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New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

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Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#21

Post by crispyambulance »

rossdavidh wrote: post #9
shadowgovt wrote: post #8

Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment. Problem is, even if they are a free and independen…

While I agree with "how malleable opinions are...", the actual answer is, "not very malleable". Every well-designed study of political advertising I've ever seen has shown that it's impact is very small, in some cases unmeasurably small. Thus, for example, the 2016 Clinton campaign raised a lot more $$ than the Trump campaign, whereas the Sanders primary campaign out-fundraised the Clinton one. Now, the impact on the…

>Every well-designed study of political advertising I've ever seen has shown that it's impact is very small, in some cases unmeasurably small.

Skeptical about that.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "political advertising". Does that include targeted misinformation campaigns?

Surveillance capitalism does work, there's no question about that. What happens when a customer of these platforms "tweaks" them for the purpose politics instead of selling shoes (or whatever)? I don't think the answer is clear, yet, but I expect there's some very ugly stuff in there that's "not compatible with democracy"-- as Shoshana Zuboff has said.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#22

Post by luxuryballs »

shadowgovt wrote: post #8

Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment. Problem is, even if they are a free and independen…

Reality TV star? Or are you just cherry picking something that can be made to sound unfit for office?

How about American business magnate and billionaire playboy who even in his 70s was loved enough by the public to become a TV star?

Yeah I just played the opposite card but for the sake of balance and honesty, here:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?187762-1/united-nations-headqu...

https://youtu.be/CXmXd1xrBUQ

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#23

Post by tekmate »

luxuryballs wrote: post #22
shadowgovt wrote: post #8

Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment. Problem is, even if they are a free and independen…

Reality TV star? Or are you just cherry picking something that can be made to sound unfit for office? How about American business magnate and billionaire playboy who even in his 70s was loved enough by the public to become a TV star? Yeah I just played the opposite card but for the sake of balance and honesty, here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?187762-1/united-nations-headqu... https://youtu.be/CXmXd1xrBUQ

the guy was always a laughingstock

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#24

Post by duncanawoods »

rossdavidh wrote: post #9
shadowgovt wrote: post #8

Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment. Problem is, even if they are a free and independen…

While I agree with "how malleable opinions are...", the actual answer is, "not very malleable". Every well-designed study of political advertising I've ever seen has shown that it's impact is very small, in some cases unmeasurably small. Thus, for example, the 2016 Clinton campaign raised a lot more $$ than the Trump campaign, whereas the Sanders primary campaign out-fundraised the Clinton one. Now, the impact on the…

> 2016 Clinton campaign raised a lot more $$ than the Trump campaign

> Sanders primary campaign out-fundraised the Clinton one

These are not convincing examples. They are utterly dominated by confounding details. Clinton had the name-recognition of Coca-Cola vs. an unknown Sanders and the less said about the Trump circus the better. To compare advertising spend of brand-name candidates, you need to account for the vast quantity of non-paid marketing they have received before and during the campaign.

Better examples would be between two similarly unknown candidates in city/county elections. I have heard it claimed (reddit) that these races are almost always won by the biggest spender but I don't have a real source.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#25

Post by boobePhuu7iet7i »

shadowgovt wrote: post #8

Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment. Problem is, even if they are a free and independen…

[flagged]

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#26

Post by luxuryballs »

tekmate wrote: post #23
luxuryballs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality TV star? Or are you just cherry picking something that can be made to sound unfit for office? How about American business magnate and billionaire playboy who even in his 70s was loved enough by the public to become a TV star? Yeah I just played the opposite card but for the sake of balance and honesty, here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?187762-1/united-nations-headqu... https://youtu.be/CXmXd1xrBUQ

the guy was always a laughingstock

He was “presidential” and anti-corruption before it was cool: https://www.c-span.org/video/?187762-1/united-nations-headqu...

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#27

Post by cm2012 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #8

Probably the most useful takeaway from CA's approach is that it's useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of "independent" voters. Ad experts and entertainment companies have known this for decades, but I get the sense the average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment. Problem is, even if they are a free and independen…

I'm a professional FB marketer and have managed both large budgets for private companies and also done political campaigns. I guarantee the trump campaign doesn't use the low quality Cambridge Analytica scraped data in their targeting. They either use voter file records or lookalikes (like everyone else does). All CA data so released so far has been useless, untargeted stuff.

Think about where the data originally came from. People in 2015 downloaded an app, and the app scraped their friends lists. You know what's better than targeting 87 mil loosely connected people? Using the FB algorithm, which targets 330m much, much more accurately and with more connections!

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#28

Post by Moodles »

groundlessly wrote: post #19
Mikeb85 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-establishment sentiment has been brewing for awhile. Some candidates simply tapped into that (Bernie, Trump) whereas the losing candidates either pretended everything was fine (Clinton) or relied on older political ideas (Cruz). I don't think CA was responsible for forming opinions so much as knowing exactly how to exploit existing opinions. And anti-establishment opinions are still popular (Warren and Sanders a…

It’s absolutely wild to me that, with the benefit of 2020 hindsight, we’re still drawing conclusions about the public based on the fact that the person who earned by far the most votes of any candidate in the race still technically lost the election. For people who pride ourselves so much on understanding how systems work, we’re consistently really bad at understanding this one. Maybe public opinion in the US is fick…

I agree the electoral college is not as good as a general public vote, however one counterargument to "side A won more votes than side B!" is that, both sides knew the rules ahead of time so if the rules were a general vote, then the campaigns would have been different so side B may still have won in that case. We will never know.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#29

Post by Mikeb85 »

groundlessly wrote: post #19
Mikeb85 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-establishment sentiment has been brewing for awhile. Some candidates simply tapped into that (Bernie, Trump) whereas the losing candidates either pretended everything was fine (Clinton) or relied on older political ideas (Cruz). I don't think CA was responsible for forming opinions so much as knowing exactly how to exploit existing opinions. And anti-establishment opinions are still popular (Warren and Sanders a…

It’s absolutely wild to me that, with the benefit of 2020 hindsight, we’re still drawing conclusions about the public based on the fact that the person who earned by far the most votes of any candidate in the race still technically lost the election. For people who pride ourselves so much on understanding how systems work, we’re consistently really bad at understanding this one. Maybe public opinion in the US is fick…

> most votes of any candidate in the race still technically lost the election

> For people who pride ourselves so much on understanding how systems work, we’re consistently really bad at understanding this one.

Well, CA seems to have understood that what matters is opinions across enough states to win the Electoral College vote. As you said, it's a system. They optimised for the system that exists.

Even if a majority voted for Clinton, there's enough discontent across the US that Trump won the election quite decisively (304 to 227 electoral college votes). Anyhow, look at the current landscape. Warren + Sanders make up nearly 50% of the Democratic primary polls and their popularity seems to be growing as others drop out and as we get closer to actual voting.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#30

Post by dfxm12 »

growlist wrote: post #13
fmakunbound wrote: post #10

After having seen The Great Hack https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9358204/ over the weekend, it's hard to imagine how the scope expanded again. They used the developing countries all over the world as practice for UK brexit and US's 2016 elections.

> UK brexit Is there any rock solid evidence around this yet? As far as I'm aware it's still in the realm of conspiracy theory. Given how far she's spun hearsay, circumstantial evidence and speculation, I'm betting if Carole Cadwalladr etc. did have anything concrete we'd never hear the end of it.

The head of biz dev for CA says they worked with Leave.EU and UKIP during the Brexit campaign.

https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica-leave-eu...

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