
Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters - chatmasta
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/style/cambridge-analytica-fashion-data.html
======
everdev
Unfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a
false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics /
advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience
because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone
takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that
Cambridge is the only one doing this.

~~~
autokad
one interesting one was that I took 5000 twitter profile photos and averaged
the pixel values by male / female. unsurprisingly, the male average had short
hair while the woman long. but what did surprise me was that the shirt area of
the males had a blue hue and the women had a red one. its not like anyone in
particular was wearing red/blue by sex, but on average they were.

~~~
tomrod
Cool! Could you share the results?

~~~
autokad
[https://twitter.com/autokad/status/689896734542069760](https://twitter.com/autokad/status/689896734542069760)

[https://twitter.com/autokad/status/689897031414886400](https://twitter.com/autokad/status/689897031414886400)

keep in mind these profile pictures are not centered, some are group photos,
etc. its not 'super strong' but it seems evident to me, let me know what you
think

------
chrisco255
Are you telling me that people who buy camo clothes are more likely to be
conservative? That's crazy talk. Next thing you'll tell me is people who dye
their hair pink or blue are more likely to be liberal.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Next thing you 'll tell me is people who dye their hair pink or blue are more
likely to be liberal._

I have been curious about this particular recent feature.

Does brightly colored/neon hair indicate the person is part of some particular
group?

My exposure to this trend has been primarily with people on the internet,
specifically Twitter and it seems to be predominantly women, and predominantly
associated with being outspoken on modern civil rights issues.

~~~
bsder
> Does brightly colored/neon hair indicate the person is part of some
> particular group?

Yes. The "I'm non-conformist and quirky!" girl.

Of course, they're "quirky" exactly the same way as all the other "quirky"
girls.

~~~
spiralganglion
This is my social group. Neither I, nor my friends, dye our hair because we
want to be non-conformist or quirky — we dye our hair because it looks cute.
It’s not at all difficult to think of fashion choices that’d be more distinct,
but it’s often the concern that we’ll be seen as “weird” that keeps us from
choosing them. I look how I do because I want to be liked and respected, same
as anyone making the choice to be fashionable.

------
drdeadringer
I remember a scene from "NYPD Blue" between Sipowicz and his adult son [who
wanted to become a cop like his father]. The advice was that the "most basic"
thing to remember was "People, Places: The things they do, the times they do
them".

If you turn a hard Left at Crazy, that's profiling ... but it's not wrong.
Going with the example provided in the scene, it's good to figure out that the
night-shift worker at the toy factory is bringing home a toy gun for his kid
at 3am Christmas Morning instead of a high-profile over-armed robbery in an
otherwise deserted industrial district in the middle of the night during a
holiday.

It seems like the "grey line" shrinks and expands at will depending on the
context one desires.

------
resters
This is how marketing works. They could have used music taste or religious
affiliation or nearly any of the data add-ons Experian sells.

This isn’t sinister in any way, merely clever as it seems marketers had been
behind the times.

There are entire magazines and television shows that have equally strong
affiliation. If spend on fashion related stuff was smart, it was because it
was a bargain compared to the many other methods.

~~~
mswen
>"Marketers have been behind the times"

I have to laugh. I learned psychographics from Bill Wells back in the mid
1990s. He had come back into academia in after spending years at DDB Needham
creating one of the first psychographic initiatives/programs that had teams of
statisticians, social scientists and used mainframes for statistical analysis
in support of product design, message refinement and targeted marketing and
advertising based on "personas".

One of the fascinating things to me was that Bill told of doing a summer
project during his own graduate school experience at Stanford in which it took
him a whole summer to manually (using a mechanical calculator) calculate a
Principle Components Analysis on some consumer data.

It boggles my mind in some ways that we have a bunch of CS trained start-up
guys who are rediscovering both techniques and consumer behavior research that
is sometimes 30 or 40 years old and think they have invented something new!
OK, I am sounding like an old fart.

Now, I will admit that many marketing executives I have met over the years
were not really comfortable with quantitative approaches but there is a whole
subset that have been applying data science types of approaches for a very
long time.

------
malvosenior
> _Mr. Wylie explained that clothing preferences were a key metric for
> Cambridge Analytica, whose business was constructing and selling voter
> profiles drawn from Facebook data._

> _“Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his
> insurgency and build the alt-right,” he said._

Cambridge Analytica built the “alt-right”? Even if that term has any meaning
(I don’t really think it does), this statement is preposterous. Bannon’s
“insurgency”? No spin there.

~~~
dvt
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. The article is obviously pretty low-
quality and technically incompenent; I'd expect better from HN's front page.

Even with the left-wing spin, arguing that CA (or even Bannon) built the alt-
right is just laugh-out-loud wrong.

