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This assumes that targeted ads are truly effective for changing politics. This remains to be studied through rigorous science rather than in trial-by-journalist

This assumes that targeted ads are truly effective for changing politics. This remains to be studied through rigorous science rather than in trial-by-journalists.

inflatableDodo 7y ago
>This remains to be studied I think it is fair for me to assume that propaganda does influence politics without having to commission a study on it.
- brycesbeard 7y ago
  the relevant question is whether it influences on a scale we want to stop. Treating it as a binary isn’t very useful.
- lmm 7y ago
  Why? Because propagandists try really hard? Because they spend a lot of money on it?
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    The US 2016 election is pretty damn conclusive. Push a simple message to the swing states of the Midwest, and boom.
    - JetSpiegel 7y ago
      If Hillary had not pulled strings on the DCCC, or she actually campaigned on those states, no amount of ads could have swinged them.
    - lmm 7y ago
      That's the election in which one candidate massively out-spent the other but nevertheless lost, right?
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    History books mostly.
GreeniFi 7y ago
You’re right of course, but until we get the double-blind randomized trial, we have Occam’s Razor: if people didn’t think it worked they wouldn’t pay so much for it.
- brycesbeard 7y ago
  Which is a very different question than whether or not it worked. After all, people pay billions every year on useless nutritional supplements which have a lot of evidence to suggest they don’t work as people think. Yet they still pay. People are irrational.
  - baddox 7y ago
    Wouldn’t the better analogy here be money spent on marketing supplements, which does in fact seem to work?
    - GreeniFi 7y ago
      Good point. I know I should not extrapolate from one data point, and by way of example after a friend joined FB about 2 years ago, I have noticed a progressive change in their viewpoints. Although a trained scientist, they now talk frequently about (1) anti-vaccination, (2) chemtrails, (3) climate change hoax,(4) Soros, (5) Brexit. My hypothesis is that hawkers of nonsense use FB to identify people interested in one of the above and then bombard them with recommends. After all, we behave according to our lived experience - and if social media platforms are used to alter the perception of lived experience, then logic dictates that they can sway behaviour. Should I be smug? Absolutely not! I have little idea where my opinions come from.
- return1 7y ago
  Ad spending as percentage of gdp has not changed in at least a century. So i m not sure if these new media are any more effective than any other media. I honestly am baffled at the lack of scientific research of the effectiveness of advertising in the digital age, to the point of being suspicious. https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/20/607954-15215770607489548.png https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/20/607954-152...
save_ferris 7y ago
The New Knowledge whitepaper[0] on the Russian social media interference operation noted several times that Facebook could've provided a lot more data than it chose to release (i.e. relevant FB comments, the number of users who interacted with fake content who also went to the polls, etc.) A lot of important context was intentionally left out of their release that could've helped researchers better understand the tactics and effectiveness of the operation. We're never going to get a comprehensive answer to the questions underlying these operations as long as companies like Facebook get to pick and choose what data gets released to research these issues. [0]: https://www.newknowledge.com/articles/the-disinformation-report/ https://www.newknowledge.com/articles/the-disinformation-rep...
- Amezarak 7y ago
  New Knowledge was caught manufacturing Russian social media interference. I don’t recommend using them as a source. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jon... The CEO is part of several other unsavory propaganda campaigns, such as Hamilton 68, which Greenwald et al have pretty effectively torn apart.
  - itronitron 7y ago
    Thanks for posting this
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
marstomorrow 7y ago
> This assumes that targeted ads are truly effective for changing politics No it doesn't. "Targeted ads" had very little to do with the CA/Facebook scandal and I see them as largely irrelevant in what happened. So I don't see that assumption present in the top comment at all. A significant amount of the "noopolitics" done with this kind of data is done through peer-based evidence - "regular" accounts posting political things, with "regular" accounts responding, but where both accounts are false personas, spies if you will. The 'targeted ads' line is a misleading spin. Very little was done with targeted ads and a lot more was done with impersonating Americans and posing as GOP officials, etc.
