Slashdot Mirror
Did A Billionaire Harvest Big Data From Facebook To 'Hijack' Democracy? (theguardian.com)
Long-time Slashdot readers walterbyrd and whoever57 both submitted the same article about the mysterious data analytics company Cambridge Analytica and its activities with SCL Group, a 25-year-old military psyops company in the U.K. later bought by "secretive hedge fund billionaire" Robert Mercer. One former employee calls it "this dark, dystopian data company that gave the world Trump."
Facebook was the source of the psychological insights that enabled Cambridge Analytica to target individuals. It was also the mechanism that enabled them to be delivered on a large scale. The company also (perfectly legally) bought consumer datasets -- on everything from magazine subscriptions to airline travel -- and uniquely it appended these with the psych data to voter files... Finding "persuadable" voters is key for any campaign and with its treasure trove of data, Cambridge Analytica could target people high in neuroticism, for example, with images of immigrants "swamping" the country. The key is finding emotional triggers for each individual voter. Cambridge Analytica worked on campaigns in several key states for a Republican political action committee. Its key objective, according to a memo the Observer has seen, was "voter disengagement" and "to persuade Democrat voters to stay at home"... In the U.S., the government is bound by strict laws about what data it can collect on individuals. But, for private companies anything goes.
A branch of this company reportedly also received half the campaign budgets of four pro-Brexit campaign groups, and there's some dark talk about "military-funded technology that has been harnessed by a global plutocracy...being used to sway elections in ways that people can't even see." The article notes the two firms have plied their services in Russia as well as Lithuania and the Ukraine, and suggests that "we are in the midst of a massive land grab for power by billionaires via our data. Data which is being silently amassed, harvested and stored."
A branch of this company reportedly also received half the campaign budgets of four pro-Brexit campaign groups, and there's some dark talk about "military-funded technology that has been harnessed by a global plutocracy...being used to sway elections in ways that people can't even see." The article notes the two firms have plied their services in Russia as well as Lithuania and the Ukraine, and suggests that "we are in the midst of a massive land grab for power by billionaires via our data. Data which is being silently amassed, harvested and stored."
and it won't stop as long as these "persuadable" voters make their decisions based on facebook posts.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
If we agree with the person doing the activity?
Why, that's just democracy in action!
When informed about mass surveillance and privacy issues many people respond that they have "nothing to hide". My response to them is that they may have no criminal activity to hide, but with all that information they can be me manipulated without knowing it. I give the example of a first date. If you know what the person likes and dislikes before the date you can easily shape your approach to the evening, presenting yourself to be as pleasing as possible.
This is exactly what theses projects are doing to us on a national level, manipulating people one by one. And that's the danger of having so much data about ourselves out there. We can be influenced and manipulated on a personal and societal scale simply by these groups knowing so much about us.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato
This wouldn't be a problem if the media were still fulfilling their role of informing people of the facts, instead of also taking up the role of interpreter of those facts.
So what if you're influenced by something you hear? That's normal: you receive information and act on it. You should, however, have -all- the information and not just the subset deemed supportive of the cause by invisible people, with the rest made up with suggestive phrasing and outright lies. But reporting of actual facts, supported by accurate and relevant numbers, has become a rarity, and finding those numbers is becoming less and less possible, despite the vast possibilities the internet offers for unlocking information.
So it's all down to hollow phrases, and given that total lack of input, people become suggestible. I would suggest, however, that the solution lies in a well-educated population that is aware of the problem, and is given unlimited access to uncensored facts and figures.
This kind of sophisticated attacks reveal that we have reached the next stage in communication, where we must use anti-virus like techniques. The body continuously gets assaulted by viruses, computers too. Now it's our minds that get virused.
It's been going on for a very long time.
Now we just have better technology. Macron did it too.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
The company is so mysterious. They even have a website that tells you exactly what they do in big bold letters.
Believe in it and it will believe in you. Tell it your desires, your lusts, and your deepest darkest secrets, and you will be rewarded. Pay it forward, and pay it forward with Facebook.
Thank you, and may God Bless
I thought it was Russia that was subverting democracy ?
Now we have this group whats doing it ?
