Cambridge Analytica

[inchy14]

I'm not sure how you can legislate against it. Besides, it's not as if their targets had their free will revoked.

I think people just need to be far more educated that you shouldn't assume what you post or view online is private and the importance of critically analysing statements put to you as facts. If that single mum saw that Trump was going to focus on education in her area, she should have verified that independently.

Maybe, just maybe people should stop believing everything they see on Facebook and Twitter and take it as gospel. Maybe people should actually watch different news channel, read a bit more and make their own opinions instead of following the facebook crowd.

 

[stonerblue]

As if politics was ever clean before this lot turned up?

I’m not condoning their behaviour but come on folk, doing anything and everything to win, especially in American politics is hardly new or news.

As for Vote Leave somehow manipulating the EU ref result via social media? Seriously? The age group active on social media channels voted overwhelmingly to remain so it’s a no from me lol.

Yeah, who needs experts eh?

I tried telling you about this stuff yesterday but you dismissed it out of hand. Campaigns are bound by rules including ones covering tv/radio/news adverts and appearances. Not a perfect system but at least it has some checks and balances.
If you're happy to have your info stolen and then be targeted with false info during a campaign then you may as well keep your head in the sand on this.
I'd also like to see some evidence that backs up the young people/facebook/remain claim you trot out to have this down as a non-story.
And finally, this isn't about 'sides' or 'losers' whinging. It's an assault on democracy.

 

[Ricster]

Or Trump was the first to use it so effectively. I'd be gobsmacked if his opposition didn't employ similar tactics - Trump's side just did it better.

The opposition did it to Sanders

 

[Ricster]

Yeah, who needs experts eh?

I tried telling you about this stuff yesterday but you dismissed it out of hand. Campaigns are bound by rules including ones covering tv/radio/news adverts and appearances. Not a perfect system but at least it has some checks and balances.
If you're happy to have your info stolen and then be targeted with false info during a campaign then you may as well keep your head in the sand on this.
I'd also like to see some evidence that backs up the young people/facebook/remain claim you trot out to have this down as a non-story.
And finally, this isn't about 'sides' or 'losers' whinging. It's an assault on democracy.

It would be very interesting to know how these ads affected peoples votes.

Also the Tory party used Blue telecoms to try and get voters to vote Tory in a similar fashion to CA.

Why are most up in arms over what is going on in America while in the UK some people were brushing this off. It remarkable to see

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

What i find worrying is that Arron Banks and Farage sat down and contemplated using this company to have an effect on brexit.

Yes they decided against it but the fact they had a meeting in the first place for overseas donors is wrong.

Its Arron Banks putting out a statement before a question was asked.......you have to ask why he would that?

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

Farage, Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica's relationship has been known about for a year.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...eat-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Farage is good friends with Paul Mercer, owner of Cambridge Analytica.

VoteLeave spent over half it's official budget with AggregateIQ, which is pretty much a spin-off of Cambridge Analytica, being run by friends of guy "who brought data and micro-targeting [individualised political messages] to Cambridge Analytica."


It looks pretty likely Brexit was something of a test run for them.

As did the DUP in both the election and their leave campaign.....However its also coming out that CA influenced the election of Kenyatta

 

[CityStu]

Maybe, just maybe people should stop believing everything they see on Facebook and Twitter and take it as gospel. Maybe people should actually watch different news channel, read a bit more and make their own opinions instead of following the facebook crowd.

Not just Facebook and Twitter. Plenty of Remain voters espouse the view of experts without having critically thought about the work those experts have produced. It's exactly the same as thinking vaccines cause autism because a doctor said so once.

 

[johnnytapia]

Private, corporate £/$ being used to sway elections; who'd have thunk it?

 

[hawkhurst]

Farage, Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica's relationship has been known about for a year.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...eat-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Farage is good friends with Paul Mercer, owner of Cambridge Analytica.

VoteLeave spent over half it's official budget with AggregateIQ, which is pretty much a spin-off of Cambridge Analytica, being run by friends of guy "who brought data and micro-targeting [individualised political messages] to Cambridge Analytica."


It looks pretty likely Brexit was something of a test run for them.

Arron Banks (co-founder of Leave.EU and major UKIP donor) openly admitted last year to hiring Cambridge Analytica during the EU referendum campaign. CA deny this is true, but I'm not sure why Arron Banks would lie about it and it fits neatly with the rest of what CA have been doing in recent years.

 

[Ghandi's Flip Flops]

Great bit of journalism. CA will cease to be, but nothing stopping them starting up again with a new name. Sure a few guys will go to prison, but there will be countless others waiting to take up the role.

It's almost impossible to stop this kind of thing without FB/Twitter etc being fully cooperational and competent.

It does make you wonder about recent big voting decisions though...

It depends on what define as 'cooperational and competent'.

Social media apps (& search engines etc) already 'control' to an extent what people get to view by linking suggestions to other content or directing them towards specific content. This is supposed to be done by complex algorithms etc and based on previous viewing history, likes etc. But there is strong evidence out there that suggests that some of the algorithms are used to specifically promote certain political viewpoints and restrict opposing views.
It wasn't that long ago i think that a software engineer from Twitter admitted that they (i.e. Twitter) also employed 'shadow-banning' (i.e. where people make posts/content in good faith, but while they can see it nobody else can) to censor certain individuals.

Add to this that Twitter then also started to de-verify (i.e. remove the blue ticks which verify people are who they say they are) the same sort of individuals. Seems no coincidence that the majority of the individuals in these cases were considered to have political opinions from the right.

So, on the one hand you have these major companies/organisations like Twitter, google, FB etc that actively promote certain political views and censor others on a daily basis, and no-one seems to bat an eye-lid, then you've the likes of CA of using people's data to enable targetted propaganda and it gets portrayed as the end of democracy (sarcasm).

In my mind they are both as bad as each other (targetted propaganda & targetted censorship), but over long term the censorship is likely to be far more dangerous.