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My key takeaway of Cambridge Analytica was that the advertising industry is a lot more harmful than I thought. I always thought, that there is no real problem w

My key takeaway of Cambridge Analytica was that the advertising industry is a lot more harmful than I thought. I always thought, that there is no real problem when some people influence/manipulate other people on what they spend their money on. But now we see that those same instruments can be used to not only change shopping decisions but also democratic decisions, which is not okay in my opinion and should be prosecuted and be punished with severe penalties. Otherwise, the whole point of democracy (one human, one vote) is useless, as the rich can simply buy ads to influence enough people to follow their goals.

dqybh 7y ago
>Otherwise, the whole point of democracy (one human, one vote) is useless, as the rich can simply buy ads to influence enough people to follow their goals. As they've always done through the media? The hardest thing to swallow, for some people, is that democracy is deeply flawed, and these things openly show it. Until now they've been free to ignore it.
- edejong 7y ago
  The traditional media had to operate in the open. You could figure out what your neighbor was reading by buying his/her newspaper for a day. Also, newspapers could report on each other’s reporting. This has become increasingly opaque.
  - hrktb 7y ago
    I feel the traditional media operated in the open as much as you can still get whatever message is broadcasted to half of the population by clicking on a few links. Even in the days anything more insidious would happen over direct mailing, or direct spam through the mailbox. Even knowing what magazines someone subscribes to is not obvious if you don’t catch the mail staff or check the garbage, which would be roughly equivalent to stalking someone online and checking their accounts followings and network. I think as long as people are trying to build communities, there will be channels to get what other people are thinking/reading/discussing. It will be more tricky with true direct one direction messaging sending “orders” to an army of followers of an ideology.
  - acct1771 7y ago
    Media conglomerates still indeed have some sway. CNN et al which all have questionable at best propaganda/war drum records are still pointed to with appeals to authority.l, etc.
  - dominotw 7y ago
    its not just media though. politicians in my country directly give ppl money, liquor ect in exchange for their vote, its not really happening in open.
- TelmoMenezes 7y ago
  > As they've always done through the media? The hardest thing to swallow, for some people, is that these things show very openly how democracy is deeply flawed. If you study a bit of History, or look beyond the western world, you will see how terrible the alternatives are. And you will see that democracy is something worth fighting for. Democracy is not flawed, it is hard. We have to fight for it, and the next generations will have to fight for it, and so on. It's real life. I haven't resigned myself to living in a Black Mirror episode.
  - perfmode 7y ago
    Truth: Democracy has dependencies. Just (fair) access to education and opportunity is absolutely necessary for democracy to function.
    - xtian 7y ago
      As early as Athenian democracy the dependencies had been identified as comprehensive education, quality information, and time to debate.
      - perfmode 7y ago
        interesting. got a link or reference? would love to read more
        xtian 7y ago
        I might be misremembering but I think I heard that in a speech by John Ralston Saul. Sorry I can’t remember anything more specific!
      - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
        And the will to uphold democracy in the first place.
  - shard972 7y ago
    > If you study a bit of History, or look beyond the western world, you will see how terrible the alternatives are. You might have missed Socrates in your reading of history I think. > And you will see that democracy is something worth fighting for. Democracy is not flawed, it is hard. Ok yep, maybe you should read some.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  We need political adverts otherwise we wouldn't know what any party supports. One solution I can think of is every party gets equal ad time so no one can buy more votes and we all find out whats going on.
- Franciscouzo 7y ago
  Why blame democracy when the elephant in the room is capitalism?
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago
  It's not deeply flawed, just corrupted, but hey, anything can, there's no silver bullet against it.
edejong 7y ago
I’d be more concerned about the effects on the journalism sector. Suddenly they can target worldwide the public perception of everything. It’s the most detailed and effective propaganda machine ever built.
- JetSpiegel 7y ago
  You can think of language barriers as firewalls for this virus, and translation and localization as the ICE breakers.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
x0x0 7y ago
It wasn't the advertising industry in general that made the decision that person X authorizing Cambridge Analytica granted access to the data of every friend of person X. That sits squarely on the scum at 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park. The ad industry isn't full of angels by any means, but no reputable companies treated private data so cavalierly.
dontbenebby 7y ago
>But now we see that those same instruments can be used to not only change shopping decisions but also democratic decisions Did we really not know that prior to 2016?
- sgift 7y ago
  > Did we really not know that prior to 2016? Did we really not know prior to Snowden that the NSA, GCHQ and all the others spied on the populace? There's a market difference between knowing in the abstract and understanding it as "this is happening. Right now. Here."
  - dontbenebby 7y ago
    I agree with your abstract vs concrete analogy. We knew bits and pieces from cases like Jewel v NSA[0] but not things like modifying things on the wire to insert malware, or kneecapping standards. But conversely, it was well that Obama used data analytics to enhance his campaign[1], using techniques extremely similar to Cambridge Analytica's[2]. The important difference being users of the Obama for America app opted into sharing their data for political purposes, whereas CA claimed to be a personality quiz to secretly harvest data for political purposes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_v._NSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_v._NSA [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-data-to-rally-voters/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-us... [2] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/22/meghan-mccain/comparing-facebook-data-use-obama-cambridge-analyt/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar...
jdminhbg 7y ago
The problem with this theory is that Cambridge Analytica is infamously associated with an election where the monetary underdog vastly overperformed.
MisterBastahrd 7y ago
I always knew it was harmful. The problem is what Cambridge ultimately did. People shouldn't be able to shutter companies and transfer wealth just to avoid civil and criminal liability.
- whenchamenia 7y ago
  Thats kind of silicon valleys whole MO though...
klagermkii 7y ago
