
Cambridge Analytica were the tip of the iceberg - sturza
https://graphcommons.com/stories/3f057b42-09fb-49af-aab4-f5243e48734d
======
rhizome
This is kind of a thin post linking to someone's larger project/company, but
it does almost touch on something of substance, that there's (what I call) a
"Blackwater Problem" with statistical-targeting companies. This is when one
company out of many (manymany) emerges as the whipping boy for a problematic
(if not inherently criminal) industry or profession. We see the same kinds of
company name shuffling, same maintenance of primary leadership, who is
essentially that industry's lobbyist over the long term.

------
chishaku
Edit: This is an honest question -- just wondering the difference in tactics
and have received one helpful comment so far.

\---

When Obama won in '08 and '12, his team of data "nerds" were lauded as
geniuses.

Examples:

 _How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power_

[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm...](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html)

 _When the Nerds Go Marching In_

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-
the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/)

Can someone distinguish between what Obama and Trump were doing when it comes
to digital campaigning?

~~~
throwaway5752
Yes, easily. Microtargeting and related campaigns can be distinguished
entirely by the content of they present. Microtargeting is just a technique
that can be used for good or bad. In the case of Obama's campaign, nobody has
accused them of misleading or false information. Brexit and the the US 2016
election was almost defined by misleading or false information (as you can see
by lingering Pizzagate, QAnon, and Bengazi conspiracy theories).

Amused at the downvotes. It is true. You can not like Clinton and not vote for
her, or Obama. I don't judge and people can disagree. But the amount of false
content in those campaigns (which came to be known as "fake news" after the
fact) was unprecedent, was aided/spreaded by foreign sources, and was largely
on partisan lines. Evidence includes
[https://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/18/stanford-study-
examines...](https://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/18/stanford-study-examines-
fake-news-2016-presidential-election/) among countless others). It would be
just as wrong if, say, the Sander campaign did the same thing.

~~~
cheese4242
The amount of false and misleading information spread about Trump has been
staggering though. Trying to pretend this only goes one way is a joke.

Is there even any proof that these micro-targeting campaigns swayed the
election in anyway? Has anyone stopped to consider that maybe enough people
just preferred Trump over Hillary and the election outcome was not the result
of a some facebook ads?

~~~
Brain_Thief
I'm trying to interpret your comment in a charitable manner, but no matter
what angle I come at it from it seems disingenuous ("whataboutism" comes to
mind, for starters). No one in this thread has pretended that disinformation
is mono-directional in the political arena; what has been stated is that there
is a disproportionate amount of disinformation emanating from the conservative
end of the media spectrum and that said misinformation has been coupled to the
process of micro-targeting.

With the premise that advertisements are information streams that are designed
to modify a person's behavior, I have few questions for you:

1\. Do you believe that advertising is effective?

2\. Do you believe that targeted advertising is more effective than non-
targeting advertising?

3\. Do you believe that misrepresenting information in an advertisement is
acceptable?

~~~
cheese4242
>there is a disproportionate amount of disinformation emanating from the
conservative end of the media spectrum

There is no evidence of this though. Have you considered that whatever you
have read to suggest that a "disproportionate" amount of disinformation is
from the right is itself a disinformation campaign by the left?

Maybe another way to look at it would be: Nobody would give a shit if "micro-
targeting" had been used against Trump. The hand wringing over all of this is
solely the result of a humiliated establishment trying to save face by
pretending some Facebook ads cost them the election rather than their own
hubris.

I'll ask again, what evidence is there that these micro-targeted ads swayed a
single vote, much less the entire election? At what granularity is it "okay"
to target an advertisement?

------
harikb
Nice way to show the content. Really brings home the fact that nothing much
has changed for 2020, only getting worse.

> When CA was closed down many employees simply moved to new companies doing
> the exact same thing. One of the more well known of these is Emerdata, not
> just sharing some of the same workers from CA but also funded by the same
> family.

> Not everyone is aware, but CA was just a small part of a parent organisation
> called SCL. Pretty much all of the companies shown (in blue) on the left
> are/were part of this group.

~~~
nickbauman
Here's a post that has been on HN before covers what phase of technology
adoption we're in.

[https://idlewords.com/talks/ancient_web.htm](https://idlewords.com/talks/ancient_web.htm)

Basically we've seen this kind of cultural manipulation on a massive scale
before more than once. The last time it happened the manipulators were people
like Joseph Goebbels. Remember the first thing the Nazi's did when they
annexed a territory was to seize all forms of mass communication. Radios were
replaced with new radios that could only be tuned to Nazi stations.

But I heard from a talk given by a Hungarian Jew, Robert Holczer, who was
secretly working for the Antifa in the city of Prague that was under control
of the Nazis in the 40s. Even when listening to Nazi radio with their
propaganda, he could tell when the tide had turned against Germany. There are
always clues, he said; He figured out that the Normandy Invasion was
successful by listening to Nazi Propaganda, for example.

Eventually the culture-hacking turns against the hackers.

~~~
onefuncman
Is there any chance there's a recording of the talk by Robert Holczer, may
peace be upon him?

edit: found a recording and a transcript,
[https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504887](https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504887)

------
throwaway5752
Wow, this is amazing content. I'm not sure anyone has exposed the reach of SCL
similarly.

edit: in case anyone here is just reading the headline, be sure to go through
to the end. Seeing Parscale connected to this is concerning (though it may be
a tenuous connection).

------
troughway
>The first step to beating these bastards is to understand them. The more of
us working to that goal the better chance of success.

When Obama was doing it nobody wanted to beat that bastard.

What happened?

~~~
uptown
Somebody did. Many of those "somebodies" are detailed in the link from this
post.

~~~
troughway
The same "somebodies" who put Obama in power, you mean?

~~~
edoceo
It's objectively different groups of actors.

------
kevin_thibedeau
Completely missing all of the legacy data aggregators that form the bulk of
the iceberg.

------
booboolayla
Friendly reminder that Barack Obama's campaign didn't hire an external firm to
manipulate Google and Facebook - they had direct access to the companies, with
Google even providing a team of engineers to work with the campaign in
Washington.

~~~
commandlinefan
> providing a team of engineers

Who were manipulating search results in his favor. And will again.

------
allovernow
It is plainly foolish to believe that only right wing groups are targeted by
this kind of manipulation.

Particularly when the goal of KGB like entity is not necessarily to prop up
one particular candidate or policy, but to generally sow discord. The fact
that propaganda aligns with your views does not mean it isn't propaganda. We
are not only particularly vulnerable, but playing right into these actors'
hands when we pretend that only one side of our bipolar politics is subject to
nefarious influence.

~~~
DanTheManPR
All evidence I've seen indicates that the right wing engages in this kind of
manipulation at a scale much more massive than other political groups.

~~~
allovernow
How sure are you that those performing these analyses are operating without
bias? Also everything I've seen in this style begins with an explicitly right
wing group and then looks for connections - but performing the analysis in
such a style is unlikely to uncover left leaning efforts because the graph is
probably nearly or totally disjoint.

It's very easy to conclusively show only one side of the story if no one
reputable is looking into the other.

~~~
raisedbyninjas
Not an exhaustive study, but Jestin Coler got in the fake news clickbait game
in 2013. He said that liberal targeted stories never gained viral traction
like conservative stories.

------
user7629
You can’t read this without JavaScript?

~~~
onefuncman
It's an in-browser rendering of a graph database... I believe each slide is a
live query.

------
m0zg
Here's how you know this is a (rather crude) propaganda piece: try to find any
mention of any democrats in it.