I wish people would make their minds up...
Trump won fair and square. Get over it, leftists. Legally buying information to better reach and influence voters isn't hijacking an election. Trump and the Republicans ran a better and smarter campaign, and this is just another example of them doing so. Americans don't want leftist policies and it's time that you liberals get over it. Clinton's had far more money than Trump's, so they easily could have acquired the same information. And yet they made blunder after blunder, including not visiting Midwest states that they took for granted. You lost. Get over it, leftists.
- snruter rotsac
When Obama won in 2008 slashdot ran slobbering articles about how the tech industry had used data mining techniques to properly target ads towards the appropriate voters and who the Dems needed to target to maximize votes. In 2012 this was repeated along with Facebook altering walls to make sure only the "proper" messages were showing up on walls.
Now the "other" side is doing it and its "evil" and "manipulative" and "fake news"
No that's bullshit. You can't praise the use of story planting and voter manipulation when your guy does it then turn around and demand all the rules be changes because for all that whiz bang technology you couldn't get voters to choose your sucky candidate. Maybe that's the real story here... that all this voter manipulation and Orwellian tech doesn't really work and individuals still pick the best candidate presented?
Naaah... they're sheep when they don't vote the way you want and enlightened peoples when you use the same techniques.
FTY:
I stopped reading right there. When you start your research with your conclusion already in hand, you're no longer researching, you're just finding additional support for your thesis.
And I no longer bother with Trump Is Teh Evil articles anymore. People have had their say, 10 times over. Enough.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
anybody else sick to the back teeth of listening to these tinfoil hat conspiracy theories from people with far left views?
did it first!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I am reasonably sure that some people with lots of money are actively working on trying to somehow condition the feelings and fears of the masses via social media (e.g., over-promotion of isolated or even completely false events of violence or chaos). Just as an example, I have seen various "curious" global trends which, after a quick research, seemed to be almost exclusively triggered by accounts associated with certain online-positioning companies (note that validated/good-track-record accounts can get global trends easier) which, after a little further digging, seemed to also be related to certain bigger companies/millionaires.
Note that I am not too much into the paranoid conspiracy world and have an eminently practical attitude ("We have no online privacy? OK, I guess that I will have to accept this reality. I certainly don't agree with it and expect social pressure to gradually reduce abuses like this."). I am plainly sharing my objective impressions about some things which I have been seeing lately.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
And yet Stallman is the crazy one? The man is a fucking prophet. Almost everything about computers he's predicted has come true including the eventual turning of computing technology and user data against democracy.
Expect -1 very soon. This is taboo the only thing worse is saying voting is useless. I will send round re-educators. (or the police if it is illegal to not vote in your area). You will soon learn to vote for tweedledee.
It's kind of the argument for a republic if not an aristocracy.
The masses are too ignorant, gullible and guided by base motivations to make serious decisions. In a Democratic Republic you at least have the will of the people as voiced in elections for Representatives, but that as a rule intelligent, serious people will actually be making the decisions.
It's what's kind of interesting at times in the British monarchy -- the crown doesn't run government but by virtue of its status, gives advice and guidance to the government and acts as a conscience. I think at this point -- historically, politically and perhaps geriatrically -- this idea has been exhausted.
Historically, though, you find that most institutions diluted the common man's voice. Rome certainly did with Senatorial asset requirements and differing electoral classes.
I don't think poor people are too poor to understand facts, but I think at times they are too uneducated *and* too provincial in their outlook. And the level of understanding required to make educated decisions on many topics has gotten pretty deep. I like to think of myself as well-read and well-educated, but when I think of what's involved in truly understanding economics, diplomacy, health, I think I know my limits but do other people, or are they merely indulging in the fallacy that they understand when they don't?
But this is all info that's been reported for over 6 months. Robert Mercer of Renaissance Technologies is working with other billionaires and Islamic banking and 'thought leaders' to use big data to consolidate global power, while the consolidating is good.
It's not a plan that will scale upward to world domination, but the end result is wealth manipulating democracies and destroying people's trust in media and freedom of press.
