Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I don't recall as much scare when people found out Obama's team used machine learning and data collection, as well as Hillary's later efforts, to influence voters or gain support.
I am not a Trump supporter, nor a Hillary or Obama fan; I am pretty disgusted with the US political system, however, I also recall people praising the IT/ML/Big Data teams for Obama and Hillary without even a mention of what data they were slinging or collecting.
I left FB years ago, and I feel much better for it, especially after reading this article.
Edit: perhaps you could at least provide a link to a typical Breitbart comment section, full of hatred and calls for genocide?
Condemnations of whataboutism is just sticking with one's side, and attributing all evil to the other side.
Instead of having a historical, and morally accurate, perspective.
And it's even more hideous and morally outrageous if the side one is not willing to criticize is several time worse than the other.
The promises of Trump have the potential to go far, far worse than the results of Obama. And no amount of blaming him will help.
"American carnage" is what Mr. Trump said he would stop. Not some kind of vision he has for the future. Personally I don't see the "American carnage" (if anything, it's the opposite), except if he means that us corporate interests (of which he is part, anyway) stomp on the American middle/working classes.
People outside of the US have even less the luxury of an "objective retrospective comparison". And a direct to-the-moment comparison is that the previous administration(s) were so much into wars, invading, meddling etc, and created so many open sores and hell-holes where they invaded or intervened or supported "national interests", that it will take a lot of work for Mr. Trump to be as dangerous to the world at large. If anything, he has shown to be quite isolationist, which would be a welcome change.
(Of course I understand that the lives of non-US citizens don't seem to be as much a concern to the US pundits, compared to say, whether something like "Obamacare" is repealed or whether someone with redneck-y ideals is in power. But it does matter to the people elsewhere who lose those lives).
The meth-addled and jobless need access to health care, extended unemployment insurance, affordable education, access to low-cost housing, and jobs programs. Donald Trump isn't going to deliver improvements in any of these areas. He'll actively make the situation worse, then lie about what he did. It's the only mode he's ever operated in. His next bankruptcy will be ours, and everyone will be worse off as a result.
Average is different than the median.
And there's a ton of wastage of e.g. american soldiers being killed (and especially: killing others) in the middle east and such, with no rhyme or reason as far as the public (and not trillion-dollar military interests) is concerned.
>Putting Iran "on notice" draws us into conflict.
Don't really disagree. But I fail to see how's that different from the previously administrations that constantly had Iraq, a presence that mostly minds its own matters and regional interests and, if the aggression was dropped, could not care less about the US, on the crosshairs (just for a chance for another multi 100-billion dollar war and resource plundering).
Trump infamously asked "what have you got to lose?" to a predominately African American and Hispanic audience [1] while campaigning. The answer: still quite a lot.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08...
I'd love to see some public works and upper-bracket tax increases aimed at bringing that median closer to the average. I just don't want the incompetence, nuclear saber-rattling, risk, and political instability of a Trump administration. This guy still lies about his inauguration crowd size to this day, and is now whining about Obama and "paid protestors" somehow being behind anti-Trump rallies. He's departed reality, and is wholly unqualified even compared to George W. Bush (the guy who at least anticipated and tried to head off post-9/11 anti-Islam sentiments).
That is a moving of the goalposts.
This is all submarine marketing by Cambridge Analytica.
http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Tools exist to do all the things that these articles describe. And the reality is very far from what these articles are describing.
Given behavioral targeting (highly effective), demographic targeting (less effective) and A/B testing (highly effective), you can construct customized messages to improve your conversion rates. You can sell skin cream to the hippie by emphasizing the organic ingredients, and to the vain lady by showing her a pretty lady with great skin using the cream.
That might get your conversion rate from 5% to 6%, which is HUGE WIN for your company - a 20% boost in revenue. That's also very far from the mind control being described here.
If you want to understand what Trump did, rather than paying attention to the people who completely failed to predict his victory (i.e. the mainstream media), I'd focus on the people who predicted it perfectly (i.e. Scott Adams and similar folks). It's only in the mainstream media that a sequence of failed predictions somehow makes a person worth listening to.