nullwasamistake 7y ago
Targeted ads are extremely effective, in general. You'll never see a scientific study because nobody in ad space wants targets to realize this. I used to run a campaign so well targeted that we had an 8% buy rate. That is, 8% of the people that saw the ad not only clicked, they actually bought the product. Google charged us $35 for every click but the product was so expensive we still made a killing. Targeted advertising needs to be banned for the good of society. It's evil, inisidious. All about trying your best to manipulate the worst traits of human nature for profit. I can pretty easily find out if you're an addict, ex con, a gambler, in debt, illegal immigrant, bad English, maybe a minority. I'll find something you're probably insecure about and use that to sell you shit. Also, I don't wanna waste money showing my ads to poor people. Can't do that directly, but there's plenty of proxies. Just add a bunch of "interests" to your audience. Things Like horse racing, wine collecting, yachts, expensive rugs. I wish I was kidding, but everyone does this on targeted advertising platforms. It's a discrimination minefield, but since you use proxy characteristics for everything and everyone covers their eyes it's totally fine.
- return1 7y ago
  Advertising a painkiller in a hospital is also targeted advertising. The question is whether digital is somehow dangerously more effective than other forms (which are ostensibly considered "safe"). I m not surprised by your data point, you are obviously selling something to very specific to people who really need it, but this says nothing about the ability to change people's opinion on something. And as counterpoint, if it was really so effective as you claim, why haven't we seen huge increases in ad spending lately?
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Advertising a painkiller in a hospital is also targeted advertising And should also be banned. A painkiller being promoted and bought more by customers just because it has more money to spend in advertising is morally worse than the mere creepiness of regular (buy BS stuff you don't need) targeted advertisement. Who needs ads? Level the playing field with an online catalog where patients can discover (in, say, random order for each viewing, to avoid even sorting bias) all available painkillers. You can then add voting to the catalog, so patients and doctors can weight in for how good they think the painkiller is -- but with huge fines and prison for any company trying to manipulate buy those votes.
netcan 7y ago
This is the sort of question that tends to be settled in a market (of one kind or another) rather than rigorous science.
- return1 7y ago
  the market shows that ad spending overall has not increased during the transition to the digital age. It has shifted from traditional to digital, but overall businesses spend the same amounts on advertising as in the past.
  - akiselev 7y ago
    Political ad spending has been growing nonstop, outpacing inflation significantly.
    - return1 7y ago
      Interesting. However this article claims that the reason for the jump is the 2010 decision to allow unlimited political spending. And lets remember that in the US the biggest spenders ddid not win. https://www.google.gr/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/156BEC18-44EF-11E5-BDE8-97803EE98AFC https://www.google.gr/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/gu...
coldtea 7y ago
>This remains to be studied through rigorous science rather than in trial-by-journalists. If politicians get results when they spend their money on it, they wont care to wait for "rigorous science" to prove anything. And they wont be foolish to pay for non-results for long... Empirical results beat "rigorous science" every time...
- return1 7y ago
  still in this case the candidate who spent the most lost the election
- michaelt 7y ago
  And they wont be foolish to pay for non-results for long... Imagine Joe gets re-elected after delivering 30,000 pre-election leaflets, knocking on 3,000 doors, delivering 10,000 reminders on the day of the poll, getting 13,000 views of facebook adverts, employing 2 people to do casework for constituents, calling 7,000 people with a human-operated phone-bank, robocalling 20,000 people, attending 40 community events, getting 300 people rides to polling stations, getting 5 celebrity endorsements, getting 1 visit from a really high profile colleague, and so on... It's far from obvious to me that you could tell apart the effects of different efforts - especially as you don't know who each voter voted for.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >It's far from obvious to me that you could tell apart the effects of different efforts - especially as you don't know who each voter voted for. Companies that do those short of campaigns stagger them at different times, do polls before and after, test a new method in this or that area or demographic and check again and so on through election year. It's not just "apply a bunch of methods at once" -> "check the final election result" as the only feedback.