All in all their algorithms aren't that good and amount to little more than targeted slander ads for the most part. The real factor here is changing media focus. As people migrate from TV news to internet news, they are highly vulnerable to fake news because they are moving from at least semi trusted sources to mostly unknown sources from Facebook and all kinds of news startup designed to take advantage of this trend and feed back into Facebook. Some of those are funded by the mercers, but most are now. Google, Bing, Facebook, Reddit and others all make money from the clicks, so they are along for the ride at the end of the day.
The really bad part is coming, which is when they get AI chat bots to the point that most people cannot tell the difference. Instead of target ads you will have convincing 'fake people' who use the same Facebook data to plant doubt and conspiracy theories in people heads under the guise of having similar interests as them and being actual people, not just coded ads. Instead of armies of thousands of trolls, they can have millions of AI chat bots to befriend and corrupt people.
As automation kills more jobs you have more easily influenced people sitting at home on Facebook being bombarded with this stuff and automation will keep killing jobs for the foreseeable future.
At the end of the day the real problem is that society is not ready to transition away from their simple work week based lives, but science and technology are ready to start that transition. We can have better production with less people and for less money. Not healthcare needed for robots!
People need jobs to keep them sane and well behaved, but we are running out of jobs as more and more of our basic needs and the jobs associated with them get automated.
The fast and simple solution is to create more jobs for the people who are getting left behind so they don't destroy society in their childish, ignorant rage. The transition from the Industrial Age to the Automation Age must be managed by government, corporations and society itself or it will be a very bumpy ride that is, as usual, exceptionally bad for those working paycheck to paycheck.
They will just essentially wake up one day and be mostly unemployable and with an attitude that doesn't embrace continued education, they will stay that way.
In the bigger picture of things wealth itself will decline in value as labor costs drop and with it the cost of basically everything other than land. If you don't have to pay for labor the amount of resources and farmable land on the planet increases significantly. The cost to build housing falls, the cost to build goods falls and people who have a lot of equity will mostly loose that equity if they don't convert it.
With the wealthy no longer able to control the job markets, their grip on the voters also rapidly drops off and I believe we are seeing some of that now, but it will get exponentially worse as big automation plans take hold and AI progresses to start displacing office and other white collar jobs. Amazon and other internet sales are already killing retail jobs.
I would reduce the work week, raises wages, create jobs, create more professional certifications and programs to get people into them as well as make it easy for citizens to get guidance on available programs, including education and job placement. People need one number they can call for all their state and federal government assistance/guidance. They should be assigned a social worker who can actively guide them through all the layers of BS that state and federal governments hav
That's not what this story is about at all...
Democracy doesn't depend on informed voters. Democracy is nothing more than giving the vote to citizens who are not part of the government. The outcomes will be better, for certain definitions of better, but there's no way to hijack democracy.
I am reasonably sure that some people with lots of money are actively working on trying to somehow condition the feelings and fears of the masses
George Soros has been doing exactly that for years.
Moveon.org, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Women's Day March, People's Climate March, the list goes on and on. His money is behind all of them.
Curious that they are portrayed by the poster as some insidious master data manipulator...when as recently as 2016 advertising industry magazines mocked them for being "all hat, no cattle".
Several customers were quoted as complaining that their $16k monthly fee produced nothing of value except constant sales pitches.
http://adage.com/article/campa...
-Styopa
And there I thought it was the conservatives that had the occasional fake-news problem
It seems impossibly hard to believe for some that Trump won because people were honesty, genuinely fed up with the alternative. Instead its one nutty conspiracy theory after the other about why he really won.
I'm pretty sure Obama For America employed many, if not all the same tactics in 2008 election...
Why yes, look at MIT's Technology Review, the New York Times, and InfoWorld - again, another glaring example of a profound double-standard. When Team Obama did it, it was "ground-breaking", when Republicans employ similar tools it a nefarious plot to control the world!
Ken
Big data was great when it was getting Obama into office, and it was great when Eric Schmidt et al were trying to get Hillary into office, but it's bad ("hijack democracy?") when their opponents use it?
I'm reading "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez, about Facebook advertising. I'm at the part where Facebook internal data connects with external data to attach personal information on to every piece of data that Facebook had collected from the web. Scary stuff.
