5 ms·

Both can be true simultaneously. Targeted ads work where they reinforce and expand on existing inclinations and beliefs. They don't work so well when you're try

Both can be true simultaneously. Targeted ads work where they reinforce and expand on existing inclinations and beliefs. They don't work so well when you're trying to sell in general or raise awareness of your brand. So someone who was mildly inclined toward right-wind ideas can be made into a alt-right supporter with the right targeted messaging. But when I'm trying to convince someone to buy my expensive gizmo, targeted ad won't actually do the job.

sanxiyn 7y ago
I mean, ad is not mind control. No good ads can save bad products. But that's not what ad is for. Ad works.
the_narrator 7y ago
I have seen right-wing brought up multiple times, how does the same not apply to the far left?
- knzhou 7y ago
  You're perfectly correct. The advantage of social media, if it exists at all, is symmetric between right and left. The 2008 Obama campaign was universally celebrated in the press for its deft use of social media [0, 1, 2, 3, 4], which included data mining in the style of Cambridge Analytica but at several times the scale, and using that data to hyper-target its message. Strangely, at the time this was universally called the future of democracy, not its end. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm... 1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/nov/07/barackobama-uselections2008 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/nov/07/barackoba... 2: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/barack-obama-and-the-facebook-election https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/barack-ob... 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71bH8z6iqSc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71bH8z6iqSc 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZmcyHpG31A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZmcyHpG31A
  - beerandt 7y ago
    It might be somewhat collectively balanced, but I certainly wouldn't call it symmetric. People don't realize that the Obama campaign and Cambridge Analytica were essentially doing the exact same thing. CA just didn't have explicit permission. The bigger problem is that Facebook denied everyone else the same inside access that it proactively offered to the Obama campaign. Which is the only reason CA was doing it in the first place.
    - knzhou 7y ago
      Indeed. That would be a good argument that social media, circa 2008, was biased towards the left, not against it.
      - beerandt 7y ago
        I think the companies are biased to the left, especially Facebook. The benefit the right sees is as ad-buying customers, or as users of the platform. Which isn't anything the left arguably couldn't also do.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Obama and the Democratic Party are, by no stretch of the imagination, far-left. I suspect whoever had used it first would have been celebrated at the time. Every new innovation usually reveals its problems only later. Targeted ads 15 years ago were touted as being able to ensure we'd have a healthy relationship with ads, and only get ads we desired. Didn't turn out like that, did it? If Cambridge Analytica had come along 5 years earlier in the political cycle, the Republicans would have been lauded for finding a marvellous new technique to engage the electorate, and the Democrats caught the flak for breaking democracy. Give it a couple more elections and I imagine much of the developed world will have outlawed micro-targeted political ads.
    - knzhou 7y ago
      > Obama and the Democratic Party are, by no stretch of the imagination, far-left. Indeed. My point is that social media works about equally well for both mainstream left (the Obama campaign) and mainstream right (the Trump campaign). It also works for both far-left and far-right. I know people who have been radicalized this way in both directions. > I suspect whoever had used it first would have been celebrated at the time. [...] If Cambridge Analytica had come along 5 years earlier in the political cycle, the Republicans would have been lauded for finding a marvellous new technique to engage the electorate I'm sorry, but this is such a naive take that I honestly don't know how to respond to it. Even as a child I was able to deduce, from the obvious editorial slant in the newspaper, that an inversion of tribal affiliations like this would never happen. I challenge you to find any article in the NYT or Guardian that paints any new election strategies by any right-wing politicians favorably.
- jazzyjackson 7y ago
