I first heard about these fuckers last summer while watching a fascinating BBC2 series called 'Secrets of Silicon Valley'. If I remember correctly, one whole episode was dedicated to the role of CA, Facebook and individually targeted social media messaging in Trump's victory.
They were essentially creating thousands of different versions of the same ads every single day, with language and messaging tailored directly to reflect the language and opinions of the people viewing the ads. So if a single mother posted a Facebook status decrying the state of childcare in her town, she'd see a "Vote Trump" ad later that day saying that improving this situation was one of his main objectives (even though it plainly wasn't).
All very sinister stuff when you consider that this wasn't about getting someone to buy a certain brand of jeans, but trying to directly influence the way they voted in a supposedly democratic election. The main issue being that there wasn't one coherent message being shown to all the people all of the time; everyone was seeing different messages that directly addressed their own individual concerns, whatever they may be and how irrelevant they actually were to Trump's campaign.
Politicians have long been lying, devious shits, but how do you even begin to hold someone to account when all they have done is tell each individual undecided voter exactly what they want to hear? And all this in secret so the wider voting public never gets to see how blatantly contradictory all these different messages are.
@BobKowalski is exactly right when he says its the use of emotional reasoning over factual reasoning. And it urgently needs addressing, because any politician would exploit such tools given the chance. Trump just happened to get there first.