And yet it was somehow not creepy when Obama hired teams of social psychologists in order to find the most effective ways to sway public opinion, right? It wasn't a bad thing when HIS people went after "suggestible voters," right?
Oh wait, that's right, I forgot. This stuff is only creepy if it is done by the "other" guys.
Nothing is new under the moon. Some clever guys could persuade some rich guys that they could change the future by shitposting of primitive memes in the internets, and for that the rich guys have to pay a big money. The key idea here, as it was a milenia ago, is that there is no way to ascertain that the crap worked. If the prophesy seems to fulfill, it is, obviously, due to the skills and abilities of the magician to influence the goods (use a big data). If it fails miserably, it means, if course, that there was not enough sacrifice (amount of a big data) has been given, and the failure is chiefly due to lack of funds to perform a big-enough sacrifice. Thousand of years passed, nothing is changed. There is absolutely no way to prove that *any* of these activities, leave alone the big-data analytics crap have a substantial impact on election results. 4chan, for example, could be a *much* bigger factor to influence the uneducated and naive that all that facebook analysis crap combined. One catchy meme ("Shillary will start WW3!!1") with an appropriate picture of a nuclear blast popularized on /b/ would accomplish more than any purchased dataset... But, obviously, you need to know some psychology to understand that. So, instead, you are telling the customers with usual powerpoint crap that it is your pseudo-scientific research activities and data crunching is what swayed the election, not the 4chan, reddit and similar boards powered by the law of big numbers.
This, by the way, is the remarkable example of how shit works in the high places. If you thing finance or investment are different - think again. If you are bold enough you will attribute success to yourself and failures to not enough funding, like a good old brahman or oracle of old days. The only difference - instead of masks and amulets one dances with computers and datasets.
I'm not sure how photos from my vacations and dank memes can sway elections, but whatever.
Yet another "explanation" for people rejecting big-government and so-called progressivism. Because it couldn't possibly be that people are fed up, could it.
Free Market Trumps Democracy
I thought the whole point of Facebook was to give him access to that data.
So, no mention of the startup company (Groundwork) that Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO) created for the Clinton campaign to do exactly the same kind of data analytics?
“There are a lot of people who can write big checks,” Slaby says. “Eric recognizes how the technology he’s been building his whole career can be applied to different spaces. The idea of tech as a force multiplier is something he deeply understands.” https://qz.com/520652/groundwo...
Primates, eh?
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
Anything to deflect the blame anywhere else but themselves. Liberals really ARE just like small children. Wonder what next month's excuse will be?
As a low level volunteer on a campaign I heard of a voter database that linked magazine subscriptions etc. Welcome to the 90s.
And what I'm seeing is millions and millions of dollars being funneled into the Democrat's coffers from outside the district. Speaking of outside the district, he does not live int he district and so he's not eligible to vote in the district in which he is running. Some 95% of his campaign funding is coming from outside of Georgia, mostly New York and California. He outspent his opponents by multiple millions in the jungle primary (most of them had campaign spending of about $400K, he spent $8M+).
Almost all of his commercials and mailings fail to mention the word "Democrat", in a concerted effort to try to convince voters he is something other than a hand-picked minion of the Party. He inflates his resume to make it seem like he is a national security expert (he was an intern still in college for much of the time-span claimed) and anti-corruption (but he is supported by Nancy Pelosi).
If he wins, it will certainly be an example of a seat being bought by outside funding throwing piles of money into the campaign--ironically funded largely by people who despise Citizen's United ruling. Money can certainly make a difference.
The main reason he may actually win, though, is that his Republican opponent is Hillary-esque in her own negatives and there is about zero enthusiasm to get her elected.
So this psyops operation persuaded Obama voters to stay home? Isn't that the claim?
I mean, had Clinton secured the same votes as Obama, she would have won.
Are we sure that the problem wasn't a politically weak, out-of-touch candidate under a party that failed to listen to its own constituents and manipulated their own run-offs while refusing to come to terms with existence of the disconnect?
Seriously, are we not doing Betteridge's Law any more?
Both the left and right wing, and the various private organisation that feed off the power of those governments, are doing this.
