3 ms·

Gore writes about this in one of his books, I believe in reference to one of his Tennessee campaigns. In short form: His polling manager tells him that if he r

by ethbr0 5y ago

Gore writes about this in one of his books, I believe in reference to one of his Tennessee campaigns. In short form: His polling manager tells him that if he runs this ad, at this time, on these channels, he'll get this much of a polling bump. Gore reflects to self that surely people are more complicated than that. Ad is run, polling moves exactly as predicted. The dangers of population-scale mind control isn't that it's universally effective, but that it doesn't need to be to swing democratic elections. You can usually sway the outcome just by appealing to the lowest-thinking denominator, and micro-targeting on universal platforms is exceedingly good at that.

avalys 5y ago
This is hardly news. You can sway a democratic election, by definition, by changing the opinion of the median voter. Which means political campaigns focus their energy on the median voter. And targeted advertising makes it easier and more efficient to do that. So what? This doesn't change the end result, that the person who gets elected is close to the median opinion in the country. It doesn't give you a way to elect an extremist that 90% of the country disagree with. It's also a mechanism that is equally available to all candidates. It is not as if only Republicans can run advertising on social media. In fact, I recall a bunch of fawning praise in the media and tech sphere for the 2008 Obama campaign's use of social media, and much prognostication that the old farts in the Republican party would be consigned to political oblivion because they wouldn't be able to master the use of big data and social media to precisely target their spending and efforts to win elections. At the time no one in the media seemed to consider this future the end of democracy - that's only a complaint that comes up when the Republicans use this technique to win, apparently.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I made no mention of party. And I think the modern reality is a little different, precisely because we aren't talking about influencing the median voter. We're instead talking about influencing the mostly easily influenced voter. It used to be, that was the median voter, because that's all newspaper / radio / television was able to target. But now, it's pretty easy for me to say "Show me likely voters who believe the Koch brothers are the Illuminati" or "Show me likely voters who believe in Pizzagate," and craft a winning campaign around motivating them. Which leads us to... where we are now.

by ethbr0 5y ago

avalys 5y ago

This is hardly news. You can sway a democratic election, by definition, by changing the opinion of the median voter. Which means political campaigns focus their energy on the median voter. And targeted advertising makes it easier and more efficient to do that. So what? This doesn't change the end result, that the person who gets elected is close to the median opinion in the country. It doesn't give you a way to elect an extremist that 90% of the country disagree with. It's also a mechanism that is equally available to all candidates. It is not as if only Republicans can run advertising on social media. In fact, I recall a bunch of fawning praise in the media and tech sphere for the 2008 Obama campaign's use of social media, and much prognostication that the old farts in the Republican party would be consigned to political oblivion because they wouldn't be able to master the use of big data and social media to precisely target their spending and efforts to win elections. At the time no one in the media seemed to consider this future the end of democracy - that's only a complaint that comes up when the Republicans use this technique to win, apparently.

ethbr0 5y ago
I made no mention of party. And I think the modern reality is a little different, precisely because we aren't talking about influencing the median voter. We're instead talking about influencing the mostly easily influenced voter. It used to be, that was the median voter, because that's all newspaper / radio / television was able to target. But now, it's pretty easy for me to say "Show me likely voters who believe the Koch brothers are the Illuminati" or "Show me likely voters who believe in Pizzagate," and craft a winning campaign around motivating them. Which leads us to... where we are now.