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Mike Bloomberg is plowing millions of dollars into a secretive tech firm
- smn1234 7y ago“In God we trust. Everyone else bring data.” So, it's a data analytics company ?
- Jglueck46 7y agoYes, to address as part of Hawkfish, it's a data and tech platform for progressive candidates and causes, including voter segmentation and digital activation and engagement. Really Dems have been quite behind the Republican data trust which has been funded for a decade by right-wing special interests, and the goal of Hawkfish is to level the playing field, for democratic candidates up and down the ballot, and advocacy groups for climate, women's rights, education, gun safety common sense, and more. For folks interested in jobs from the data science and full-stack Eng side, job postings are here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/hawkfish/ https://boards.greenhouse.io/hawkfish/ Jeff Glueck
- jaksawesome 7y agoI'm quite surprised to hear this. When I was finishing up school (2013), our professor had worked out an agreement with the two congressional campaigns to allow our class to volunteer on both sides of the aisle. At that time, Republican data might as well have been non-existent when compared to the Democratic Votebuilder system.
- dillondoyle 7y agothe R version of votebuilder sucks, but the larger for-profit data-warehousing model has been a big asset almost a decade before Ds caught on (and are still losing digital). Rs have been leading here for a long time. Kochs funded for-profit i360 which seems to me to be the first, most successful model. They enabled programmatic access to voter data (and even as a D buyer I was able to execute against) while most D campaigns below presidential weren't even really buying programmatic.
- steve19 7y ago> Really Dems have been quite behind the Republican data trust Do you have any actual evidence for that? Because mainstream media have been saying the opposite since Obama. What you said is exactly what a company looking for dem dollars would say. Which is pretty much what Cambridge Analytic said to the gop candidates.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- huac 7y agoHere's a mainstream article: https://www.wired.com/story/democrats-fix-crumbling-data-operation/ https://www.wired.com/story/democrats-fix-crumbling-data-ope..., I have heard that both the previous setup and the new setup are worse than reported. On a different level, Obama drastically reduced the funding for the DNC and weakened the organization, possibly as part of a grand bargain with Hillary (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/2/brazile-says-obama-left-dnc-deep-debt-clinton-camp/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/2/brazile-says...). Additionally, the consensus is that Trump's team embraced FB ads / other digital much more than Clinton's team. FB embedded "representatives" (presumably sales/operations people who understood how to best use FB ads) with both campaigns but only Trump's really listened: "Hillary Clinton’s campaign didn’t have Facebook employees stationed on site, according to people familiar with the campaign. One former Clinton campaign official said the campaign didn’t want to give Facebook employees “24/7 opportunity” to sell more ads by embedding with its staff. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton didn’t respond to a request for comment." (https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-facebooks-embed-in-the-trump-campaign-helped-the-president-win-11574521712 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-facebooks-embed-in-the-trum...). Of course, to Kick's point, the specific company being discussed here is a Bloomberg operation, not a Democratic or "progressive" operation, whatever those terms mean. If Sanders or Warren win the primary, will Bloomberg redirect the company to their control / use?
- caseysoftware 7y agoYou're thinking of Project Narwhal: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/02/project-narwhal-how-a-top-secret-obama-campaign-program-could-change-the-2012-race.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/02/project-narwhal-... I think the distinction here may be "the Obama campaign" vs "the DNC" but yes, the media lauded expansive data collection, microtargeting, and get out to vote (gotv) efforts in the ancient days of 2012-2015.
- spamizbad 7y agoIs this platform also against certain things, like getting weaponized against universal health coverage?
- natechols 7y agoBloomberg's own campaign site promotes universal coverage and specifically promotes adding a public option to the ACA. (Disclaimer: not a Bloomberg supporter and don't plan to be, I just know how to use Google to find stuff like this out.)
- gremlinsinc 7y agopublic option generally does not equivocate to universal coverage. If he advocated against public option for Single Payer, then you could call it universal/progressive. Public option doesn't address runaway drug spending. 1 bulk purchaser of drugs could set the price basically that we're willing to pay, the federal government could also strip patents of companies found price-fixing or price-gouging. I mean he's rich, so he def. could be progressive in that maybe he doesn't need the money the pharmacy/insurance companies would give him to not be progressive, but I'd have to see it before I believe it. I mean there are progressive billionaires - Nick hanover has given tons of Ted talks on income inequality. There's definitely other options this cycle though if you're skeptical and want a real progressive, so why take the chance?
- natechols 7y agoSingle payer may guarantee universal coverage, but it is not the only route to achieving it - there are multiple counter-examples among advanced nations. If your goal is to improve health care and reduce costs, you should consider all options, not just the ones that flatter your ideological biases. That doesn't mean accepting clearly bad-faith arguments like "let's abolish malpractice lawsuits" at face value, but it does mean you have to explain why (for example) Germany's multi-payer health insurance system would be unacceptable for Americans. (Germany is significantly more socialized than the ACA, but significantly less socialized than Warren's current M4A plan. EDIT: or maybe not, as comment below suggests, but it definitely includes private health insurers, which Warren has said she would abolish.)
