanings. That was step one, but they also rated users' openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, depression, anger and vulnerability.[1] Then they showed targeted messages to people they decided were right leaning and vulnerable to their messaging. [1] https://www.cnn.com/style/article/christopher-wylie-fashion-cambridge-analytica/index.html https://www.cnn.com/style/article/christopher-wylie-fashion-...
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoYea... they did all that... then fell all the way back to “who buys wrangler jeans?”.
- everdev 8y agoUnfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics / advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that Cambridge is the only one doing this.
- carbocation 8y agoStereotype is probably the correct word, but it's overloaded here. Stereotyping someone by something that they did not choose is a gateway to prejudice: skin color, eye color, place of birth. Stereotyping someone by something that they did choose may be very useful for making inference about them, because it is a revealed preference: clothing tastes, food preferences, etc.
- inetknght 8y agoStereotyping someone by something that you assume they chose is also a gateway to prejudice. @NeedMoreTea said it right by mentioning cases where someone might not have chosen their particular attire.
- sosborn 8y agoIt works on a macro level though. You have to be ok with idea that the stereotype isn’t 100% perfect, it’s just used to get a majority of your target market.
- buboard 8y agoI don’t know if this is interesting. It is their job
- coldtea 8y agoWell, Eichmann just did his job too, but it was interesting enough for a trial, several movies and documentaries, and many books.
- buboard 8y agovery appropriate analogy
- coldtea 8y agoIt's the canonical example of "I was just doing my job". It doesn't have to be appropriate as to the human toll, nor it's sane that because someone wrote an meme "internet law" in Usenet back in the day about nazi analogies people should refrain from making such arguments when they do fit, as if it's some holy period of history that people should not touch...
- malvosenior 8y ago> Mr. Wylie explained that clothing preferences were a key metric for Cambridge Analytica, whose business was constructing and selling voter profiles drawn from Facebook data. > “Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right,” he said. Cambridge Analytica built the “alt-right”? Even if that term has any meaning (I don’t really think it does), this statement is preposterous. Bannon’s “insurgency”? No spin there.
- dvt 8y agoNot sure why you're getting downvoted. The article is obviously pretty low-quality and technically incompenent; I'd expect better from HN's front page. Even with the left-wing spin, arguing that CA (or even Bannon) built the alt-right is just laugh-out-loud wrong.
- malvosenior 8y agoI don’t think we’ll get an answer but the downvotes all came in a span of a couple minutes so maybe some partisan site linked to the HN post or something. Down voters feel free to explain if you actually have a objection.
- icebraining 8y ago> Bannon’s “insurgency”? No spin there. Bannon himself used the term: "We're leading an insurgency movement against the Republican establishment" https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/steve-bannon-jewish-zionists-israel-republican-party-mitch-mcconnell-paul-ryan-donald-trump-a8052776.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/steve-bann...
- mymythisisthis 8y agoSo it is a cultural war.
- drdeadringer 8y ago... how? How is an identification methodology a war let alone a culture war?
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- yourbandsucks 8y agoBecause people's fashion choices, food they like, beer they drink.. that's culture. Two opposed cultures fighting over everything? Culture war. It's another point in evidence of something we can all see.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoThe whole article reads, to me, as "We can sell you ads on the most tenuous associations" as we're too stuck in our own marketing bubble. :) Stereotypical difference between a peace activist and Wall St banker, sure. No doubt some more subtle variations too. Comparing mainstream brands? That seems a stretch too far to say the least. Preferences in clothing and music are the leading indicators of political leaning Or might indicate nationality and age group far more than politics? Music has long heavily influenced clothing. opting for Levi’s over Rag & Bone makes a statement about associations and history and opens one up to fashion profiling Or you were born in the 50s and haven't, yet, heard of Rag & Bone, or you prefer Levi's fit, or they're heavier denim. Or you're British and prefer Rag & Bone, as they started here. Or one was on offer at Amazon. Or your partner chose whichever they prefer on you.
- inetknght 8y agoI don't think it was being used as the sole metric. Rather, I think it'd be used as a weight. X percent of the population wears A brand, while Y population wears B brand. What correlations can we find in some Z count of reference population? Use that correlation value to infer data where none existed. Yes, some of that inferred data will be wrong. But a lot won't be. And when you're talking a massive numbers game like millions of voters then you're also talking about accepting that trade-off by hedging against other correlations that can help solidify a potential inference.
