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That's a long link, so the part in question. Note this is from a taped pitch from the president of Cambridge Analytica, this isn't hearsay, it is from the horse
by nicpottier 7y ago
That's a long link, so the part in question. Note this is from a taped pitch from the president of Cambridge Analytica, this isn't hearsay, it is from the horse's mouth:
> Nix moved on to pitch his next case study – a youth mobilisation campaign. Again, all is not as it seems. “Trinidad is a very interesting case history of how we look at problems,” Nix said. “Trinidad's tiny – it's 1.3 million people – but almost exactly half the country are Indian and half the country are Black, Afro-Caribbean. And there are two main political parties, one for the Blacks and one for the Indians… when the Indians are in power the Blacks don't get anything, and vice-versa, you know – they screw each other. So we were working, I think for the third time in Trinidad, and we were working for the Indians, and we did a huge amount for research, and two really important things came out.
> “One was that all the youth, Indian and Afro-Caribbean, felt disenfranchised … And secondly, amongst the Indians the familial hierarchies were really strong. There was huge respect for their elders and their parents and their families, but not so for the Afro-Caribbeans. And that was enough information to inform the entire campaign.
> “We went to the client and said, we only want to do one thing, we want to run a campaign where we target the youth – all youth, all the Blacks and all the Indians – and we try and increase apathy. And they didn't really understand why… but they allowed us to do this campaign, and the campaign had to be non-political, because no one, the kids don’t care about politics. It had to be reactive, because they’re lazy; inclusive of all ethnicities; bottom-up. It had to be exciting, because kids want to do something fun.
> “We came up with this campaign which was all about ‘Be part of the gang, do something cool, be part of a movement.’ And it was called the ‘Do So’ campaign… A3 posters. And graffiti, yellow paint, you know, we cut stencils with the jigsaw… And we'd give these to kids, and they'd get in their cars at night, you know, just make a drawing, get in the car, and race around the country putting up these posters and getting chased by the police and all their friends were doing it, and it was fucking brilliant fun…
> “Do So. Don't vote. Don't be involved in politics. It's like a sign of resistance against – not government, against politics. And voting. And very soon they're making their own YouTube videos. This is the prime minister’s house that's being graffitied! … It was carnage.
> “And the reason why this was such a good strategy is because we knew, and we really really knew, that when it came to voting, all the Afro-Caribbean kids wouldn't vote, because they ‘Do So’. But all the Indian kids would do what their parents told them to do, which is go out and vote. And so all the Indians went out and voted, and the difference on the 18-35-year-old turnout is like 40%, and that swung the election by about 6% – which is all we needed!”
- knzhou 7y agoYou have to keep in mind that you're not listening to a journalistic expose of the Trinidad election -- you are listening to a sales pitch from Cambridge Analytica, which has all the motivation to vastly exaggerate their influence. I've been unable to find any reference to this "Do So" campaign anywhere except for Cambridge Analytica bragging about it. Furthermore as described this was an old-fashioned campaign, which had more to do with physical materials handed out than social media ads. The same caveats went for all the "psychological targeting" they bragged about a few years ago; there is precious little evidence that it is better than targeting roughly by political party, which we've had for decades. For its power, we only have their word to go on.
- nicpottier 7y agoI would say the burden of truth is on you, not me. We have it from them that they did this, the documentary does indeed have images from the campaign. Just because there isn't a ton of internet content you can search from your seat doesn't mean it didn't happen. Yes, this was primarily a physical campaign, but it drives home the point of how these people work. And how they DID work in 2016 as well with respect to targeted advertising on Facebook. Watch the movie if you haven't, this stuff was well researched by various reporters. It isn't perfect but it certainly shows that what we have now is not tenable if we want to maintain a democracy.