
The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz - lingben
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/the-secret-agenda-of-a-facebook-quiz.html?
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ENTP
I'd suspected for years about such quizzes. Initially, I assumed the posts to
calculate your (porn/movie/etc) name was a low grade phishing exercise as it
asked you to mix personal data that are often used in security questions (eg
first pet name plus mothers maiden name). This is a whole new level, but
entirely unsurprising. Facebook is a data mining platform. Remembering that is
nothing but a good thing.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Especially quizzes like "where was your first job?" or "what's your favorite
movie?" all sounded like phishing for security question answers.

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angry-hacker
Just got an evil idea.. You can target on fb and Google by email lists. You
create some stupid web app with questions and promise something in return, a
prize, or make it worthwhile to play and target them with all the security
questions email accounts or whatever might ask. Could be that this is being
done for phising already if the victims are being targeted specifically and
don't have 2fa.

~~~
tomascot
You are late to the party. I remember receiving this kind of questions in 2006
when hotmail and msn messenger were still popular. I think it was part of a
game to measure how worldly you were.

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mjfl
I'm not impressed. Did anyone notice that Cambridge Analytics did not work for
Ted Cruz? I mean he did win Texas and the great plains states, but those were
his most-winnable locations from the beginning due to his consistent
conservatism and other nominees dropping out. He even lost the south, which
should have been his other target, presumably due to being off-wavelength with
southern voters, something the analytics data should have helped him with.
Cambridge Analytics and their Facebook questionnaires don't seem to be very
effective.

~~~
patcon
I imagine we'd be equally unimpressed with other early tech.

imho, our concern should be of an extrapolative nature. we can guess where
this will be in 5 or 10 years, nevermind Ted Cruz' future electoral successes.
and we know how easy people are to psychologically "nudge". (sorry for
assuming our agreement there)

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rounce
> and we know how easy people are to psychologically "nudge"

How easy? I thought "Nudge theory" was beginning to unravel under the burden
of empirical evidence?

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techwizrd
I've been warning friends and family about this for years. It's incredible how
much information people will give about themselves to get totally inane
information. This "psy-ops" stuff is shady and scary, and I guarantee you that
most voters have no idea it's happening.

~~~
sean_patel
> I've been warning friends and family about this for years.

How did it work out? I tried the same too, but it was falling into deaf years.
Most common response. "Sean beta (means son in hindi). You are being
excessively paranoid. Facebook is a closed community, and I only share info
with friends and family, so don't worry."

~~~
delinka
Nit: "falling on deaf ears"

I will concede to typo/autocorrect, but wanted to make the comment in case
someone reads your comment and assumes the phrase correct.

~~~
sean_patel
haha. Yes it was a typo/autocorrect. lol. thanks.

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fovc
And yet for all their magic, they were just as wrong about the outcome of the
election:

 _You might think from a casual reading of the Cambridge Analytica press
release that they predicted the outcome of the election. They did not. A
company spokesman called reporters before election day to say that Trump had
only a 20 per cent chance of winning._

Source: [http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-
cruncher...](http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-crunchers-
who-say-they-helped-donald-trump-to-win/)

~~~
gareim
I'm not sure I get this logic. If I told someone they had a 16.6% chance of
rolling a die and getting a 6, and then they proceed to roll the die and get a
6, would you laugh and tell me that I was wrong?

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delinka
That's not a prediction of the outcome. That's a statistic. A prediction of
the outcome would be "you won't roll a 6."

~~~
dagw
If you asked me to predict whether you will roll a six or not, then I will
predict that you won't. Is that a bad prediction?

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delinka
It's certainly an incorrect prediction if I roll a six. You didn't simply
state the odds and leave it at that, you actually made a prediction. Is it a
"bad" prediction? Depends on how you're defining "good" vs. "bad" predictions.
If the quality of the prediction is not based on the outcome (i.e. whether the
prediction is correct), but is instead based on the odds themselves, then
that's a conversation that leads to "bad but correct" predictions.

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divbit
Seriously. Why do we allow this kind of data collection. This is ridiculous.

Edit: the commenter who responded has pointed out that this is phrased fairly
accusatory. Should the fact that there is probably a data cloud out there
about me being used to manipulate me through subliminal type messaging not be
upsetting? I don't think I have _ever_ signed up for a service with the
expectation that whatever information is collected will be collated in some
over-arching cloud used for more things than just the service provided to me
by the site. Maybe somewhere in a 30 page terms of service document, it said
that, and I clicked "agree" upon skimming it. But should that really be
enough?

Edit 2: Here's an idea: charge me $3/month to use your service without ads,
and with full expectation that my data will not be sold or used
inappropriately (you can give it to the govt. if they need it for security
reasons, I don't care). I currently pay for e-mail without ads from both
outlook and mail.com and would gladly do the same for a pure facebook / gmail
/ google search / etc service.

~~~
notyourwork
Can I re-phrase your question?