- brazzledazzle 8y agoI think you’re spot on. I have friend that probably defies nearly every major category he’s part of: age, race, population density, location, home and perhaps even vehicle. But after reading this I realized his clothes do stand out and might be one of the few outward things that don’t suggest “middle aged midwest conservative”. If you need to figure out where to focus canvassing and marketing in a political campaign it’s probably not bad to have a range of variables and metrics to weigh, especially when things are otherwise mostly homogeneous. My friend isn’t going to tell his neighbors he voted for Clinton but you better believe he did.
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- notacoward 8y agoMakes perfect sense. I remember seeing something a while ago about an fMRI study which showed that the difference between "Coke drinkers" and "Pepsi" drinkers had more to do with people's sense of identity than with actual physical enjoyment of each drink. We're probably all familiar with the stereotypes of latte-sipping liberals and beer-swilling conservatives. Are liberals physically different in a way that makes them more likely to enjoy latte? Unlikely. People identify with brands as reflections of their identity and affiliations all the time. This is especially evident with cars. What kind of person drives a Prius? What kind of person drives an F-150? Don't tell me that mentioning those brands didn't make certain images pop into your head. I drive a Mini and love it, but I'd never buy a BMW 3-series (which is built from many of the same components) because of the brand associations. Of course someone who wears Carhartt is going to fit a different political profile than someone who wears Under Armour. It would be foolish not to use that information in targeting an ad or political campaign.
- tokyo_sky_park 8y agoChris Wylie didn't work at Cambridge Analytica in 2016. He left in 2014 to create his own company, Eunoia Technologies, which was a direct and bitter competitor. The two regularly competed for clients and CA sued Eunoia, alleging that Chris took both clients and data with him when he left. It was a deeply unfriendly parting. Therefore, Chris has no insider information about what happened at Cambridge Analytica during or in the run up to the presidential election. Therefore, these claims are creative fiction.
- alottafunchata 8y agoHonestly... who cares??
- rjplatte 8y agoAgree. This is simply good targeting.
- trhway 8y agocouple years ago i heard that adult content industry was selling pretty precise political profiling of their users. So it isnt just fashion.
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- gammateam 8y agoWe use the erc20 contents of ethereum addresses to determine exactly which influencers someone is exposed to and will be exposed to This is because nobody uses the best practice of avoiding address reuse These are basically brands
- zyxzevn 8y agoI wonder what google or reddit know about my political ideas..
- roel_v 8y agoI often wonder what HN could infer from my positions on various topics based on my voting (eventhough I don't use it to signal (dis)agreement).
- drdeadringer 8y agoI remember a scene from "NYPD Blue" between Sipowicz and his adult son [who wanted to become a cop like his father]. The advice was that the "most basic" thing to remember was "People, Places: The things they do, the times they do them". If you turn a hard Left at Crazy, that's profiling ... but it's not wrong. Going with the example provided in the scene, it's good to figure out that the night-shift worker at the toy factory is bringing home a toy gun for his kid at 3am Christmas Morning instead of a high-profile over-armed robbery in an otherwise deserted industrial district in the middle of the night during a holiday. It seems like the "grey line" shrinks and expands at will depending on the context one desires.
- whoopdedo 8y agoOnce again demonstrating that "deanonymized" data is anything but.
- dvt 8y agoAs much as I think Trump's idiotic anti-media rhetoric erodes our democracy, when I see the NY Times publishing articles like this, it makes me cringe. First of all, it's a complete non-article -- marketing firms used correlative data to make inferences about political affiliation? No way! Second of all, instead of being a smart and pointed analysis as to why this might be bad, it somehow draws political conclusions from a fashion conference and displays a large header featuring the green-haired Christopher Wylie making fantastical claims about "Bannon's insurgency" -- even an iota of research would clearly show that today's "alt-right" movement was a decades long project started by Newt Gingrich (among others in Republican leadership) in Georgia, escalated during Clinton's impeachment proceedings, and fully developed during the Tea Party movements that preceded Trump. But of course, these are complicated political machinations that have many moving parts. Instead, the NYT insults its readers by pandering technically- and politically- incompetent drivel like “Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right” -- give me a break.
