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New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

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Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#61

Post by SpaceManNabs »

buboard wrote: post #44

In politics , the best manipulation campaign is to have a vision that moves people. Why are american Dems stirring again the CA pot? It s frankly bad publicity at this moment to blame everything to the evil bad actors. It may appeal to a small part of their voter base, but conspiracies usually alienate moderate/undecided ppl

Conspiracies tend to have the connotation as stories believed by a small segment of the population hoping to have access to secret knowledge that tends to be wrong and based in narrative rather than facts.

Is this how you are using the word? Where are the lack of facts in how CA melded elections?

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#62

Post by mark_l_watson »

I think that people who are whistle blowers and release information like this are hero’s and deserve as much protection as civil society can offer them.

Off topic, but I feel like saying it: here in the USA, the administrations of presidents Obama and Trump have really tried to stomp out valid whistle blowing efforts. I hope that history is very harsh on both presidents in this issue in the future when people start to ask how democracies got so subverted by corporate/elite interests.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#63

Post by Spooky23 »

malvosenior wrote: post #38
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…

> 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…

Absolutely.

Delivery of the Trump message absolutely resonated with and flipped voters who normally vote democratic or who wouldn't vote. Union members, Catholics, etc. In my county, which hasn't elected a GOP candidate in 30 years, it drove 5% more republican votes than 2004/2008/2016. That matters in competitive places.

Bernie Sanders was very similar on the democratic side. Many people not so happy with the mainstream party candidate were attracted to his message, which was delivered mostly via social media, especially early on.

Don't discount the power of social platforms. The impact of a good targeted message is real on its own, but is magnified when your dad/cousin/friend/boss implicitly endorses the message by commenting or sharing. If you look at Trump's campaign, that made it possible to say and do socially unacceptable things. "Make America Great Again" means something to people who support him... they find it inspirational.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#64

Post by makomk »

qmmmur wrote: post #18
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…

You don't even need as good as on average in the right circumstances. Take Britain, which only has a sample size of its 650 constituents and whose votes within those are not represented if not the majority. In fact, the seat of power rests in those seats which can flip flop by very small margins.

Britain is probably not a good example of this in 2020, since a whole bunch of constituencies which had previously always voted for the same party and which in theory shouldn't matter suddenly flipped in the last election.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#65

Post by buboard »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #61
buboard wrote: post #44

In politics , the best manipulation campaign is to have a vision that moves people. Why are american Dems stirring again the CA pot? It s frankly bad publicity at this moment to blame everything to the evil bad actors. It may appeal to a small part of their voter base, but conspiracies usually alienate moderate/undecided ppl

Conspiracies tend to have the connotation as stories believed by a small segment of the population hoping to have access to secret knowledge that tends to be wrong and based in narrative rather than facts. Is this how you are using the word? Where are the lack of facts in how CA melded elections?

> are the lack of facts in how CA melded elections

CA's job was to meddle in elections, the question is if it's effective. there is very little evidence that it worked.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#66

Post by mark_l_watson »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #11
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…

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…

re: “ And anti-establishment opinions are still popular (Warren and Sanders are 2 of the 3 Democrat front-runners) despite media messaging.”

I really find it shocking how extremely biased outlets like MSNBC are in favor of pro-corporations candidates like Clinton, Biden, etc. I very rudely mock my friends who are Democrats and who swear by what the paid shills on MSNBC do to negatively cover any candidate who does not tow the corporate state party line. Of course, it is the same for the rare republican candidates like Ron Paul who also are not paid shills for the corporate state.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#67

Post by cm2012 »

SeanAppleby wrote: post #60
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…

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…

I'm sure people claim you can find the best voters using their special astrology method also. The FB algorithm already takes in 1000s of black box factors that are going to work better than some unproven personality score hogwash.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#68

Post by cm2012 »

iamben wrote: post #56
cm2012 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It's even better now, but in 2016 it was still really good. in 2016 I was using FB targeting to find business owners who were in the market for loans, which is far more specific than democrat, independent, or republican!

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#69

Post by cm2012 »

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #58
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…

> 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 so…

The CA data is a BS story. But its also more or less definitive that Russia's slow leaking of otherwise innocuous emails really hurt Clinton's campaign. Its easy to get confused because there's so much going on.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#70

Post by Jakawao »

linusnext wrote: post #42

The story incorrectly reports the company was hired for the trump campaign to do data work. As per https://youtu.be/yjn6wK01cqk?t=1878 only staff were hired. edit: provide link, and clarify.

Fine, I will bite.

https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-rea...

Cambridge worked both for the Trump campaign and a Trump-aligned Super PAC.

Cambridge Analytica was paid $5.9 million by the Trump campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings

If you have a source that shows otherwise, please share.

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