> My key takeaway of Cambridge Analytica was that the advertising industry is a lot more harmful than I thought. I always thought, that there is no real problem when some people influence/manipulate other people on what they spend their money on. If this kind of advertising is able to make people act against their own interest to the level claimed with this political meddling, how is this somehow more acceptable on an economic level which directly impacts individuals? At least for most people the consequences of the election are more distant, whereas if people are tricked into making poor purchasing decisions they could be looking at directly losing hundreds or thousands of dollars. Certainly a large amount over their lifetime. I can't see how this is any better, and I personally think it's worse. Is the only justification that poor purchasing decisions directly impacts the easily influenced people (one could unpleasantly spin it as getting what they deserve), whereas political decisions hit everyone?
- kmonsen 7y ago
  Because on "regular" advertising business you can protect yourself or stay away from them. In an election there is no way to protect yourself since the majority decides. (Not saying I completely buys this, but there is a major difference here).
kevingadd 7y ago
The recurring theme of politicians advocating restrictions of voting to land owners (even to this day) says a lot about what some people think democracy means. It's depressing even before you get to the idea of buying the votes of the people who can still vote, or using gerrymandering to make their votes not count
- whenchamenia 7y ago
  To demand a stake of investment in order to incur privlidge is one thing but rights are another. It still seems beneficial to listen to those with 'skin in the game' so to speak, but how to balance that with greater social good requires the assumption that most people are a net social positive, which many optimists struggle with. Its a tricky problem with no clear answers unless you cling to some dogma.
nradov 7y ago
It's questionable whether Cambridge Analytica actually succeeded in changing many votes. And even counting that targeted advertising, the losing side in the 2016 presidential election spent far more in ads. So apparently ads aren't that effective. The Electoral College is what really violates the principle of "one human, one vote".
- rhizome 7y ago
  CA behavior doesn't have to be connected to specific votes in order to have been harmful. There is a constellation of operators behind the name "Cambridge Analytica," and almost all of them still have jobs doing what they were doing three years ago. NBD?
- syshum 7y ago
  >The Electoral College is what really violates the principle of "one human, one vote". No it really does not if you understand what a Republic of States is. We are the United States of America. A republic of states. Not "America the great democracy" like people seem to want it to become. A federalist nation of independent states is what the constitution created, and what we should be protecting. There are many things that would improve our elections (Wyoming Rule, No Gerrymandering, Proportional Electoral College, Instant Run Off Voting, and returning the Senate to the States just to name a few) but a national popular vote for President is a TERRIBLE idea, and would rip this nation apart and in the long run likely result in another civil war.
  - nradov 7y ago
    Oh I fully understand the Federalist argument however the Electoral College has outlived its usefulness. Times change. The notion that eliminating it would cause another civil war is ludicrous.
    - syshum 7y ago
      How has it outlived its Usefulness let me Guess you live in CA, NY, or Texas? Because with out the Electoral College, the rest of the states do not matter.. the Elections will be decided by about 5 states in the union, the very thing the Electoral College was designed to prevent and is every much just as relevant today as it was when there were only 13 colonies As to civil war.... You do understand that most of the private guns in this nation are in the Red States, and currently if National popular vote is enacted the Blue States will effectively control government at the national level (which is most likely why you support it, chances are you are a democrat and are tried of the Republicans having any power so if NY and CA can control the nation that would be grand for you) . Which will most likely mean extreme pushes to the Authoritarian left including Draconian gun control laws and seizures... Which will bring about all out civil war //For the Record I an neither R or D, I am small L libertarian.
vinbreau 7y ago
This is why I left work in advertising. I could see the levels of psychological manipulation 30 years ago and knew with the future of data mining it was only going to get worse. There is nothing ethical about advertising. It's all about what you can get away with. Look at the history of subliminal advertising, though it never got so bad as to have laws enacted when the public became interested in it they realized the game was up and abandoned it. The industry is full of tiny little battering rams like subliminal advertising. Each attempt yields success or failure, rinse and repeat. The refinement at this point is unfathomable.
- busymom0 7y ago
  I think there is a thin line between ethical advertising and unethical psychological manipulation. I think generally, people know that when they are watching an ad, they are being tricked a bit. I think as long as it’s obvious to the user that they are being advertised to, there shouldn’t be an issue. Cambridge Analytica data was used to manipulate people by them not being aware that they were basically watching an advertisement. Except in this case, the ad was a real time political movie in the same theatre as someone else but both people somehow came out watching a different version of the movie because of filtered and targeted manipulative ads. They did not know that the posts they were seeing on social media were supposed to be manipulative ads.
  - sgift 7y ago
    > I think there is a thin line between ethical advertising and unethical psychological manipulation. That line runs between "let's think about this as an interesting thought experiment" and "let's do this!" - People can and are manipulated even when they know they are being advertised. That has been shown time and time again. Advertising is psychological manipulation with another name.
    - busymom0 7y ago
      Sure. My following question would be how do we then differentiate between healthy advertising an unhealthy one? We can't abandon and block ads completely. If we did that, we wouldn't even get to be aware of products which might really make our lives better. How do we figure out the healthy balance out? I would argue that the current laws around advertising are pretty decent but they could be made better and adapted for social media platforms.
Lucadg 7y ago
In the US the rich buy ads to influence enough people to follow their goals. I never really understood how this is a good thing for democracy.
globuous 7y ago
Then you might be interested in this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent The advertising industry comes from war propaganda from what I understand. So using advertising to sell goods is actually much more recent than using these methods to manipulate political views...
ptah 7y ago
historically all democracies deteriorate towards non-existence over time. it's just a matter of how long for particular cases
GoblinSlayer 7y ago
Any power is prone to corruption. If people don't want democracy, how do you make them want it?