~~~
malvosenior
I don’t think we’ll get an answer but the downvotes all came in a span of a
couple minutes so maybe some partisan site linked to the HN post or something.

Down voters feel free to explain if you actually have a objection.

------
buboard
I don’t know if this is interesting. It is their job

------
jammygit
This sort of thing is going to cause a huge chilling effect in the medium-term
as it becomes more widespread. Every nuance of how you act or look is going to
get collected by websites and cameras and used to make conclusions about who
you are (accurate or not), potentially stored forever.

One can only imagine how China will use these approaches with their planned
570M cameras with facial recognition.

edit: number of cameras was an order of magnitude low, corrected based on:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/china-facial-recognition-
tec...](https://www.businessinsider.com/china-facial-recognition-technology-
works-in-one-second-2018-3/)

------
zyxzevn
I wonder what google or reddit know about my political ideas..

~~~
roel_v
I often wonder what HN could infer from my positions on various topics based
on my voting (eventhough I don't use it to signal (dis)agreement).

------
wolfgke
I just ask myself how I, a person who satisfies quite some nerd stereotypes
would be classified by these algorithm (in particular for political
advertising).

So for example the small number of categories that Google Ads assigns to me
([https://google.com/ads/preferences](https://google.com/ads/preferences)) are
correct - but featureless and quite hard for marketers to target.

~~~
elliekelly
It's very likely that you just _think_ they're "featureless and quite hard for
marketers to target."

For example, this story (from 2012) about Target's ability to predict a
woman's pregnancy: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-
targ...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-
figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/)

~~~
wolfgke
> It's very likely that you just think they're "featureless and quite hard for
> marketers to target."

At least of the second part, I am pretty convinced. When I see ads, I always
think how wrong and clueless the ad network is again of my true interests.

------
trhway
couple years ago i heard that adult content industry was selling pretty
precise political profiling of their users. So it isnt just fashion.

------
MistahKoala
Hardly ground-breaking stuff; individuals do this in everyday life as a matter
of routine. They even use this tacit knowledge when they attempt to manipulate
others: just compare 'old' Chris Wylie with 'new' Chris Wylie.

------
gammateam
We use the erc20 contents of ethereum addresses to determine exactly which
influencers someone is exposed to and will be exposed to

This is because nobody uses the best practice of avoiding address reuse

These are basically brands

------
jhwhite
Not really surprising. I catch myself making assumptions about people's
politics based on the clothes they're wearing. This data just allows one to
confirm.

------
SlowRobotAhead
People who buy Wrangler and LL Bean might vote conservative. Hard hitting
stuff right there.

I suppose as per the article we could make a guess about the people that buy
green hair dye?

~~~
axaxs
Not sure why downvoted, I agree. A 'western' and 'outdoorsy' company tends to
have conservative customers, I think any 12 year old could tell you that.

I'd rather see unexpected/unexplained trends, things the average person
wouldn't already assume.

~~~
elliekelly
I think it actually goes a bit deeper than using certain brands to identify
political leanings. That was step one, but they also rated users' openness,
conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, depression, anger
and vulnerability.[1] _Then_ they showed targeted messages to people they
decided were right leaning _and_ vulnerable to their messaging.

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/style/article/christopher-wylie-
fashion-...](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/christopher-wylie-fashion-
cambridge-analytica/index.html)

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Yea... they did all that... then fell all the way back to “who buys wrangler
jeans?”.

------
notacoward
Makes perfect sense. I remember seeing something a while ago about an fMRI
study which showed that the difference between "Coke drinkers" and "Pepsi"
drinkers had more to do with people's sense of identity than with actual
physical enjoyment of each drink. We're probably all familiar with the
stereotypes of latte-sipping liberals and beer-swilling conservatives. Are
liberals physically different in a way that makes them more likely to enjoy
latte? Unlikely.

People identify with brands as reflections of their identity and affiliations
all the time. This is especially evident with cars. What kind of person drives
a Prius? What kind of person drives an F-150? Don't tell me that mentioning
those brands didn't make certain images pop into your head. I drive a Mini and
love it, but I'd never buy a BMW 3-series (which is built from many of the
same components) because of the brand associations. Of course someone who
wears Carhartt is going to fit a different political profile than someone who
wears Under Armour. It would be foolish _not_ to use that information in
targeting an ad or political campaign.

------
alottafunchata
Honestly... who cares??

~~~
rjplatte
Agree. This is simply good targeting.

------
whoopdedo
Once again demonstrating that "deanonymized" data is anything but.

------
mymythisisthis
So it is a cultural war.

~~~
drdeadringer
... how? How is an identification methodology a war let alone a culture war?

