
Cambridge Analytica Leaves Long Trail of Subterfuge, Dubious Dealing - robertgk
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-23/trump-data-gurus-leave-long-trail-of-subterfuge-dubious-dealing
======
aphextron
As a kid growing up in the first generation to not know a world without the
internet, I had always thought humanity was headed for a golden age of wisdom,
learning, and truth for all. That there was no way evil people could control
the masses any longer for their own means via ignorance.

How sadly wrong I was. It is becoming more and more clear to me that for the
average person, technology has become nothing more than another tool for the
propagandists of the world to influence their minds. It turns out that having
a supercomputer in your pocket at all times does not magically induce the
ability for critical thinking.

~~~
thr0waway1239
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so
few engage in it." Henry Ford

You are right to expect that the internet could make it easier to do such
thinking.

Except, you are not taking into account another factor: "Hard work never
killed anyone. But why take a... Oooh.. another like on my Facebook post"

~~~
dvcc
I don't think people set-out to not think, it's just we're by default lazy
thinkers. Cognitive dissonance pushes us to find our own contained, biased
circles within the internet, where we can 'think' without the requirement of
resolving conflicting thoughts. Because, no matter what weird views we might
have, there is bound to be a few hundred people out there that share them. The
internet just made it easier to find them.

~~~
pixl97
>it's just we're by default lazy thinkers

Thinking is expensive. Somewhere around 20% of our bodies energy use is our
brain working. It's probably been an evolutionary advantage in many cases to
offload our thinking _to the right people_ for most of history.

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startupdiscuss
The scary thing is that this works.

Consider:

> _In Latvia, SCL said it ran a campaign in 2006 designed to stoke tensions
> between Latvians and ethnic Russian residents: “In essence, Russians were
> blamed for unemployment and other problems affecting the economy,” an SCL
> document said. Nix confirms the firm’s role, saying that its research found
> that such tensions would “influence voting behavior.”_ <

Now suppose they had not discovered this and exploited it. The fact remains
that if this could influence voting behavior then someone else could have come
along -- someone who did not know about this study, someone who genuinely
despised the Russians, or Latvians -- and become popular in the elections.

It would be a sad comment on humans if that is what it took.

~~~
balabaster
You know what's crazy? Our historic attraction to witch hunts stoked by fear
and doubt of what is different than ourselves is no different today than it
was 100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000 years ago. We just disseminate the propaganda a
lot more efficiently now.

What I fail to understand is how so many people are still so ignorant despite
having almost free access to all the world's information with zero requirement
to actually pay for school. You don't even have to walk down to the library
and pay for a library card to access it!

Witch hunts in 2017 just take place in the form of elections. But otherwise,
no different today than they were in biblical times.

That's progress folks. Welcome to your future.

~~~
M_Grey
Most people aren't bright or educated enough to understand what you're saying,
the best they can do is pick people or groups to trust. They are far more
moved by pathos than logos.

~~~
balabaster
Many only use logos to retroactively justify decisions already made by pathos;
and ethos comes into play to undermine the credibility of those with a logos
that would negatively impact our own pathos.

Basically a witch hunt because nobody wants to accept that others may have
differences than us and _that 's okay!_ It doesn't make them dangerous, it
doesn't make them criminals.

Every culture, every nation, every race and both sexes have their bad apples,
their despots, their angry, disaffected troublemakers. They are the few. They
are not the majority in _any_ case. So now we're ostracizing huge groups of
people based on the the largest voting class's perception of a tiny fraction
of a massive group that they perceive is different than them.

It's the equivalent taking out a social media campaign to whip up a frenzy
boycotting MacDonalds because one pissed off spotty white kid who works there,
who you slighted on Facebook for spitting in your food, hunted you down and
torched your car in retaliation and happened to be caught on CCTV wearing his
MacDonalds uniform while he was doing it.

Cambridge Analytica is using social media to effect massive swings in consumer
sentiment against whole segments of the population in order to swing votes in
a way that's favourable to an agenda that is so far unclear, except that it
seems to be tearing whole nations apart and in turn flipping the world order
on its head. How it will play out is unclear, but it doesn't feel like this is
heading anywhere good.

~~~
jacquesm
> How it will play out is unclear, but it doesn't feel like this is heading
> anywhere good.

I'll tell you how it _should_ play out: every exec of that company behind
bars.

~~~
balabaster
I would be truly astonished if they're the ones pulling the strings. They're
just the public faces. The puppet masters using them and their company to
effect global change in some as yet unknown favour.

~~~
jacquesm
If they want to get paid for being the fall guys then fall they should.

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lawless123
>"In Latvia, SCL said it ran a campaign in 2006 designed to stoke tensions
between Latvians and ethnic Russian residents"

Jesus Christ.

why was this flagged? it shows clearly they're using this technology for
terrible things.

~~~
sersi
Yes, just reading that sentence shocked me. It's despicable and I can't
imagine ever hiring someone who worked for such a company.

Later on, it's not much better...

> SCL’s original description of its work in Nigeria echoes some of those
> concerns. According to a 2016 version of its website, SCL advised the PDP to
> try to dissuade opposition supporters from voting. This was achieved, the
> website said, “by organizing anti-poll rallies on the day of the election.”

