Some details on the actual technology are in this related article:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-merc...
> On its website, Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters
Then there are some speculation what data could it be and how would it be used. From that, it seems that the difference between other "Better audience targeting" tools used for typical commercial advertising campaigns would be mainly scale and accuracy?
As a side note, does anyone else thinks that this specific photo in article about manipulation was used to manipulate my emotions and invoke negative view of the other side?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-merc...
Yes, he's either got a crazy face or "laughing all the way to the bank" face. They used fairly "stock" photos of Mercer and perhaps Banon, but Trump has a look of confusion and Farage looks mental. For the record I'm neither pro Trump or pro Brexit. I wish both sides wouldn't participate in behaviors like this.
I wonder how long until your browser or an addon can get the gist of the article's subjects compare with image recognition the facial expressions and let you know if there might be some editorial bias. Just something to put in your subconscious before the editor/author works on your subconscious
You can see that sort of thing everywhere, subtle manipulation through image choice. Here's another example:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/06/brussels-punishin...
That article is supposedly about Brexit and Marine Le Pen, but the image chosen for the top of the article claims to be a picture of a Russian journalist (holding up pictures of Trump, Le Pen and Putin). In fact she's not a journalist at all, her name is Maria Katasonova and she is an obscure candidate for a far-right Russian political party. I can only assume the point of doing this is to try and plant the subconscious message that Russian journalism is unreliable.
Some of it is explained on this 5 minutes video (ignore the clickbait title). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo3gOoOSdhY According to this professor one of the things they used for better targetting is a person's Big 5 personality profile that they extract from Facebook likes.
As far as I know Big5 is not the final, definitive model. There is this famous quote about performance of NLP machine learning system going up after firing a linguist, I wonder if we will someday hear similar comment about psychologists?
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nigel+farage&tbm=isch
He's not exactly known for looking Churchillian.
What problems does that actually expose about his platform, or how does it show that his opponents are correct? It is barely even an ad-hominem attack - am attack on his character or reputation might lead me to believe that his viewpoint is held by untrustworthy people, but his face? It means nothing.
And yet it does have a small subconscious impact, causing a bias in my thinking.
The Anti-Defimation League whose reason d'être is to combat anti-Semitism came out with a statement against Ellison on Dec 1, 2016,[2] but you won't see MSM mention the ADL condemnation of Ellison.
[1] http://jpupdates.com/2014/08/03/rep-ellison-explains-anti-ir...
[2] http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/israel-middle...
[3] http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/17/democrats-must-scrutinize-...
Of course choosing Ellison as a candidate to lead them was truly a lack of judgment on the part of the DNC but for some reason, NY Times, Washington Post, etc. failed to report Ellison's views and the ADL statement.
EDIT: The Wall Street Journal, unlike NYTimes and Washington Post does bring up Ellison's anti-Semitism, but only after the fact, not before the election:
"Mr. Ellison, who is an African-American Muslim, also faced complaints about his past associations with the Nation of Islam and statements he has made that were perceived as criticizing Israel. Haim Saban, an Israeli-American donor who funded the construction of the DNC’s Washington headquarters, in December publicly called Mr. Ellison “clearly an anti-Semite.”" [4]
[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-elect-tom-perez-party...
It is also very much possible to be anti-Semitic and pro-Israel, but I won't go into those mental gymnastics here.
Edit: the mental gymnastics that have been offered elsewhere basically boil down to, "we hate Jews, but are fine giving them their own country if it means they leave America." White supremacists are also pro-Israel because they think having a Jewish homeland justifies having a white homeland (America, Europe, etc).
Practically speaking I'd say it is less than you think.
Anti-Zionism is often just a proxy for hating jews who live in Israel.
There's no real way to engage with somebody who willfully tries to remove that distance.
I could say something similar the other way but that would be to accept your invitation to a framing competition.
Actually this whole: there is no way to engage with x is a problem IMO.
You cite the ADL's statement about Ellison (which doesn't accuse him of anti-Semitism, but instead retracts ADL support based on his statements about US support for Israel government policy), but you seem to have ignored their statements about Bannon, eg:
http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/miscellaneous...
http://cleveland.adl.org/news/trump-appointee-bannon-accused...
If I were to introduce a bill to the house floor today that says we give Zimbabwae one billion USD to build a missile system to defend against terrorist missile strikes - a system which they refused to share details regarding its operative details and technical/operational schematics - and it was voted down, would you say all of Congress are anti-Zimbabwaen and terrorist sympathizer?
This explains most of the rare exceptions to the "winner spent the most" rule.
Did Trump outspend Rodham?
Please, help me explore how this is significantly different than the Russia vs US election issue on the other side of the pond.
Robert Reich says that Brexit and the Trump victory happened because the economic recovery after the 2008 crash wasn't quite a big hit (contrary to what we all might have hoped for).
Now that may be due to changing economic realities, i think that people blamed transnational entities (EU, NAFTA, TTIP) and the elites that supported these developments for what happened. The only entity that could change the status quo were the populists (due to the neo-liberal consensus that erased any real differences between right and left) [1]. Now the backlash against the populists might come either from a reformed left or from a reformed right, go figure.
I don't think that financial support by a moneybag could have changed the global picture in any significant way. For every right wing sponsor there is one on the left.
[1] in Britain they had Boris Johnson, who played a major role throughout the referendum campaign.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5vxxyh/reddit_i...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2017/02/20/reddit-i...
some of us were smart enough never to start using them in the first place
So, one part Machiavelli, one part sociopath?
It's just a numbers game like sales, you may not always be able to influence one particular voter but you can nudge a swing population X number of percentage points in your favoured direction.
People were not swayed by abstract arguments of balances of trade, but about lies told about paying £350m per week to the NHS rather than Europe.
