
Mike Bloomberg is plowing millions of dollars into a secretive tech firm - hsnewman
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/mike-bloomberg-campaign-uses-tech-firm-he-founded-earlier-this-year.html
======
cmdshiftf4
An elaborate propaganda machine privately funded by, and for the sole benefit
of, a billionaire. I'm sure the Republicans have their own, so let's not be
partisan here but merely call it for what it is.

I did get a chuckle from the blurb in a job posting promoted below by one of
the propagandists working on the machine though:

>You are: A dynamic, seasoned software engineer who can bring your in-depth
expertise and computer science experience to save our democracy.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Come help us weaponize data against the
citizenry for our billionaire candidate, it will save democracy.

What an absolute circus US politics has descended into.

~~~
api
Trump won in part because his Internet ground game was better. Look for the
Dems and everyone else to not only copy but improve on that, fake news and
trolling included.

Prepare to be force fed propaganda like a fois gras goose every election year.
Welcome to the future.

~~~
hos234
This is a weird future though. Its not about the issues, its about who has
better targeting. That's it.

And if both sides have equally good targeting, the result is an even split of
the populations attention. No one wins.

So how does this cycle break. Where is Daenerys?

~~~
darawk
Another interpretation of this is that it is even more about issues, though.
At the end of the day, you're targeting people based on their interest in /
feelings on particular issues. Everyone wants to be so alarmist about all of
this, but the reality is that this is democracy functioning as intended.
Candidates are trying to fit even more tightly to what the voters want.

~~~
zapita
Unfortunately that’s not true. If you look at the thorough reporting of
Cambridge Analytica’s operations for example, it shows that their targeting
was not based on issues but on psychological profile, which they determined
with personality tests. Specifically they focused their attention on people
exhibiting signs of neurosis and anxiety, and then experimented with various
content designed to amplify their fears. Once they got the right level of
“engagement”, they hammered crucial electoral districts in swing states with a
deluge of weaponized propaganda. In that election the issue (“payload” would
be a better term) boiled down to “Hillary Clinton is corrupt and belongs in
jail”. The point is not to convince millions of people to change their minds,
but to manipulate a few tens of thousands of crucial undecided voters into
distrusting one candidate without really knowing why, just enough to change
their vote (or perhaps just stay home - Cambridge Analytica had conducted vote
suppression campaigns in other countries as well).

This is essentially large scale human experimentation. We have to accept the
fact that it works, and is not at all politics as usual. To expect to be
targeted with “issues” is to expect to be treated like a human being. But to
be targeted in this way is to be treated like a lab rat.

~~~
darawk
> Unfortunately that’s not true. If you look at the thorough reporting of
> Cambridge Analytica’s operations for example, it shows that their targeting
> was not based on issues but on psychological profile, which they determined
> with personality tests. Specifically they focused their attention on people
> exhibiting signs of neurosis and anxiety, and then experimented with various
> content designed to amplify their fears.

Sure, that was their marketing pitch. But we have no evidence that anything
like that actually worked, or was meaningfully implemented at scale. Secondly,
what does it mean to "target people with anxiety or neurosis"? Were they
_shifting_ their opinions? Or were they just saying, "Hey, are you afraid of
stuff? Well, we've got the candidate for you". My guess is it's the latter,
and if it's the latter, that's just another way of communicating issue
alignment of their candidate.

I don't think there is any substantial evidence at all that CA or anyone like
them was actually _shaping_ opinion. As far as I know, all the evidence
indicates that they were finding the issues people cared about, and explaining
why and how Donald Trump aligned with them on those issues.

The underlying fact that nobody seems to want to face is that large numbers of
people aligned with him on many important issues. Not because they were
tricked, but because that's what they truly wanted.

~~~
simonh
Overall I agree. The left was ecstatic about Obama’s ground breaking use of
social media and analytics in his first presidential campaign, but now are
crying foul because the right has caught up and even pulled ahead. I’m not
entirely happy about the tactics due to the privacy implications, but that’s a
separate issue.