~~~
yourbandsucks
Because people's fashion choices, food they like, beer they drink.. that's
culture. Two opposed cultures fighting over everything? Culture war.

It's another point in evidence of something we can all see.

------
sjg007
So what information could they see? Could they see posts and shares? If they
installed the app from before? I mean you can find right wingers by looking at
all of the right wing pages on Facebook and seeing who is in them. I can't
imagine it's that difficult.

------
liftbigweights
Why is this news? Everyone does this, including the nytimes. The nytimes
marketing department offers their clients on all kinds of
identifying/targeting traits for advertising.

From your fashion to your viewing habits to which news you consuming to even
the types of pets you have and everything in between is used. Where you work,
where you live, what kind of parenting situation you have, etc.

Isn't that the point of political and corporate advertising? Isn't this why
the nytimes and cambridge analytica is in business? Is the obvious "news" now
because of trump and the "right wing"?

Considering the DNC spent a lot more money than the RNC the past few
elections, there are far more organizations who targeted left-wing voters than
right-wing voters. But I guess the nytimes doesn't want to write an article
about itself and its ad team and their clients.

------
dvt
As much as I think Trump's idiotic anti-media rhetoric erodes our democracy,
when I see the NY Times publishing articles like this, it makes me cringe.
First of all, it's a complete non-article -- marketing firms used correlative
data to make inferences about political affiliation? No way!

Second of all, instead of being a smart and pointed analysis as to why this
might be bad, it somehow draws political conclusions from a _fashion
conference_ and displays a large header featuring the green-haired Christopher
Wylie making fantastical claims about "Bannon's insurgency" \-- even an iota
of research would clearly show that today's "alt-right" movement was a decades
long project started by Newt Gingrich (among others in Republican leadership)
in Georgia, escalated during Clinton's impeachment proceedings, and fully
developed during the Tea Party movements that preceded Trump.

But of course, these are complicated political machinations that have many
moving parts. Instead, the NYT insults its readers by pandering technically-
and politically- incompetent drivel like “Fashion data was used to build AI
models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right” --
give me a break.

~~~
iscrewyou
These news don’t make a big splash when other companies use profiling to
identify people. This one did because those profiles were used to incite
violence. It’s news, just not to your liking.

~~~
dvt
It's really not news, it's clickbait (because it's controversial). I
understand NYT and their like needs to make ends meet, but they need to find a
better way.

------
NeedMoreTea
The whole article reads, to me, as "We can sell you ads on the most tenuous
associations" as we're too stuck in our own marketing bubble. :)

Stereotypical difference between a peace activist and Wall St banker, sure. No
doubt some more subtle variations too. Comparing mainstream brands? That seems
a stretch too far to say the least.

 _Preferences in clothing and music are the leading indicators of political
leaning_

Or might indicate nationality and age group far more than politics? Music has
long heavily influenced clothing.

 _opting for Levi’s over Rag & Bone makes a statement about associations and
history and opens one up to fashion profiling_

Or you were born in the 50s and haven't, yet, heard of Rag & Bone, or you
prefer Levi's fit, or they're heavier denim. Or you're British and prefer Rag
& Bone, as they started here. Or one was on offer at Amazon.

Or your partner chose whichever they prefer on you.

~~~
inetknght
I don't think it was being used as the sole metric. Rather, I think it'd be
used as a weight.

X percent of the population wears A brand, while Y population wears B brand.
What correlations can we find in some Z count of reference population? Use
that correlation value to infer data where none existed.

Yes, some of that inferred data will be wrong. But a lot won't be. And when
you're talking a _massive_ numbers game like _millions of voters_ then you're
also talking about accepting that trade-off by hedging against other
correlations that can help solidify a potential inference.

~~~
brazzledazzle
I think you’re spot on. I have friend that probably defies nearly every major
category he’s part of: age, race, population density, location, home and
perhaps even vehicle. But after reading this I realized his clothes do stand
out and might be one of the few outward things that don’t suggest “middle aged
midwest conservative”. If you need to figure out where to focus canvassing and
marketing in a political campaign it’s probably not bad to have a range of
variables and metrics to weigh, especially when things are otherwise mostly
homogeneous. My friend isn’t going to tell his neighbors he voted for Clinton
but you better believe he did.

------
tokyo_sky_park
Chris Wylie didn't work at Cambridge Analytica in 2016. He left in 2014 to
create his own company, Eunoia Technologies, which was a direct and bitter
competitor. The two regularly competed for clients and CA sued Eunoia,
alleging that Chris took both clients and data with him when he left. It was a
deeply unfriendly parting.

Therefore, Chris has no insider information about what happened at Cambridge
Analytica during or in the run up to the presidential election. Therefore,
these claims are creative fiction.

