Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

#31

Post by dx87 »

slg wrote: post #17
mensetmanusman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, the double standard is obvious. I laughed when I read all these articles about Trump which were the same about Obama on this issue, but with a completely different tone.

There isn't a double standard. The criticism of CA is not that data use is bad. It is that they did it in unethical and potentially illegal ways.

The Obama administration was praised for gathering the same information about users without their consent. Obama's campaign manager said that Facebook told them that if it was anyone else gathering that much information, they would have blocked it, but that Facebook was "on their side". There's absolutely a double standard.

Re: If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

#32

Post by _jal »

TristanDaCunha wrote: post #20
dashundchen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence the Obama campaign did what Cambridge Analytica/Trump was being criticized for? Which was harvest private data (including messages and news feed) from Facebook users and their friends via an app that was ostensibly non-political, and then in turn sell it to a super PAC that for microtargeting. I'll note that the super PAC involved was likely coordinating with a campaign in violation of FEC campa…

Disclosure: I worked at Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica were accused of taking data mainly on what pages users 'Liked' - not private messages or news feed. (Unless you have a source?) Obama campaign boasted about having access to the entire friends network. In other words, they know who each person was and what the connections between them were. Facebook openly said that they helped the Obama campaign get an…

If that disclosure statement means what it is apparently meant to imply, it would of course be substantially more interesting to hear what you know, rather than talking about accusations, no?

But if you actually want a refresher, and for anyone else,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica

Re: If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

#33

Post by auganov »

loceng wrote: post #28
TristanDaCunha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I worked at Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica were accused of taking data mainly on what pages users 'Liked' - not private messages or news feed. (Unless you have a source?) Obama campaign boasted about having access to the entire friends network. In other words, they know who each person was and what the connections between them were. Facebook openly said that they helped the Obama campaign get an…

Fairly sure that's not anywhere near the whole picture of what CA was accused of? I thought CA ran surveys and from that data could make implications based on the friends and friends if friends of the person who took the survey?

My understanding is the quizzes were just viral Facebook apps to get API authorizations which back then let you download a lot of friends' basic data.

Simple scraping would get you a lot of the same data back then but it would be more involved and less solid legally. CA just figured out an easy way to do a huge scrape of Facebook.

I'd be surprised if many other organizations out there aren't sitting on similar datasets.

Even without asking any psychometric questions you could easily seed this through the dataset based on just a few examples or ground truths. This part seems rather unspectacular. With all the likes you can already tell who's alike. You just need to label the clusters.

CA's sell was this data would allow them to target super precisely and send different messages to different groups. But there's a big bottleneck at message creation. If you have 10 ads you can only target 10 groups uniquely. I'd be much more impressed if CA actually had software to manage ad creation, placement and performance tracking.

Re: If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

#34

Post by TristanDaCunha »

_jal wrote: post #32
TristanDaCunha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I worked at Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica were accused of taking data mainly on what pages users 'Liked' - not private messages or news feed. (Unless you have a source?) Obama campaign boasted about having access to the entire friends network. In other words, they know who each person was and what the connections between them were. Facebook openly said that they helped the Obama campaign get an…

If that disclosure statement means what it is apparently meant to imply, it would of course be substantially more interesting to hear what you know, rather than talking about accusations, no? But if you actually want a refresher, and for anyone else, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica

Well I'm not willing to provide any proof of my identity, so you have no reason to take what I say as legitimate. Indeed, I've seen lengthy posts of utter nonsense from others who claimed to work at CA.

Usually, even the generally available facts are a lot better than most people's understandings of the situation. For example, most people seem to think that this scandal proved that Facebook sell their user data, whereas it actually is alleged that CA took advantage of the well-documented public API that Facebook used to have, where any app vendor could download data on friends of friends who had given permissions to the app.

If you have specific questions, I would be happy to point you in the right direction.

Re: If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

#36

Post by dsaavy »

loceng wrote: post #30
mc32 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for those platforms it’s a plus as well (more political ad income) given the poor quality of the average eyeball.

Interesting question arises - does advertising to Republicans or Democrats cost more or less than the other? Either way the mechanism would be good to level the playing field further.

That's a good question, the only thing I could find (and take it with a grain of salt) was that Trump spent $5 per vote compared to Clinton's $10 per vote if you assume all the money they raised was spent. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-spending/at-...

It is interesting to think of campaign efficiency (or propaganda efficiency lol) as CPV (cost per vote) to make it parallel to advertising metrics like CPC and CPI.

Re: If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

#37

Post by dominotw »

slg wrote: post #26
dominotw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> potentially illegal ways. Is anyone in jail? Are there any pending legal cases against them?

Does someone not being in jail somehow prove what they did is legal? Is someone always held individually liable for corporate misdeeds? There have been multiple fines related to this scandal from multiple governments. There have been Congressional hearings on it in the US. There have been numerous lawsuits. I did say "potentially" in that first comment because I can't say definitively that they acted illegally, but t…

the phrase "potentially illegal" makes no sense to me.

I can claim that your comment is "potentially illegal" ..means nothing.

> There have been Congressional hearings on it in the US. There have been numerous lawsuits.

doesn't mean its illegal. Its just politics to discredit opposition's election victory.

This is equivalent to "hillary's emails" which also had lawsuits and congressional hearings. Now no one cares about it. Same with CA, no one will hear about it once democrats win.

> where is the smoke surrounding Obama's use of data?

There isn't because republicans didn't think it would be politically useful like "hillary's emails".

Re: If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

#38

Post by dsaavy »

loceng wrote: post #21
dsaavy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This realization really pushed me away from mainstream media entirely. I explicitly remember and can still find articles about Obama's campaign being cutting edge by using "behavioral data" ( https://theweek.com/articles/451328/how-obama-won-internet ). Yet when the same actions were taken by conservative candidates it was ridiculed. As an independent I just couldn't trust these sources any longer. Yes the methods of…

The solution is to not allow targeting for political ads. Costs will go up as you'll be competing for same eyes, and you'll have to spend more to reach everyone you want - plus has added benefit of allowing to see what messaging and narratives opposition is perpetuating.

It might be a solution although I think regulating this specific form of political ads would have unintended negative consequences.

I think things like hard cap campaign contribution limits (as in overall campaign fundraising cap rather than by donor type) could do more good to even the playing field. And it should reduce the web of "IOUs" that elected officials come into office with.

Re: If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

#40

Post by xxpor »

loceng wrote: post #21
dsaavy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This realization really pushed me away from mainstream media entirely. I explicitly remember and can still find articles about Obama's campaign being cutting edge by using "behavioral data" ( https://theweek.com/articles/451328/how-obama-won-internet ). Yet when the same actions were taken by conservative candidates it was ridiculed. As an independent I just couldn't trust these sources any longer. Yes the methods of…

The solution is to not allow targeting for political ads. Costs will go up as you'll be competing for same eyes, and you'll have to spend more to reach everyone you want - plus has added benefit of allowing to see what messaging and narratives opposition is perpetuating.

How is this even remotely practical? You're only allowed to have political ads on nationally shown TV programs? Choosing to show an ad in Wisconsin and not California is "targeting".
Post reply on HN