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Data Miners Liken Obama Voters To Caesars Gamblers
theodp writes "As Steve Wozniak publicly laments how government used new technologies he introduced in unintended ways to monitor people, the NY Times reports how the digital masterminds behind the Obama Presidential campaign are cashing in by bringing the secret, technologically advanced formulas used for reaching voters to commercial advertisers. 'The plan is to bring the same Big Data expertise that guided the most expensive presidential campaign in history to companies and nonprofits,' explains Civis Analytics, which is backed by Google Chairman and Obama advisor Eric Schmidt. Also boasting senior members of Obama's campaign team is Analytics Media Group (A.M.G.), which pitched that 'keeping gamblers loyal to Caesars was not all that different from keeping onetime Obama voters from straying to Mitt Romney.' The extent to which the Obama campaign used the newest tech tools to look into people's lives was largely shrouded, the Times reports, but included data mining efforts that triggered Facebook's internal safeguard alarms. ... 'We asked to see [voter's Facebook] photos but really we were looking for who were tagged in photos with you, which was a really great way to dredge up old college friends — and ex-girlfriends.' The Times also explains how the Obama campaign was able to out-optimize the Romney campaign on TV buys by obtaining set-top box TV show viewing information from cable companies for voters on the Obama campaign's 'persuadable voters' list. "
If humans weren't so predictable.
Each one of you could be modeled as a computer program.
LOL @ people that think they have freewill.
People who vote for either of the two main parties are incredibly idiotic, so this isn't much of a surprise.
Yeah, the country's out billions but hell, put it all on red for another spin.
Hah. They're just the obvious snoops, and at least they pretend to care about national security.
Politicians wanting to be elected have even less scruples.
When Netflix furor broke out about being able to identify a person by the ratings they gave, it turns out that it was only possible when a person had rated an obscure movie (and had cross rated the same movie over different websites).
When Target furor broke out out predicting pregnancy, it was based largely on if you bought a certain type of cream.
I know data mining and such is an attractive but most times it just boils down to some obscure identifier over all the data. Optimizing this and balancing hundreds of factors, does that even work?
The guy who broke his public campaign financing pledge and keeps complaining about "money in politics" is using expensive, privacy-invading big data analytics to manipulate the public to elect him. And now the same guys are going to help corporations put their manipulative techniques to good use. OK, just remember that come next election.
1) The Democrats had the better candidate, in the sense of being able to connect with voters on the campaign trail. Mitt Romney made one gaffe after another during the primary season, all showing how out of touch he was, so his campaign staff deliberately kept him off the trail for an entire critical month before the Republican convention. One more slip during the fall campaign - the "we had binders full of women" boast during the second debate, even more remarkable because it was clearly a planned talking point - reinforced all the doubts the independent voters had about him.
2) Immigration. Romney made a tactical decision (not personal) before the 2008 election to pander to the Republican base on the issue, as a way of answering any doubts about whether he was a conservative. He stuck to that course in 2012. He lost the pretty close to the entire Hispanic vote in the general election; other groups, including Asians and African Americans, were also apparently turned off by what appeared to be Romney's and the Republican Party's whites-only strategy.
3) While the economy was still relatively weak last November, Romney's ability to capitalize it was neutralized by the Bain Capital attacks started by Newt Gingrich and continued by the Democrats, and of course the fact that the housing and banking crisis and collapse of the economy occurred during Bush's watch with Bush's tax policies and Treasury/SEC administration.
Obama certainly had better IT, but that was far down on the list of factors.
'keeping gamblers loyal to Caesars was not all that different from keeping onetime Obama voters from straying to Mitt Romney.'
The day the computer AI become totally unpredictable is the day we human kiss our ass goodbye
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You get the "leaders" you deserve.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The real reason people are scared of big data is because the more and more we study it, the more and more it is proven that most people are very, very predictable. It's gotten to the point that companies optimize the color placement of objects in the background of their advertising to appeal to people they are targetting.
The thing that amazes me however is how some companies can still get things so outstandingly wrong/backwards in this day and age. Take the recent Microsoft Xbox One fiasco. I find it hard to believe that a company like Microsoft would not have known this reaction was coming. Any trivial study of online sentiment data would have shown this in advance.
Somehow we talk about campaign donations being the be all and end all, but we are obviously missing something:
pro-bono work done by media and technology experts that other canidates would have to pay for. This by-passes all donation contributions. In an ideal system you wouldn't need campaign finance reform, because people would make informed decisions, and no amount of money spent could change that. Thats not true. Money can buy votes. We all know this, but HOW is rarely discussed, because the people taking the money are the same people reporting the donations.
They buy you, by buying the "favorite celebrities" they already sold you previously. They overhype their strengths, and they downplay the really creepy and criminal things they do. They then go out of their way to let you know what bad guys the people who don't like celebrities are, and how you'll be social outcast if you give up on your favorite celebrities.
