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Comment by fixxer | Hacker News Reader

> Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters – its USP is to use this data to understand people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly.

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.

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There is a distinction between deeply understanding someone at scale and using that understanding to either bait them computer generated propaganda or suppress their vote.

That's my take. They kicked it up a notch from human execution to computerized execution of the models they were collecting before. Their models might be better, too.

If I was a federal prosecutor, I'd go after Cambridge Analytica for computer mediated election fraud. Effectively, it is using AI to run a dynamic con job.

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.

No they should be going after voters who voted for Trump.

This kind of partisanship helps absolutely no one.

Come and get me.

You have to solve ad attribution first. Good luck.

Fraud laundering, the data is there in a network of shell accounts.

You have to prove that there was an impact on the electorate and that it wasn't just a matter of hating HRC or desire to shakeup the GOP.

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?

You are putting my words in my mouth to construct a straw man. You have no idea how I voted or what I think. My comments were only directed at automated techniques for generating and disseminating propaganda.

Facebook absolutely has a log of every ad shown to every user, ever. Who bought the impression and who viewed it.

They'd try to argue free speech/press like corporate media did many times. Then point out other side often cherry-picks or lies.

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