Guilt by association, throwing in the Russians and Holocaust deniers, some evil billionaires - it has it all. Funneling foreign money into national elections is always happening - through foundations, local branches, tax location, and so on.
Absent from all of this are of cause any facts on what Cambridge Analytica is doing different than being just another programmatic ad buying firm.
Firstly I don't think either of above are proper sentences. Secondly use of 'one of the most' with 'profoundly unsettling' doesn't read well to me - for this to work wouldn't we have to commonly or often be in a state of being profoundly unsettled, thereby to have the collection that 'one of the most' seems to require?
These types of errors are strewn about the entire piece and diminish the authority of the writer.
However, it's the first time I've seen an answer to the question "who's driving Brexit" that seems realistic.
Mercer, Bannon, Thiel, et al. and their psy-ops arms - what's their involvement now in the French election. Presumably if the article's narrative is factual they're trying to get Le Pen elected to further fragment Europe? Which French campaigns have had unsolicited calls from AIQ/AIS/Cambridge Analytica?
I find it another pseudo-logicical explanation for those who can't accept the fact that most voters don't agree with them. Who are trying to justify their own moral superiority by pretending those who don't agree with them were all scammed and cheated into that believe.
Nothing personal but since we are already picking those narratives that we favor let me just pick the other extreme.
Replace 'most' with 'a slender majority' if you want to retain the fig-leaf of objectivity and rationality that you seem to covet.
Politics is littered with examples of groups who were deceived into voting against their own self-interest. This isn't some kind of bizarre conspiracy - it's business as usual. It strikes me as more bizarre to pretend that democracy is some kind of idealized machine that extracts considered, rational decisions from large aggregates of people. It never was and never has been. It's simply the "least worst"[1] way of choosing our leaders.
Of course. We have vested interest in complaining when we 'lose' and praising the outcome when we 'win'.
But your original post seemed to be dismissive of the idea that there is anything to be worried about. Even if we agree on the existence of a major cognitive bias here - it's irrelevant to the question of whether there is a real issue that should be addressed.
The problem with a "backdoor in democracy" is similar to the problem with cryptography backdoors. You can't control who'll make use of them so everyone should be scared.
Would the argument still hold water if he did ?
> Politics is littered with examples of groups who were deceived into voting against their own self-interest. This isn't some kind of bizarre conspiracy - it's business as usual. It strikes me as more bizarre to pretend that democracy is some kind of idealized machine that extracts considered, rational decisions from large aggregates of people
Tell that to the leftists in US who go around shouting that Trump lost the popular vote
Do you mean mine or his? I think his argument would lose some rhetorical force and be much less persuasive. If you mean something else then please clarify as I don't quite follow.
> Tell that to the leftists in US who go around shouting that Trump lost the popular vote
I'm not sure how the existence of that group is relevant here. Surely if anything they underscore my point from the other side of the fence?
I'm not claiming "this only happens to the side I disagree with" if that's what you're implying.
It's not new, but with Facebook etc and the masses of data that are out there, along with the technology to mine it, I think we're seeing a huge shift into how these things are run as people can be targeted on a much more macro level.
Somebody coordinated the campaign, somebody established writing £350M on the side of a bus was the perfect way to win people over, knowing it was a lie.
Doesn't a foreign business contacting a supposed grass-roots campaign unsolicited look even a little suspicious to you?
Where's the link between Farage and Trump's campaigns in your version of events.
It doesn't take shadowy foreign billionaires to figure out that promising the electorate lots of money is a vote winner
The demographics least likely to be reached by Cambridge Analytica's ad-buying campaigns were also those most likely to vote Leave.
Some thought that immediately after the vote passed, for example, that all non-British residents would be deported.
Others voted, expecting financial devastation, but preferring the Tory party to be in control of our destiny as a country than yielding anything to an accord of nations - as another example.
Still others voted, a large proportion it seems to stop immigration; which isn't going to happen.
Yet others voted because they'd been persuaded it would be better economically for them and their communities. But instead those communities will get less spending and, eventually, far worse conditions of employment too.
Another large proportion voted because of the promises of funding for the NHS but the Tory plan is to run it down and bring in more and more commerce until it's effectively privatised, so even if it hadn't been a lie the Tory's weren't going to follow it through.
If the voters could make their support conditional on the actual outcome then it seems like maybe 15% at most would still be supporting it.
How those who stood by the "£350M for the NHS" lie, our Foreign Secretary say, weren't committing treason I don't know ... but I digress.