To me the real question becomes what happens when the government uses the big data to "sell" ideas to the public.
That 5% swing can be used in all sorts of ways.
The thing here which is actually interesting is not the use of propaganda. What's interesting is people outside the cathedral using it effectively.
https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle...
(Or a shorter description: http://home.earthlink.net/~peter.a.taylor/moldbug.htm )
I suspect a more likely outcome - given the centralization of social media - is that the cathedral will succeed in suppressing the upstarts.
Twitter, in spite of Trump's use of it, is certainly attempting to do so. Zuckerberg seems to have briefly resisted, but now seems to have seen the light.
It appears that I have a view not being mentioned here: Sure, can pay attention to issues, using data on the voters, crafting messages based on the data, making predictions, etc. But to me in this election, all of that was small potatoes compared with what really caused Trump to win.
Here's my guess:
(1) Analysis and Arithmetic. Broadly Trump did see from somewhere some statistics on states, counties, and voters. Then he did some simple arithmetic on votes and the votes in the Electoral College. Okay, we all can agree so far.
(2) His 757. Then Trump got in his Boeing 757 and started flying to selected locations to give speeches, rallies. Eventually a favorite approach was to rent a hanger at an airport, arrive in his plane, park his plane in front of the hanger with the crowd, give a speech, and then fly to the next stop. That was an efficient way to motivate 5,000 to 30,000 (in a sports stadium, etc.) potential voters at a time. And a lot of those voters communicated with others and influenced them. That he did this is easy to see.
(3) Polishing Lines and Delivery. Now we come to what appears to me to be the big, crucial point: At each of the rallies, Trump delivered one by one his then favorite lines, looked at the audience, and just observed, no numerical data, just with his two ears and eyeballs, how good the reaction was to the line. Based on such reactions, he selected and refined his lines and his delivery.
(4) Application. Then he took that technique in (3) and applied it like his life depended on it, maybe five rallies in three states in one day, then four hours of sleep, maybe on his plane, and do it again.
(5) Targeting. Crucially near the end of the campaign, he raised the intensity in (4), carefully selected his rally locations, and, then, applied his polished lines and delivery as in (3).
E.g., why was the election so close? Because really early on the mainstream media was correct -- Hillary was ahead in both popular and Electoral College votes. Then, for his attack, especially near the end, one candidate swing state, one promising county, one good rally location at a time, Trump did JUST ENOUGH to win the popular vote in that state and, thus, the Electoral College votes.
In a word, the Trump secret sauce was hustle as in super-salesman drive and 20 hour work days, 7 days a week, determination, in two words, insightful hustle, in the words of Ross Perot, personal "finger tip feel" for the people at his rallies but along with careful attention to the Electoral College map and the maps of the candidate voter characteristics of the states and the counties.
Any good salesman constantly watches his candidate customer, second by second, during the pitch and adjusts instantly, appropriately accordingly. Trump watched and adjusted, a week at a time, a day at a time, a rally at a time, and at each rally a second at a time.
All of that Trump super-selling skill, hustle, and determination is tough to quantify, analyze, and use to make projections, but IMHO that skill, etc. was the key to his victory.
Or, setting aside big issues of the future of civilization, Trump wanted to win, went to where Electoral College votes were potentially available, and got the votes by doing well with what lines would please the corresponding audiences.
Net, actually, in some important ways, Trump is a bright guy, e.g., he is good at filtering information from others, keeping only the best stuff, and understanding that; he has good intuition; although he has some rough edges that hurt him at times, he is good at being a super-salesman, one person at a time, one audience at a time; he is highly determined and takes a lot of personal pride in winning; he can go for months working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Tough to use analysis of numerical data 12-18 months ago to predict the outcome. Better: In the last weeks of the campaign, look at some maps, county by county in the swing states, observe how good Trump was at using the Internet to announce his rally times and locations to candidate audiences, observe how good Trump was at getting his rally audiences up on their hind legs, look at where Trump was giving rallies, see how hard and effectively Trump was working, and then do some more vote counting.
Democracy is supposed to be about getting votes, for POTUS in the Electoral College, and that is what Trump concentrated on and did.
