Read on Twitter
Let me preface this by saying that in my work, I've run my fair share of ads on social media. (THREAD)
Granted, it was to convince people to play Rach 2 in once-in-a-lifetime master classes, or learn to conduct La Cenerentola, but the tools were still what's available to everyone else. Unless, of course, you engage in illegal and unethical behavior.
It's important that we understand what this all means, and that it's not just techie stuff for someone else to figure out.
Before you let anyone poo-poo the Cambridge Analytica story (which I saw from a NEW YORK TIMES journo yesterday), here are some key things to remember:
Before you let anyone poo-poo the Cambridge Analytica story (which I saw from a NEW YORK TIMES journo yesterday), here are some key things to remember:
-Cambridge Analytica is a subsidiary of SCL group
-SCL group was immediately given a huge contract with US Department of State following the inauguration. Contract was reportedly to fight ISIS via propaganda.
-SCL group was immediately given a huge contract with US Department of State following the inauguration. Contract was reportedly to fight ISIS via propaganda.
-Mike Flynn was forced to update his FARA stating that he'd taken payments from SCL Group - shortly before he was indicted and pled guilty http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-flynn-financial-filing-20170803-story.html
-Facebook says it's not a data breach. They deliberately wrote their terms of service in such a way that it didn't qualify as such. They looked the other way when Cambridge Analytica illegally scraped the data of millions of us.
And since they weren't calling it a breach, they didn't notify the authorities either, who would have seen their shit show and blew the lid off the whole operation.
-The users on Facebook is their most valuable asset. It’s what advertisers pay billions for. We’re supposed to believe that they were okay with some rogue company having unauthorized access to 50 million of their users?
Users in one of the richest countries in the world - prime targets for advertising dollars? That they were okay with them having access to this for YEARS? PLEASE.
-Facebook was embedded in the campaigns (they helpfully offered this), working with the stolen data. Facebook knew when it was stolen, and they knew when they were working with this stolen data on behalf of Trump and others. They KNEW.
(link to sourcing on above) https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/26/facebook-google-twitter-trump-244191
-there is every reason to believe that the voter registration hacks, Equifax hacks, and god knows what else are related
-Corey Lewandowski was in communication with Cambridge Analytica as early as 2015, before Trump had even announced.
-Corey Lewandowski was in communication with Cambridge Analytica as early as 2015, before Trump had even announced.
-servers at Trump Tower, Alfa Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Spectrum Health (owned by the DeVos family) were all in communication with each other and were the target of a FISA application in October of 2016 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
What a great way to move around illegally obtained data, and add even more illegally obtained data!
-immediately following the election, Kushner gives an exclusive interview to Forbes, and the resulting article pushes the idea that Kushner's a boy wonder when it comes to social strategy, and gosh - they just figured things out on a shoestring budget, and look at them now!
(here's the article) https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2016/11/22/exclusive-interview-how-jared-kushner-won-trump-the-white-house/#4755dd4b3af6
-Trump won the electoral college by 70,000 well-placed votes
With the kind of data they had available - data that was STOLEN - they weren't running ads along the lines of "this person likes the Gap, Hamilton, and vacationing at the beach, and is probably liberal.”
They were running ads disguised as news stories, linked to fake news sites + stories, and targeting along the lines of "this person is located in this key voting district, has $17 in their bank account, is paranoid, has used the word n***er in their private FB messages,
has talked about violence towards women in their comments, and hasn't worked in 2 years". If they also had access to health data (which I think they did), they could target people with mental illness.
Microtargeting is achieved by uploading a custom audience to the Facebook ad manager - meaning, after they've found all the ppl in say, Pennsylvania who've used the word n***er in their private messages, they separate these people from everyone else.
Then they run ads targeting these people and only these people. They don't have to waste money casting a wide net and seeing what sticks. They already know what will stick.
Then, with a pixel (basically, a tracker placed on a website), they can see if the person has visited the sites they've linked to. They could see if these people were sharing stories, liking, clicking, or commenting.
And they could target these people over and over and over and over: because you can then create ANOTHER custom audience based on behaviors from your FIRST custom audience.
They could have Trump coordinate his messaging in speeches with what was being run in these ads, and what was being covered on the news - all the news, not just Fox - 24/7 because, ratings.
Remember how Trump kicked off his campaign with disgusting comments about Mexican human beings? What he said to Megyn Kelly on live TV? He was talking to his custom audience, all cued up in the Facebook ads manager, and ready to go.
(by the way, people on the far left were targeted too)
Continuing: they achieved social proof with an army of trolls and bots who made it look like many other people agreed with these extreme ideas, and look like the fake news was legitimate. The trolls and bots shared the links, made comments on fake and legitimate news articles.
Trolls even created fake events and attempted to create situations in which violence would erupt (and then be covered extensively, and used to further push the narrative of ppl of color and/or on the left being thugs).
Social proof was solidified, and Cambridge Analytica got to refine their stolen data even more, by luring vulnerable people into private groups where they could ask them questions and encourage them to take action.
In the end, it was 70,000 people - people with a specific psychological profile, which they had access to because they'd stolen it - who swung key states.
If you think this is impossible, consider that companies convince people on a daily basis to leave their homes and buy a $30,000 car. WITHOUT stolen data about the most intimate parts of their lives.
And WITHOUT these people being afraid that their very lives depend on buying a car/going to McDonald's/shopping at Walmart-Mart.
I'd posit that the rest were filled in by people who told everyone "he doesn't mean what he's saying" and stood to gain the most from what Trump was promising: rich, white straight men.
And they just got what they were promised - a giant cash grab that goes against what every so-called conservative has said they believe in.
And let's not forget the far religious right! See: Council for National Policy.
There was a reason Trump had little to no ad spend in other areas of media, like TV. He didn't need it. They had a STOLEN profile of just about every single American - likely down to their bowel movements - and used those profiles to manipulate those who were vulnerable.
So, in summary, this is a BFD. And it was only ONE of the things they were doing, as we're finding out. ||END||
Sorry, just wanted to add one more thing. This is another important question we need to ask: who ELSE has this data now? and WTF are they doing to us with it?
If you haven't read or watched the stories, Facebook didn't ask CA to do anything about the stolen data until August of 2016 - YEARS after it had happened. Even then, they didn't follow up, AND the named source (Wylie) has stated that this data was EMAILED, UNENCRYPTED.
Looks like the NRA works with Cambridge Analytica. What are they doing with this data? Who are they targeting? What are they convincing them to do? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/16/nra-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-gun-control
