The flood of news about Cambridge Analytica's use of Facebook data is beginning to unleash tongues with stories of ever more far-reaching interference in national elections.
The Guardian has this story about Nigeria's 2015 election. SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company was hired by a wealthy Nigerian to help defeat Muhammadu Buhari the opposition candidate running against incumbent (and memorably named) Goodluck Jonathan, who was favored to win. In fact, Buhari won.
Politico has this background story on Cambridge Analytica that includes new info on the Facebook data heist: the "Cambridge academic," who was given the data trove, is Russian-born and was actually a University of St. Petersburg somebody, or maybe nobody.
As usual, I would read all of this with a cup of salt...still, suggests how devious the fake campaign business can get.
A lot -- not all, but a bloody lot -- of the Analytica flap is the tsouris felt by flesh and blood when an art becomes a science. What the Trump campaign did with the data is what campaigns have been doing forever with old pols. Before The Candidate came to town, his staff provided a checklist of people to thank, subjects to duck, local fetishes to support and words not to use. Don't praise the grits in Grand Rapids. His staff didn't get this wisdom from its own brows but from friendly old pols and operatives who knew the territory. Analytica pretends, and apparently succeeds to some extent, to provide the same kind of guidance on the basis of data analysis. More than that, it can get neighborhood-specific in Grand Rapids by knowing where the active American Legion Post is, where the hippies live and even the neighborhoods with enough displaced Southerners that it's safe to mention grits. More than that, it at least semi-promises to provide hot-button words that will appeal to individual, specific voters. The old pols never could do that (and I doubt Analytica can. Yet.).
ReplyDeleteThe ability to talk massively to customers one-on-one has always been the Holy Grail of advertising. You may recall how magazines(before people stopped reading them on paper) experimented with ads aimed at individual subscribers, with the subscriber's name in them, that were a little bit different at each address to which they were delivered.
What Analytica (and its competitors) promise is to take the old pol out of the equation. That is one more step back for mankind. But it is a disservice to voters. Who the old pols worked with, and who they refused to work with, used to be like a seal of approval to less plugged-in party members. Now voters will have to rely on algorithms for that kind of verification. It really is sad.
TB: "A lot -- not all, but a bloody lot -- of the Analytica flap is the tsouris felt by flesh and blood when an art becomes a science. What the Trump campaign did with the data is what campaigns have been doing forever with old pols."
DeleteYes, BUT, a science?....There has got to be a qualitative difference between the artist/pols of yore who knew their voters. Analytica only knows points on a probability..eg. You like Bruce Springsteen's music, what is the likelihood you'll vote for Trump, or not. Gathering enough points might give you an answer, or not.
You may have 2,000000000 points from millions of people on Facebook, which may increase the chances of turning out Trump voters, or not.
The pols of yore went and kicked in the door and drove voters to the polls.
To the best that I can tell, there are two things that are driving this story, and the media is doing a fairly poor job on both of them.
ReplyDeleteOne, which I think is a genuine issue, is that Cambridge Analytica got its hands on Facebook data in an unorthodox fashion. Whether any laws were broken still isn't clear to me.
The second, which I don't view as very newsworthy, is that the Trump campaign may possibly have used Facebook data in its campaign activities.
In my view, the news media has pretty much botched both angles. The initial newscasts I saw seemed to suggest, without actually saying so, that the Trump campaign, or its sinister contractor Cambridge Analytica, hacked into Facebook - that this is a data breach story.
The Donald Trump campaign angle is botched because news reports suggest that the use of Facebook data is some sort of new dirty trick. In fact, it's neither new nor a dirty trick. Any Facebook user, or user of any other social media platform, who professes any surprise whatsoever that the social media company is collecting data on their income, marital status, likes, dislikes, habits and so on, and making it available to researchers, consumer marketers and political campaigns - anyone to whom this is news should be banned from social media for excessive cluelessness. The use of data analytics culled from sources like Facebook was a big part of the secret sauce used by the Obama campaign and by other successful Democratic campaigns during the Obama era. This is not new, folks, and there is nothing prima facie underhanded about it.
It seems to me that the news media has been trying, unsuccessfully, to make this story fit one of two story templates: that this is a data breach; or that this is some sort of evidence of Trump/Russian collusion. Inasmuch as the story doesn't fit very well into either pre-existing template, it hasn't been a very good reporting job. Sometimes the news media needs to learn to tell different stories.
Don't know what you're reading on this, but what I read is that there was no data breach, i.e., hacking or theft of data. Facebook turned it over willingly to a "scholar" doing research.
DeleteThat scholar turned the data over to Analytics contrary to his agreement. That he is a Russian feeds rumors that he was part of some plot (all of this unproven). Analytics use was unauthorized; hard to see how it was illegal.
Yes, Facebook is a grubby, greedy tech corporation, much like the guys who still own coal mines.
