Elections Social Media Engineering And The Art Of Hacking HumansBy Graham Vanbergen Strangely, this is a technology where human-verses-human pitch skills against each other in ever greater numbers. We are all aware of some of the dangers of putting ourselves out-there. We know that criminals can harvest data and steal our identities but we are not so aware of the intelligence operatives building an entire picture of who we are, how law enforcement is changing or how politicians steal elections. Our permanently connected lives leave us vulnerable, especially because we cannot see who these infiltratorsare.As in all scenarios, some people are harder to trick than others but all humans are vulnerable to social media engineering. One part of social engineering is operating scams like Phishing, Baiting, Tailgating and Pretexting.Hackers prey off of human psychology and curiosity in order to compromise their targets information. Social media engineering is a bit different. For instance, after the Paris attackson November 13th, Facebookswitched on two lesser-known features: Safety Check and Temporary Profiles. The former was a way for people in Paris to let family and friends know they were safe; the latter splashed an overlay of the French flag on top of profile pictures. Facebooks CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to explain why this service was switched on for this attack and not previous terrorist attacks around the world. Until yesterday, our policy was only to activate Safety Check for natural disasters, Zuckerberg wrote. We just changed this and now plan to activate Safety Check for more human disasters going forward as well We care about all people equally, and we will work hard to help people suffering in as many of these situations as we can. Was Facebook taking advantage of the situation? wired.com enquired with Facebook When I asked Facebook, the company pointed me toward its information page for Safety Check, noting that in the 24 hours following its activation, 4.1 million people marked themselves as safe and 360 million people were notified that someone was safe. By any stretch of the imagination, the speed of this interaction between people is a feat of solidarity probably never achieved in human history. Neither Facebook, nor Twitter were around at events such as 9/11. In the 2010 US congressional elections, 61 million Facebook users saw a social message encouraging them to vote, with a link to polling station information, a clickable I voted button, a counter showing how many people had clicked I voted, and the profile pictures of six of their Facebook friends who had done so.It turned out that users who saw their friends faces were more likely to vote than those who saw the message alone. Hundreds of thousands of votes were attributed to this one action by Facebook. In the 2015 general election in Britain, 10 parliamentary seats were won on less than one percent of the vote. One Conservative won his seat on a margin of just 27 votes. Since 1918 only three had won on such thin margins. A report by 72point Digital Hub concluded -Facebook has become a linchpin for right-wing parties, whereas Twitter is more of a left-wing social media channel. It also concluded that with the Scottish referendum,social media played a role in mobilising voters for an unprecedented 84.6 percent turnout. The scenario imagined above given certain algorithms is an example of digital gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is themanipulation ofboundaries so as to favour one party or class. It transpires that allsorts of factors contribute to what Facebook or Twitter present in a feed, or what Google or Bing show us in search results. None of these businesses promise neutrality at any time, let alone during an election. We dont really think these companies willmanipulate the information, content or advertiser sponsored links one way or another. But the thing is, they do already with personalised advertising, this much we know. So digital gerrymandering occurs when a serviceinstead distributes data or information in a manner that serves its own ideological agenda. For instance, why would Facebook, Google or Twitter want a left-wing party in power knowing that partywill make them pay the tax due on their enormous revenues when a right-wing party lets them off. In January 2012, for example, Google blacked out its home page doodle as a protest against the pending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), said by its opponents to facilitate censorship. Wikipedia and Reddit joined in as did hundreds of popular websites. That coordinated protest paid off and it demonstrated the power of these companies verses their political opponents. Robert Epstein reported for Politico a couple of months ago results of a study that truly shocked many. Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more power to control electionsindeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefsthan any company in history has ever had. Googles search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or moreup to 80 percent in some demographic groupswith virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated, according to experiments I conducted recently with Ronald E. Robertson. Epstein continues, the employees who constantly adjust the search giants algorithms are manipulating people every minute of every day. The adjustments they make increasingly influence our thinkingincluding, it turns out, our voting preferences. In another group to be targeted, often young people are caricatured as being apathetic about politics. Cross-party think-tank DEMOS views social medias critical new spaces as organic, less hierarchical, which political institutions cannot afford to neglect. Yesterday, the House of Lords voted in favour of allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to take part in Britains EU referendum.Peers argued that lowering the voting age would help to engage teenagers in politics. However, allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to participate could be a boost to the pro-EU campaign as younger voters are viewed as more likely to support Britains continued membership. Lord Hamilton of Epsom, a former Tory minister, claimed the move was an attempt to tilt the whole playing-field in favour of the pro-EU camp. Perhaps he should not worry, the pro-EU camp has some big supporters. The US administration desperately wants Britain to stay in the EU. So do all the banks and largest corporate companies, many of whom collectively pay billionsin revenue to all the social media and search engine organisations. The Conservatives also want Britain to stay and have turned a blind eye to these companiespaying almost no taxes. You may think it a done deal? And just to add injury to insult,computer scientists from the University of Warwick are using Twitter to predict the outcome of elections and now say their forecasts arefar more accurate than traditional opinion polls by using analgorithm that harvests political tweets. You can read more from Graham Vanbergen at his site TruePublica 