- slg 7y ago> it's a data and tech platform for progressive candidates and causes Are you able to share any other candidates or causes you have worked with? Bloomberg isn't exactly the most popular candidate among progressives and without knowing the other customers this looks like a vanity company with the primary goal of getting him elected.
- gremlinsinc 7y agoDemocrat != progressive. Just sayin'. Progressive test is: Pro Single-payer. Pro billionaire tax. Pro free community college. Against insane military complex budgets. I mean, I'd rather him succeed ONLY if it keeps Koch's in check, but don't call it progressive unless it actually brings us something progressive like Bernie Sanders, which I doubt it will - at least in the short term. I mean Bloomberg till recently was an independent, and not a super progressive one at that. Unless he's turning progressive because that's where the 'youth' is, and he's following trends because there's money in that, which if there's money in being progressive I'm all for cashing out on it to bring about progressive means.
- vorpalhex 7y agoAy and yer only a true scotsman if ya wear a kilt and have a beard!
- justincredible 7y agoonly if you play golf in the highlands.
- maximente 7y agoodd that so called progressives don't need to care about climate change nor womens' or minority rights per this test. FWIW labels like this are largely useless and generally are about value signaling more than action. there are countless so called progressive politicians who did nothing when push came to shove. it's just another word that sounds nice but means nothing.
- sigzero 7y agoIt's not going to be "good", whatever it is.
- sbuccini 7y agoInterviewed there last week for a software engineering position after some people in my network went over there. Didn't get the gig but I came away impressed with the team and the mission. It's a unique opportunity to build a state-of-the-art data system with unlimited resources. I've heard that the comp is very, very good but can't confirm that from my own experiences. If you think you can survive the sprint, I think it's a great opportunity. Jeff, if you're still lurking in the thread -- we've chatted at the Kairos & the Arena summits. I've got the political and tech background to make an impact. If you're willing to take a flier on me, I'm all-in. Email is in my profile.
- Jamwinner 7y ago'Unlimited resources' are exactly the thing we don't need shaping a democratic election. Shame on you and anyone else seeking to work for such a firm. Ill take my downvotes, this is bedrock ethics.
- sbuccini 7y agoUnfortunately, this is our reality. I’d highly recommend Dark Money by Jane Mayer if you haven’t read it already. Of course, this same machinery has already been built time and time again in the Valley.
- adventured 7y ago> Unfortunately, this is our reality. It's not. Sanders is going to stomp Bloomberg in the primary, with a tiny fraction of the resources behind him that Bloomberg has and a magnitude more of the public support. Trump won while spending a lot less money than what Clinton vaporized in her election campaign. He decimated the formidable Bush money machine right out of the gate, humiliating Jeb Bush as a weak candidate before the first inning was over. This is increasingly the era of populism. It's raging all over the planet right now (Trump in the US, Brexit in UK, SD in Sweden, riots in Iran and everywhere else, and so on). The establishment candidates, such as Bloomberg, can't win under any scenario no matter how much money they burn. Sanders and Warren are the only real competing candiates to Trump, as they're both populists. If the Democrats make the mistake of running Biden, he'll be embarrassed in the general election. Spending $500m vs $1 billion versus $2 billion will not matter in the least in 2020.
- saagarjha 7y ago> “It’s clear to me and other tech leaders that Trump and the GOP are better at creating and sharing engaging online content than anyone on the Democratic side,” Conway said in explaining his conversation with Bloomberg. No no no. I don’t want bipartisan “engaging” content, I want data analytics use for hyper-targeted political advertising pulled from the list of allowable political tactics.
- rvz 7y agoWell couldn't the signs be any clearer? $100M + Mr Bloomberg + "secretive tech firm" + "Your Data" * 1 billion = Palantir 9.0
- cmdshiftf4 7y agoAn elaborate propaganda machine privately funded by, and for the sole benefit of, a billionaire. I'm sure the Republicans have their own, so let's not be partisan here but merely call it for what it is. I did get a chuckle from the blurb in a job posting promoted below by one of the propagandists working on the machine though: >You are: A dynamic, seasoned software engineer who can bring your in-depth expertise and computer science experience to save our democracy. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Come help us weaponize data against the citizenry for our billionaire candidate, it will save democracy. What an absolute circus US politics has descended into.
- api 7y agoTrump won in part because his Internet ground game was better. Look for the Dems and everyone else to not only copy but improve on that, fake news and trolling included. Prepare to be force fed propaganda like a fois gras goose every election year. Welcome to the future.
- hos234 7y agoThis is a weird future though. Its not about the issues, its about who has better targeting. That's it. And if both sides have equally good targeting, the result is an even split of the populations attention. No one wins. So how does this cycle break. Where is Daenerys?
- phkahler 7y ago>> So how does this cycle break. Where is Daenerys? It stops when people get so used to recognizing it that they give up social media and the usual news sources. Everyone needs to watch "they live" and realize that it's happening more than ever.
- cloudwalking 7y agoCampaign finance reform.
- rayiner 7y ago
- chmaynard 7y agoI find this encouraging. If Bloomberg can convince Sanders or Warren to be his VP candidate, together they could give Trump a run for his money.