In the new digital age, there is also facebook. Once they know everything about you, it makes it easier to push your buttons. What if they find some dark sexual secret? Find out your weaknesses, exploit them. Since they already know who your friends are, they can tell them, or let them know subtly.
They can manipulate the girl you always had a crush on into sleeping with you, or dating you, because now they know. They can do all kinds of things to her as well.(mabey she spies on you?).
Since they know all your personal informaiton they can pretend to be an old long lost friend and use their credibility to bombard you with propaganda.
Speaking of propaganda, they can easily bypass your intellectual guards by finding out what pushes your buttongs and tailoring propaganda specificly to you.
All this is done pro-bono. This is what we know their capabilities are because they BRAG about them. Now it gets better, what if they want information about the opposition? What if they want to target organizers, donors, and leading voices opposing canidate XZY? What if they used the information to conduct smears of the opposition?
What if they targeted and harrassed campaign organizers and leaders. with information like this they'd be able to do with almost without being known about.
They aren't going to tell you that. Its not beyond their capabilities. Your a fool to think they never considered it.
Sometimes people just don't realize the full implications of their own analogies...
Ceasar's Palace exists for one reason and one reason only - to extract as much of money out of their customers^h^h^h^h^h^h suckers as possible. They (and all of the other modern casino/resorts) pioneered "Big Data" techniques to figure out just how much they could squeeze out of every person that comes into contact with them. They've got official policies on paper to deny it. but they are happy to manipulate and exploit addiction to get all of the money.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
People who vote for either of the two main parties are incredibly idiotic, so this isn't much of a surprise.
We don't have good choices because the ultra rich and powerful game the system so that the people that take care of them end up in the primaries. Then they just let the rabble choose who they "want" because regardless of who wins, they will be the One Percenters bitch - case in point: Obama - Hope and Change indeed.
And what exactly is the difference between them vs chinese dissidents who are sentenced to jail for exposing government corruption or similarly embasessing things. I think USA is nowdays just an another non-democratic police state. Sorry for having that opinion.
So far, with 24 comments, nothing has those two arguments. Some justify voting for Obama otherwise, but not this tactic of the campaign.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Oh, never mind. That is just one word.
It shows you that info is power. If you have info on a country you can leverage that into votes and into power.
If there's one great thing Snowden did that, its to protect us from President Keith Alexander and his NSA Presidential Campaign crew.
You're a f*ing hero Snowden.
Also, WTF are you GCHQ guys taking orders from the head of the NSA? We voted in Cameron, he promised to end this surveillance culture, you are acting against your elected government in favor of a US General gone rogue, why?:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa
US law is clear, UK law is clear. RIPA did not make you into an agency to spy on Brits for the benefit of the CIA.
which will sound a bit familiar IOKWMSDI It's OK when my side does it.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
'keeping gamblers loyal to Caesars was not all that different from keeping onetime Obama voters from straying to Mitt Romney.'
yes. there could be no other possible explanation than brand loyalty and marketing, because as we all know, the only humans in this country capable of thought and self-determination are marketing hacks and the algorithmic wonderboys which they employ.
what a condescending load of horsecrap.
It's GOOD that you luddites are so angry at what ever Obama does and always do the opposite no mater what.
Keep up the good work!
There was a study where they asked people if they could put small signs in their yards for something innocuous. After awhile, they came back and asked if they could put a slightly larger sign in. Most said yes. Then they brought in larger and larger signs, until eventually these giant, obnoxious signs were in peoples' yards, signs that nobody accepted if approached with them to begin with.
This was people making an "emotional investment" in something, and refusing to give up on it. This is heavily involved in casinos and gambling, too. People will continue to throw good money after bad.
Now take this and put it in the context of getting people to support a guy who's petered along with a terrible economy for 4 years.
Magnificent job by his people. I suppose. Umm, congrats?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The Obama concern was never that 2008 Obama voters would "stray" to Romney. The Republicans moved so far to the right that even Romney was having trouble following his base (and that was one reason he lost: he showed clearly that he would follow the conservative base, not lead the country).
The Obama concern was that 2008 Obama voters *wouldn't show up at the polls*. Turnout was key. If those that disliked Obama (but disliked Romney more) just decided to stay home, he would have lost. In fact, in some regions he DID lose vs. his 2008 wins for that very reason, such as Lynchburg, VA.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Gamblers were loyal to Caesar? I must have missed that part in my sttidies of ancient Rome.
(Or is this about a later Roman Emperor rather than Julius, Augustus or Tiberius...
BTW I remember John Hurt's acting as Caligula in the British miniseries I Claudius - I am sure he will make an excellent Doctor.
Comment 3 is probably going to take the cake: Dems, Reps, what's the difference?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, people laughed at me when I complained in 1990 about how we're losing something important when the USSR crumbled and how it protected our freedom by proxy.