For the future? Maybe like a real super-salesman, Trump is continuing to sell to his audience, e.g., Twitter, meetings televised on YouTube, a weekly report, a big rally in Florida, etc. Trump has some bitter opponents, but he can continue to get his audiences enthusiastic and applying pressure to politicians, the media, etc. Likely before the end of 2017, nearly all the bitter opponents will tire of fighting, be discouraged from losing, calm down, and do something else, and the Trump Administration will be less contentious and more normal. E.g., for al the screaming about immigration, Trump can simply say that he's just actually enforcing long standing US immigration laws, policies, and procedures, and eventually that will be enough to get nearly all the opponents to calm down.
It was a bitter campaign. The Trump opponents tried hard to scare a lot of people about Trump; a lot of people are still scared but will calm down as they don't see actual big things to be scared about.
Both sides have no idea how alike they are.
Clinton did indeed have a programme similar to Obama's, which has since (perhaps uselessly overdue?) been panned heavily in the MSM[1].
This isn't to say that Obama/Clinton wouldn't have relied on a Cambridge Analytica type service for moral reasons (in fact IIRC Clinton's campaign did do something similar, but at a much smaller scale), though, but more that they underestimated its potency...
[1]:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/11...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/health/dream-team-of-behav...
Saying "both sides do it" is just plain unfair and borderline propaganda.
I led Mercer's old team at IBM for a few year and we also developed NLP/ML-based profiling technology. They work better than chance but not much better (there is lots of published literature on the subject) and definitely not enough to make a big difference from just feeding fake news to everybody equally.
Politics, in my opinion, is creating a product capable of fitting more people inside than the other candidate can. Certainly it is vastly easier to make out-performing political ads based on data points like pro-gun, hunter verse making ads for Coca-Cola based on data points like breast feeding, yoga.
Perhaps this is more about category discovery and targeting (vastly more difficult without Facebook) than any cutting machine learning.
When you're dealing with razor thin margins in individual electoral districts, and 300M people, even slightly better than chance can be pretty powerful.
If you want to understand that demand, below is my favorite article on what Trump was tapping into and how liberals were coming across to them. Next liberal candidate needs to change marketing to appeal to some of these in the swing states. They certainly had opportunities but substituted mockery for appeal to them.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...
Sure, they might believe in their victimhood, and Trump is fluent in speaking that language. Doesn't make it true. We all struggle to survive in this economy and we all have our own problems -- the difference is those of us who will not drag the country down by supporting a transparently dishonest conman in an attempt to lash out at those we perceive to be doing better but undeserving.
Justifying this perspective is a fallacy.
How you feel about their vote and how you feel about the material circumstances of their life are two distinct things. It's quite possible they've got a legitimate grievance, and nonetheless voted poorly.
I say this as a member of the liberal elite in urban Canada. Things are great right now for my set!
I've been to Pittsburgh and rural Vermont within the past year, as well as NYC. In Pittsburgh I happened to be in a hospital waiting room and saw some of the poorest looking white people I've ever seen. Missing teeth, ragged clothing, leathered skin, sunken eyes. It was shocking.
In Vermont, I heard many stories of the opioid crisis. It sounded quite severe.
I've also driven through rural Maine with my family. Rusting cars and junk heaps in every backyard, doors falling off the hinges, chickens running amok.
Certainly they're not the only group to have struggles. But to dismiss their troubles is part of what got us here.
Here are some stats on the recent mortality shift: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078.full
Personal note: I grew up rural California; Frank's thesis describes the adamant, self-defeating narratives that I regularly heard from my neighbors.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-Ame... [1] http://www.economist.com/node/8057895
elites in big cities obliterated their jobs and companies in the name of efficiency.
One argument I hear sometimes from those who express statements like this is that there should be less government and that business and the market are the best ways to handle issues that provide some sort of social safety net in part because they're more efficient and will cost less. Businesses and the market will tend to reduce labor costs in the name of efficiency.
Have you noticed this as well? Please note I'm not disagreeing with you. I think the situation is pretty complicated.
Edit to add: Looks like you updated your comment while I was composing mine, and it now addresses in part what I've written.