- Vervious 7y agoMoney in politics <-> Data in politics Sounds like a new conversation to be had
- taxidump 7y agoThis is another data race. Campaigns are highly regulated for a reason and I hope some movement to protect voters against data attacks and manipulation will go above and beyond what your average adword target would be protected for.
- ngokevin 7y agoMaybe data as a property right? https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/
- ngokevin 7y agoData is the oil of the 21st century.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoThis just sounds a lot like The Groundwork, which was the Eric Schmidt-funded company that did all of Hillary Clinton's campaign technology work. During the 2016 campaign, The Groundwork's site consisted solely of an Illuminati-esque logo, but today has a more informative/generic site offering their services to people that are not Hillary Clinton. https://thegroundwork.com/ https://thegroundwork.com/ Presumably it's cool to start a company in this space solely to elect one person, because if you can say you got a President elected, it's going to be good business after that?
- woodhull 7y agoExcept the groundwork has effectively gone out of business and no longer has anyone working there. They made a good faith effort to find non HRC campaign and non profit customers after the election but never found meaningful market fit. It was an odd assortment of tech that felt like what it was: an attempt to productize an enormous consulting engagement to build whatever the campaign wanted. It's all an interesting campaign finance loophole though. You can fund money loosing tech companies to work with candidates and as long as they charge the campaign something, it's an interesting way to spend huge amounts of dark money on elections.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoWhoa, the front of the site would give you no idea of that! Though the blog is an intriguing hint that something's amiss: https://thegroundwork.com/blog/ https://thegroundwork.com/blog/ It's all SEO spam.
- mmanfrin 7y agoPart of the problem that Cambridge Analytica ran in to was that it was a "foreign agent". A lot of what it did would be legal under an American entity, and I think many in politics know this.
- paulgb 7y agoAFAICT, the foreign agent stuff happened in the 2014 mid-terms and was only exposed when they came under fire for the data breach. I think why CA went down is not because the core of what they were doing was illegal, but because after their data scandal no campaign would have wanted to associate with them. Ironically, there are so many snake oil peddlers in the data brokerage business that my hunch is that they probably didn't actually derive much value from the data they got in trouble for having.
- Y-Bopinator 7y agoMike Bloomberg is plowing your ass
- Havoc 7y agoWell the part about a counterweight being needed does ring true. Though that still seems like to evils counter-balancing each other. There is a real need to legislate against this on an overall level. The average guy on the street just isn't equipped to survive this highly sophisticated data driven type of attack. Hell I'm not confident I am.
- indigochill 7y ago>There is a real need to legislate against this on an overall level. I could not disagree more strongly. Legislation is simply the people already in position pulling the ladder up behind them. The people with money and lawyers will insert and then exploit loopholes. Instead, disrupt it at its source. Flood the data collectors with adversarial noise, learn to remove your personal information from the web, and so on. Personal privacy is becoming a duty not just to ourselves but to our democracy.
- Havoc 7y ago>Instead, disrupt it at its source. As grand as that sounds it's not viable. People aren't even coping with tech basics let alone large scale evasion of the sophisticated tracking being deployed. Sure you can maybe get the top 10% most tech savy to do something like removing their personal info, but that's not enough to move the needle. Legislation might though. See GDPR forcing companies to stop logging IPs. That's way more tangible. Of course there will be loopholes - legislation is imperfect - but we need something that has any kind of effect asap.
- dillondoyle 7y agoThe possibilities of Bloomberg money & commitment to invest in digital/experiment are huge. My political digital wet-dream: an org with enough $$$ to get access to bid-stream + processing/compute/intelligence + large audience graph tied to voter data = biggest coup in voter profiling and targeting ever. Modeled issue/turnout scores updated in near real time using a large % of every individual's entire web surfing/app usage history. Even a user graph graphed to 20% of voter file + bidstream data would be an unimaginably ginormous amount of data. Like imagine receiving a field call & digital ads after reading an oped on universal healthcare by Bloomberg in nytimes, receiving call about that issue that night and a series of healthcare digital ads following you everywhere after reading. it would be 'fb is listening to my phone' level of effectiveness - and as I'm sure nearly everyone here would say creepy/horrible. i think a lot of DSP/players are now afraid of working in politics, but perhaps someone like beeswax or hell directly from IPONWEB would do it for the right money with the right protections built in. i bet bloomberg could also call up Oracle who has sucked up all the data companies recently.
- dmitrygr 7y agoWell, with the citizens united decision, The country decided that buying a power is acceptable. Choosing whether this Bloomberg company upsets you or makes you happy is still just haggling over the price.
- nickpinkston 7y agoI'm not a supporter of Bloomberg's candidacy, but we need to thank him and other tech leaders who are contributing to Democratic politics, especially the political infrastructure we so desperately need. Critics are right to be skeptical about rich people spending a lot of money in politics, but that doesn't automatically mean every big money tech political initiative is in the wrong. In the eyes of tech critics, tech is either not engaged enough in politics, or we're donating too much to political organizations, or we're turned away from directly giving money to Warren and other progressives. Can someone tell me what critics really want the tech community to do aside from cease to exist?
- spiderfarmer 7y agoI hate everything about this.