This assumes that targeted ads are truly effective for changing politics. This remains to be studied through rigorous science rather than in trial-by-journalists.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

>This remains to be studied I think it is fair for me to assume that propaganda does influence politics without having to commission a study on it.

brycesbeard 7y ago
the relevant question is whether it influences on a scale we want to stop. Treating it as a binary isn’t very useful.
lmm 7y ago
Why? Because propagandists try really hard? Because they spend a lot of money on it?
- Spooky23 7y ago
  The US 2016 election is pretty damn conclusive. Push a simple message to the swing states of the Midwest, and boom.
  - JetSpiegel 7y ago
    If Hillary had not pulled strings on the DCCC, or she actually campaigned on those states, no amount of ads could have swinged them.
  - lmm 7y ago
    That's the election in which one candidate massively out-spent the other but nevertheless lost, right?
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  History books mostly.

GreeniFi 7y ago

You’re right of course, but until we get the double-blind randomized trial, we have Occam’s Razor: if people didn’t think it worked they wouldn’t pay so much for it.

brycesbeard 7y ago
Which is a very different question than whether or not it worked. After all, people pay billions every year on useless nutritional supplements which have a lot of evidence to suggest they don’t work as people think. Yet they still pay. People are irrational.
- baddox 7y ago
  Wouldn’t the better analogy here be money spent on marketing supplements, which does in fact seem to work?
  - GreeniFi 7y ago
    Good point. I know I should not extrapolate from one data point, and by way of example after a friend joined FB about 2 years ago, I have noticed a progressive change in their viewpoints. Although a trained scientist, they now talk frequently about (1) anti-vaccination, (2) chemtrails, (3) climate change hoax,(4) Soros, (5) Brexit. My hypothesis is that hawkers of nonsense use FB to identify people interested in one of the above and then bombard them with recommends. After all, we behave according to our lived experience - and if social media platforms are used to alter the perception of lived experience, then logic dictates that they can sway behaviour. Should I be smug? Absolutely not! I have little idea where my opinions come from.
return1 7y ago
Ad spending as percentage of gdp has not changed in at least a century. So i m not sure if these new media are any more effective than any other media. I honestly am baffled at the lack of scientific research of the effectiveness of advertising in the digital age, to the point of being suspicious. https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/20/607954-15215770607489548.png https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/20/607954-152...

save_ferris 7y ago

The New Knowledge whitepaper[0] on the Russian social media interference operation noted several times that Facebook could've provided a lot more data than it chose to release (i.e. relevant FB comments, the number of users who interacted with fake content who also went to the polls, etc.) A lot of important context was intentionally left out of their release that could've helped researchers better understand the tactics and effectiveness of the operation. We're never going to get a comprehensive answer to the questions underlying these operations as long as companies like Facebook get to pick and choose what data gets released to research these issues. [0]: https://www.newknowledge.com/articles/the-disinformation-report/ https://www.newknowledge.com/articles/the-disinformation-rep...

Amezarak 7y ago
New Knowledge was caught manufacturing Russian social media interference. I don’t recommend using them as a source. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jon... The CEO is part of several other unsavory propaganda campaigns, such as Hamilton 68, which Greenwald et al have pretty effectively torn apart.
- itronitron 7y ago
  Thanks for posting this
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

marstomorrow 7y ago

> This assumes that targeted ads are truly effective for changing politics No it doesn't. "Targeted ads" had very little to do with the CA/Facebook scandal and I see them as largely irrelevant in what happened. So I don't see that assumption present in the top comment at all. A significant amount of the "noopolitics" done with this kind of data is done through peer-based evidence - "regular" accounts posting political things, with "regular" accounts responding, but where both accounts are false personas, spies if you will. The 'targeted ads' line is a misleading spin. Very little was done with targeted ads and a lot more was done with impersonating Americans and posing as GOP officials, etc.