Because as long as there have been those evil commies with their lack of freedom, our leaders needed to keep their white hats shiny so we knew who were the bad guys. Today, why bother with it, it's not like you have any other system you could run for.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's taken over 30 years for the industry to turn that bucket of wires and melted lead of yours into anything usable.
Nobody blames you.
Democrats are more likely (according to that study) to go with their party than Republicans... BUT... that's not even the best part...
This effect is under-reported by the paper's (false) pretense that the spying by the two administrations was the same. During the Bush years, Democrats were rabid over the typically mis-named (by politicians) "Patriot Act" which enable warrantless wiretaps and such on Americans if they were on one end of a conversation and the party on the other end was a terror suspect outside the US ..... But in the era of Obama, the federal government is spying on every single American (without a warrant, AND without probable cause in clear conflict with the plain text of the Constitution) and monitoring communications where the parties on both ends are NOT terror suspects and are INSIDE the US. In the era of Bush, companies like Google who were collecting data on everybody in exchange for use of their services (nothing in life is free) were in a separate realm from the government... but in this shiny new era of growing National Socialism, Google and the federal government are in bed together with employees regularly moving back-and-forth between them, unknown data exchanges between them, Google working to elect them (in exchange for power? money? regulatory "wiggle room"? help suppressing competitors via government oversight/regulation?) and no transparency. This government/big-business/one-party-allegience "partnership" experiment was run in the 1930's... it does not end well for the little guy (and the technology available for oppression now is far more powerful
My liberal friends who were shrieking expletives at Bush are now responding to Obama with {insert sound of crickets chirping}
TOTAL, unabashed, Hypocrisy
at the same time, they had the USSR to make an excuse on why they need to get their hands dirty, and the realpolitik took over with regards to restricting rights.
like it did with terrorism, and goth kids, and every other cooked up threat.
The Obama campaign treated voters as consumers, because the vast majority of voters treat democracy as a supermarket. Instead of being informed, listen to each other, actively voice their position in petitions and protests, and generally be involved in governance, modern voters just switch to the other brand of soap. To carry on with the metaphor, some of them abandon soap altogether and choose not to shower. This "exit" strategy has reached particularity absurd level in the United States where a number of voters (the so called "independents") bounce as ping-pong balls between the two parties every four years. These voters are never satisfied with the government they just elected, yet they cannot be bothered to actively push this government to fulfill promises or address their grievances. So, if you approach democracy as market, the politicians will treat you as shoppers. You got what you asked for, why are you complaining? (Disclosure: These are not my ideas, I stole them from a book called "In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders?".)
I could see this backfiring for the entities that are trying to play us with it.
'Conservatives' (capital-C, sadly, but that's how it works) have a pretty well-organized network. They should actively oppose and boycott businesses that choose to work with Analytics Media Group. Everybody already says 'fuck Google. fuck Big Data' in private to all their friends. It's just a matter of helping people figure out what's going on and making it a public thing.
GOP was hiring companies to think up and implement stuff like this many years ago - I was a consultant involved in just 1 aspect of their future plans to profile every voter. They have purchase histories - if you use a credit card... it is data they are designing their system around getting. If you have a car outside when they go to knock on your door, they'll be marking the make and model of it on their smart app.
The whole thing was poorly managed, in that it was so free market that it was bound to implode because quick bucks could be made by not helping them achieve their aims. Because the contractors weren't in the loop on their thinking it wasn't going to be anywhere near what they were hoping for. I got out anyhow.
The funny part is that it was more like Hitler using competition in science-- he split his A-bomb people up and had teams competing for discoveries without collaboration between them. In a way, the GOP was doing the same extreme and rigid thinking which inhibited the rate of progress.
It also helps that they hated and fired their black chairman... who was actually smart and devious, he was pushing things like this but was caught up in internal struggles and idiocy -- which runs rampant in the GOP.
I recognized back in the early days of the Obama administration that there was a key quid pro quo for bailing out the large banking firms that were caught in the real-estate crisis trap of their own making.
Each one of those firms had its own synthetic model of the economy, probably researched in fine detail and hyperlinked in clever ways. I thought that part of the 'price' for a Government bailout would be the sharing of the code, architectural details, etc. of these various programs, which could then be set up somewhere like Bay St. Louis to be run for the advantage of... well, ultimately, the American taxpayer.
I suspect we are now seeing the results of exactly why that technology wasn't demanded.. publically, at least... and perhaps how we can expect to see it used in future...
Obama was getting viewer data from cable companies?? No wonder the data being gathered by the NSA under his leadership has exploded. Data privacy clearly means nothing to him. Data -> information -> knowledge -> power. Somebody has too much. (Power -> corruption)
Let's not forget Windows Me or Bill's terrible performance in Microsoft's Anti Trust trial.