Its not just the 'evil' right wing.
Traditional news outlets are part of it - The Guardian are in bed with this type of profiling and influence as part of the left wing.
Facebook (so social media) is just the latest mechanism, and its even more effective.
Media (in all forms and by all sponsors) have driven a wedge in between the right and left, forcing you down one path or another, and almost every single person reading this post is not able to critically think about anything political. Its turned us all into morons, sheep that follow a path that we are convinced is our own.
Yawn.
The left can start complaining about people like this after George Soros is hanged for crimes against humanity and the murders, riots, and more he's caused through his various NPOs.
Doesn't that prove that democracy itself is fatally flawed?
If democracy is broken at such a fundamental level, then it's time to seriously re-examine, and probably dismantle, the institutional power structures which have been established using "democracy" as an excuse.
Can we stop with the Trump conspiracy theories already? The facts are that Clinton was an completely undesirable candidate, and conservatives were tired of Obama's progressive policies (and being called names anytime they disagreed). Is that so hard to understand?
When informed about mass surveillance and privacy issues many people respond that they have "nothing to hide". My response to them is that they may have no criminal activity to hide, but with all that information they can be me manipulated without knowing it. I give the example of a first date. If you know what the person likes and dislikes before the date you can easily shape your approach to the evening, presenting yourself to be as pleasing as possible.
Well put, nuanced point. Unfortunately, I tend to find people who use the "I have nothing to hide" don't do nuance well. What does seem to get through to them is the following: "Do you mind taking a dump in the middle of 5th Avenue/Main Street/The High Street? No? Why not? What have you got to hide?" Privacy is a right and a requirement for decent quality of living, irrespective of whether or not you "have anything to hide." And there are lots of reasons to legitimately have something to hide: childhood sexual abuse, escaping an abusive and dangerous partner, a foolish act committed as a teenager or young adult that would mar your reputation or prevent you from obtaining gainful employment (e.g. driving drunk, or experimenting with drugs, or whatever other nonsense young people often get mixed up in before they're old or wise enough to know better), and so on.
This isn't just an assault on our democracy. It's an assault on our humanity.
Why did the globalist SJW jew who owns facebook decide to use it to corrupt democracy to promote Trump? Even after they were caught altering trending lists to support the Hilldawg.
The left can't internalize it's failures - blame whitey for everything.
Either the article belongs in front of "Lithuania" as well, or it does not belong in front of "Ukraine".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Read my signature
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
About Me, I don't have a Facebook account. And I usually vote ;)
They were paid a whole lot of money by people who would benefit from the thing they do, and therefore we assume they did the thing they do.
Immediate response: They didn't do the thing, and even if they did it didn't work, and it was the fault of your woman that she lost, not the thing they did that is a bit totalitarian and scary and I totally oppose. I'm not wrong! My thoughts are my own. Proven psy-ops techniques don't work on ME! My side is anti-psy-ops-style-totalitarian-government-intrusion and would never do the thing. They clearly paid the company for puppies and flowers!
Now they're saying facebook did it? lolol
"In the U.S., the government is bound by strict laws about what data it can collect on individuals."
If you believe that, I have virtual real estate in my home Sims desktop to sell you.
The conspiracy train is in full motion. Next month: How aliens sabotaged the Hillary campaign in exchange for mars.
Instead of blaming big evil shadowy corporations, we need to admit that we ran a slimy crook who publically admitted that she despised half the populations. No big evil right-wing conspiracy
...vote for the person only mentioned in passing on the news
Look, just because this is a left leaning piece, does not mean that it isn't a steaming pile of Alex Jones conspiracy claptrap.
None of this even makes sense, if you believe people have agency.
If you don't believe people have agency, you're in a world of hurt already, at least in terms of politics, and it's going to get worse. You'll have to come up with a dozen reasons, other than Liberals have lost the ability to sell their talking points to the public, in order to explain what is about to happen. The 2018 midterms are going to be an absolute bloodbath for the Left, if my numbers are right, which they have been.
Social media works well as a predictor, but not necessarily as an influencer. Studies have shown that nobody changes their minds because of what they see on Facebook or Twitter. If you think that's what might be happening, I'm sorry, but you're wrong.