Peggy - I'm not very conversant on data privacy laws, but there are some out there, even beyond the HIPAA medical privacy laws that we all learn about when we sign forms in doctor's offices. The Europeans have stronger ones than we do. But whether those laws would cover the sorts of data that Facebook would mine from us, and whether or not we've essentially given Facebook permission to sell that data as part of their terms of service, are things it would be best for a lawyer or two to weigh in on, if any hang out here at NewGathering.
DeleteThe Guardian seems to be doing a good job; I suppose because the word "Cambridge" keeps appearing.
DeleteHere's what's up at 1:07 PM.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/22/cambridge-analytica-scandal-the-biggest-revelations-so-far
Here's the Russian, Aleksander Kogan speaking up (proclaiming his innocence, more or less).
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/22/facebook-gave-data-about-57bn-friendships-to-academic-aleksandr-kogan
How they elected Trump: Here's what Cambridge Analytic leakers are telling the Guardian.
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/23/leaked-cambridge-analyticas-blueprint-for-trump-victory
Jim, That's just about how I read it, too, including the angle of the befuddled media.
ReplyDeleteA basic issue with the activities of Cambridge Analytics and other firms that scoop up piles of data and then work the data over in efforts to manipulate the people they or their clients expose to the product of their manipulation. They aim to modify the behavior of their targeted people in ways that are advantageous to them regardless of how the altered behavior affects the targets themselves.
ReplyDeleteFor a good view of the dangers involved in this kind of operation, see Cathy O'Neil's "Weapons of Math Destruction."
Now, off topic. Does any of us want to say anything about Cardinal Dolan's Wall Street Journal op-ed of today?
You mean, "The Democrats Abandon Catholics"? (WSJ, 3/23/18) Don't you think it's an old story, and a half-truth? Some Democrats have. Some haven't.
ReplyDeleteBut I didn't know this and it is shocking: The Cardinal reports that: "In 2013 there were more black babies aborted in New York City (29,007) than were born here (24,758), according to a report from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene."
Of course, as we often say on this blog, that's as much the Republicans doing as the Democrats. Though maybe the Repubs are somewhat more responsible because they are enemies of the safety net.
Of course, the cardinal's statement that "I'm a pastor, not a politician," must be taken with a pound of salt...
Margaret, maybe Cardnal Dolan's story is an old one, but so much coming from National Democratic figures like Perez and this NY legislation that Cardinal Dolan refers to is about much more that the incidence of abortion. Entirely too much of this stuff has to do with a contempt for some of their fellow citizens that they, the people who say such things, forfeit al reasonable claims to be concerned with anything that looks like the "common good," One not line up with Cardinal Dolan to refuse to line up with the "alt-left."
ReplyDeletePolitically, some of us, including me, may swallow hard and continue to support the Democratic Party' national leadership while having no stomach for encouraging friends and family to do so.
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ReplyDeleteI'll try this comment again, I didn't get the link right the first time: Unfortunately WSJ is behind a pay wall. A lot of the other newspapers at least give you a few free articles a month. Here is kind of a summary from Crux.
ReplyDeleteI can't truthfully say that Dolan is altogether wrong, though there are some promising cracks in the facade lately. The Dems are setting themselves up for failure again if they can't manage to at least put some distance between themselves and Emily's List and that ilk.
Last Fall when Heath Mello ran for mayor of Omaha, there was a back and forth on this blog (as I recall) about the Dems and abortion. Mello was pro-life and Catholic. Perez the DNC head opposed him. He lost. But there was pushback from Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi, who declared the Democrats a BIG TENT Party. I don't think they are hypocrites.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that that is not a sentiment shared by my Democratic mayor or governor, though I don't think they'd do what Perez did. So yes, I groan about voting for Democrats. But the alternative is to stop voting altogether. The Republicans are a disgrace; they are a pro-death party as far a I am concerned. So what Dolan says is partly true. Will 2018, via a Colin Lamb, send the virtually moribund DNC a message about the tiny tent Perez & Co. are occupying. Ever Hopeful.
https://www.thenation.com/article/why-was-heath-mello-thrown-under-the-bus/
Margaret, I agree with you that the Republicans have become a pro-death party. Almost makes one wish for a viable 3rd party. Though tbat option doesn't have a very good track record.
DeleteAbout the treatment of Mello by the DNC, he wasn't even "pure" pro-life. For some reason he didn't get the endorsement of Right to Life organizations. I think he said that he allowed for some exceptions to the rule.
Yes. I am waiting for Dolan Part II, Comrade Trump Abandons Catholics. I'm not arguing for false equality. They are different forms of abandonment. But voting happily for someone is something I haven't done in decades.
DeleteI'm sorry that I diverted this thread to focus on Dolan's op-ed. Much more serious, in terms for its durable effects on people wherever they are, is the instrumentalization of people that is barely concealed in the practices of operations like Cambridge Analytics, any number of sponsored projects having to do with "big data" at universities around the world, industries, etc. The good old-fashioned notion that each person is of fundamental and inalienable worth is under sharp, sustained challenge. Granted, this challenge has never been reduced to zero, but today iEllul's concern about the "technological imperative,' which says that if you can do x you might a well do x because otherwise someone else will do so is taken to be obvious.
ReplyDelete