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New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

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Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm extremely interested in learning more about the crowdstrike arrangment. As someone who is interested in both politics and cybersecurity, it leaves a lot of open questions. Here's some dangling questions brought out from the Mueller report: * Mueller’s decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundame…

CrowdStrike is not a Ukrainian company, it is a U.S. company! Its founders are U.S. citizens and none are of Ukrainian descent. When you get basic facts like this wrong, it makes me wonder what your interest really is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrowdStrike

The account was also made 47 days ago. Fishy fishy. I really hope HN never succumbs to the same forces slashdot did...

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CrowdStrike is not a Ukrainian company, it is a U.S. company! Its founders are U.S. citizens and none are of Ukrainian descent. When you get basic facts like this wrong, it makes me wonder what your interest really is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrowdStrike

I stand corrected! I was just confused why they would have possession of the DNC servers?? So many interesting questions still to answer!

Add to the list of your suspect observations those of Steele and his dossier. He was hired by Republicans before he was hired by Democrats. And his dossier was largely accurate—surprisingly so given that the target was (at the time) a wealthy, media-savvy businessman and television celebrity.

The dossier was oppo research. There’s literally nothing controversial about any of it, other than it was leaked and its target successfully spun the few disputed claims into evidence of mass political conspiracy.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CrowdStrike is not a Ukrainian company, it is a U.S. company! Its founders are U.S. citizens and none are of Ukrainian descent. When you get basic facts like this wrong, it makes me wonder what your interest really is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrowdStrike

I stand corrected! I was just confused why they would have possession of the DNC servers?? So many interesting questions still to answer!

The DNC hired them to do a forensic analysis of their email servers after they learned they may have been hacked. Forensic analysis is one of the security services CrowdStrike provides, they also provide defensive services to detect intrusions or attempts.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#154

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. 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. I would dispute this claim, as it has yet to be…

Awesome article - thanks for sharing!

I'll support the authors (and their conclusions) by clicking on the ads links on the site /j

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes surprisingly few data points to draw small and detailed psychographic categories of people. This has been known in the advertising world since the 50s, we just didn't have the tools to make microtargeting practical at scale until recently.

> This has been known in the advertising world since the 50s Any reference from the 50s? Also, anyone care to recommend modern references that go into these topics? (David Ogilvy comes to mind but that's from the 60s).

this is a little dense, but the preface has a nice statement on neurobiology, and wikipedia has some interesting articles on neuroscience and cognitive psychology. I suppose I'm looking for a popsci book on how computer science, psychology, neuroscience, etc all came together in the last decade to become so effective in hacking our brains and influencing our decisions. Or perhaps it's been there all along just now it's getting more attention.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#156
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't that "unproven personality score hogwash" have something like 9 decades of research behind it and is considered the gold standard of personality testing by textbooks on the psychology of personality?

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#157
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a particularly important counterargument when talking about the 2016 presidential election, since Clinton seems to have been the only candidate who was actually trying to win the popular vote. She put a bunch of campaigning resources into places like California which would increase her popular vote share but wouldn't affect the result. Trump's campaign, on the other hand, was by all accounts focused on simply…

> Clinton seems to have been the only candidate who was actually trying to win the popular vote. She put a bunch of campaigning resources into places like California which would increase her popular vote share but wouldn't affect the result. What Clinton was trying to do was not so much “win the popular vote” but “maximize down-ballot coattails associated with an expected electoral victory” (and, thereby, assure that…

Bill Clinton did pave the way for HMOs. They were a punt, but it was progress in reducing healthcare costs.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#158
I remain unconvinced that Cambridge Analytica had any material impact on the election. Please give me some hard evidence to the contrary. This whole scandal seems like a red herring onto which people project their a) anger about their losing candidate or b) their personal and often unsubstantiated beliefs about the "harm" they could experience due to "big data".

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#159
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

All the cable networks are owned by major corporations that use them to serve their interests. This shouldn't be shocking.

Of course, you are correct.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clinton seems to have been the only candidate who was actually trying to win the popular vote. She put a bunch of campaigning resources into places like California which would increase her popular vote share but wouldn't affect the result. What Clinton was trying to do was not so much “win the popular vote” but “maximize down-ballot coattails associated with an expected electoral victory” (and, thereby, assure that…

Bill Clinton did pave the way for HMOs. They were a punt, but it was progress in reducing healthcare costs.

> Bill Clinton did pave the way for HMOs.

How? I rather thought that Nixon (or Ted Kennedy, the principal sponsor of the bill) did that with the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, the federal law that required employers with 25 or more employers to offer them if they offered traditional insurance plans, almost 20 years before Clinton took office.

What Bill Clinton did do after he big health reform failed was HIPAA.

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