Forget Cambridge Analytica. Zuck could use FB data for his own presidential run

>a study of the 1974 Canadian federal elections found that attractive candidates received more than two and a half times as many votes as unattractive candidates (Efran & Patterson, 1976). Despite such evidence of favoritism toward handsome politicians, follow-up research demonstrated that voters did not realize their bias. In fact, 73 percent of Canadian voters surveyed denied in the strongest possible terms that their votes had been influenced by physical appearance; only 14 percent even allowed for the possibility of such influence (Efran & Patterson, 1976). Voters can deny the impact of attractiveness on electability all they want, but evidence has continued to confirm its troubling presence (Budesheim & DePaola, 1994).

Yay representative democracy.

It is fairly evident that Zuckerberg does not inspire with his words; they feel contrived in a way that makes you wonder if he really believes what he is saying. On the other hand, Trump has conviction, even if his point of view is not something you agree with.

Zuckerberg has no conviction in his speech at all, and that makes him difficult to trust. One cannot reasonably trust a man who appears to have no trust in himself.

That's such a low bar that even I would be a huge improvement over the incumbent and I have the political acumen of a small horsefly.

Any US-born citizen can run for president, claiming that someone in his position never will is at best wishful thinking, at worst self-delusion. As to whether he'd stand a chance mostly depends on who he'd be running against, there have been plenty of candidates where it would not be inconceivable for people to vote for him as being the least bad of the set.

>Mr. Kramer wrote that changing the emotional makeup of the news feeds had a minimal impact, prompting users to produce an average of one fewer emotional word per thousand words over the following week.

What I am saying is that I find unlikely that they can change the voting preference, if not that of really gullible (or if you prefer "very easy to manipulate") people.

1) asking a user who had signed up for the Obama campaign if the campaign could contact their friends Johnny and Sue (discovered via their Facebook API) to ask them to support the Obama campaign.

2) Obtaining Facebook data by a professor for an academic study, who then turns around and sells said data to Cambridge Analytica, who uses it for targeted fake news propaganda. All of this without any consent from any user.

Add to this the fact that CA was also self-admittedly conducting political blackmail and bribery, and allegedly hacking election results, and you have a pretty ugly picture.