Sam Brownback didn't happen in Kansas because the city dwellers wanted him in power. His disaster of an administration happened because he demonstrated that he understood all of the phobias his constituents have been fed for over a generation now.
It's not any easier being poor in the city.
> the difference is those of us who will not drag the country down by supporting a transparently dishonest conman in an attempt to lash out at those we perceive to be doing better but undeserving.
The only thing I'd point out is that in the previous path, we'd probably be at WW III with a clash between Rússia and US. Hell, Clinton lost and it is still fueling a rivalry between these countries.
I'm confused - is the bracketed clause a causal factor here?
I keep telling people, things are going to get really weird. You tell me, what happens in a complex adaptive system when the cost of information (transmission and storage) goes to zero? Yah, shit gets weird fast.
Does anyone think Cambridge Analytica is the sole proprietor of tech like this? Will they remain the only ones? What if one person leaks the model? What if someone open sources a better one? We know this story. After some time this is going to become as accessible as any other tech, and Things. Are. Going. To. Get. Really. Weird.
We need tools for information digestion and management to cast more informed votes. Unless we just want to admit that voters can't keep up with their government and hold it accountable, in which case we need tools to manage a government that cannot manage its own information input/output.
Critical thinking is nice and the most basic requirement, but it doesn't enlighten you to facts that you simply don't have time to discover. You can make educated guesses and you could be right, but they are still guesses.
To go and find all of those facts, you have to spend an enormous amount of time reading all sources of information (Breitbart, MSM, alt-right, ADL, etc.) or you have to admit you are making decisions with incomplete information. You also have to watch videos, listen to sound bites, and read tweets.
Time is the real enemy and the reason so many people give up in the face of this information-saturated reality is that no one has enough of it to continue using their eyes and ears to parse the world's raw data. Anything that reduces the time cost of being an informed voter is going to have the greatest impact of managing information and governments.
I think that it will be easier to make tools to manage and summarize accurately than to limit the rate of growth or output of information.
This wasn't popular because one group of people kept Having their feelings and biases attacked. They were later served by the media empires built to serve their views.
They got their experts and their talking heads to say things they felt needed to be said.
In so doing the first false dichotomy was established - feelings and opinions are the same no matter the facts and the experts disagree.
So the first layer of agreement/expert concord was breached.
This results in the problem you describe.
What we face now is fiction being camouflaged as news sites, and super insulation/echo chambers.
This is happening at the margins. Topics and people which are capable of being attacked in this manner. Later the surface are of attack will increase as technology, technique improve while human fatigue sets in.
The Obama campaign's use of technology was well documented - a two minute Google threw up detailed articles from MIT, Forbes, Technology Review.
If you have a substantive point to make about any of that, or any proof at all that the Obama campaign has indulged in the kind of propaganda Bannon et al are neck deep in, you should make it instead of resorting to hand wavy arguments like this.
There are some uses of nudge theory - using it to lower college dropout rates, encouraging tax payments - where the ethics are not clear cut and you can make an argument one way or another. 'It happened on House of Cards' isn't going to cut it.
We're asking for better journalism, not implicating any public figure or party.
We would like to know exactly what you're asking:
> specific instances of the Obama campaign doing the same
The commenter said 'This has been happening for ages, Obama did it too'
I asked for examples of where the Obama campaign had done similar - particularly around the propaganda part.
The accusation of 'bad journalism' becomes a lot stronger if you can point to specific things which have been omitted from the account in the OP.
What you appear to be asking for is 'balance' - I'm asking of you, what's missing from the account in the OP?
You're the only one mentioning "Obama" in this comment tree. You were quick to assume a defensive position for whatever reason, but his is aimed at both parties in general.
> What you appear to be asking for is 'balance' - I'm asking of you, what's missing from the account in the OP?
You're assuming again. I do not expect the Guardian to expose its party, but it would be interesting to see both sides laid bare next to each other.
That is all.
There's a weak implication there that the Democracts are doing something similar to Big Data + troll armies that this article covers. I'd have asked for clarification before jumping straight to "Obama doing same thing" but I see where kristianc is getting the impression.