  Because right wingers have higher engagement and are more profitable to target, as outlined in this buzzfeednews piece: > Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters. > Earlier in the year, some in Veles experimented with left-leaning or pro–Bernie Sanders content, but nothing performed as well on Facebook as Trump content. > "People in America prefer to read news about Trump," said a Macedonian 16-year-old who operates BVANews.com. Personally I think it's because right wingers find obviously made up tabloid pieces hilarious and share with their network where as left wingers are more shocked and appalled that someone would lie on the internet.
  - tdurden 7y ago
    > left wingers are more shocked and appalled that someone would lie on the internet. You have to be kidding
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  There are no doubt destructive tendencies on the far left as well (horrible cult-like groups have survived from the 1960s up till now tbh). But there is important way that a particular so of right-wing approach has fed on the current climate. Imagine, if you will, a fusion of a hate group, a conspiracy theory and a multilevel marketing campaign (and it's not hard given you can see these things in action today). Such tend to be radical, bizarre but not anti-capitalist since they are quite overtly a business (and arguably "right wing" is not almost the best for them but they're seldom left wing 'cause they're businesses).
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Guardian are UK based. The far left in the UK barely exist, or at least are spread so thin they barely matter. There's dozens (hundreds?) of fringe groups still, and sub-groups within Labour. The right seem to have had their Internet act rather more together - whether the ERG wing of the Tories, UKIP, or the outright fascist Britain First. Or at least slightly less inclined to split into the People's Front of Judea, Judean People's Front, Popular Judean People's Front - membership of one, etc. Maybe a better question is why the far left haven't been able to replicate what might seem pretty obvious for a fringe group? I suspect in other parts of Europe they are doing much better at it...
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    The far left in the UK barely exist, or at least are spread so thin they barely matter. I don’t want to get into an ideological flamewar (hello dang!) but this factually isn’t true. Momentum have gotten so out of hand that even Tom Watson is telling people to vote for BoJo now.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Compared to the fun times of Labour in the sixties and seventies. Or early eighties Trotskyite Militant Tendency, with all the "fun" councils and leaders like Derek Hatton - and Blunkett - once leader of strike supporting Sheffield council - a nuclear free city (lol), who now tries to position himself as a moderate. They used to be in the news pretty much every day (well it felt that way). Momentum aren't even in the same league. They are far less influential than Militant were, or the ERG within the Tories. The majority of the MPs aren't supporters. Tom Watson more likely takes issue with Corbyn's impossible dance with Brexit, and the clique around Corbyn - at heart Corbyn wants to leave too, or the failed attempt to oust him. Momentum appears to be a mostly failed attempt to recreate those Militant days, except they are a far less successful parasite. https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/feature/2018/10/liverpool-1985-council-tried-set-illegal-budget https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/feature/2018/10/liverpool-19...
      - goatinaboat 7y ago
- satya71 7y ago
  It probably does, but the far left is not so big and rabidly destructive at the present time, at least from the available evidence. That might change, of course.
mirimir 7y ago
This is it, I think. There's a huge difference between propaganda that strengthens filter bubbles and ads for selling stuff to people. But as other note, this is not just about one political group. For example, Obama bragged about his social media campaign, and Trump bragged about his.
Gibbon1 7y ago
If you're trying to sell towels a conversion rate of 1:1,000,000 is hopeless fail. If you're trying to goad some mentally ill asshole into shooting up a synagogue, 1:10,000,000 is worth it.
knzhou 7y ago
And I can write a similarly plausible narrative in the opposite direction. "Somebody who is starting to do yoga is definitely going to be affected by a yoga mat ad. But political opinions involve deeply held personal convictions, cultural values, and moral intuitions, and may even be determined in large part by fixed personality traits. How could an ad possibly change all that?" That's why deciding on the conclusion you want and then writing a plausible narrative in support of it isn't good enough. A narrative can be made to support any conclusion. To decide which is true, you need actual evidence, which in the case of social media and politics is sorely lacking.
joe_the_user 7y ago
Basically, targeted ads are a waste of time in a large percentage of cases but can be quite destructive if you can figure how to target a particular group that might be subject to just the sort of obsession you want to sell.