"Why do we allow people to voluntarily hand over their own information at
their own will?"

Sounds much different when its phrase properly and not accusatory.

~~~
kalleboo
If it said up-front "this data will be collated and eventually used to
emotionally manipulate you", I'd agree with you that people give the
information up of their own will.

~~~
Natsu
Can you explain how an OCEAN score helps do that?

Because I have yet to be convinced that knowing how open, agreeable, etc.
someone translates into manipulation and the article did not even attempt to
explain that, it just said this has some vague relation to Trump & Brexit and
left us to assume it was a magic X factor.

~~~
ma2rten
It was pretty clear to me:

"Mr. Trump’s digital team used [individually targeted] posts to serve
different ads to different potential voters, aiming to push the exact right
buttons. [...] A pro-gun voter whose Ocean score ranks him high on neuroticism
could see storm clouds and a threat: The Democrat wants to take his guns away.
A separate pro-gun voter deemed agreeable and introverted might see an ad
emphasizing tradition and community values, a father and son hunting
together."

~~~
Natsu
So the danger here is that they might find something they agree with Trump on?

~~~
ma2rten
I don't know if there is danger, but I find the idea very scary that there is
an organization that collects very intimate data on me without my knowledge
and uses that to manipulate me. They are not really trying to find points that
people agree on with Trump. They are trying to create a strong emotional image
that works with the person in question and connect it to Trump.

~~~
Natsu
That's advertising in a nutshell, though. You can (and should) limit the
information you put out. You can (and should) learn to recognize emotional
manipulation of all kinds from all sources.

~~~
ma2rten
I know, but ...

a) This degree of personalization is completely unheard of.

b) No one except the most paranoid expects that when they fill in a quiz that
information will be recorded and stored.

c) Normally with personalized advertising (or advertising in general) the
worst that can happen is that the person advertised to will buy something they
don't need. In this case it can have implications for many other people.

~~~
Natsu
A) Not really, Google knows way more about us. B) That sounds like a problem
with education. C) This is by no means the only targeted political
advertising. They have systems to track what you respond to and have done so
for quite some time now. Calls, letters, even people visiting at the door
don't happen by accident.

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lstroud
Has anyone been able to validate or correlate the claims in this article? It's
an opinion piece without a lot of verifiable references or data. Seems like it
is, to some degree, describing itself.

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toyg
Meh, big deal. Like the Obama campaigns were't good at "weaponizing" all web
tools they could find.

Note how the examples proposed are all GOTV efforts targeted to the R base
rather than anything appealing larger slices of the electorate. Despite all
this black magic, R turnout wasn't that impressive and Trump lost the popular
vote. Where it might have helped a little bit is in exploiting weaknesses that
Dems shouldn't have had in the first place, i.e. Clinton's baggage, to reduce
D turnout in key states, but again, that's more the Democrats' fault for
fielding such a candidate knowing very well that she had such baggage.

------
08-15
> In this election, dark posts were used to try to suppress the African-
> American vote. According to Bloomberg, the Trump campaign sent ads...

Really? Sending ads is suppressing the vote of certain people? Like the soviet
union suppressed dissenters by sending them to the gulag?

I don't think so. But I think the New York Times has a secret agenda of its
own, I just don't know what it is. Portraying the election as somehow "unfair"
could result in civil unrest, who could possibly want that?

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wtbob
> In this election, dark posts were used to try to suppress the African-
> American vote. According to Bloomberg, the Trump campaign sent ads reminding
> certain selected black voters of Hillary Clinton’s infamous “super predator”
> line. It targeted Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood with messages about the
> Clinton Foundation’s troubles in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

How is this suppressing the vote? It's giving potential voters accurate
information about your opponent. Frankly, how is it any different from Mr.
Biden shouting, 'they're gonna put y'all back in chains!' — other than the
former being true and probably in good taste?

N.b.: I did _not_ vote for President Trump.

~~~
mattnewton
An answer to how this is different is provided in literally the next sentence
of the article.

>Federal Election Commission rules are unclear when it comes to Facebook
posts, but even if they do apply and the facts are skewed and the dog whistles
loud, the already weakening power of social opprobrium is gone when no one
else sees the ad you see — and no one else sees “I’m Donald Trump, and I
approved this message.”

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RichardHeart
"Mr. Zuckerberg is young, still skeptical that his radiant transparency
machine could be anything but a force for good" This is naive bordering on
delusional. I think Zuckerberg knows the real deal. Considering quotes like
these: Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just
ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted
Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted
it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks"

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aw3c2
Is this another rogue Cambridge Analytica ad that will get debunked later when
the impact was done?

~~~
imron
No, it was written by an Open Society Fellow, e.g funded by George Soros, a
major Hillary Clinton backer.