- iscrewyou 8y agoThese news don’t make a big splash when other companies use profiling to identify people. This one did because those profiles were used to incite violence. It’s news, just not to your liking.
- dvt 8y agoIt's really not news, it's clickbait (because it's controversial). I understand NYT and their like needs to make ends meet, but they need to find a better way.
- malvosenior 8y agoWhat violence did it incite?
- chrisco255 8y agoAre you telling me that people who buy camo clothes are more likely to be conservative? That's crazy talk. Next thing you'll tell me is people who dye their hair pink or blue are more likely to be liberal.
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- AndrewKemendo 8y agoNext thing you'll tell me is people who dye their hair pink or blue are more likely to be liberal. I have been curious about this particular recent feature. Does brightly colored/neon hair indicate the person is part of some particular group? My exposure to this trend has been primarily with people on the internet, specifically Twitter and it seems to be predominantly women, and predominantly associated with being outspoken on modern civil rights issues.
- dnadler 8y agoOutspoken in which direction?
- hyperdunc 8y agoNot liberals of the traditional type. This type of hair is adopted by some females who espouse intersectional views on how society works. The hair style is both a signal to others and a modest act of rebellion against societal norms. Modest because similar hairstyles have been around for decades in older countercultures.
- 1337biz 8y ago>modern civil rights issues That is the most positive way I have seen somebody frame them. I guess they would even call themselves social activists...
- bsder 8y ago> Does brightly colored/neon hair indicate the person is part of some particular group? Yes. The "I'm non-conformist and quirky!" girl. Of course, they're "quirky" exactly the same way as all the other "quirky" girls.
- jhwhite 8y agoNot really surprising. I catch myself making assumptions about people's politics based on the clothes they're wearing. This data just allows one to confirm.
- jammygit 8y agoThis sort of thing is going to cause a huge chilling effect in the medium-term as it becomes more widespread. Every nuance of how you act or look is going to get collected by websites and cameras and used to make conclusions about who you are (accurate or not), potentially stored forever. One can only imagine how China will use these approaches with their planned 570M cameras with facial recognition. edit: number of cameras was an order of magnitude low, corrected based on: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-facial-recognition-technology-works-in-one-second-2018-3/ https://www.businessinsider.com/china-facial-recognition-tec...
- MistahKoala 8y agoHardly ground-breaking stuff; individuals do this in everyday life as a matter of routine. They even use this tacit knowledge when they attempt to manipulate others: just compare 'old' Chris Wylie with 'new' Chris Wylie.
- wolfgke 8y agoI just ask myself how I, a person who satisfies quite some nerd stereotypes would be classified by these algorithm (in particular for political advertising). So for example the small number of categories that Google Ads assigns to me (https://google.com/ads/preferences https://google.com/ads/preferences) are correct - but featureless and quite hard for marketers to target.
- elliekelly 8y agoIt's very likely that you just think they're "featureless and quite hard for marketers to target." For example, this story (from 2012) about Target's ability to predict a woman's pregnancy: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
- icebraining 8y agoOr they got lucky in that case, and we only heard of it because of such luck.
- wolfgke 8y ago> It's very likely that you just think they're "featureless and quite hard for marketers to target." At least of the second part, I am pretty convinced. When I see ads, I always think how wrong and clueless the ad network is again of my true interests.
- sjg007 8y agoSo what information could they see? Could they see posts and shares? If they installed the app from before? I mean you can find right wingers by looking at all of the right wing pages on Facebook and seeing who is in them. I can't imagine it's that difficult.
- liftbigweights 8y agoWhy is this news? Everyone does this, including the nytimes. The nytimes marketing department offers their clients on all kinds of identifying/targeting traits for advertising. From your fashion to your viewing habits to which news you consuming to even the types of pets you have and everything in between is used. Where you work, where you live, what kind of parenting situation you have, etc. Isn't that the point of political and corporate advertising? Isn't this why the nytimes and cambridge analytica is in business? Is the obvious "news" now because of trump and the "right wing"? Considering the DNC spent a lot more money than the RNC the past few elections, there are far more organizations who targeted left-wing voters than right-wing voters. But I guess the nytimes doesn't want to write an article about itself and its ad team and their clients.