New Cambridge Analytica Leaks • Hacker News Board

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#181

Post by xibalba » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #164

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".

how would you prove the inverse of this? i.e cambridge analytics didn't have any material impact. I think most are basing it on the assumption that CA with the help of Facebook could target millions of americans in a personalized way and display ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate. No way to say it's a guaranteed method, but it's as effective as bill board marketers proving their ads change peo…

> how would you prove the inverse of this?

I don't know, but that alone isn't a convincing argument.

> ...ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate

> ...that's where most of the presential election fund raises go to...

Perhaps. The question is, what is the effect? I would wager it is very small to nil.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#182

Post by linusnext » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:59 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #162

n4r9 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I see what you mean, yes: it's denied by the campaign manager.

In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

That's the evidence? Just because you want to believe it does not make it true.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#183

Post by susijdjdjxa » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #125

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…

> Because the Democrats don’t want to hear that they lost because they chose Hillary to run instead of almost anyone else. If by “the Democrats” you mean “the center-right neoliberal Democratic establishment”, sure. The rest of the Democratic Party has been saying that was a deciding factor (though not the sole deciding factor; there are a number of things you could take away and flip the result) since the day after…

> Plus, the rules that interacted with establishment support to facilitate Clinton's win in 2016 were abolishes almost immediately due largely to the influence the Sanders factions gained in the DNC despite not winning the nomination, so even a Clinton clone with an electorate with no hindsight to 2016 failures would have a harder time.

Hillary won the primary with 16.9M votes to Sanders’ 13.2M, are you telling me Democratic Party has changed its rules such that someone wins the vote like that won’t win the nomination?

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#184

Post by Intermernet » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 3:21 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #122

cwkoss wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketers are most effective at selling their own industry

If we assume that's true, it would imply marketing works, would it not?

It implies that marketing works for marketing. It's possible that those involved in the marketing sector are more vulnerable to marketing. This vulnerability could be the reason that they have faith in the sector's methods, and are therefore employed in the sector.

Many people are marketing averse, and marketing at them will have a negative effect. It just seems that there are enough people around who respond positively to marketing to make it a successful business.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#185

Post by senectus1 » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 4:44 AM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #51

keiferski wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differen…

not the same thing at all.

Obama's app was only ever installed on peoples devices that wanted it.

it was in effect preaching to the converted.

CA deliberately harvested people that were not politically involved and dissafected and whipped them into a fuhrer, and thats just how they got started and doesn't cover the outright lies they pushed and farmed.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#186

Post by sifar » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

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 average American citizen still thinks of themselves as a free and independent thinker and not a product of their environment.

More importantly, these people have realized it is far easier to shape the environment to the individual than mould the individual to the environment. When you can engulf an individual in his own filter bubble, you no longer have to predict his behavior, but can literally shape it.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#187

Post by james_s_tayler » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

larnmar wrote: post #179

james_s_tayler wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does it?

Mostly the standards of rigour in the field of psychology are deemed flimsy and a lot of findings have failed to replicate.

It's my understanding that Big Five has been replicated consistently across different languages and cultures over the last 90 years and is one of the only things we're fairly sure of in psychology at this point.

The accusation was that it was "unproven hogwash". That doesn't check out.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#188

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 6:50 AM UTC

susijdjdjxa wrote: post #183

dragonwriter wrote: post #125

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. If by “the Democrats” you mean “the center-right neoliberal Democratic establishment”, sure. The rest of the Democratic Party has been saying that was a deciding factor (though not the sole deciding factor; there are a number of things you could take away and flip the result) since the day after…

> Plus, the rules that interacted with establishment support to facilitate Clinton's win in 2016 were abolishes almost immediately due largely to the influence the Sanders factions gained in the DNC despite not winning the nomination, so even a Clinton clone with an electorate with no hindsight to 2016 failures would have a harder time. Hillary won the primary with 16.9M votes to Sanders’ 13.2M, are you telling me De…

> Hillary won the primary with 16.9M votes to Sanders’ 13.2M, are you telling me Democratic Party has changed its rules such that someone wins the vote like that won’t win the nomination?

Elections that have coverage of results during voting are known to experience very strong positive effects from perception of success already attained (and in US Presidential nominating contests particularly this is known to affect voting both directly and by effecting fundraising, endorsements, etc.), and the coverage of the 2016 primary featured reports of delegates “won” in the nominating contest to date including both pledged delegates secured by voting and superdelegates who had made public commitments, on the basis that those were the expected first ballot votes. Because of her strong early establishment support, the absence of significant establishment competition, Clinton had huge superdelegate commitments at the outset of the nominating contest.

They've changed the rules to prohibit superdelegate voting on the first round unless the result is already determined, and to exclude superdelegates from the total on which the majority needed to win on the first ballot is needed.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#189

Post by nojvek » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 6:59 AM UTC

xibalba wrote: post #181

nojvek wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how would you prove the inverse of this? i.e cambridge analytics didn't have any material impact. I think most are basing it on the assumption that CA with the help of Facebook could target millions of americans in a personalized way and display ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate. No way to say it's a guaranteed method, but it's as effective as bill board marketers proving their ads change peo…

> how would you prove the inverse of this? I don't know, but that alone isn't a convincing argument. > ...ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate > ...that's where most of the presential election fund raises go to... Perhaps. The question is, what is the effect? I would wager it is very small to nil.

As nil as Coca-Cola’s billboard/tv marketing ? When I still had FB, their ads/propaganda was super convincing about Hillary and her hacked email server yada yada.

It was quite a genius marketing method to reach millions.

Re: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks

#190

Post by Moodles » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 7:57 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #109

Moodles wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I'm happy to accept criticism of my characterization if it was factually inaccurate.

It’s not so much the factual inaccuracy as the loaded language. One can factually describe Trump in a positive light and Clinton in a negative light. It’s needlessly emotive and doesn’t belong on HN in my opinion.