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clydethefrog
Forum voor Democratie [0], a party that can best be described as the Dutch New
Right [1] party, used Cambridge Analytica for their campaign. As a party that
joined they elections for the first time, they suddenly got two seats, while
many other small parties like the Pirate Party have been struggling to get a
seat for years. They described their tactic as being "inspired by Trump social
media tactic". [2] I was skeptic at first but this event showed to me that at
least they're a bit successful in manipulating potential voters.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_for_Democracy_(Netherlan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_for_Democracy_\(Netherlands\))

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_Droite#Beyond_France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_Droite#Beyond_France)

[2] [https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/thierry-baudet-net-als-
trump](https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/thierry-baudet-net-als-trump)

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phreeza
I think it is important to note that the company probably has a significant
interest in such stories being published, though that may seem
counterintuitive at first. It's better for them to overstate the effectiveness
of their methods (as I have heard many people suspect) and seem evil than to
appear benevolent and ineffective.

~~~
RodericDay
As a far left person, I'm firmly on the camp that believes that hyping up
Cambridge Analytica's run of the mill operations (they were for Cruz, and he
lost, lol) mainly benefits Clinton fans who want to believe that she lost for
reasons beyond her control and that these are some geniuses.

Seeing Clinton lose, and hearing all these stories about grassroots
campaigners being turned away, about Bill Clinton being told that his rural
votes were gone forever, about "the Mook Mafia", about the "Ada algorithm",
about Nate Silver being brutally wrong in the primaries and the NYT being
brutally wrong about the chances of winning on the day of the election, and
betting markets being wrong on Brexit... part of me thought this is where we
draw the line. We need to go back to basics, start reacting to our
circumstances, realize that something has gone very wrong, and stop blindly
trusting "the data".

Instead this narrative cropped up that said "actually, we need even more even
better data". And people seem to find it more palatable.

~~~
ak4g
>blindly trusting "the data"

This phrase is not coherent.

Doing something blindly would literally be to do something without data.

~~~
anamoulous
Folks can data dredge and present their results as significant. Lay people
trust the conclusions. They had the data, but they didn't understand that the
data presents a narrow view. They trust it blindly.

Worse are the people that treat conclusions drawn from polling and surveys as
scientifically rigorous.

Happens all the time with Vox, NYT, Quartz, you-name-it articles. Policy is
enacted from information like this.

------
wavefunction
This is the firm (I wrote 'owned' originally) in which Robert Mercer is
reputed to own 10%:

[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-
merc...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-
breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage)

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rdiddly
It seems the USA was the big enchilada, the top prize, after populating the
bottom shelf of their trophy wall with Latvia, Trinidad and Nigeria, then the
UK above that.

It isn't "just politics" \- people can die over crap like this. How'd you like
to be an ethnic Russian living in Latvia when this guy decides demonizing your
entire cohort would be a good way to "influence voting behavior?"

~~~
macintux
> How'd you like to be an ethnic Russian living in Latvia when this guy
> decides demonizing your entire cohort would be a good way to "influence
> voting behavior?"

Ask any Hispanic in the US.

~~~
rdiddly
Oh snap! Yeah that was probably a Cambridge Analytica strategy too! It worked
in Latvia, why not here?

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frgtpsswrdlame
It doesn't seem like they're even doing very much innovative work with
data/technology. Rather that they're just running operations based off old CIA
stuff but with a lot of money behind them.

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jacquesm
Tools can be used for good and bad. This is a very nice example of how to use
a good tool for a bad purpose.

The bigger question is what can be done about it, what specifically is there
that breaks the law and if there isn't anything is there a law that we'd like
to see created that would tackle this without making things worse in other
respects?

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Sniperfish
Nix says Oakes attended UCL “in a private capacity.”

I have no idea what this means, which is - I suppose - the point?

~~~
gpawl
It's explained in the article:

“He has made up many stories about working and studying here which are untrue"

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arca_vorago
You can never trust an Eton kid.

~~~
jessaustin
So, it's kind of like Phillips Exeter? b^)

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r00fus
Interesting question - I wonder if any of the candidates in the French
Presidential election upcoming are using Cambridge Analytica (Le Pen?). Not
that we could easily find out...

~~~
jacquesm
They easily might. The problem is that if this becomes acceptable everybody
will be doing it sooner or later, it will become just another weapon in the
arsenal. Influencing an election like this ought to be made illegal very
rapidly or it will end up destroying democracy as we know it.

Even Switzerland would not be immune to these tactics (and they have what I
think is the best functioning democracy on earth at the moment).

~~~
gpawl
What exactly should be illegal? Campaigning? Having an opinion based on how
much you are paid to hold it?

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arise
How horrible that we live in a world where people can make a living doing
stuff like this.

~~~
pixl97
How horrible that we live in a world where a venus fly trap pretends to be a
flower --A Fly

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samirillian
Nix, rivaled only by Captain Hook for worst Old Etonian.

------
ZeroGravitas
It's conmen all the way down ...