Are you kidding? Obama invented the use of social tools to get elected. [1]
Google, who, as an org make up probably 95% Obama voters, have a deep relationship with government [2]. And Sheryl Sandberg worked for the Democratic apparatus.
There's nothing entirely wrong with either things (possibly), but the point is that it's 'nefarious' when conservatives have money and access but not when massive and institutional entities like Google do for the Democrats? Google and Facebook are two organizations that, if they chose to, could control the outcome of the election - that's a pretty scary conflict of interest. Exxon certainly couldn't. Where is the uproar?
Surely, it's worth pointing out where 'big money/business and politics collide', but it's very hypocritical to scream about the plight of one side, and not the other.
If anything - this somewhat hypocritical posturing, generally supported by the MSM, gives credence to those who argue the MSM is at least softly biased in one direction. Though I tend to generally trust most of the big news orgs, I believe there is a degree of 'sidedness' on this issue.
[1] http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-social-m...
[2] https://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-revol...
I distinctly remember that. Then there's a fit now among liberals that the Republicans are doing what liberals say they should've been doing. Hell, they're doing it better. Liberals will need to up their game plus have a final candidate that's worth something in next election.
There is far too much shadiness going on. Yes the horse has bolted with Brexit but there are more elections around the world and if the democratic process _may_ be being distorted then I think it needs investigation.
Most political processes are distortion. Political ads are never basic presentations of fact. At best, they're just exercises in cherry picking, but typically they're spin and outright lies.
Major media outlets all have their political slants and their subsets of slants presented by their various journalists. More distortion.
Is it political distortion when you bus in voters of a particular party to the polling places who would otherwise not have bothered to vote?
I meant a tool was used and was not registered as a donation. This may have distorted the campaigns because the two sides had to disclose all donations.
That one chose not to, is in my view dishonest, thoroughly inappropriate and may very well have been ilegal.
I am not naive, hence my comment. For future elections election officials will need to be observant.
Think of it more like CEO's with their executive dashboards, Wall Street journal, stock tickers, and trusted advisors. They're going day-to-day with their finger on the pulse of the company and markets. They have people constantly advising them on various things that pop up. They mix their own style and ideas with that advise to determine course of action. It happens so much it becomes natural for them.
Probably like that but in direct & orchestrated way given how election campaigns work.
Mercer is CEO of Renaissance Technologies and seems to own piece of Cambridge Analytica. Peter Thiel and Palantir. Even Mark Zuckerberg seems to have political ambitions.
Big data, microtargeting, and social graph analysis are being used to manipulate the electorate.
I hope whatever side of politics you fall on that you can see its not a single party or even just the government,its the propagation and use from every day citizens and their ignorance of what and how information will be used.
This is nothing new. This is the Obama data machine/Civis/270/etc etc (who didn't Eric Schmidt fund after 2012?), AFL-CIO/Catalist, the party databases... This is the basic strategy today regardless of side. Whatever business layer Cambridge Analytica has on top of that data is not novel.
The "conspiracy" to manipulate is truly bipartisan now.
Map out exactly what the voter wants to hear, bury your message inside a wrapper of fake news that speaks directly to them.
The part that makes it so insidious, is that ad targeting is so fine grained, that only the victim will be able to see the ads, it is an imperceptible enemy. Literally zero rebuttals given.
Really hard to prove attribution. The assumption that the election was won because everyone who didnt vote like you was "manipulated" is insulting. We're all just getting more entrenched.
As for shell accounts, tinfoil hat is all I'm hearing. Prove it. There is more substance in DNC leaked emails than any of this left conspiracy nonsense.
Edit: wtf is fraud laundering?
Facebook absolutely has a log of every ad shown to every user, ever. Who bought the impression and who viewed it.
Why couldn't something like Twitter or instagram be built out of p2p protocols? Where users actively curate their connections predominately in person with people they actually know? I think there's actually a demand for this. People I know are tired of the polluted mainstream social media channels, but know no other options.
https://github.com/mmckegg/patchwork-next/blob/master/README...
