Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters • Hacker News Board

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#21

Post by beginningguava » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

carbocation wrote: post #8

everdev wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics / advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that Cambridge is the only one doing this.

Stereotype is probably the correct word, but it's overloaded here. Stereotyping someone by something that they did not choose is a gateway to prejudice: skin color, eye color, place of birth. Stereotyping someone by something that they did choose may be very useful for making inference about them, because it is a revealed preference: clothing tastes, food preferences, etc.

It's just pattern recognition, we have it because it's good for survival.

Maybe that grizzly bear is nice but I'm not going to try and pet it to find out because the stereotype is that it will rip me to shreds

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#22

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

autokad wrote: post #11

everdev wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics / advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that Cambridge is the only one doing this.

one interesting one was that I took 5000 twitter profile photos and averaged the pixel values by male / female. unsurprisingly, the male average had short hair while the woman long. but what did surprise me was that the shirt area of the males had a blue hue and the women had a red one. its not like anyone in particular was wearing red/blue by sex, but on average they were.

[deleted]

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#23

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

autokad wrote: post #11

everdev wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics / advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that Cambridge is the only one doing this.

one interesting one was that I took 5000 twitter profile photos and averaged the pixel values by male / female. unsurprisingly, the male average had short hair while the woman long. but what did surprise me was that the shirt area of the males had a blue hue and the women had a red one. its not like anyone in particular was wearing red/blue by sex, but on average they were.

[deleted]

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#24

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

autokad wrote: post #11

everdev wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics / advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that Cambridge is the only one doing this.

one interesting one was that I took 5000 twitter profile photos and averaged the pixel values by male / female. unsurprisingly, the male average had short hair while the woman long. but what did surprise me was that the shirt area of the males had a blue hue and the women had a red one. its not like anyone in particular was wearing red/blue by sex, but on average they were.

> its not like anyone in particular was wearing red/blue by sex, but on average they were.

A certain Google employee noticed a similar pattern somewhere else.

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#25

Post by deogeo » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

carbocation wrote: post #8

everdev wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics / advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that Cambridge is the only one doing this.

Stereotype is probably the correct word, but it's overloaded here. Stereotyping someone by something that they did not choose is a gateway to prejudice: skin color, eye color, place of birth. Stereotyping someone by something that they did choose may be very useful for making inference about them, because it is a revealed preference: clothing tastes, food preferences, etc.

Looks to me like both are prejudice (even if applied to things usually not called such), and both may be useful.

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#27

Post by brazzledazzle » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #15

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #12

The whole article reads, to me, as "We can sell you ads on the most tenuous associations" as we're too stuck in our own marketing bubble. :) Stereotypical difference between a peace activist and Wall St banker, sure. No doubt some more subtle variations too. Comparing mainstream brands? That seems a stretch too far to say the least. Preferences in clothing and music are the leading indicators of political leaning Or…

I don't think it was being used as the sole metric. Rather, I think it'd be used as a weight. X percent of the population wears A brand, while Y population wears B brand. What correlations can we find in some Z count of reference population? Use that correlation value to infer data where none existed. Yes, some of that inferred data will be wrong. But a lot won't be. And when you're talking a massive numbers game lik…

I think you’re spot on. I have friend that probably defies nearly every major category he’s part of: age, race, population density, location, home and perhaps even vehicle. But after reading this I realized his clothes do stand out and might be one of the few outward things that don’t suggest “middle aged midwest conservative”. If you need to figure out where to focus canvassing and marketing in a political campaign it’s probably not bad to have a range of variables and metrics to weigh, especially when things are otherwise mostly homogeneous. My friend isn’t going to tell his neighbors he voted for Clinton but you better believe he did.

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#28

Post by downandout » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

everdev wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics / advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that Cambridge is the only one doing this.

There is a large body of evidence suggesting that psychographic profiling is not effective [1] [2]. So I'm actually not sure that stereotypes do have utility when it comes to marketing. If they do have utility, the 2016 election is certainly not evidence of it. CA itself actually admitted that psychographic profiling - the technique referred to in this article by Mr. Wylie - wasn't even used by the Trump campaign [3]:

"...despite articles still featured on its website touting the role psychographic techniques played in Trump’s campaign, the statement added, “We have always stated on the record that Cambridge Analytica did not have the opportunity to dive deeply into our psychographic offering because we simply did not have the time...."

In short, this Mr. Wylie is hyping up the efficacy of the techniques he developed so he can get paid to speak at conferences like the one he did here and extend his 15 minutes of fame. There would be nothing wrong with his being paid to speak at conferences if his techniques had been used in the event that made him famous, however that is not the case here.

[1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/23/17152564/ca...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17138854/cambridge-analyt...

[3] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/the-trut...

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#29

Post by lsc » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #12

The whole article reads, to me, as "We can sell you ads on the most tenuous associations" as we're too stuck in our own marketing bubble. :) Stereotypical difference between a peace activist and Wall St banker, sure. No doubt some more subtle variations too. Comparing mainstream brands? That seems a stretch too far to say the least. Preferences in clothing and music are the leading indicators of political leaning Or…

Pretty much. I think this is also why self-driving cars are still not mainstream, while we all carry little cameras in our pocket that can literally translate text in real time.

Like... the things we have that work? they work 95% of the time, and for translating menus? that's amazing! and really useful.

Advertising is something where getting it right 95% of the time is way overkill, too. so you can advertise on super tenuous links, and it's fine! totally works.

working 95% of the time just isn't okay for self driving cars, and that is what makes the problem so hard.

Re: Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

#30

Post by NeedMoreTea » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #15

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #12

The whole article reads, to me, as "We can sell you ads on the most tenuous associations" as we're too stuck in our own marketing bubble. :) Stereotypical difference between a peace activist and Wall St banker, sure. No doubt some more subtle variations too. Comparing mainstream brands? That seems a stretch too far to say the least. Preferences in clothing and music are the leading indicators of political leaning Or…

I don't think it was being used as the sole metric. Rather, I think it'd be used as a weight. X percent of the population wears A brand, while Y population wears B brand. What correlations can we find in some Z count of reference population? Use that correlation value to infer data where none existed. Yes, some of that inferred data will be wrong. But a lot won't be. And when you're talking a massive numbers game lik…

In those terms it sounds perfectly reasonable. Just as "Preferences in clothing and music are the leading indicators of political leaning" is rather different to "Preferences in clothing and music are two strong indicators, of the dozens of factors we used to infer political leaning". Just like Google use hundreds of factors, with probably a few more significant ones, to decide search placement.

I'm sure inferences can be made in aggregate, but the precision that is implied in the article, from just two indicators is a leap. Shoddy reporting, or a little too much hyperbole from someone giving a conference speech I couldn't say.

It's the sort of thing that gives rise to 30 minutes of comedy in the office when there's been some reason, like a news piece, to view FB, google or other profiles. We inevitably find that half the office is mis-gendered, aged, those with children don't and vice versa, and on. These profiles seem to get most people wrong much of the time, but be worth something in aggregate. :)