CEO of Cambridge Analytica claimed they used U.S. proxies to influence election

It's important to separate the things CA claim to have done into 2 categories: 1) things that sound sketchy but are actually normal campaign tactics, and 2) things that are actually illegal.

The following tactics are in category 1:

- Micro-targeting voter with specific persuasion & get-out-the-vote technique based on their profile, which is constructed from various data sources. Indeed, the 2012 Obama campaign is famous for such kind of analytics and behavioral persuasion. [1] [2] In academic Political Science, it's also a mainstream topic of study, of which Donald Green (Yale) is a famous researcher. [3]

- Persuasion campaign is not about facts, but emotion. This is just an axiom in campaign tactics and behavioral sciences. Obama, too, built a campaign around emotions (i.e. hope and change), not detailed policy proposals.

- Strategizing to maximize electoral votes instead of popular vote. This is extremely normal tactics, and is the reason why swing states are more important than strongholds. (Once again, Obama analytics team did the same thing [4])

- Spreading the message through super PACs and other civil society groups that are sympathetic to the candidate. While one may argue about whether CA crosses a line by serving as a conduit for coordination between the campaign and the super PACs, I find this particular indictment of CA mostly a technicality. No matter whether the super PACs coordinate with the campaign or not, they can still come up with the kind of analytics-driven attack ads we saw last election. The problem here is really the Supreme Court decision to allow super PACs, not CA.

The following tactic is in category 2, which I actually find problematic:

- CA spread memes and videos on the Internet without attribute. This obscures the source and bias of the ads, causing voters react differently from what they would have upon seeing "This message is endorsed by XYZ."

On balance, I think that CA needs to be punished for the actions in Category 2. But that alone is not sufficient to reject the hypothesis that Trump got elected based on real frustration from real voters, who would have voted for him even without the fake news and attack ads. Therefore, I believe that we shouldn't neglect their grievances while trying to pin Trump's victory to just underhanded tactics.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/health/dream-team-of-behav...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-...

[3] https://isps.yale.edu/node/16698

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-obama-campai...