dqybh 7y ago

>Otherwise, the whole point of democracy (one human, one vote) is useless, as the rich can simply buy ads to influence enough people to follow their goals. As they've always done through the media? The hardest thing to swallow, for some people, is that democracy is deeply flawed, and these things openly show it. Until now they've been free to ignore it.

edejong 7y ago
The traditional media had to operate in the open. You could figure out what your neighbor was reading by buying his/her newspaper for a day. Also, newspapers could report on each other’s reporting. This has become increasingly opaque.
- hrktb 7y ago
  I feel the traditional media operated in the open as much as you can still get whatever message is broadcasted to half of the population by clicking on a few links. Even in the days anything more insidious would happen over direct mailing, or direct spam through the mailbox. Even knowing what magazines someone subscribes to is not obvious if you don’t catch the mail staff or check the garbage, which would be roughly equivalent to stalking someone online and checking their accounts followings and network. I think as long as people are trying to build communities, there will be channels to get what other people are thinking/reading/discussing. It will be more tricky with true direct one direction messaging sending “orders” to an army of followers of an ideology.
- acct1771 7y ago
  Media conglomerates still indeed have some sway. CNN et al which all have questionable at best propaganda/war drum records are still pointed to with appeals to authority.l, etc.
- dominotw 7y ago
  its not just media though. politicians in my country directly give ppl money, liquor ect in exchange for their vote, its not really happening in open.
TelmoMenezes 7y ago
> As they've always done through the media? The hardest thing to swallow, for some people, is that these things show very openly how democracy is deeply flawed. If you study a bit of History, or look beyond the western world, you will see how terrible the alternatives are. And you will see that democracy is something worth fighting for. Democracy is not flawed, it is hard. We have to fight for it, and the next generations will have to fight for it, and so on. It's real life. I haven't resigned myself to living in a Black Mirror episode.
- perfmode 7y ago
  Truth: Democracy has dependencies. Just (fair) access to education and opportunity is absolutely necessary for democracy to function.
  - xtian 7y ago
    As early as Athenian democracy the dependencies had been identified as comprehensive education, quality information, and time to debate.
    - perfmode 7y ago
      interesting. got a link or reference? would love to read more
      - xtian 7y ago
        I might be misremembering but I think I heard that in a speech by John Ralston Saul. Sorry I can’t remember anything more specific!
    - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
      And the will to uphold democracy in the first place.
- shard972 7y ago
  > If you study a bit of History, or look beyond the western world, you will see how terrible the alternatives are. You might have missed Socrates in your reading of history I think. > And you will see that democracy is something worth fighting for. Democracy is not flawed, it is hard. Ok yep, maybe you should read some.
baroffoos 7y ago
We need political adverts otherwise we wouldn't know what any party supports. One solution I can think of is every party gets equal ad time so no one can buy more votes and we all find out whats going on.
Franciscouzo 7y ago
Why blame democracy when the elephant in the room is capitalism?
GoblinSlayer 7y ago
It's not deeply flawed, just corrupted, but hey, anything can, there's no silver bullet against it.