Rather, it makes more sense to use the tools to predict, and reflect -- which is all they're suited to do. There's a lot that can be done there.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
And what I'm seeing is millions and millions of dollars being funneled into the Democrat's coffers from outside the district.
And millions and millions of dollars being funneled into the Republican's coffers from outside the district, so...
Speaking of outside the district, he does not live int he district and so he's not eligible to vote in the district in which he is running.
Strange how you don't mention how he was born and raised in Northlake, Georgia, raised there, and he currently lives near Emory University (just a few minutes outside the district) because his...girlfriend is attending medical school there. What a carpet-bagger.
Especially compared to Karen Handel, who has been bouncing around the country and world, doing wonderful things like cutting off breast cancer funding because she hated Planned Parenthood. That all the investigations she cited came up bupkus, well...
Some 95% of his campaign funding is coming from outside of Georgia, mostly New York and California. He outspent his opponents by multiple millions in the jungle primary (most of them had campaign spending of about $400K, he spent $8M+).
Money talks, and you know it. The GOP is only jealous they didn't have a standard-bearer.
Almost all of his commercials and mailings fail to mention the word "Democrat", in a concerted effort to try to convince voters he is something other than a hand-picked minion of the Party.
Oh no, he's not mentioning the word "Democrat" as if that were a meaningful argument.
He inflates his resume to make it seem like he is a national security expert (he was an intern still in college for much of the time-span claimed) and anti-corruption (but he is supported by Nancy Pelosi).
ah, still upset over Nancy Pelosi? The GOP's hate-on for her is so legendary, they use her to attack anyone, even DONALD TRUMP, who has been photographed with her on multiple suspicious occasions.
It's why they misquoted her for so long. Meanwhile they actually did pass a bill they admitted they didn't read.
If he wins, it will certainly be an example of a seat being bought by outside funding throwing piles of money into the campaign--ironically funded largely by people who despise Citizen's United ruling. Money can certainly make a difference.
Individuals can hate Citizen's United, while still loving their impact.
The main reason he may actually win, though, is that his Republican opponent is Hillary-esque in her own negatives and there is about zero enthusiasm to get her elected.
And Trump. Trump's wonderful support.
Did a submitter pose a question in the title as a way to make an accusation he has no basis for?
Those claims are ridiculous in light of what actually happened:
Hillary's data-driven campaign:
Hillary was clearly targeting individual voters and groups.
Mainstream media has be hijacking democracy for decades and decades, reducing it to "mob rule". This is just the new medium. Tch-tch. Welcome to the new millennium :-)
Each side does its best to persuade voters, then the voters decide. That's how democracy is *supposed* to work, so stop freaking out about it. If you don't like it, then you don't like democracy. Which is fine, but at least have the honesty to admit it.
"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
And for the fools who think billionaires would have chosed Jeb... why do you think all billionaires agree? And, for that matter, do you think they all have the same resources? Thiel *does* know what he's doing, and he wanted Trump.
Try reading the entire damn article, and tell me psyops doesn't work.
Russia, facebook, alt-right (whatever that is). The excuses just keep coming.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. - Winston Churchill
I don't think Winston had Facebook to blame when he made his observation about the average voter.
The sad fact is that Hillary Clinton was a highly unlikeable candidate. Even if we could fix the "fake news" problem, it would not have changed the fact that she was a terrible candidate.
You could just as easily blame the election results on the DNC for the way they treated Bernie as you can the Russia-Facebook-Alt-right boogyeman.
The DNC needs to take a long hard look in the mirror - that's where the blame for the election results lie.
It was lowly people like myself who were fed up with the status quo in Washington, DC. And we busted a gut to make it happen.
Caution: Contents under pressure
But now it is lead by the Democrats, ohh the irony is just so delicious.
But, it was the Russians, and Comey, and Misogyny, Wikileaks, Deplorables, Buckets of Losers, and now, Robert Mercer. This has gone from pathetic to plain stupid. Take a deep breath and get a grip. Hillary was a garbage candidate with no discernible message. She only does what she thinks will benefit herself. Example: "Stronger Together" has turned into "Resist". If she really meant the former, she'd bow out gracefully and not take up the mantra of the latter.
