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!
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.
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.
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?
What I am objecting to is the "Evil Matrix" assumption that underlies that first, summary paragraph. Re-read that paragraph again. The author's assumption shows up in literally every sentence.
These types of articles are a waste of time. There is nothing new to be learned.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
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.
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
Yes and also sick of the paranoid conspiracy theories from the far right. Alex Jones is a gelding.
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
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.
The Left seems to have forgotten how Obama won the 2008 campaign - look at MIT's Technology Review, the New York Times, and InfoWorld.
Ken
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.
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
By the same logic, I present you a few fine organizations that cannot possibly have anything to hide because they have a website that tells you what they do:
The FSB
The mossad (hope this is the right site because I didn't much care to enable javascript)
The CIA
The NSA
On a completely unrelated note, would you by any chance be in the market for a bridge? I can make you a really good price, because you're my friend!
My post wasn't meant to be focused on politics, much less in the US with the current president there, how he uses social media and my not-too-good actual knowledge about the whole situation there. In any case, note that I am a leftist who doesn't like Trump at all; certainly no fan of fanaticism-prone movements of any type and also not interested in starting a discussion about politics (look at some of my old posts to know about some of my ideas on this front and my intention of not talking about them anymore here).
I meant more abstract and long-term expectations, apparently not addressed to a specific group of people (US voters) and not meant to accomplish a specific short-term goal (US election), but for less clear reasons. Testing the actual social-media-manipulation effect? Contributing towards the appearance of fears towards certain people/countries? Too bored people getting some distraction? No idea. Just weird, curious and worth sharing.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
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...
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.
I guess you stop reading scientific articles at the abstract, since those usually have conclusions in them.
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?
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.
Seriously, are we not doing Betteridge's Law any more?
The irony is that even if this is true it's just a new way of doing what Rupert Murdoch has been doing for years in a lot of different places (including the US in the last election), and other media magnates did it before him.
One of the reasons he pulled out of Chinese media is because he couldn't use it to influence government.
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.
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.
anybody else sick to the back teeth of listening to anonymous cowards claiming that there are these tinfoil hat conspiracy theories from people with far left views?
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!
There are plenty of other reasons to mod parent down, it has nothing to do with not voting.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I suppose that lolol is a way to say: "sorry, I can't read. But still I'm going to make comment about the article, even if I don't know what is about"
Honey, this isn't far-left. This is the center-right members of the relatively left-wing party upset that Third Way politics is failing.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Both sides spread lies left and right through media outlets of their own design. This is not a "better campaign" by any metric. It's pandering without any merit.
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
Those claims are ridiculous in light of what actually happened:
Hillary's data-driven campaign:
Hillary was clearly targeting individual voters and groups.
Remember 4 and 8 years ago the same media that ran this story was praising Obama's '21st century, internet based campaign'. Which was the _exact_ same thing.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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
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
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.
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.