81–90 of 156 posts
I'm confused. Jeremy Corbyn could have clicked on the button "why do I see this ad" and find out he was targeted.
Even the idea of that ads can be targeted this tightly isn't common knowledge outside of technical circles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. The endgame of this notion is politicians promising each constituent exactly what they want to hear and concealing what they don't.
Problem: Politicians thrive on buying votes by targeting individual voters with tailored promises of government money spent in personally attractive ways.
Solution: Abolish the Welfare State, so there is nothing left to feed such promises.
Short of that, we shall have to accept the stench of special-interest politics rotting into individually targeted political ads, at all levels of government. At some point it is likely to turn totalitarian, because not only do you not control what "ads" you are fed but you also do not control what "news" you are fed -- and then you have no reliable, reasonable basis for any of your social, economical, or political actions.
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 th…
Most of the Blairites had deep links to elite establishment institutions (think tanks, global nonprofits) and industry (media, PR, finance, etc.). That formed the mainstay of their power while Corbyn's power base was grass roots (e.g. Momentum), left wing activist networks and unions. Ultimately it wasn't really about policy for the rebel MPs, it was about seeing the main source of their power undermined. There isn't…
Blairites have little career under any leader until memories have faded and there's another tipping point like Black Monday that brought them in in the first place. Brexit looks like it could easily cause one of those, going on current negotiations, so perhaps they won't be waiting too long.
”When the leader of a political party can be tricked in such fashion by his own officials, voters themselves stand little chance.”
This event does not support the conclusion that social media ads are effective at “tricking voters”. These ads weren’t even shown to voters. Employees simply microtargeted their boss to convince him that the ads were running.
The idea that social media ads are somehow effective at brainwashing people into switching sides has been a clickbait staple among journalists the last few years, but it is wholly unproven. If they want to sell this narrative, they’ll certainly need do it more convincingly than they did here.
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That already exists. If you click the menu icon next to an ad on Facebook you can select "Why am I seeing this?". You can also see all the advertisers who have targeted you on https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/ .
It's kinda useless, though. They give you the most general of the targeting - all mine say stuff like "men in the United States" when they've clearly got additional very specific stuff enabled.
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It's called agree of misinformation because it's become increasingly easy to produce convincing fake footage. It's entirely possible to fake a real-time video interview for instance using voice synthesis and mapping the face of your target upon your face. It's frighteningly convincing. I.e. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUC4m6w1wo
I don't think that footage is frighteningly convincing. It's pretty good, but not difficult to tell that it's not real. The bridge between pretty good and perfect when doing this type of thing is a very, very difficult problem. It also requires substantial amounts of high quality, up close footage of the person. This may be work for major politicans, but is much more difficult for the vast majority of people. I don't…
Video material can be produced at will if a wealthy nation or corporatiom wants it and the model will be significantly better if they train it on specialized hardware.
I don't think that the average person has to worry about his face being stolen. I think that it's possible to produce extremely good footage if somebody is sufficiently motivated to fund a smear campaign. It won't hold up in court, but it doesn't have to either.
From the article: ”When the leader of a political party can be tricked in such fashion by his own officials, voters themselves stand little chance.” This event does not support the conclusion that social media ads are effective at “tricking voters”. These ads weren’t even shown to voters. Employees simply microtargeted their boss to convince him that the ads were running. The idea that social media ads are somehow ef…
Facebook has long promised more visibility for users into ads, and that would go a long way to fighting this kind of trickery ... if it ever materialises.
Wow. We've seen people microtarget leaders and CEOs with ads on Facebook to get a job. http://twicsy-blog.tumblr.com/post/174063770074/how-i-target... This is a case where microtargeting the boss hopefully cost them their job. This is completely unethical.
I would assume it's also possibly illegal? They took 5000 pounds and spent it in a way that was clearly unauthorized. Seems like misappropriation to me.
From the article: ”When the leader of a political party can be tricked in such fashion by his own officials, voters themselves stand little chance.” This event does not support the conclusion that social media ads are effective at “tricking voters”. These ads weren’t even shown to voters. Employees simply microtargeted their boss to convince him that the ads were running. The idea that social media ads are somehow ef…
I think it supports the conclusion very well. If you can microtarget ads at segments of voters, you can find a way to tell different types of people exactly what they want to hear. You can quite effectively prey on their fears and weaknesses, pit them against each other–divide and conquer. Facebook has long promised more visibility for users into ads, and that would go a long way to fighting this kind of trickery ...…
The genesis of these articles - the media’s quest to explain how it failed to manipulate our Presiential election in favor of their chosen candidate - is also based on a false premise. Russian Facebook ads didn’t get Trump elected. The choice by Democrats to run a candidate against him that much of the country disliked did.
Just another example on why marketing and advertisement is a scourge upon society, it is far to easy to manipulate from the background without oversight or any ethical or moral considerations and is known to be highly effective at making people act against even their own self interests.