nullwasamistake 7y ago

Targeted ads are extremely effective, in general. You'll never see a scientific study because nobody in ad space wants targets to realize this. I used to run a campaign so well targeted that we had an 8% buy rate. That is, 8% of the people that saw the ad not only clicked, they actually bought the product. Google charged us $35 for every click but the product was so expensive we still made a killing. Targeted advertising needs to be banned for the good of society. It's evil, inisidious. All about trying your best to manipulate the worst traits of human nature for profit. I can pretty easily find out if you're an addict, ex con, a gambler, in debt, illegal immigrant, bad English, maybe a minority. I'll find something you're probably insecure about and use that to sell you shit. Also, I don't wanna waste money showing my ads to poor people. Can't do that directly, but there's plenty of proxies. Just add a bunch of "interests" to your audience. Things Like horse racing, wine collecting, yachts, expensive rugs. I wish I was kidding, but everyone does this on targeted advertising platforms. It's a discrimination minefield, but since you use proxy characteristics for everything and everyone covers their eyes it's totally fine.

return1 7y ago
Advertising a painkiller in a hospital is also targeted advertising. The question is whether digital is somehow dangerously more effective than other forms (which are ostensibly considered "safe"). I m not surprised by your data point, you are obviously selling something to very specific to people who really need it, but this says nothing about the ability to change people's opinion on something. And as counterpoint, if it was really so effective as you claim, why haven't we seen huge increases in ad spending lately?
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Advertising a painkiller in a hospital is also targeted advertising And should also be banned. A painkiller being promoted and bought more by customers just because it has more money to spend in advertising is morally worse than the mere creepiness of regular (buy BS stuff you don't need) targeted advertisement. Who needs ads? Level the playing field with an online catalog where patients can discover (in, say, random order for each viewing, to avoid even sorting bias) all available painkillers. You can then add voting to the catalog, so patients and doctors can weight in for how good they think the painkiller is -- but with huge fines and prison for any company trying to manipulate buy those votes.

netcan 7y ago

This is the sort of question that tends to be settled in a market (of one kind or another) rather than rigorous science.

return1 7y ago
the market shows that ad spending overall has not increased during the transition to the digital age. It has shifted from traditional to digital, but overall businesses spend the same amounts on advertising as in the past.
- akiselev 7y ago
  Political ad spending has been growing nonstop, outpacing inflation significantly.
  - return1 7y ago
    Interesting. However this article claims that the reason for the jump is the 2010 decision to allow unlimited political spending. And lets remember that in the US the biggest spenders ddid not win. https://www.google.gr/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/156BEC18-44EF-11E5-BDE8-97803EE98AFC https://www.google.gr/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/gu...

coldtea 7y ago

>This remains to be studied through rigorous science rather than in trial-by-journalists. If politicians get results when they spend their money on it, they wont care to wait for "rigorous science" to prove anything. And they wont be foolish to pay for non-results for long... Empirical results beat "rigorous science" every time...

return1 7y ago
still in this case the candidate who spent the most lost the election
michaelt 7y ago
And they wont be foolish to pay for non-results for long... Imagine Joe gets re-elected after delivering 30,000 pre-election leaflets, knocking on 3,000 doors, delivering 10,000 reminders on the day of the poll, getting 13,000 views of facebook adverts, employing 2 people to do casework for constituents, calling 7,000 people with a human-operated phone-bank, robocalling 20,000 people, attending 40 community events, getting 300 people rides to polling stations, getting 5 celebrity endorsements, getting 1 visit from a really high profile colleague, and so on... It's far from obvious to me that you could tell apart the effects of different efforts - especially as you don't know who each voter voted for.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >It's far from obvious to me that you could tell apart the effects of different efforts - especially as you don't know who each voter voted for. Companies that do those short of campaigns stagger them at different times, do polls before and after, test a new method in this or that area or demographic and check again and so on through election year. It's not just "apply a bunch of methods at once" -> "check the final election result" as the only feedback.