edejong 7y ago

I’d be more concerned about the effects on the journalism sector. Suddenly they can target worldwide the public perception of everything. It’s the most detailed and effective propaganda machine ever built.

JetSpiegel 7y ago
You can think of language barriers as firewalls for this virus, and translation and localization as the ICE breakers.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

x0x0 7y ago

It wasn't the advertising industry in general that made the decision that person X authorizing Cambridge Analytica granted access to the data of every friend of person X. That sits squarely on the scum at 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park. The ad industry isn't full of angels by any means, but no reputable companies treated private data so cavalierly.

dontbenebby 7y ago

>But now we see that those same instruments can be used to not only change shopping decisions but also democratic decisions Did we really not know that prior to 2016?

sgift 7y ago
> Did we really not know that prior to 2016? Did we really not know prior to Snowden that the NSA, GCHQ and all the others spied on the populace? There's a market difference between knowing in the abstract and understanding it as "this is happening. Right now. Here."
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  I agree with your abstract vs concrete analogy. We knew bits and pieces from cases like Jewel v NSA[0] but not things like modifying things on the wire to insert malware, or kneecapping standards. But conversely, it was well that Obama used data analytics to enhance his campaign[1], using techniques extremely similar to Cambridge Analytica's[2]. The important difference being users of the Obama for America app opted into sharing their data for political purposes, whereas CA claimed to be a personality quiz to secretly harvest data for political purposes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_v._NSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_v._NSA [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-data-to-rally-voters/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-us... [2] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/22/meghan-mccain/comparing-facebook-data-use-obama-cambridge-analyt/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar...

jdminhbg 7y ago

The problem with this theory is that Cambridge Analytica is infamously associated with an election where the monetary underdog vastly overperformed.

MisterBastahrd 7y ago

I always knew it was harmful. The problem is what Cambridge ultimately did. People shouldn't be able to shutter companies and transfer wealth just to avoid civil and criminal liability.

whenchamenia 7y ago
Thats kind of silicon valleys whole MO though...

klagermkii 7y ago

> My key takeaway of Cambridge Analytica was that the advertising industry is a lot more harmful than I thought. I always thought, that there is no real problem when some people influence/manipulate other people on what they spend their money on. If this kind of advertising is able to make people act against their own interest to the level claimed with this political meddling, how is this somehow more acceptable on an economic level which directly impacts individuals? At least for most people the consequences of the election are more distant, whereas if people are tricked into making poor purchasing decisions they could be looking at directly losing hundreds or thousands of dollars. Certainly a large amount over their lifetime. I can't see how this is any better, and I personally think it's worse. Is the only justification that poor purchasing decisions directly impacts the easily influenced people (one could unpleasantly spin it as getting what they deserve), whereas political decisions hit everyone?

kmonsen 7y ago
Because on "regular" advertising business you can protect yourself or stay away from them. In an election there is no way to protect yourself since the majority decides. (Not saying I completely buys this, but there is a major difference here).

kevingadd 7y ago

The recurring theme of politicians advocating restrictions of voting to land owners (even to this day) says a lot about what some people think democracy means. It's depressing even before you get to the idea of buying the votes of the people who can still vote, or using gerrymandering to make their votes not count

whenchamenia 7y ago
To demand a stake of investment in order to incur privlidge is one thing but rights are another. It still seems beneficial to listen to those with 'skin in the game' so to speak, but how to balance that with greater social good requires the assumption that most people are a net social positive, which many optimists struggle with. Its a tricky problem with no clear answers unless you cling to some dogma.