He was one of only 8 members of Congress to vote against the Iron Dome anti-missle system which protected Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets. [2]
[1] http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/israel-middle...
[2] http://jpupdates.com/2014/08/03/rep-ellison-explains-anti-ir...
[3] http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/17/democrats-must-scrutinize-...
MSM chose not to report the Anti-Defamation League statement (ADL says Bannon is not anti-Semitic BTW) about Ellison nor did it report that he was one of 8 members of Congress to vote against Iron Dome, an anti-missle system that protected Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets.
EDIT: After the DNC election which Ellison lost, the Wall Street Journal disclosed the following:
"Mr. Ellison, who is an African-American Muslim, also faced complaints about his past associations with the Nation of Islam and statements he has made that were perceived as criticizing Israel. Haim Saban, an Israeli-American donor who funded the construction of the DNC’s Washington headquarters, in December publicly called Mr. Ellison “clearly an anti-Semite.”"[4]
But they should have disclosed this information before the election.
[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-elect-tom-perez-party...
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/politics/keith-ellison-anti-de...
They even quoted "disqualifying" in the lede.
> As a matter of fact, the majority of Jewish people I know.
Well, the majority I know, both American and Israeli are not critical of how the state was re-established, rather they understand that the Palestinians turned down their state in 1948 and tried to destroy the newly established Jewish nation.
It is useful news to know that the DNC was supporting a candidate who was one of only 8 to vote against Iron Dome anti-missle system funding meant to help protect Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets.
> even back in the days of slow news the MSM got things really wrong on a regular basis
This is false nostalgia. The mainstream media may be terrible today (and I think it is) but it's still better than it has ever been. Not long ago people subscribed to a single newspaper that never needed to print retractions. There were no comment sections to set the record straight. Journalists wouldn't get held to account on twitter. Journalists used to be middle-class white men, now it's more diverse.
Hence stuff like creationism or global warming denial first enjoying a campaign of FUD and then landing up on the news as "teach the debate" or other catchy jingles.
And then the internet came along and destroyed paper after newspaper. Magazine after magazine.
The remainder got bought over and committed 100% to survive in the shortened media attention world.
These pitfalls were highlighted but lost in the cheerleading and revolution of citizen journalism.
We lost many editorial boards and years of experience. That experience is now being relearned by people manning forums as moderators who don't have the benefit of mentors, or bloggers who are fighting for clicks.
The world Was made less clear. A false narrative was used to elevate spurious arguments, emotional coddling to Drive advertising.
When the internet hit, the structure gave way to the new necessities of survival.
The loss of many editorial boards is regrettable, but in exchange we have gotten access to news from all over the world. Desperate fighting for clicks conflicts with journalistic values, but newspapers have always depended on advertisement income. The newspapers of old didn't dare offend their advertising patrons.
Major news organizations in every country should be funded by the public, just like we fund the other checks and balances in society like the courts system and law enforcement.
You can be anti-Semitic and pro-Israel, just like how in the 1960's you could support South Vietnam while holding totally racist views about them.
Nevertheless, Bannon essentially has established himself as the chief curator for the alt right. Under his stewardship, Breitbart has emerged as the leading source for the extreme views of a vocal minority who peddle bigotry and promote hate.
[1] http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/17/bannon-br...
Before, we'd call this newsworthiness. Now we call it a vast MSM conspiracy to suppress coverage of an entire spectrum of people. It's weird that the kind of person who reads Hacker News and ostensibly understands creating products for a target market would then look at decisions such as these and not see them as understanding broad audience appeal. The Hill, Politico, Breitbart, all mastheads that cater to deep politics, all ran it.
It's cool to see a narrative be created that broad appeal mastheads not running something is an indictment of "mainstream media" (the clue is in the name!) simply because the guy you like is not getting the attention you want. And then someone links the MSM running the very story that started you down this path (on CNN!) and you ignore it and continue peddling your version of events.
The flaw in MSM is that there simply isn't enough time in the day to run everything, and every time I see commentary like this around a specific event, the math on newsworthiness immediately makes sense to me because I've been an assignment editor. But unfortunately it leaves an opening for your side to say "see! the terrible left is ignoring us!" and it sounds like a legitimate gripe to a lot of people.
