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New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

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Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#51

Post by malvosenior »

keiferski wrote: post #48
paganel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the Democrats don’t want to hear that they lost because they chose Hillary to run instead of almost anyone else. That “it’s her turn now” was complete BS that messed up things even for us people who have never set foot in the States. I can see the Democrats making the same mistake again with Michelle Obama in 4 years’ time if they don’t win this round, I only hope she’ll be smart enough to stay out of it. On…

I often wonder if any of this “age of post-truth” stuff would have become popular had the election gone the other way. It’s nothing new - philosophers and media theorists have been writing about media manipulation for the past century or more. But the media got the last election so completely wrong that they have to find a grand theory to explain what happened.

Probably not. In fact Obama did more or less exactly what Cambridge Analytica did:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...

> "Consciously or otherwise, the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page – home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends – directly into the central Obama database.

The only difference is that at the time it was heralded as being technologically savvy because it produced results that the media and tech companies desired.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#52

Post by cm2012 »

iamben wrote: post #49
cm2012 wrote: post #27

Earlier 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…

But at that point couldn't you just upload an email list and target by that? I could be miles off the mark, but I assumed a lot of this came from getting people to take a "personality test" and then bucketing that person for particular ads. Admittedly I based a bunch of this on Alexander Nix's utterly fascinating OMR presentation ( https://youtu.be/6bG5ps5KdDo ). As per the parent, it always amazes me at how easy it…

You can still do that, but 1) much better email lists exist that the RNC was already sharing with the Trump campaign, 2) algorithmic targeting almost always beats uploaded lists nationally anyway.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#53

Post by Chestofdraw »

dfxm12 wrote: post #30
growlist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

To add to that, Vote Leave used AggregateIQ which is essentially the same company as CA.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#54

Post by JoeAltmaier »

pier25 wrote: post #50
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…

The biggest issue in democracy is that the majority of people vote irrationally. For example a lot of people will vote the same party no matter what or will vote for a candidate because they like him/her regardless of the program.

Hard to say what's 'rational' when voting. Lots of metrics; lots of theories. Vote for the person (character etc) vs their promises? Vote for the organization that will guide them (party) instead of the person?

I'd say its entirely irrational to vote for the program as outlined by the candidate speeches. Because they rarely happen.

It's not a problem with democracy. Its a problem with people and power.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#55

Post by war1025 »

paganel wrote: post #45
rossdavidh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because the Democrats don’t want to hear that they lost because they chose Hillary to run instead of almost anyone else. That “it’s her turn now” was complete BS that messed up things even for us people who have never set foot in the States. I can see the Democrats making the same mistake again with Michelle Obama in 4 years’ time if they don’t win this round, I only hope she’ll be smart enough to stay out of it. On…

I thought it was interesting how many of the people who opposed the "dynastic politics" of the Bush era were more than happy to back the same sort of thing when it came to the Clintons.

And further that they thought the fact that Hillary was a woman should override any misgivings someone would have about her.

2008 was the first election where I was eligible to vote (I didn't). But the number of people I talked to who backed Obama solely because "how great would it be to have a black president" really dimmed my view of how seriously people take elections.

People treat the president like a mascot as much as anything.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#56

Post by iamben »

cm2012 wrote: post #52
iamben wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at that point couldn't you just upload an email list and target by that? I could be miles off the mark, but I assumed a lot of this came from getting people to take a "personality test" and then bucketing that person for particular ads. Admittedly I based a bunch of this on Alexander Nix's utterly fascinating OMR presentation ( https://youtu.be/6bG5ps5KdDo ). As per the parent, it always amazes me at how easy it…

You can still do that, but 1) much better email lists exist that the RNC was already sharing with the Trump campaign, 2) algorithmic targeting almost always beats uploaded lists nationally anyway.

I assumed email lists of people who'd taken the personality tests, then maybe LAL off the back of that. How was the algorithmic targeting back then? I know I wouldn't want to manually optimise against it now (with the right spend).

Just to caveat again - not my specialty, but very interesting all the same!

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#57

Post by jimktrains2 »

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…

> 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.

You're forgetting that we're not as a single, monolithic country; we're designed to be a union of (mostly) independent states. It is those state who select the head of the executive however they see fit individually. There is nothing stopping a state from issuing electoral votes by percentage and not by winner-take-all.

Since the Civil War and especially with the expansion of the commerce clause, we don't act quite like (mostly) independent states any more, but those basic premises and rules are still there. To be honest, the system works much like it's intended to -- the rural/agricultural states maintain some power even though since they're rural there are fewer people. This isn't inherently bad; however, I'd argue that making the number of people represented by a single representative essentially unlimited instead of having a bounded maximum like initially designed is the root of our problems. It's possible for states to gain or maintain population and loose representatives and electoral votes under the current system, which is the main issue.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#58

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

cm2012 wrote: post #27
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 cam…

> All CA data so released so far has been useless, untargeted stuff.

It’s well known that the data is crap, and much crappier than what both the DNC and RNC were using going into 2016.

So the question remains about why CA generates so much headlines? And is associated so strongly with something magical, nefarious... something that potentially transformed 2016?

The answer is simple, to fit a narrative that 2016 was something other than voters duly electing a legitimate president.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#59

Post by Balero »

malvosenior wrote: post #46
Balero wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people were coerced by the media they saw into hating whichever candidate and, many, into loving one of them.

Only if you discount people's ability to think for themselves. Both these candidates had been in the public eye for decades. People decided based on what they've witnessed with their own eyes.

Yeah I agree completely. The media can manipulate this by controlling what people witness with their own eyes.

People tend to stick to a small number of news sources, so these sources only tell one side of a story.

You need as much of the info as possible to think for yourself, and you can be manipulated by what you have witnessed.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#60

Post by SeanAppleby »

cm2012 wrote: post #27
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 cam…

My understanding is that the most significant nonconventional heuristic that Cambridge Analytica got from FB data and exploited was by using FB like data to approximate OCEAN personality scores for almost all voting Americans using this technique [1], and then targeting correlations between people's big five ratings and their succeptibility to differnet types of marketing, such as targetingpeople high in neuroticism with emotionally charged ads, generally meant to instill fear. Am I off base?

[1] https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM13/paper/view/...

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