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Comment by oh-kumudo | Hacker News Reader

What you talk about Trump campaign is clearly far from the reality:

Starting around 11:00

The CA person clearly shows, from the screenshots, they have personal level targeting to predict whether a person is neurotic or not, what ads should be used to exploit that.

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That was (and still is) CA's supposed selling point. What's doubtful is that the Trump campaign were convinced this worked, or that there's any reason why anyone else should be. It just doesn't match up with the reporting I've seen based on campaign sources talking about how they designed ads and targetted people. It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psychological classification on someone based on what they post online, but actually use that to work out how to manipulate their minds. It's hard enough designing a repeatable and meaningful personality classification with the full co-operation of the test subjects.

Not only that, the one campaign we can confirm did use CA's tech - Ted Cruz in the primaries - flopped, and it certainly didn't get rave reports on its accuracy, ability to convince, and understanding of how they thought from those it was targetting.

Edit: Brad Parscale's actually on video saying that the campaign didn't use psychographics because they didn't think it actually worked: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/secret-weapon/ (6:35ish).

> It also seems absurd on its face - they're essentially claiming to be able to not only do a accurate psychological classification on someone based on what they post online, but actually use that to work out how to manipulate their minds.

This is not dissimilar to the idea that Russia spending a few million dollars on Facebook ads and automated Twitter bots somehow played a defining role in influencing an election. Even within the context of 1.5yrs+ of 24/7 mainstream TV/internet news coverage, billions of dollars in marketing spend by both parties, the personal influence of two of the most famous celebrities in American history (Clintons and Trumps), a multi-decade legacy of highly partisan politics, etc, etc.

It seems measuring the real-world impact of these tools and tactics is completely ignored in favour of believing we're living in some fantasy scifi world where bots and pseudosciencey psychological profiles can make anyone president.

Has anyone asked how much impact these tools have had on the sales of consumer products over the last decade? If they've hardly revolutionized online advertising of consumer products to make people buy products they didn't want (which AFAIK it hasn't), I highly highly doubt it played a huge role in the election of someone a portion of the voting populace didn't want.

It's easy to start wildfires, that's what paid agitators do and likely did. The problem is - of course - millions of Americans were (and still are) very susceptible to particular kinds of bullshit. (InfoWars, religon, guns don't kill people, "gay agenda", anti-vaxxers, other new age fuckvoodoo, and so on.)

Yes, it's probably unknowable how effective the russian bots were exactly.

> Yes, it's probably unknowable how effective the russian bots were exactly.

Possibly but I'd say it's a very safe bet the amount of outrage and blame being put on this foreign super villain boogieman with his infinitely powerful technology far far outweighs it's real world influence.

Oh well, I'm sure it will be a boon for the tech industry the more people believe in this magical nonsense.

That was their pitch. The campaign considered using them as a hedge against the RNC not providing its data, but ultimately did not use CA for the general election.

Source: ABC News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-o...

Here's a timestamp for anybody who needs it:

https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4?t=10m33s (10:33)

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