<story><title>New Cambridge Analytica Leaks</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/06/facebook-data-misuse-and-voter-manipulation-back-in-the-frame-with-latest-cambridge-analytica-leaks/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rossdavidh</author><text>While I agree with &amp;quot;how malleable opinions are...&amp;quot;, the actual answer is, &amp;quot;not very malleable&amp;quot;.  Every well-designed study of political advertising I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen has shown that it&amp;#x27;s impact is very small, in some cases unmeasurably small.  Thus, for example, the 2016 Clinton campaign raised a lot more $$ than the Trump campaign, whereas the Sanders primary campaign out-fundraised the Clinton one.&lt;p&gt;Now, the impact on the politicians of fundraising, is not at all small.  The primary advantage of personalized advertising and fundraising, is to help a campaign rake in more cash, which is both legalized bribery, and an incentive to stoke your base&amp;#x27;s outrate instead of reaching towards the middle.&lt;p&gt;The worst thing about the CA&amp;#x2F;Facebook scandal, is that it&amp;#x27;s become an excuse for a large swath of the Democratic party to decide that it didn&amp;#x27;t make any mistakes in 2016 worth mentioning (or correcting).</text></item><item><author>shadowgovt</author><text>Probably the most useful takeaway from CA&amp;#x27;s approach is that it&amp;#x27;s useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of &amp;quot;independent&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;Problem is, even if they are a free and independent thinker, voting populations are large enough that the &amp;quot;average is the outcome&amp;quot; phenomenon comes into play, and voters are on average demonstrably vulnerable to coercion. Not enough to flip people&amp;#x27;s opinions 180 degrees, but enough to, say, get a reality TV star elected over a politician with a checkered history (that has itself been subject to decades of effort and millions spent to make said history checkered).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paganel</author><text>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 the other side of the aisle the Republican base was smart enough to send Jeb Bush swinging early on during the primaries, that’s why they now hold the Presidency.</text></comment>
<story><title>New Cambridge Analytica Leaks</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/06/facebook-data-misuse-and-voter-manipulation-back-in-the-frame-with-latest-cambridge-analytica-leaks/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rossdavidh</author><text>While I agree with &amp;quot;how malleable opinions are...&amp;quot;, the actual answer is, &amp;quot;not very malleable&amp;quot;.  Every well-designed study of political advertising I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen has shown that it&amp;#x27;s impact is very small, in some cases unmeasurably small.  Thus, for example, the 2016 Clinton campaign raised a lot more $$ than the Trump campaign, whereas the Sanders primary campaign out-fundraised the Clinton one.&lt;p&gt;Now, the impact on the politicians of fundraising, is not at all small.  The primary advantage of personalized advertising and fundraising, is to help a campaign rake in more cash, which is both legalized bribery, and an incentive to stoke your base&amp;#x27;s outrate instead of reaching towards the middle.&lt;p&gt;The worst thing about the CA&amp;#x2F;Facebook scandal, is that it&amp;#x27;s become an excuse for a large swath of the Democratic party to decide that it didn&amp;#x27;t make any mistakes in 2016 worth mentioning (or correcting).</text></item><item><author>shadowgovt</author><text>Probably the most useful takeaway from CA&amp;#x27;s approach is that it&amp;#x27;s useful to realize how malleable opinions are of large swaths of &amp;quot;independent&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;Problem is, even if they are a free and independent thinker, voting populations are large enough that the &amp;quot;average is the outcome&amp;quot; phenomenon comes into play, and voters are on average demonstrably vulnerable to coercion. Not enough to flip people&amp;#x27;s opinions 180 degrees, but enough to, say, get a reality TV star elected over a politician with a checkered history (that has itself been subject to decades of effort and millions spent to make said history checkered).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gregmac</author><text>&amp;gt; Every well-designed study of political advertising&lt;p&gt;Wouldn&amp;#x27;t that be misleading though? There are active disinformation campaigns that are linked to the same people and organizations doing political campaigning.&lt;p&gt;Cambridge Analytica has apparently been (at the least) tracking people via these networks [1] [2], and it&amp;#x27;s not much of a stretch to assume some of the same targeting data used for traditional political ads would also be used for disinformation (which is often designed so it doesn&amp;#x27;t appear to be political).&lt;p&gt;There are news and TV networks that constantly present confirmed lies (often stated by the politicians themselves) as &amp;quot;news&amp;quot;, so the fact they still have viewers and are still in business must mean this type of disinformation is somewhere between somewhat and extremely effective. Whether this is &amp;quot;political advertising&amp;quot; is maybe less clear, but it&amp;#x27;s definitely designed to influence politics and political opinions.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.thestar.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;cambridge-analytica-took-fake-news-to-the-next-level-with-facebook-data.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.thestar.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;cambridge-anal...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;membership&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;sep&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;cambridge-analytica-cadwalladr-observer-facebook-zuckerberg-wylie&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;membership&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;sep&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;cambridge...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>