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Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

nytimes.com

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

#131

Post by lupire »

coldtea wrote: post #32
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.

Stereotypes is just another name for abstractions and categorizing, which is how science works all the time. It's just that there are reality (statistics) based stereotypes and bad stereotypes (e.g. jewish conspiracy and such). Still, "all people are unique" is BS, more people within certain groups are more alike than different. X DOES Y because X belongs to group G is always a bad use of stereotyping (except if Y an…

That's not quite right. Abstractions are true but simplified and miss some detail. Stereotypes are correlations where the coefficient is treated as equal to 1 for convenience.

Even reality-based stereotypes are bad, because they perpetuate social ills like racist discrimination. Slavery is reality-based economic system. Being true doesn't make it good.

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

#132

Post by lupire »

crooked-v wrote: post #109
coldtea wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stereotypes is just another name for abstractions and categorizing, which is how science works all the time. It's just that there are reality (statistics) based stereotypes and bad stereotypes (e.g. jewish conspiracy and such). Still, "all people are unique" is BS, more people within certain groups are more alike than different. X DOES Y because X belongs to group G is always a bad use of stereotyping (except if Y an…

It's also important to keep in mind that the history of "bad" stereotypes usually has somebody intentionally signal-boosting them for their own gain, often financial, like medieval kings cultivating negative public opinion about Jews so they could exile them and take their stuff, but sometimes more indirectly social, like the elites in pre-slavery American colonies portraying blacks as inferior to keep the indentured…

Is the Austrian Bodybuilder a Stereotype, or is it an archetype based on Arnold Schwarzenegger?

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

#133

Post by lupire »

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.

It's interesting that the hair-length stereotype was surprising to you, but the clothing color stereotype wasn't. Clothing color is stereotyped even before babies start to grow hair, as a way of signaling gender.

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

#134

Post by lupire »

sosborn wrote: post #19
inetknght wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stereotyping someone by something that you assume they chose is also a gateway to prejudice. @NeedMoreTea said it right by mentioning cases where someone might not have chosen their particular attire.

It works on a macro level though. You have to be ok with idea that the stereotype isn’t 100% perfect, it’s just used to get a majority of your target market.

Yeah, you have to be OK with the idea that you are part of system that has systemic discriminatory effects. It still stinks.

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

#135

Post by walshemj »

ashildr wrote: post #120
walshemj wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all ok in marketing until you have "the time" :-) Btw this is what the "marketing gels" at Burberry still refer to the time when chavs got into Burberry check baseball caps. And this is a direct quote from a mate who works for a big 4 consultancy "gels" being the upper class young women who will be working there. I suspect that Mr Bannon wearing Barbour isn't exactly taken well by their marketing team.

Gels?

Its a joke about the sort of people who work in high end fashion in London - Sloan Rangers think Princess Diana.

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

#136

Post by tlow »

tobr wrote: post #95
tlow wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 favori…

"Just use real quotes and observations"

Again, it seems you have a strong baseless bias against user centered design practices. You argue against a strawman of your creation.

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

#137

Post by wolfgke »

elliekelly wrote: post #100
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...

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

At least of the second part, I am pretty convinced. When I see ads, I always think how wrong and clueless the ad network is again of my true interests.

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

#138

Post by tomrod »

snowwrestler wrote: post #129
tomrod wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who owns cars? It leads pretty quickly to demographics, even if you condition on prior regressands. Older folks who rarely drive are unlikely to be the target of large gas consumption (and thus commodification of personas), hence demographic spoilage will happen regardless.

The fact that humans have attributes does not mean every interaction with them is an act of stereotyping. You’re really stretching now.

So long as the factors are predictive, the stretching is simply narrative creation.
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