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

thetimes.co.uk

101–110 of 156 posts

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

#102
post #24

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…

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?

You can do this over email too. Who's to say I don't delete the email? If I keep the mail I can probably keep a screenshot too.

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

#103
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And presumably they took the larger sum the 5k came from and spent it on something even less authorized!

I would expect it's easy to make the case of misappropriation when directing the money to an unauthorized advertising campaign; or to an authorized campaign, but for a different, unauthorized product.

It's a lot harder to make that case here, with campaigns using unexpected copywritting and targeting, both of which were at the liberty of the people running the campaigns. Selecting those was literally their job and given the massive Labour gains, it's hard to argue they failed at it.

It's clearly a case of internal insubordination and disciplinary action - which I'm sure the perpetrators were expecting, but deemed them an acceptable sacrifice to protect the party from what they seen as the bumbling fools running it.

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

#104
post #90

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.

My point exactly. Advertising is unethical/immoral, plain and simple.

What if you are advertising to raise money/awareness for the poor/in-need? Is that unethical/immoral?

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

#105
post #97

This pretty interesting, not only did his campaign fool him, they fooled the people voting for Corbyn —they made him appear more centrist than he actually was for, they feared, if they broadcast his real intended message to all, it might have turned voters away from his views.

One could very plausibly argue that the second point (making the candidate more electable / centrist) has been the entire point of political campaigning since the ancient Greeks. Politicians have been lying to voters (or more charitably, putting their best foot forward) since the very beginning of democracy.

Usually the candidate is in on it. Remarkably, Corbyn isn’t or wasn’t so they had to pull this stunt.

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

#106
post #24

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…

What seems to constantly happen is that we are instead served up the porridge that’s specifically for us while we don’t see the whole picture and what all the other people have also been promised. What I’m saying is that the narrative of a manifesto or even what a political party stands for is corrupted by being “all things to all people” in their messaging.

I don't think anyone has managed to pull this off, simply because social media is also a very effective way of broadcasting the fact that someone is trying to do so. People get pissed off when they think someone is trying to pull a fast one on them, and they feel smart when they think they've outwitted them, and both of those things make for effective viral content. This even happens when the claim isn't true; for instance, there's a perennial viral news hoax about the Washington Post running opposite headlines in Trump-supporting and Clinton-supporting areas that keeps popping up despite having a Snopes debunking.

If the social media networks clamp down on ordinary people's ability to spread political messages this might work. Which I guess could happen, given the pressure for them to do so.

(The Trump campaign seems to have sensibly not even tried this and just used micro-targetting as a way of reducing the cost of getting their message in front of the people who're interested in it. If people outside the target group saw their message organically, well, that was basically just free advertising.)

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

#107
post #99

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. The endgame of this notion is politicians promising each constituent exactly what they want to hear and concealing what they don't.

The key word there is convince. Most replies to my post seem to think the act of making a promise means you have convinced the voter. It seems very hypocritical to think that people are responsible enough to choose their elected officials while at the same time argue that they can't be trusted to make an informed decision because of a Facebook ad which promised them what they wanted. If you microtarget me and your op…

If a person was to go round your office saying subtly different things to everyone in the hope of making friends and ending up in charge, would you think that was fair or would it make them a creep?

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

#108
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What seems to constantly happen is that we are instead served up the porridge that’s specifically for us while we don’t see the whole picture and what all the other people have also been promised. What I’m saying is that the narrative of a manifesto or even what a political party stands for is corrupted by being “all things to all people” in their messaging.

Is there any example of this? In American politics and British politics (where much of the current drama stems from), the issues and candidates are promising opposite things in many ways. Hillary Clinton was not promising the return of coal jobs. Donald Trump was not promising a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Jeremy Corbyn was not promising leaving the EU. These were all very polarized issues and perspec…

Donald Trump actually says contradictory things every 5 minutes in order to appeal as broadly as possible (and if you think the Super PACs aren’t running ads that are contradictory you’re plain wrong) and the article is about successfully conning a microtargeted group to believe something that wasn’t true. Facepalm.

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

#109
post #82

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. The endgame of this notion is politicians promising each constituent exactly what they want to hear and concealing what they don't.

This is a deep threat to the founding values of representative government, worthy of reflection. 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 rott…

Well, yes, a government that doesn't actually do anything for its citizens is likely to have less corruption. It's not much of a government, though.

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

#110
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What seems to constantly happen is that we are instead served up the porridge that’s specifically for us while we don’t see the whole picture and what all the other people have also been promised. What I’m saying is that the narrative of a manifesto or even what a political party stands for is corrupted by being “all things to all people” in their messaging.

I don't think anyone has managed to pull this off, simply because social media is also a very effective way of broadcasting the fact that someone is trying to do so. People get pissed off when they think someone is trying to pull a fast one on them, and they feel smart when they think they've outwitted them, and both of those things make for effective viral content. This even happens when the claim isn't true; for in…

TFA is about abusing micro targeting to convince a group (in this case the Labour Leadership) of something that wasn’t true. I don’t see how you could have a more direct example of something you’re saying doesn’t exist.
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