
‘I made Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’ meet the data war whistleblower - wgx
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump
======
TazeTSchnitzel
The video interview
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXdYSQ6nu-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXdYSQ6nu-M))
was really fun to watch. It's not every day you hear someone talking directly
and honestly to camera about how their company's image was a fabrication, that
they ran a propaganda machine, how they were bankrolled by an American
billionaire, how they directly interacted with Steve Bannon, Facebook's broken
app privacy model, etc.

~~~
bhouston
Very interesting.

I love where he says it wasn't a public campaign where one message was sent
out and everyone could judge it, but rather it was designed to whisper the
right message privately to each individual, the message most effective at
converting their opinion given their psychological and demographic profile,
even if the messages themselves were contradictory across different
individuals.

Hard to figure out what the future holds because we generally never get less
sophisticated, but more sophisticated.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" it was designed to whisper the right message privately to each individual,
the message most effective at converting their opinion given their
psychological and demographic profile, even if the messages themselves were
contradictory across different individuals."_

When Netflix can't even recommend movies to me that are more than 50% likely
to be enjoyable for me, I really have to wonder how effective messages
designed to change people's political opinions based on demographic and
psychological profiles really were.

~~~
ritchiea
I understand the sentiment but propaganda and prediction are vastly different
fields. Some of the things they were doing were: spreading misinformation,
undermining trust in real information and spreading negative affect. Those all
seem more concretely achievable than predicting whether you will like a film
that has dozens to thousands of variables around tone, content and aesthetic.

They don't really have to change people's political opinions. But they can
know what makes people angry and give them more of it. They can know the lie
they want to tell and make it more ubiquitous so it's harder to discern from
truth. These tasks aren't anywhere near as abstract as predicting your taste
in film. It seems like they knew angry people were showing up to vote for
Trump, so just give people more of what makes them angry. And give people
thinking about voting for Hillary more reasons to be skeptical about her
weaknesses as a candidate.

------
joejerryronnie
I wonder if a large part of this social media psyops/fake news "crisis" is
because the "bad guys" won. The bad guys here being Trump, Bannon, and the
alt-right, who are disliked by both traditional democrats and republicans. Why
did we not question Obama's original campaign and their use of social media?
It is widely understood that Obama leveraged social media in novel and cutting
edge ways to directly target voters predisposed to his message and to rally
huge amounts of voters into action. Isn't this essentially what happened
leading up to the election of Trump? Obviously there are some other factors at
work like the involvement of a foreign entity and very questionably ethics in
the gathering and compiling of these massive data sets. But do we really think
that this is the first time Russia has meddled with US elections? And since
when are we surprised when a politician (or their hired guns) exhibits
unethical behavior?

I'm not trying to excuse Facebook or the other platforms here. I would think
they would be the first ones trying to combat this behavior and expose people
leveraging their ecosystem without permission for some personal agenda - if,
for no other reason, than the sheer pride of not being taken advantage of. And
now these companies certainly need to take action to avoid huge social and
political backlash (or try to stem the backlash that has already occurred).
But I do wonder how large this backlash would be had Hillary won the
Whitehouse in 2016.

Edit: I hadn't seen ryanx435's comment and the corresponding replies before
posting. While it's easy to dismiss his comment as purposely obtuse, I also
think it's very easy to do so too quickly, thus avoiding actually thinking
about this issue and perhaps falling into the same echo-chamber/bubble
mentality that many accuse Trump supporters of.

~~~
mnm1
"Obviously there are some other factors at work like the involvement of a
foreign entity and very questionably ethics in the gathering and compiling of
these massive data sets."

I think you answered your own question. Those other factors are the crucial
factors that make this situation different. Crimes were allegedly committed.
This isn't about using social media, it's about the alleged crimes. I don't
even see how you can draw a parallel to Obama's campaign. What crimes did
Obama's team allegedly commit?

~~~
joejerryronnie
But what specific crimes were committed? Is it illegal for Russians to buy
Facebook ads? Was it illegal for these researchers to harvest Facebook data
and was there explicit laws preventing them from using that data in other
ways? Certainly there is massive ethical issues but technically illegal?

~~~
krapp
A merely "massively unethical" secret targeted psyops and propaganda campaign
involving a foreign power should still be a cause for concern. Especially if
it turns out it worked.

~~~
joejerryronnie
Would we see these activities as unethical if the message was one of hope
rather than hate?