That's not antisemitism. It's certainly anti-left, but that doesn't make it antisemitic.
Similarly, a protestant's failure to be catholic doesn't make them a satanist.
More or less the same applies to Trump as well. Here's an article that lays this out quite well, though I suspect you'll refuse to engage with it: http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/01/17/aggressive-stupidity-...
They merely say he isn't left wing and allow the reader to draw the vague inference that he may be somehow associated with others (second or thirdhand) who are. I can understand why you might have been mislead by this, however.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/jewish-groups-and-unio...
I'm sure there are lots of other examples. I certainly heard of it repeatedly. But I would not call it "vital."
There was at least one Op-Ed about Steve Bannon and anti-Semitism but no opinion piece of Op-Ed in the NYTimes or otherwise about Ellison and his views.
Whereas the general vibe I seem to get is that people believe he's been compromised and co-erced.
Also - Found it difficult to continue the article after they tried to draw an analogy between Trump and Modi on account of both being nationalist.
Do you seriously think you can make stuff up here and nobody is going to bother checking it? You literally just have to type Keith Ellison ADL into Google to demonstrate your claim is false.
I did google each of these publications and found nothing. Nor did I find anything that cited how he was one of 8 members of Congress to vote against the Iron Dome anti-missle system that has protected many Israelis civilians from Hamas missiles.
> Where is the NY Times citation, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic? Please cite links that refer to the ADL statement about Ellison before the DNC election.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/jewish-groups-and-unio...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/02/ke...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/rep-keith-ellison-faces-critics-...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/keith-e...
All dated within 48 hours of the ADL statement, almost three months ago.
> I did google each of these publications and found nothing.
Now you're just proving you're lying. If you type this into Google:
Keith Ellison ADL site: [each of those publications]
those pages are the very first results.
> Nor did I find anything that cited how he was one of 8 members of Congress to vote against the Iron Dome anti-missle system
Do they routinely report on what he votes against in Congress? Or are you saying the "MSM" should for some reason focus on everything you personally happen to think is newsworthy?
This is an important vote and for Ellison to be one of 8 members of Congress suggests that he is very anti-Israel.
I had earlier googled on Ellison and anti-Semitism and did not find articles. Meanwhile, the media went crazy over Bannon who in fact is not anti-Semite in the slightest and he is very pro-Israel.
The author made sure to paint another Trump supporter in a bad light by using words like antisemitic, islamophobic, scary, brainwashing, disrupting the MSM, extremist sites, creepy, propaganda, amplify particular political narratives, playing to emotions. These words and many others have become their divisive talking points. I was surprised that I didn't see Hitler, Fascist, Racist and Sexist too. It's laughable if they weren't so transparently vulgar.
There's also stuff about tracking and usage habits but not a word about Google, Facebook, Twitter, George Soros (and his countless disruptive sites) and the REAL power (the MSM) - all engaged in extremist misrepresentation, censorship, outright lies, news coverups, blacklisted topics, paid rioters, banning users, manipulation of trending topics, physical assaults on the public by paid thugs. He mud-slings terms like "ethical regulations" in regard to Mercer when the real power has been documented to have long crossed the line and hold the details of our lives in their data-sharing databases with NO accountability.
He segues into "playing the victim". The privileged elite that has long held the reins of manipulating public opinion is (laughably) the victim now. The MSM, which has engaged in massive coverups to support their candidate, that has used fear-mongering through misinformation, that holds ALL the keys and power is now the victim. I would borrow the following from the race-baiting left... "check you privilege at the door", in response.
I started off as a fairly objective person during the political process. I liked Bernie, grew to despise Hillary and her divisive rhetoric (and noted how often the MSM media blacklisted explosive stories about this corrupt politician who was selling our country away, piece by piece). I wasn't even a Trump supporter and NEVER visited anything right-wing. I was long sold on the idea that the right-wing was racist. I got ALL my news from the MSM. They betrayed my trust and continue to do so daily. The author has learned nothing.
