can anyone explain what is happening with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook? Is it as important as the journos would have us believe?
Its a way to give subliminal messages to the ones they want to target. In the EU referendum they targeted the easily swayed lower intelligence voters. They posted adverts and media on their facebook pages through targeted advertising. That way every time people opened facebook all they saw was how bad the EU were. In the USA they only saw how bad Clinton was and how great Trump was. . It is happening now with postings about Corbyn and the Labour Party. Cambridge Analytica are using mind bending to get what they want.
Yes it is. Basically, 270, 000 people on Facebook voluntarily filled in personality quizzes to find out what sort of fruit they are etc. This gave the quiz developer their data (e.g. location, posts liked, pages visited, photos posted etc.), fair enough, they agreed to share it. However, it also gave him all of their friends data too, who did not agree to it. This gave him access to 50 million people's data. Facebook says that data collected in this way can't be sold on but he sold the data to CA. Facebook told CA to delete the data and CA said that they would. They didn't and FB never checked. That data was then used to target people with (often false) propaganda that they would be suscepible to in order to influence their votes in the US election and Brexit. For example, if someone often posted about, or liked votes about, fishing for example they would see adverts about how the EU was a bad deal for British fishermen/women. If someone in America liked a NRA related group they would see posters about Clinton being against guns etc. Whole false articles would be written and posted on the timeline of people most likely to believe and be aggrieved by the contents. Those adverts would only be seen by people in certain areas (normally marginal areas) and others would never even know they exist.
A quiz was placed on Facebook. Everyone who completed the quiz unknownigly allowed all of their Facebook data and the data of all of their friends to be downloaded. This company has then studied the data in depth and has been sending targeted ads to the victims based on everything they know about them. This targeted advertising has included showing them fake news stories which their research knows they will believe. Not only does it mean heavily targeted ads for normal products but also political messages have been sent which could have influenced everything from how a Facebook user interacts with a stranger to how they voted in the EU referendum. An example is that if somebody had liked or replied to messages on Facebook that suggested they could be racist, may be racist or even were just interested in the debate about different races then they were shown fake news stories that were designed to make foreigners look bad. If they had reacted to stories about Muslims they were shown fake stories about Muslims and how they were taking over the UK. We've all seen the type of daily mail story which say Christmas is banned etc. These stories were forced upon these people and shown as legitimate news stories on Facebook further reinforcing the users view that all Muslims are bad. Stories which suggested they would all have to leave the UK after Brexit or that they cost the UK millions of pounds, that being in the EU only has negative aspects etc were shown over and over. The user then went out and voted
The scary thing is, that apart from being a bit gullible, people affected by it would understandably completely believe themselves to be well informed. If they have seen multiple articles about something that they have no reason to suspect was made up and only visible to them, then they would think they are justified in their opinions. It adds another reason as to why people are angry when someone with a different opinion suggest that they are 'thick' or uninfomed'. Obviously, there's the fact that no-one like to be called those things anyway, but there's also the fact that they truly do believe that they did research and that their opinions were based on tangible facts and so they feel doubly aggrieved. The problem is of course that those 'facts' were completely made up by CA. That two people saw two completely different sets of news articles also goes a way to explain why people are finding it so hard to emphasise with people of different opinions as they have never seen the things that the other side has. The ones who were judged to be potential racists and got all the 'foreigners are bad' data, can't understand why everyone doesn't hate anyone not British based on the articles they have seen highlighting horrible things they are supposed to have done, and those who didn't see those articles can't understand why some people suddenly hate foreigners so much out of the blue.
I understand the gravity of this, but it's nothing new. The newspapers have been used to push out powerful people's messages to gullible readers for centuries (As have certain tv news channels) However the reach of newspapers is diminishing, so I guess these people have found another way of doing it.
Newspapers have to a) be pretty general and b) be mostly accurate. CA wrote completely false articles and targeted them at only people who were likely to believe it, based on inside information about that person. It's very hard to defend against something you have never seen, whereas anyone can see and comment upon a national newspaper. It's a completely different situation.
That's not true though is it? Let's start with the lies told by certain tory led rags about the miners strike and Hillsborough Admittedly the Facebook method is more subtle and devious, but they both achieve the same ends.
I have posted this on another thread but I believe it is relevant and useful here too: I would advise everyone to do as I have just done and look at your app settings and edit them accordingly at this page: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications I deleted apps that I don't use (old games etc.) and went through every app I wanted to keep and edited the settings. The amount of permissions they have is crazy, why does a Candycrush type game need to have access to: your home town, status updates, religious and political views, date of birth, photos and videos, work history, education history, likes, groups etc.? Also click on 'Apps others use' lower down and select/deselect what data you want your friends to take with them. This is also a pretty interesting page which I cleared out a few months ago which tells you what information advertisers have about you, how they have categorised you (e.g. female, over 25, likes sports etc.) and what types of adverts you will see based on that (on the 'Your information' tab click on 'Your categories'). https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen
What I find hypocritical though, is that Obama, with the assistance of FB, used such data farming in his 2012 election. This has been admitted by one of his campaign managers, who said FB agreed as "they are on our side". The press at the time lauded the Obama campaign as being tech savvy and brilliant. It only seems a problem today as it was used to support Brexit and Trump. It should have been condemned back in 2012 and we wouldn't have the problem today.