So basically, it's counter propaganda.

~~~
ubernostrum
_e.g funded by George Soros_

Careful -- you've mentioned his name twice in this thread. Do it a third time
and he'll appear in your bathroom mirror.

Also, nothing in the article was particularly surprising, nor is any of it
outside the realm of what we already know is technically possible at Facebook.
Give it four years and see if Zuckerberg makes _his_ rumored run for
President, after beta-testing the tools in 2016...

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potatosoup
> In the immediate wake of Mr. Trump’s surprise election

How was it a surprise? With huge crowd sizes at his rallies (that NYT didn't
show, but RSBN for example did), strong populist message that worked, and the
awful candidate the other side put up (while sadly destroying Bernie), I was
not surprised.

~~~
IshKebab
Because most poll models gave him a small chance of success. How bad is your
memory?

~~~
potatosoup
Interestingly enough, the same pollsters are now saying that Trump has a 37%
or something approval rating. And Obama went out with a 60%+ approval rating.

Until they find a way to poll a significant slice of the population truly
representative of the electorate, I'm surprised people can take them
seriously. Since we're on HN, there is a startup idea here somewhere.

(Edited to remove an electoral hypothesis, so that we can discuss polls and
not politics.)

~~~
flavor8
Hillary ran a sub-par campaign as one of the least popular candidates in
recent history, and that hurt down-ticket races. The democrats made a
strategic mistake by allowing Clintonistas to take over the DNC and party
establishment to the point that she was essentially "the anointed", and faced
no real competition. Had e.g. Biden or even Franken run, the results might be
quite different. Heck, if Obama had run against Trump (for a third term, were
such a thing possible) it would likely be a different story. This is not the
whole situation, of course; e.g. districts are more gerrymandered than ever,
reducing competitiveness and allowing party establishments to push their
favored candidates (out of touch establishment = unpopular candidate); e.g.
the last congress was the most dysfunctional in decades, meaning that the
bills that made it were compromises, and not a full test of democrat ideas;
media echo chambers have polarized voters; etc.

As easy as it is to critique Obama's policies on privacy & foreign policy, he
was assured and rational, which people like in a leader. It's entirely
reasonable that there's such a wide gap in approval polls. There's really no
reason to significantly doubt them.

Regardless of whether you agree on the above, we're about to see the GOP have
its way and push a slew of policies that they favor. Many will actually be
favorable for entrepreneurs and startups, but my guess is that overall they
will turn out to be quite unpopular. I predict the house to flip back in 2018
and for Trump to be crushed in 2020 (if he makes it that far without being
impeached.) We'll see.

------
Propen
Is it just me starting to really have enough of "secret agendas" of Facebook
and other internet giants? What the hell are the legislators doing? Even if
you say that the advertising-based business model is OK where do you draw the
line? Do they really need to know what kind of a psychologic personality I am
and what kind of porn I watch ?! (exaggerating... but who knows nowadays)

------
kome
Friendly reminder: don't use Facebook and block _any_ advertisement and
trackers online using ublock.

It helps to keep some mental ecology.

~~~
hedora
I did that too. Look where it got us.

Anyway, I eventually set up a placholder Facebook account. Once I typed my
name into the setup form, they provided a frighteningly detailed list of
friends and acquaintances. Since then, due to "do you know" emails, I get the
impression they slurp other people's call and sms logs (or maybe just
contacts, if FB types are more OCD about address books than me) into their
social network graph.

Anyway, it is not much of an exaggeration to say that facebook gets more
metadata to sell every time you make a phone call, regardless of whether you
have an account.

(Of course, I don't have their software installed on any of my devices.
However, I did give them my phone number for 2FA purposes. How naive I was.
Assuming the phone app grabs people's address books and/or call logs, they
probably had it before I gave it to them)

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sean_patel
> If Mr. Zuckerberg takes seriously his oft-stated commitments to diversity
> and openness, he must grapple honestly with the fact that Facebook is no
> longer just a social network. It’s an advertising medium that’s now
> dangerously easy to weaponize.

The story is chilling. It more or less proves that Trump campaign and the
Billionaire Republican donor who owns the Data Analytics site used Facebook to
profile people and send targeted "fear" stories to them and swing the vote
away from Clinton.

Fear is a great motivator.

~~~
Rapzid
I'm not sure how the Dem's will compete with this going forward. Maybe it will
become taboo and they won't have to. Maybe they already are.. I hope they
don't go too deep into the mud on this.

It's almost impressive though how well the Republicans, and Trump
specifically, are employing these, IMHO shady, tactics.

Is it scandalous how little scandal is made of all this(the FUD, populist
rhetoric, phycological manipulation, etc)? I can imagine how this would be
spun if "evil Hillary" was found to be targeting people with "dark posts".

~~~
Gargoyle
Democrats will use it in completely analogous ways.

~~~
sean_patel
> analogous ways.

I really don't understand what this mean? Can anyone explain?? Thank you :)

~~~
morpher
similar/comparable
([https://www.google.com#q=define%20analogous](https://www.google.com#q=define%20analogous))

------
YYZoroaster
The Open Agenda of a New York Times article.