nradov 7y ago

It's questionable whether Cambridge Analytica actually succeeded in changing many votes. And even counting that targeted advertising, the losing side in the 2016 presidential election spent far more in ads. So apparently ads aren't that effective. The Electoral College is what really violates the principle of "one human, one vote".

rhizome 7y ago
CA behavior doesn't have to be connected to specific votes in order to have been harmful. There is a constellation of operators behind the name "Cambridge Analytica," and almost all of them still have jobs doing what they were doing three years ago. NBD?
syshum 7y ago
>The Electoral College is what really violates the principle of "one human, one vote". No it really does not if you understand what a Republic of States is. We are the United States of America. A republic of states. Not "America the great democracy" like people seem to want it to become. A federalist nation of independent states is what the constitution created, and what we should be protecting. There are many things that would improve our elections (Wyoming Rule, No Gerrymandering, Proportional Electoral College, Instant Run Off Voting, and returning the Senate to the States just to name a few) but a national popular vote for President is a TERRIBLE idea, and would rip this nation apart and in the long run likely result in another civil war.
- nradov 7y ago
  Oh I fully understand the Federalist argument however the Electoral College has outlived its usefulness. Times change. The notion that eliminating it would cause another civil war is ludicrous.
  - syshum 7y ago
    How has it outlived its Usefulness let me Guess you live in CA, NY, or Texas? Because with out the Electoral College, the rest of the states do not matter.. the Elections will be decided by about 5 states in the union, the very thing the Electoral College was designed to prevent and is every much just as relevant today as it was when there were only 13 colonies As to civil war.... You do understand that most of the private guns in this nation are in the Red States, and currently if National popular vote is enacted the Blue States will effectively control government at the national level (which is most likely why you support it, chances are you are a democrat and are tried of the Republicans having any power so if NY and CA can control the nation that would be grand for you) . Which will most likely mean extreme pushes to the Authoritarian left including Draconian gun control laws and seizures... Which will bring about all out civil war //For the Record I an neither R or D, I am small L libertarian.

vinbreau 7y ago

This is why I left work in advertising. I could see the levels of psychological manipulation 30 years ago and knew with the future of data mining it was only going to get worse. There is nothing ethical about advertising. It's all about what you can get away with. Look at the history of subliminal advertising, though it never got so bad as to have laws enacted when the public became interested in it they realized the game was up and abandoned it. The industry is full of tiny little battering rams like subliminal advertising. Each attempt yields success or failure, rinse and repeat. The refinement at this point is unfathomable.

busymom0 7y ago
I think there is a thin line between ethical advertising and unethical psychological manipulation. I think generally, people know that when they are watching an ad, they are being tricked a bit. I think as long as it’s obvious to the user that they are being advertised to, there shouldn’t be an issue. Cambridge Analytica data was used to manipulate people by them not being aware that they were basically watching an advertisement. Except in this case, the ad was a real time political movie in the same theatre as someone else but both people somehow came out watching a different version of the movie because of filtered and targeted manipulative ads. They did not know that the posts they were seeing on social media were supposed to be manipulative ads.
- sgift 7y ago
  > I think there is a thin line between ethical advertising and unethical psychological manipulation. That line runs between "let's think about this as an interesting thought experiment" and "let's do this!" - People can and are manipulated even when they know they are being advertised. That has been shown time and time again. Advertising is psychological manipulation with another name.
  - busymom0 7y ago
    Sure. My following question would be how do we then differentiate between healthy advertising an unhealthy one? We can't abandon and block ads completely. If we did that, we wouldn't even get to be aware of products which might really make our lives better. How do we figure out the healthy balance out? I would argue that the current laws around advertising are pretty decent but they could be made better and adapted for social media platforms.

Lucadg 7y ago

In the US the rich buy ads to influence enough people to follow their goals. I never really understood how this is a good thing for democracy.

globuous 7y ago

Then you might be interested in this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent The advertising industry comes from war propaganda from what I understand. So using advertising to sell goods is actually much more recent than using these methods to manipulate political views...

ptah 7y ago

historically all democracies deteriorate towards non-existence over time. it's just a matter of how long for particular cases

GoblinSlayer 7y ago

Any power is prone to corruption. If people don't want democracy, how do you make them want it?