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New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

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Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#171

Post by rumblerock »

takeda wrote: post #73
malvosenior wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. The difference here and ordinary ad is, that unlike ads which target people based on where they live, interes…

Completely agree with these anecdotes, and this is where the potential power of the campaign extended far beyond ads to Facebook groups, and Twitter / Instagram follower networks. Within those spheres you have free reign to curate audiences based on profiles, feed this type of blatantly false information to trigger people, and optimize from there. I went into greater detail in another comment in this thread, but I would suggest reading the Senate intelligence report from October to learn more – if you care about this topic it's riveting and frightening.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#172

Post by rumblerock »

xibalba wrote: post #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".

The Senate intelligence committee report from October is the most detailed look into their operation. In sum, you're looking at an operation across platforms (FB, Twitter, etc.), with the manpower to generate endless content and avatar accounts, with this type of data in addition to what the political campaigns already had.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#173

Post by rumblerock »

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.

I don't have evidence for Brexit, but I did personally witness a similar operation in a 2014 Senate race where the data made clear that this wasn't something organic, or small scale (think orders of magnitude). While I can't tie direct to CA if they were leaders in the space there's no reason to believe they weren't using the same playbook, and more.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#174

Post by wayoutthere »

hdrujvw-4579 wrote: post #155
hdrujvw-4579 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Or perhaps it's been there all along just now it's getting more attention.

It's been a slow build to add layers of targeting on as the media machine grows. It started out with time-based targeting by showing ads for home goods during the daytime (e.g. soap operas were used to sell soap to housewives). Cable TV was a big step forward -- you could craft shows that appealed to narrower demographics like 8-14 year old boys and then sell ads targeting those demographics.

Psychographic segmentation became prevalent along with cable TV and direct mail, but it was limited to a few dozen "personas" until Google came along and allowed keyword targeting, which then gave way to social targeting. It got exponentially more effective with each step, which is why it seemed to come out of nowhere.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#175

Post by lmm »

cm2012 wrote: post #67
SeanAppleby wrote: post #60

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.

Having worked in that industry, that's backwards. OCEAN is solid, well-understood science; we have decades of figures for test-retest reliability, we know what correlates and what doesn't. FB's black box factors are not public, not understood, and if they stopped working tomorrow no-one would be able to tell you why (or why they worked in the first place).

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#176

Post by Natsu »

extra88 wrote: post #131
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #89

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

GP got it wrong. Not that it matters, but this is the guy that's usually referenced in these discussions:

"Alperovitch is a naturalized American citizen born in Russia who came to the United States in 1994 with his family."

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dmitri_Alperovitc...

"Dmitri Alperovitch is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CrowdStrike – responsible for the company’s overall technology vision, strategy, and architecture as well as R&D initiatives."

https://www.crowdstrike.com/about-crowdstrike/executive-team...

It does seem odd that the FBI has claimed in legal filings not to have taken the DNC computers into its possession for forensic analysis, relying entirely on 3rd party analysis, though. I believe this info can be sourced from filings in the Flynn case, which I really wish someone would put up a full archive of, it's been pretty crazy.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#177

Post by taurath »

cm2012 wrote: post #96
mbesto wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the FB algorithm already takes in 1000s of black box factors that are going to work better than some unproven personality score hogwash. 1. My understanding is that CA wasn't just executing FB ads. Is your assumption that this was their only technique? 2. Are you aware of the specific techniques CA used? 3. What would be the purpose of CA obtaining the data then?

1) That kind of targeting is even less useful outside of FB. You can upload gmail addresses to Google to target, or use something like LiveRamp to target on display networks, but both options suck compared to FB. 2) Nothing beyond whats publically available. 3) It's not unusual to test different audiences, I've definitely tested all sorts. I'm sure thats how it started for Cambridge. Of course now, tin pot dictatorsh…

> 1) That kind of targeting is even less useful outside of FB. You can upload gmail addresses to Google to target, or use something like LiveRamp to target on display networks, but both options suck compared to FB.

Both google and FB are financially incentivized to provide as much granularity in targeting as possible so they can charge more money to advertisers, who'll get a better return and get promoted. All up until the point that it becomes a liability. Thats the line they're walking - you can totally target quite a few things that end up correlating to say, neurotic people, if you know your audience is neurotic people. You have enough of the dataset at that point.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#178

Post by larnmar »

mbesto wrote: post #97
cm2012 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) That kind of targeting is even less useful outside of FB. You can upload gmail addresses to Google to target, or use something like LiveRamp to target on display networks, but both options suck compared to FB. 2) Nothing beyond whats publically available. 3) It's not unusual to test different audiences, I've definitely tested all sorts. I'm sure thats how it started for Cambridge. Of course now, tin pot dictatorsh…

So are you saying CA wasn't effective at all? Or just as effective as any other agency is/could have been. I'm confused...

I would say there’s no evidence whatsoever which would tell us whether CA was more or less effective than any other agency might have been.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#179

Post by larnmar »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #156
cm2012 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, which gives you an idea of what the standards of rigour in the field of psychology are like.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#180

Post by freepor »

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 best way to realize how malleable you are is to imagine what beliefs you would hold if a baby of your identical DNA was born 5000 years ago to a royal family. You’d probably be completely down with slavery, pillaging, monarchy, etc.
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