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

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

#91

Post by barbecue_sauce » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:00 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #84

snowwrestler wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're talking about using personas. I'm not surprised that was your reaction, as personas are often misunderstood, even by marketing folks. The point of using personas is not to stereotype your customers but to establish focus sufficient to permit clear product decisions. In other words the idea is not "all our customers are like this" but "this is the type of customer we care about the most." Or more typica…

Right. With personas, you're using demographics to predict behavior (and, occasionally, craft your product, which isn't marketing but rather product design). That is another word for stereotypes.

"Product" is one of the 4-Ps of marketing. With that meaningless jargon out of the way, as someone who attended a non-technical marketing undergrad program, product development was one of the tracks, with a course requirement in the general curriculum and a few related electives.

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

#92

Post by malvosenior » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:09 PM UTC

iscrewyou wrote: post #57

dvt wrote: post #55

As much as I think Trump's idiotic anti-media rhetoric erodes our democracy, when I see the NY Times publishing articles like this, it makes me cringe. First of all, it's a complete non-article -- marketing firms used correlative data to make inferences about political affiliation? No way! Second of all, instead of being a smart and pointed analysis as to why this might be bad, it somehow draws political conclusions…

These news don’t make a big splash when other companies use profiling to identify people. This one did because those profiles were used to incite violence. It’s news, just not to your liking.

What violence did it incite?

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

#93

Post by malvosenior » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:13 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #88

malvosenior wrote: post #7

> Mr. Wylie explained that clothing preferences were a key metric for Cambridge Analytica, whose business was constructing and selling voter profiles drawn from Facebook data. > “Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right,” he said. Cambridge Analytica built the “alt-right”? Even if that term has any meaning (I don’t really think it does), this statement…

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. The article is obviously pretty low-quality and technically incompenent; I'd expect better from HN's front page. Even with the left-wing spin, arguing that CA (or even Bannon) built the alt-right is just laugh-out-loud wrong.

I don’t think we’ll get an answer but the downvotes all came in a span of a couple minutes so maybe some partisan site linked to the HN post or something.

Down voters feel free to explain if you actually have a objection.

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

#94

Post by tobr » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:14 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #80

tobr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they’re supposed to be individuals, but the problem is that unlike real individuals, you made them up. You can’t learn anything from them that you didn’t put into them yourself. Only a real person with lifelong experience of being themselves can give you insight into what that’s like.

Look, if you take a group of 100 people who are into Warhammer 40k, chances are that at least 80% of them will have played StarCraft too. Collapsing that group into a single person and calling her Wendy helps some people reason about them. If you prefer to think of them a Venn diagrams and that helps you sleep at night, no crime in that.

But you’re not learning that from a persona, you’re learning it from talking to 100 real people. You can put that into a persona if you like, but it won’t give you any new knowledge.

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

#95

Post by tobr » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:28 PM UTC

tlow wrote: post #82

tobr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they’re supposed to be individuals, but the problem is that unlike real individuals, you made them up. You can’t learn anything from them that you didn’t put into them yourself. Only a real person with lifelong experience of being themselves can give you insight into what that’s like.

This is not necessarily the case and makes light of an entire field. Often times personas are developed by ethnographers, human centered designers, design researchers and are based upon actual users or prospective users. Furthermore, data analytics can be used to generate personas. Personas can be representative of key forks in behavior patterns or beliefs and are a useful tool when making design and product decision…

I’m aware that personas are often based upon insights from real people, but I question the value of repackaging the insights as a new, made up person. It introduces distractions and invites stereotypes. Just use real quotes and observations, statistics if it makes sense, and focus on describing typical or recurring situations or behaviors that are relevant to what you’re using the research for. A hair color or favorite snack isn’t going to be helpful.

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

#96

Post by sjg007 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #58

Jedi72 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was hilarious as an engineer who needed to learn marketing 101 for a startup, its pretty much just stereotyping your customers. "Wendy is a 24-30 yr old professional, slightly insecure, straight, likes wine and dogs."

I think you're talking about using personas. I'm not surprised that was your reaction, as personas are often misunderstood, even by marketing folks. The point of using personas is not to stereotype your customers but to establish focus sufficient to permit clear product decisions. In other words the idea is not "all our customers are like this" but "this is the type of customer we care about the most." Or more typica…

So is the solution here just to hire these personas into your marketing department? Is this what all the marketing interns are for?

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

#97

Post by icebraining » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:31 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #7

> Mr. Wylie explained that clothing preferences were a key metric for Cambridge Analytica, whose business was constructing and selling voter profiles drawn from Facebook data. > “Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right,” he said. Cambridge Analytica built the “alt-right”? Even if that term has any meaning (I don’t really think it does), this statement…

> Bannon’s “insurgency”? No spin there.

Bannon himself used the term: "We're leading an insurgency movement against the Republican establishment"

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/steve-bann...

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

#98

Post by sjg007 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:32 PM UTC

So what information could they see? Could they see posts and shares? If they installed the app from before? I mean you can find right wingers by looking at all of the right wing pages on Facebook and seeing who is in them. I can't imagine it's that difficult.

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

#99

Post by liftbigweights » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:34 PM UTC

Why is this news? Everyone does this, including the nytimes. The nytimes marketing department offers their clients on all kinds of identifying/targeting traits for advertising.

From your fashion to your viewing habits to which news you consuming to even the types of pets you have and everything in between is used. Where you work, where you live, what kind of parenting situation you have, etc.

Isn't that the point of political and corporate advertising? Isn't this why the nytimes and cambridge analytica is in business? Is the obvious "news" now because of trump and the "right wing"?

Considering the DNC spent a lot more money than the RNC the past few elections, there are far more organizations who targeted left-wing voters than right-wing voters. But I guess the nytimes doesn't want to write an article about itself and its ad team and their clients.

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

#100

Post by elliekelly » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 11:35 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #81

I just ask myself how I, a person who satisfies quite some nerd stereotypes would be classified by these algorithm (in particular for political advertising). So for example the small number of categories that Google Ads assigns to me ( https://google.com/ads/preferences ) are correct - but featureless and quite hard for marketers to target.

It's very likely that you just think they're "featureless and quite hard for marketers to target."

For example, this story (from 2012) about Target's ability to predict a woman's pregnancy: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...