For instance, how upset would we be if Sweden purchased a bunch of pro Bernie
Sanders Facebook ads and Bernie Sanders ended up getting voted in as
president?

~~~
krapp
There's more being alleged here than another country merely "buying ads" for a
candidate. That in and of itself is neither illegal nor unethical. I'm
probably more laissez-faire about that then many people ... I wouldn't care if
the 50 cent army posted here so long as they were up front about their
affiliations. I don't object to the attempt to sway people to one or another
point of view, I object to doing so through duplicitous means.

You may be correct in implying that one side is using partisanship to fuel
interest in what is, objectively (I believe,) a legitimate concern. But why is
the other side is so adamant to dismiss those concerns, regardless of their
legitimacy?

It shouldn't matter either way, either there's fire or there isn't.

~~~
joejerryronnie
For what it's worth, I agree with you. One general exception I have is that
the backlash is disproportionately targeting big tech/silicon valley, when the
backlash should be more societal in nature. Yes, tech should look at making
improvements and implementing checks and balances but at what point do we
accept responsibility for our actions and stop trying to pawn off our own
insecurities, biases, and dark impulses to some far off tech company?

------
timeu
Mercer's and Koch's are the oligarchs of the US thanks to Citizen United et
al. Combined with 24/7 propaganda brainwashing by Fox News, defunding of
public schools, the raising inequality and gerrymandering and voter
supression, democracy is just a hollow shell and you end up with a guy like
Trump as president.

------
pdog
A year ago, it was widely reported that Cambridge Analytica had very little to
do with the Trump campaign's digital strategy[1][2][3]. This was corroborated
by GOP consultants, campaign staffers, and current and former Cambridge
employees. What changed?

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/cambridge-
ana...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/cambridge-
analytica.html)

[2]: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/kendalltaggart/the-truth-about-
the-...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/kendalltaggart/the-truth-about-the-trump-
data-team-that-people-are-freaking)

[3]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-08/no-big-
da...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-08/no-big-data-didn-t-
win-the-u-s-election)

~~~
orf
Members of the Trump team and GOP members lying about things, especially
involving foreign countries/entities getting involved in the election? Who
would have thought it.

------
fallingfrog
Oh dear. 2 hours in and all the comments appear to me to be the kinds of
politically trolling that we typically try to avoid on hacker news. The story
is about technology and statistics and what the future of data mining might
mean for democracy, folks.. can we keep the name calling to a minimum please?

~~~
cloakandswagger
There was already a massive topic about this story yesterday. I don't see what
a new one accomplishes except exhausting HN's moderation team.

------
patcheudor
From last years DEF CON 25, pre-dating what we are now learning about
Cambridge Analytica (CA):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Hx86H3-mc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Hx86H3-mc)

Ultimately this isn't a political issue, it's an ethics in engineering issue
and despite claims by CA that it didn't impact the outcome of the election,
independent research into this area by multiple independent researchers has
been painting a picture, much like Chris Sumner covers in his DEF CON 25 talk
that these techniques are effective enough as just a one percent swing is
sufficient.

------
Floegipoky
We can't pretend that this is a political post. The ethical implications of
this extend to the very structure of the modern Internet, which has become so
entwined with targeted marketing. Democracy was not devised to withstand this.

------
fisherjeff
And now his Facebook account has been suspended:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/chrisinsilico/status/975335430043...](https://mobile.twitter.com/chrisinsilico/status/975335430043389952)

~~~
steadicat
To be fair, Facebook announced they would, 2 days ago:

> We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook,
> pending further information.

[https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-
an...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-analytica/)

------
cat199
in other news: media outlet manages to publish 'shocking expose' about how
news media is easily manipulated by external actors, all the while painting it
as something 'novel', 'else' and 'external' to the venue of publication
itself..

------
magoghm
"...and Darpa, the US government’s secretive Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, is cited in at least two academic papers supporting
Kosinski’s work." <\-- DARPA is secretive? That sounds to me like
sensationalism.

------
ryanx435
Interesting how when Obama used big data and targeted marketing to win, he was
applauded and given accolades [1], but when Trump used big data and targeted
marketing to win, he is painted as sinister and manipulative and evil.

Almost like there is an anti trump propaganda narrative being pushed. Almost.

[1] [https://www.infoworld.com/article/2613587/big-data/the-
real-...](https://www.infoworld.com/article/2613587/big-data/the-real-story-
of-how-big-data-analytics-helped-obama-win.html)

~~~
alwayseasy
Interesting how nuance is important: Obama's big data was public or obtained
legally to supplement his campaign's ground game or TV buying. While Trump's
big data was based on stolen data and used to discourage Democrats from
voting.

~~~
ryanlol
“stolen data”

~~~
alwayseasy
Didn't read any news this weekend?

~~~
ryanlol
Yes, and I’d still go with “stolen” over stolen. This data was handed out, not
stolen.

