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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
Normally I'd agree with you but since you are trying to compare putting Obama in the White House to putting Donald Trump in the White House I'm going to have to disagree here. Obama, whatever you may think of him, at least had a multi digit IQ that allowed him to answer questions from reporters, skin that was too thick for his soul to be injured by Saturday Night Live skits and had a clear idea of which countries he had bombed. Trump on the other hand walks out of press conferences when he gets questions he does not like, launches twitter storms where he lambasts anybody who lampoons him and told a reporter he'd launched a missile strike on Iraq until the reporter corrected him and pointed out the strike was on Syria.... and those are just three sample of the highlights of what those bastards at SCL Group and their friends have saddled us with
Why are you blaming SCL when it's was the Clinton campaign's strategy for a "Pied Piper" nutjob to be the GOP nominee (because she's too bad of a candidate to run against an adult), Bill encouraged him to run, and the media gave that asshole $2 billion in free advertising.
The reason that we have this problem is that our electoral system lacks an option to shoot both candidates into the sun and have a mulligan. That could have gotten 65% of the vote, easy.
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