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Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

#41

Post by NeedMoreTea »

I'm fascinated to see the apparently limitless efforts that both the media and his own party went to in order to brand Corbyn as an extreme and dangerous left winger and undermine his progress.

His policies were comparable to, and sometimes to the right of, those of the SDP. The SDP being the right of the Labour party who split in the 1980s and later merged with the Liberals to give today's LibDems.

He was more of the fringe in his youth. So were quite a lot of people, current politicians, even Blairites included. Peter Hain (anti-apartheid and gay rights) and David Blunkett (Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire[0]) spring to mind as having had far more activist and strident roots than Corbyn. Blunkett went on to be a Home Secretary the right of the Tory party would have been proud of.

Edit: Nowhere am I advocating his policies, why the downvotes?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Republic_of_South_Yo...

Re: Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

#42

Post by ScottBurson »

fareesh wrote: post #24
andy_ppp wrote: post #8

So they ran ultra left wing ads micro targeted at Corbyn and similar supporters so these people thought everyone was seeing them. I really wonder if micro targeting should just be switched off for everyone during political campaigns. It allows political parties to do exactly this, be literally all things to all people rather than genuine in their messaging. How can we educate people this is happening? I’m certain it’…

If you can speak to me one on one and tell me why I should vote for you, and you convince me - then you deserve my vote. Microtargeting allows you to do that at scale. If I care about a certain issue and you advertise to me in a way that matches up to the things I care about, and present ideas that I agree with, then you are campaigning correctly. If a politician saw that I cared about the environment and argued for…

To expand on @andy_ppp's point: how can you hold a politician responsible for the promises they make you, when no one else knows what those were?

Re: Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

#43

Post by addicted »

Btw, for all those who like to step in other aritcles about the concerns with social media, to tell us how it's just like TV was a few decades ago, this article shows why it absolutely is not.

The persoinal targeting provided by FB and the like makes it an entirely different beast from past experiences.

Re: Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

#44

Post by simplecomplex »

fareesh wrote: post #24
andy_ppp wrote: post #8

So they ran ultra left wing ads micro targeted at Corbyn and similar supporters so these people thought everyone was seeing them. I really wonder if micro targeting should just be switched off for everyone during political campaigns. It allows political parties to do exactly this, be literally all things to all people rather than genuine in their messaging. How can we educate people this is happening? I’m certain it’…

If you can speak to me one on one and tell me why I should vote for you, and you convince me - then you deserve my vote. Microtargeting allows you to do that at scale. If I care about a certain issue and you advertise to me in a way that matches up to the things I care about, and present ideas that I agree with, then you are campaigning correctly. If a politician saw that I cared about the environment and argued for…

[flagged]

Re: Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

#46

Post by Rjevski »

corobo wrote: post #19
elorant wrote: post #10

So how exactly microtargetting works? They target his interests? Or just import emails and hope they match the ones they provided?

> micro-targeting Facebook adverts at the leader and his closest aides I'm guessing they created a new target list by uploading enough peoples' email addresses to get past Facebook's minimum list length. I don't know how many that is but when I last had a look at it a couple years back the minimum was 20

I think they raised that limit recently, but again nothing prevents you from creating lots of fake profiles just to get past that limit, then targeting all those profiles + the real user you want to target.

Re: Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

#48

Post by 52-6F-62 »

mkempe wrote: post #18
adamnemecek wrote: post #5

Programming people seems to be the next frontier of programming.

Hasn't social engineering always been a common aspect of hacking?

Absolutely. There's a difference in scale and intent, however. Probably simplifying here...

I think the hacking thing always had a bit more of a Robin Hood complex coupled with it. The lone renegades taking on powers and organizations much larger than themselves for entertainment, or acquiring status that they weren't otherwise bestowed.

This is powers using it to manipulate other powers, where the price is paid by the people 'Robin Hoods' were never originally out to exploit.

Re: Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

#49

Post by eeeuo »

Gargoyle wrote: post #38
GreeniFi wrote: post #25

This is disturbing for the following reasons: 1. It alerts us to the possibility of fake political adverts. Do I (hypothetically)see an ad purporting to be a Tory ad promising something that will damage me, placed by a non-Tory actor? 2. Are unknown actors placing adverts which cause discord and dislike? 3. How do we solve this problem? Where FB is not regulated it will be impossible to knowingly audit the materials…

Fake advertising for the purpose of creating discord is as old as political advertising. I had a friend run for state legislature in the 1990s, his opponent sent people around targeted neighborhoods passing out fake flyers for my friend's campaign. They used his name and photo, but attributed positions he did not hold to him. I imagine before cheap printing, it was gossip. I'm sure it's been the case since democracy…

People often suggest that the Internet is a problem in terms of disinformation, but I'd argue in many cases that the Internet actually helps.

In pre-Internet days, it was difficult to get someone's views in their own words, especially in real-time. All information was filtered through various sources before being passed onto the consumer. Now, it's straightforward to check their website, or their twitter, or their youtube.

This, of course, is not perfect and requires a root-of-trust involving Google and DNS, but I'd certainly take that tradeoff versus Guy On The Street asserting things.

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