They haven't safeguarded anything. The last time Republicans were in control of the military-intelligence complex led to wars on false pretenses that killed more Americans and foreigners than 9/11. The cost was hundreds of billions of dollars with estimates of several trillion in long-term liability. Money that could've been spent on education, healthcare, infrastructure improvements, business subsidies... anything with provable benefit to Americans' lives. ISIS formed as a direct result the Iraq war as predicted those of us protesting. They killed even more people. The local surveillance then failed to spot a guy in Boston spewing out hate speech online and visiting red flag countries... the ideal case for mass surveillance.
So, conservative policies previously led to the murder of thousands of Americans, maiming of thousands more, more terrorists in Middle East, tons of tax dollars lost w/ no gain to average voter, and some defense CEO's getting richer. That's not safeguarding our country. That's an active threat to it. It will be interesting to see whether history repeats given the new Republican President is quite different from priors. More like a knockoff of Silvia Berlusconi in Italy given all the campaign stunts/claims on top of corrupt, business dealings.
"This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs."
This is what anyone who votes or participates in the election process is doing. Hell, it's what this journalist is doing.
>They’re dead, I learn, because they – we, I – “cannot be trusted”.
Please, as if you hadn't worked out you can't be trusted before. You knew what you were doing with the above line.
Obama already used data science in his campaigns, and Hillary spent more money than Trump afaik. Advertising and user targeting are not new inventions.
I agree it's possible. It's a combo of facts either side might use, facts cherry-picked for one side, logical fallacies, and pure rhetoric. I think there's more to it, though. These techniques go way back to point that my first analysis of logical and rhetorical persuasion was the Declaration of Independence that used both. Old media articles are a laugh, too, given their bias was so obvious.
For example, I have witnessed first hand the campaign for banning ads on Breitbart (which was often pointing to Milo articles like "the pill is making women ugly", falsely claiming they were mysognist), and I have followed Milo for a long time. I was following him on Twitter when he was banned, so I know he didn't call for racist attacks on the Ghostbusters actress as many articles claim. I have asked people to prove to me that Breitbart is antisemitic (while employing Jews like Milo) and received no replies. Therefore the article simply seems laughable to me. In fact the way Milo is mentioned is often a quick way to judge an article - if they claim he called for harassment of the Ghostbusters actress, it is bunk.
is really nothing new. Sensing the emotions expressed by someone and then nudging them through targeted advertisement is a multi-billion business. It is proven to be effective in that realm. Is it fear mongering when one wonders about the political impact of this technology when employed on a massive scale?
Little actual information?
"Cambridge Analytica worked for the Trump campaign ... it was reported that until recently he had a seat on the board."
"A few weeks later, the Observer received a letter."
"earlier this week, I ended up in a Pret a Manger near Westminster with Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s affable communications director"
Concrete facts about how people and organizations relate. Events and named sources. First hand interviews.
In any case, as you say, it is nothing new, and open to everyone with enough money (as Clinton had). If you want to suggest it was unfair play, then maybe you should rethink how the president is elected in general. Should TV advertisements be allowed? They also manipulate people, and favor the candidate with the most money. How could you ensure that people vote without having been manipulated? Maybe nobody should be allowed to consume any media for 2 years prior to the election?
There are also presumably entities with far more data available than Cambridge Analytics, as have been mentioned on HN frequently before. Advertisers have been collecting data on people for a long time.
There are definitely people who are looking to reform election campaign rules and the influence of money. There's been plenty of debate regarding cases such as Citizens United.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
To imply that people aren't also concerned about factors beyond Cambridge Analytics is disingenuous.
Edit, since HN doesn't let me reply: the point is the article suggest something sinister going on, whereas it is mostly just business as usual. Note that claims about the effectiveness of CA also come mostly from CA executives. It could almost be a PR article for CA...
Other aspects also reek of conspiracy theory, like the "you set up outlets like Breitbart to replae the established media" - really, just like that, you set up news sites that are more popular than the established ones? And with a shocking, enourmus investment of 2 million dollars, too? It really seems as if Billionaires control everything, don't they? In fact, reading the article, I get the impression that rich people are generally evil - leftist ideology much?