Both sides engaged in hyperbole but no amount of rhetoric would change what people saw around them with their own eyes. Some saw a thriving metropolis that benefited massively from the EU; others saw factory towns decimated by the switch in trade away from the Commonwealth and towards the EU. It just so happens there were more of the latter than the former.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/derekxiao/2016/06/22/from-disas...
Including most of the mainstream media, tv personalities, actors, etc.
Not to mention that they had the full cooperation and support of the state, that was supposed to be neutral.
Plus thinly veiled (or open) threats from all kinds of businesses, heads of foreign states, etc against a Brexit.
Indeed, the entire premise of this article is that people make up their mind based on what they see on Facebook, although Leave voters trend old (i.e. the people least likely to heavily use Facebook). The idea that it's sinister and scary comes from an academic "expert". This way of thinking has been pushed so hard by the left wing and pro-EU segment of media and society:
• Trust experts, not yourself.
• People who disagree with us are merely influenced by lies.
• It should be (pro-EU) MPs, not a referendum result, that decides what happens.
• When courts overrule referendums, that's democracy.
• Referendums are a bad idea because the outcome is pre-determined by whoever lies the most/spends the most money/is best at manipulation/etc.
It's a worldview that dehumanises anyone who disagrees and makes fools of anyone who adopts it, as the endless shrill cries of "what about the £350 million for the NHS" make clear - as if no lies were told by the Remain campaign! Emergency budgets that never happened, an insta-recession that never happened, Cameron saying he'd stay on and then immediately resigning, Obama saying the USA would shun the UK, the £4300/yr figure that was dropped the moment the Treasury produced it because it was clear this "expert prediction" was nonsense, the "we can stay in a reformed EU" despite the actual leaders of the EU saying that wasn't going to happen, etc etc.
But despite all that, only one side constantly harps on the idea that the vote wasn't reliable because of nonsense said by politicians: the side that never believed in voting to begin with.
It's perhaps because you listen to "left-wing" politicians and people in power, and you're out of touch with people who have actual leftist opinions, that you get this impression. But it has nothing to do with being left-wing as it has it with being in power.
So, I think you should stop labeling those things as leftist (they are not - democracy is in fact very much a leftist idea), you're only hurting your own cause, by seeing enemies where you could have allies.
And these "experts" you talk of, they're just as politically motivated as you are, think about that.
I am basing my list on attitudes expressed by people in:
1) The Guardian
2) The Labour party
3) Friends who I know strongly identify as left wing
I think you'll agree Labour, the Guardian and people who explicitly identify as left wing are all describable as left wing.
Most people won't explicitly state outright that they distrust democracy. But all I have to do is examine the number of MPs that voted against the Article 50 bill (to begin implementation of the referendum) in each party to see a clear difference between the right and left wing parties. It was after all the Tories that gave the UK a referendum on the EU, and Labour that said they would and then went back on their promise.
All I have to do is compare randomly chosen articles in the Guardian and (say) the Telegraph to see the clear difference in attitudes.
And when I look at what my friends are sharing on Facebook, there's a clear correlation between those who were most appalled by Brexit and the ones who are constantly sharing anti-Tory screeds.
So, I do feel that my experiences are pretty consistent in this regard, and I know from articles and comments I read elsewhere that I'm not alone in this.
https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/on-the-refe...
https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/on-the-refe...
As for the rest of the article and the graph of influence. I wish some SC wiz kid would build a "revenue Big Brother" DB so we can see and track all these often nefarious connections. We have video games out the ass but no way of knowing and seeing a graph of relationshios that for all practical purposes paints a picture of corruption. When will we finally get something that useful?
In all fairness: Isn't "extremely troubling undisclosed support-in-kind" exactly what Bannon and Mercer are charging the "mainstream media" with?
(Disclosure: No Trump supporter, nor Ukip. Not a citizen in both countries)
That idea occurred to me a few months ago. I've been researching it in some depth, and like most good ideas, I'm hardly the first to stumble accross it. In recent memory, Elizabeth Eisenstein has pursued the idea to a greater extent than nearly anyone else, in particular in her 1980 book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Review here (full text available via https://sci-hub.cc):
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2779560?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...
I'm aware of a number of those transitions, and there's good evidence for nearly all of the corresponding changes.
1. Speach and language itself: increased intra- and inter-tribal communications. Strong evidence of rapidly advancing toolmaking, including stone tools, and weapons.
2. Writing. Co-incident with the start of civilisation itself, cities, and agriculture. Spread like wildfire from regions in which it first developed over a period of a few centuries for the most part.
3. Printing. Moveable type, in Europe, corresponded with thhe Reformation, schism of the Catholic Church, and a continent-wide 30 Years War.
4. Incremental improvements in literacy, papermaking, and printing: the American and French revolutions.
5. Steam-powered, iron-framed prresses, greatly increased literacy, and much cheaper paper: the Revolutions of 1848, in which 50 nations in Europe and Latin America experienced revolutionary uprisings.
6. Mass media, especially radio, public address systems, cinema, audio tape recording, grammaphone, and ever cheaper and faster presses: the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany, demagogues in the United States (Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy).
7. In the 1950s - 2010s, mass social movements piggy-backing on radio, mobile PA systems (bullhorns), mass music, television, CB radio, call-in radio, telephones, mimeographs, Xerox machines, Fanzines, dial-up, broadband, and mobile Internet, Web-based apps, social media.
Profiling, targeted messaging, and other elements operate similarly.
The overall dynamics are complex, and I've omitted other elements, but the overall concept seems quite strong. Many authors have commented on elements of this, though few look to the darker side. Le Bon, Mackay, Bernays, McLuhan, Chomsky, Mander, Shirky, and boyd are among those who have.
