The Guardian
Carole Cadwalladr


‘I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower

For more than a year we’ve been investigating Cambridge Analytica and its links to the Brexit Leave campaign in the UK and Team Trump in the US presidential election. Now, 28-year-old Christopher Wylie goes on the record to discuss his role in hijacking the profiles of millions of Facebook users in order to target the US electorate

This is a very lengthy article that is going to get a lot more scrutiny in the days ahead, I feel certain.

Link

Cambridge Analytica has been mentioned on the Forum only twice, last year, once in connection with the retirement of Robert Mercer.

Amazing.

Reason #4,763 that I'm not on Facebook.

Well, that's a gut-punch. The Guardian, of course, is an extreme leftist paper, but not, I believe, actually dishonest.
I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about this, and most likely with a lot more political coloration than found in this article, which just assumes that Trump and Brexit (and DARPA and the NSA, etc.) are evil, because that's what good Leftists believe.

OTOH if inquiries into this result in blackening the reputation of Facebook, Google, and the like, then that is a positive good IMO.

Have not read the article yet, but is this believable or is it just some guy trying to get famous?

You mean, some company did the EXACT SAME THING that Facebook, Google and any other data gathering company does when advertising to you.

excerpt from the article:


“And then I came across a paper about how personality traits could be a precursor to political behaviour, and it suddenly made sense. Liberalism is correlated with high openness and low conscientiousness, and when you think of Lib Dems they’re absent-minded professors and hippies. They’re the early adopters… they’re highly open to new ideas. And it just clicked all of a sudden.”

, well, I guess at least some of them are honest about this particular trait.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
Well, that's a gut-punch. The Guardian, of course, is an extreme leftist paper, but not, I believe, actually dishonest.
I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about this, and most likely with a lot more political coloration than found in this article, which just assumes that Trump and Brexit (and DARPA and the NSA, etc.) are evil, because that's what good Leftists believe.

OTOH if inquiries into this result in blackening the reputation of Facebook, Google, and the like, then that is a positive good IMO.

It looks to me like Faceplant et al are going to play innocent victims of lying scheming international forces beyond the control of anyone, implacable evil, IN CAHOOTS with those PESKY Ruskies, determined to put their boy in the WH at any cost. They were LIED to, DECEIVED, MANIPULATED, what more could they do?

Yeah maybe. I’m not sure the article isn’t just more revisionist history. “We don’t like how the election turned out so we’re going to explain why people didn’t choose the ‘correct’ answer.” Typical leftist twaddle.

quote:

Originally posted by Scurvy:
You mean, some company did the EXACT SAME THING that Facebook, Google and any other data gathering company does when advertising to you.

Exactly. This is nothing new and nothing surprising. It's only getting tabloid headlines because it involves Trump.

This has been open and known about for a year accorsing to the article. More straw grasping from the left.

My old company, hired a company which promoted the ability to deliver to every Facebook user within every zip code a selected a message touting our message.
We were using it to promote political messages.
What you see on your facebook feed is not random.

Gee, targetted marketing based on personality characteristics. Has Madison Avenue heard about this yet?

I read a fair bit of the article earlier today. Basically, the guy helped develop a "better" algorithim for designing campaign targetting (or so he says). Apparently it was related to some Phd work he was doing in IT/CS for evaluating cultural affects on fashion marketing. But really, advanced statistical analysis is just advanced statistical analysis. He managed to mine a bunch of user info from Facebook by designing a "personality test" that also created a 'like' link so user Facebook pages could be mined for data. Same thing a lot of other companies do for targetted marketing. The media is just using the connections this guy had to various conservative groups to make things sound nefarious. Oh, and one of the companies the Cambridge Analytica had ties to is run by a Russian (also a guy with a doctorate in analytics).

Ken

This issue has now been raised to the level of the NY Times:

Link

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
This issue has now been raised to the level of the NY Times:

Link

The Times has been in it for awhile. Much of the Guardian article I linked to was mirrored in the Times, same reporter in part, I believe.

This is a problem for a long time. Once you digitize something and put it on a computer connected to the Internet, you’ve lost exclusive control of it probably.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JALLEN,

This story has been out there for a while.

Just another case of how Facebook is a surveillance company, not a social media company. I have never had a Facebook account, and I will never have Amazon Echo in my house. Anyone who does, needs to understand that they are being surveilled 24-7, and that everything they say will be used for marketing, and potentially sold.

10 years ago, when you took one of these quizzes designed to mine:

at the end of the quiz it asked you to connect to Facebook

there were no Facebook controls to prevent your "friends" actions from having your profile mined too

Now, when you go to one of these quizzes designed to mine:

first step is that it's asking you to connect to Facebook

There are Facebook controls that supposedly prevent your "friends" who take these stupid ass quizzes from having your profile mined.

---

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

What a revelation!!!!


But, our former POTUS Barak the All-knowing was credited by the NY Times and others for very cleverly doing exactly the same thing in his first run for the job.
In fact, the GOP was disparaged for their failure to make good use of the deep information available on social media.

If anyone is surprised by the depth of information available for sale on Facebook, Google, and social media; they have not been paying attention for the last 10-15 years.

I'm not wild about all of the information gathering/sharing over the internet, but I feel it's common knowledge that it's been occurring for quite some time.

If I go camera shopping online at a camera retailer, next time I look at CNN, it is full of camera adds.

But the company took that data and used it for adds.

I can't speak for everyone, but I have never, never, ever voted based on a political add. They are full of half truths, outright lies, and vague promises of "improve education" "make the economy better", etc. I also have never met someone who told me they changed their mind about voting based on an add. If they were pro Obama, then no amount of adds changed their minds, ditto for Trump, etc, etc.

Just my opinions
cc

CBS News(!!!) report Trump campaign phased out use of Cabridge Analytica before the election:

Link

Seems Brad Parscale, Trump's digital data guru, didn't trust Cambridge Analytica, but wasn't sure until after the convention that RNC would allow their data to be used by Trump campaign. Once they knew RNC was in, they phased out CA.

Now it's a story about how Facebook didn't protect their Facebookers' data; and today, an Obama person tweeted that Facebook was fine with Obama's people sneaking off their data in 2012-- because they were on the same side.

Twitter link

Can someone shift through all the blather for me:

Was what Cambridge Analytica did actually illegal in any way ?

Was using any data the C.A. presented illegal in any way ?

If so...why ?

I can't help but notice how the "Liberal Narrative" has been morphing as it is incrementally debunked:
It used to be "Trump colluded with Russia"
.....But there is zero evidence of that;
so it became "There was "some collusion" with Russia (implied that it was Trump campaign)"
....but there really isn't any evidence of that either.
So then it became "Russia 'meddled' in our elections".
But what does "meddled' mean"? The FBI has already concluded that not a single voting machine was hacked and not a single vote was actually changed, so how did they "meddle" ?
Well....they conducted an "organized propaganda campaign".
OK...that sound serious....how did they do that ?
.....with Facebook posts.
.
.
What ?
The entire "Russian collusion" investigation is now based on an allegation that Russians 'influenced' our opinions with Facebook posts ?!?!

That is absolutely laughably preposterous! Is there anything else ?