Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
you're clinging to a fantasy
New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
31–40 of 204 posts
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#32Probably 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 cam…
If the data you're referring to didn't come from a company like CA, how did the campaign get access to it?
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#33Probably 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 cam…
Is FB making their raw data public, though?
There's a strategy/tactics divide to consider. Relying on FB's targeting algorithms is tactical - that'll give you great targeting once the time comes to execute your campaign.
But CA data, even if noisy, has been exfiltrated out from under privacy controls, so that you can get a much more direct look at it. That allows an analyst to get a more detailed sense of what social networks actually look like. I imagine that is more useful for figuring out what kinds of people you should be targeting in the first place, in order to maximize the leverage of your campaign.
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#34Earlier 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…
[deleted]
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#35Probably 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
Wouldn't that be misleading though? There are active disinformation campaigns that are linked to the same people and organizations doing political campaigning.
Cambridge Analytica has apparently been (at the least) tracking people via these networks [1] [2], and it's not much of a stretch to assume some of the same targeting data used for traditional political ads would also be used for disinformation (which is often designed so it doesn't appear to be political).
There are news and TV networks that constantly present confirmed lies (often stated by the politicians themselves) as "news", so the fact they still have viewers and are still in business must mean this type of disinformation is somewhere between somewhat and extremely effective. Whether this is "political advertising" is maybe less clear, but it's definitely designed to influence politics and political opinions.
[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/03/19/cambridge-anal...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2018/sep/29/cambridge...
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 cam…
If the data you're referring to didn't come from a company like CA, how did the campaign get access to it?
Voter registration information is public, also both parties have huge, manually curated lists that they sell access to. But giving FB a seed audience of 10000 voters and asking them to find the 100mil most similar people works better a lot of the time. The effectiveness of FB's machine learning on this stuff would blow your mind.
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#37Probably 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
> How about American business magnate and billionaire playboy
American is redundant. It is _literally_ a requirement of the office that you be an American. You might remember this because Trump spent almost a decade pretending to believe his predecessor wasn't American. Countries which are more confident don't have such a rule but the American Founding Fathers feared a European power might try to seize control.
Magnate just means wealthy or powerful man so it is also redundant with your other qualifications.
Billionaire is based on Trump's claims, he has gone out of his way to ensure nobody actually knows what he's worth. One of the dirty secrets about "rich lists" is that all the interesting people on them don't have verifiable wealth so the list makers invariably resort to guesswork or fiction.
So that leaves "playboy". My dictionary explains that a playboy is single and devotes their life to pleasure, typically sexual pleasure. But Trump is on his third wife and his main pleasure appears to be either golf or soaking up praise from other people.
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#38Probably 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…
> 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.
What makes you think that people are malleable? This article doesn't say anything about the effectiveness of what CA did. It's impossible to say if people voted the way they did because of a FB ad. My >20 years of experience in the consumer technology (ad) industry tells me that ads had little to no impact.
> Not enough to flip people's opinions 180 degrees, but enough to, say, get a reality TV star elected over a politician with a checkered history (that has itself been subject to decades of effort and millions spent to make said history checkered).
Clinton vs Trump wasn't an option people were waying. No one switched from Clinton to Trump (or vice versa) because of an ad or anything else. Those that hate Clinton voted for Trump, those that hate Trump voted for Clinton. It's really is as simple as that.
Have you ever met or even heard of someone who supported one of those candidates but switched to the other? I haven't.
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#39Earlier 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…
Among left-leaning circles there is an overwhelming feeling that the "Overton window" has shifted way too far right -- especially on things like regulation of business. Bernie Sanders is popular specifically because he shifts that window back to the left. From a deregulatory standpoint, I'm not sure Trump is significantly worse than Clinton. He's definitely worse, but the difference is smaller than Clinton vs Sanders; they're both in the pockets of the corporate overlords.
The far-left wing of the Democratic party felt that 4 years of chaos under Trump was an acceptable tradeoff in the long-term for moving the party (and the country) to the left on the economy. So they stayed home on election day and made the race close enough for Trump to win. In the current climate, moderates are going to find themselves left out in the cold in national races -- exactly because moderates are relatively easy to pull to one side or the other via targeted campaign advertising.
Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks
#40Probably 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
You're going to be down-voted to oblivion on hacker news, but I do agree with the general point that, the post you're replying to saying "'reality TV star' vs 'politician subject to decades of effort and millions spent to make said history checkered'" is needlessly political and doesn't belong on hacker news (same as your post).