sanxiyn 7y ago

I mean, ad is not mind control. No good ads can save bad products. But that's not what ad is for. Ad works.

the_narrator 7y ago

I have seen right-wing brought up multiple times, how does the same not apply to the far left?

knzhou 7y ago
You're perfectly correct. The advantage of social media, if it exists at all, is symmetric between right and left. The 2008 Obama campaign was universally celebrated in the press for its deft use of social media [0, 1, 2, 3, 4], which included data mining in the style of Cambridge Analytica but at several times the scale, and using that data to hyper-target its message. Strangely, at the time this was universally called the future of democracy, not its end. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm... 1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/nov/07/barackobama-uselections2008 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/nov/07/barackoba... 2: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/barack-obama-and-the-facebook-election https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/barack-ob... 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71bH8z6iqSc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71bH8z6iqSc 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZmcyHpG31A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZmcyHpG31A
- beerandt 7y ago
  It might be somewhat collectively balanced, but I certainly wouldn't call it symmetric. People don't realize that the Obama campaign and Cambridge Analytica were essentially doing the exact same thing. CA just didn't have explicit permission. The bigger problem is that Facebook denied everyone else the same inside access that it proactively offered to the Obama campaign. Which is the only reason CA was doing it in the first place.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    Indeed. That would be a good argument that social media, circa 2008, was biased towards the left, not against it.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      I think the companies are biased to the left, especially Facebook. The benefit the right sees is as ad-buying customers, or as users of the platform. Which isn't anything the left arguably couldn't also do.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Obama and the Democratic Party are, by no stretch of the imagination, far-left. I suspect whoever had used it first would have been celebrated at the time. Every new innovation usually reveals its problems only later. Targeted ads 15 years ago were touted as being able to ensure we'd have a healthy relationship with ads, and only get ads we desired. Didn't turn out like that, did it? If Cambridge Analytica had come along 5 years earlier in the political cycle, the Republicans would have been lauded for finding a marvellous new technique to engage the electorate, and the Democrats caught the flak for breaking democracy. Give it a couple more elections and I imagine much of the developed world will have outlawed micro-targeted political ads.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    > Obama and the Democratic Party are, by no stretch of the imagination, far-left. Indeed. My point is that social media works about equally well for both mainstream left (the Obama campaign) and mainstream right (the Trump campaign). It also works for both far-left and far-right. I know people who have been radicalized this way in both directions. > I suspect whoever had used it first would have been celebrated at the time. [...] If Cambridge Analytica had come along 5 years earlier in the political cycle, the Republicans would have been lauded for finding a marvellous new technique to engage the electorate I'm sorry, but this is such a naive take that I honestly don't know how to respond to it. Even as a child I was able to deduce, from the obvious editorial slant in the newspaper, that an inversion of tribal affiliations like this would never happen. I challenge you to find any article in the NYT or Guardian that paints any new election strategies by any right-wing politicians favorably.
jazzyjackson 7y ago
Because right wingers have higher engagement and are more profitable to target, as outlined in this buzzfeednews piece: > Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters. > Earlier in the year, some in Veles experimented with left-leaning or pro–Bernie Sanders content, but nothing performed as well on Facebook as Trump content. > "People in America prefer to read news about Trump," said a Macedonian 16-year-old who operates BVANews.com. Personally I think it's because right wingers find obviously made up tabloid pieces hilarious and share with their network where as left wingers are more shocked and appalled that someone would lie on the internet.
- tdurden 7y ago
  > left wingers are more shocked and appalled that someone would lie on the internet. You have to be kidding
joe_the_user 7y ago
There are no doubt destructive tendencies on the far left as well (horrible cult-like groups have survived from the 1960s up till now tbh). But there is important way that a particular so of right-wing approach has fed on the current climate. Imagine, if you will, a fusion of a hate group, a conspiracy theory and a multilevel marketing campaign (and it's not hard given you can see these things in action today). Such tend to be radical, bizarre but not anti-capitalist since they are quite overtly a business (and arguably "right wing" is not almost the best for them but they're seldom left wing 'cause they're businesses).
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Guardian are UK based. The far left in the UK barely exist, or at least are spread so thin they barely matter. There's dozens (hundreds?) of fringe groups still, and sub-groups within Labour. The right seem to have had their Internet act rather more together - whether the ERG wing of the Tories, UKIP, or the outright fascist Britain First. Or at least slightly less inclined to split into the People's Front of Judea, Judean People's Front, Popular Judean People's Front - membership of one, etc. Maybe a better question is why the far left haven't been able to replicate what might seem pretty obvious for a fringe group? I suspect in other parts of Europe they are doing much better at it...
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  The far left in the UK barely exist, or at least are spread so thin they barely matter. I don’t want to get into an ideological flamewar (hello dang!) but this factually isn’t true. Momentum have gotten so out of hand that even Tom Watson is telling people to vote for BoJo now.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Compared to the fun times of Labour in the sixties and seventies. Or early eighties Trotskyite Militant Tendency, with all the "fun" councils and leaders like Derek Hatton - and Blunkett - once leader of strike supporting Sheffield council - a nuclear free city (lol), who now tries to position himself as a moderate. They used to be in the news pretty much every day (well it felt that way). Momentum aren't even in the same league. They are far less influential than Militant were, or the ERG within the Tories. The majority of the MPs aren't supporters. Tom Watson more likely takes issue with Corbyn's impossible dance with Brexit, and the clique around Corbyn - at heart Corbyn wants to leave too, or the failed attempt to oust him. Momentum appears to be a mostly failed attempt to recreate those Militant days, except they are a far less successful parasite. https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/feature/2018/10/liverpool-1985-council-tried-set-illegal-budget https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/feature/2018/10/liverpool-19...
    - goatinaboat 7y ago
satya71 7y ago
It probably does, but the far left is not so big and rabidly destructive at the present time, at least from the available evidence. That might change, of course.

mirimir 7y ago

This is it, I think. There's a huge difference between propaganda that strengthens filter bubbles and ads for selling stuff to people. But as other note, this is not just about one political group. For example, Obama bragged about his social media campaign, and Trump bragged about his.

Gibbon1 7y ago

If you're trying to sell towels a conversion rate of 1:1,000,000 is hopeless fail. If you're trying to goad some mentally ill asshole into shooting up a synagogue, 1:10,000,000 is worth it.

knzhou 7y ago

And I can write a similarly plausible narrative in the opposite direction. "Somebody who is starting to do yoga is definitely going to be affected by a yoga mat ad. But political opinions involve deeply held personal convictions, cultural values, and moral intuitions, and may even be determined in large part by fixed personality traits. How could an ad possibly change all that?" That's why deciding on the conclusion you want and then writing a plausible narrative in support of it isn't good enough. A narrative can be made to support any conclusion. To decide which is true, you need actual evidence, which in the case of social media and politics is sorely lacking.

joe_the_user 7y ago

Basically, targeted ads are a waste of time in a large percentage of cases but can be quite destructive if you can figure how to target a particular group that might be subject to just the sort of obsession you want to sell.