If there was still such a thing as reasonable privacy in the "digital age", much of this would be moot. Though, it seems the current human condition is that money > privacy. And sites like Facebook, which feed off of the data of their users, is simply a cog in the machine that is driving toward erasing any trace of privacy left in the world for people who are connected to the Internet. Makes me fucking sick to my stomach.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Obama generally sided with the working class (generally, he's a politician and that means compromises). I'm not expecting the same from a billionaire. It's the difference between convincing Ayn Rand to take Social Security in her old age and her writings to convince people on SS are paracytes. There is actually a difference, ya know.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It lumps you into the bucket of people with enough initiative to change the default settings on any aspect of their daily existence. You're probably an educated technocrat.
People Who Use Firefox or Chrome Are Better Employees
Okay, you're harder to neutralize with micro-disinformation.
So they suck you into pointless debates about SpaceX, colonising Mars, medical nanotechnology, life extension, the AI singularity, Hayekian economics, Objectivism, or liberal save-the-world TED porn.
Effectiveness: what you know times what you do.
Wolowitz syndrome: able to configure an ad-blocker, but not exactly picking the right fight.
____
I've already got a bit of file on Robert Mercer.
Yachts seen close together — March 2017
As Rene Magritte would say, "this is not a smoking gun." Not yet, anyway. Hey, that reminds me, has anyone here got a match?
Rachel Maddow Explains "The Money Man" — August 2016
What Kind of Man Spends Millions to Elect Ted Cruz? — January 2016
This is genuinely funny!
There is an identifiable breed of right wing commentator who actually fits this description. We all know who they are. Fox likes them certainly, so does talk radio, some have migrated to their own websites or specialist Alt-Right websites.
Here's the APB description:
1). White; ...
2). Male;
3). Usually middle-aged or older;
4). Gets red-faced during a good rant;
5). Excited enough to spit, though this does not usually get captured by the medium;
6). Liberally sprinkles their tirade with terms like "Social Justice Warrior", "Libtard", "Extreme Socialist", "Freedom", "The American Way", "Second Amendment Rights", "Illegals", "Crime", "Terrorism", "Threats", "Feminazi", etc.
7). Knows what they like and what they like is exactly like themselves. Thus "A Good Guy" is white, male, middle-aged or older, dislikes immigrants, women are fine but feminists are not,
Hail Hydra!
Is stupid.
The question was not for you, but for the AC, who suddenly decided, long experience is important to being the President of the US.
But you wish to talk about Sarah Palin:
Unlike both Barack Obama and Joseph Biden (and even John McCain), Sarah Palin actually did have executive experience — she previously ran her town as a mayor and her State as a governor. So, on the subject of experience you are objectively and verifiably wrong. Four Pinocchios...
"Talent" and "qualifications" are subjective, so I'm not going to go there.
No, after the Democratic primaries, where the two opposed each other, Obama was the turd and Biden was the douche. And you helped the nation elect both, while leaving the unarguably more experienced (and arguably qualified and talented) team out. Something to tell your grandchildren about...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You anti-trumpers are deranged. >shadowy >dystopian. The only thing dystopian is socialism.
Niccolo Machiavelli understood all these things, these methods are 600+ years old...
I love you people. Lonely losers who want to share that little offtopic piece of themselves. Maybe someone will understand me, talk to me, love me - please read my thought of the day. Pleeeeeze. So alone - just read this - I'm beautiful inside, ignore the outside.
Go read your own signature nerd. Don't no one care what you think or what you are. We are here to have a discussion on the article and your thought of the day. Stay ugly loser. We need more clowns.
Where is there any equality in this sort of thing?
How is it fair for entities (with lots of money) to go collecting data for the purpose of toying with psyches
with hopes of effectively brainwashing into serving their wishes?
How is it fair for entities to go collecting data at all without knowledge AND permission from the subjects?
I reserve the Right to protect myself from any and all things that threaten any part of my privacy and freedom.
This includes any psychological attempts on any part of psyches!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.