What does worry me is that the messaging being targeted in this way is often
disingenuous. Parties will target one message at one demographic and a
contradictory message at another demographic. So if a consistent message is
simply being targeted effectively that’s fine, but deceptively tailoring the
message to the target is a legitimate concern.

~~~
zapita
You’re making a false equivalence. The Obama campaign hired savvy analysts and
marketers to run a modern web and email campaign. A lot of what they did was
pioneer what is now standard in almost every campaign: heavy use of email
follow-ups to keep supporters engaged; recruiting and coordinating canvassing
teams nationwide; using social media as a primary channel of communication
rather than a gadget.

What the Trump campaign did was go to Paul Manafort, the guy who fixed
Ukrainian campaign using black ops disinformation campaigns on behalf of
Putin, and hire him to run his campaign!

The only thing those campaigns had in common is that they used the Internet
efficiently. But they used them very differently to achieve different goals.
To compare them as equivalent is irresponsible.

~~~
darawk
You keep implying differences, while not actually stating them. Who was hired
is not a salient difference, in this context. The tactics employed by each are
essentially the same: Heavy internet advertising with effective, outcome-based
targeting. For all of Cambridge Analytica's marketing puff pieces, I see no
evidence they were doing anything fundamentally different.

~~~
zapita
Just to be clear, you are willing to say on the record that the Obama campaign
and Manaford, a convicted criminal who is known to have worked for a mass
murdering autocratic regime as their expert electoral fixer, are “essentially
the same” in their use of the Internet?

If so, you’ll have to find someone else to engage in debate with you. If you
are capable of believing such a thing, we simply don’t have enough moral
common ground to have a productive conversation.

I will say for the benefit of others who might read this, that how successful
Cambridge Analytica actually was in manipulating US voters in 2016 is
irrelevant to whether or not A) mass disinformation is a real threat to
elections everywhere (it is) and B) the Trump campaign employed Cambridge
Analytica to manipulate US voters using mass disinformation (they did).

~~~
darawk
> Just to be clear, you are willing to say on the record that the Obama
> campaign and Manaford, a convicted criminal who is known to have worked for
> a mass murdering autocratic regime as their expert electoral fixer, are
> “essentially the same” in their use of the Internet?

In their use of the internet in relation to their respective presidential
campaigns, yes. Do you have specific evidence to the contrary?

> If so, you’ll have to find someone else to engage in debate with you. If you
> are capable of believing such a thing, we simply don’t have enough moral
> common ground to have a productive conversation.

So, just to be clear, at the first sight of a challenge and request for
literally any supporting evidence at all, you're backing away, while
pretending to do so out of contempt?

It's become quite clear that you don't actually have any evidence to back up
your claims here. Though feel free to prove me wrong.

------
Havoc
Well the part about a counterweight being needed does ring true.

Though that still seems like to evils counter-balancing each other. There is a
real need to legislate against this on an overall level.

The average guy on the street just isn't equipped to survive this highly
sophisticated data driven type of attack. Hell I'm not confident I am.

~~~
indigochill
>There is a real need to legislate against this on an overall level.

I could not disagree more strongly. Legislation is simply the people already
in position pulling the ladder up behind them. The people with money and
lawyers will insert and then exploit loopholes.

Instead, disrupt it at its source. Flood the data collectors with adversarial
noise, learn to remove your personal information from the web, and so on.
Personal privacy is becoming a duty not just to ourselves but to our
democracy.

~~~
Havoc
>Instead, disrupt it at its source.

As grand as that sounds it's not viable. People aren't even coping with tech
basics let alone large scale evasion of the sophisticated tracking being
deployed.

Sure you can maybe get the top 10% most tech savy to do something like
removing their personal info, but that's not enough to move the needle.

Legislation might though. See GDPR forcing companies to stop logging IPs.
That's way more tangible. Of course there will be loopholes - legislation is
imperfect - but we need something that has _any_ kind of effect asap.

------
dmitrygr
Well, with the citizens united decision, The country decided that buying a
power is acceptable. Choosing whether this Bloomberg company upsets you or
makes you happy is still just haggling over the price.

------
sbuccini
Interviewed there last week for a software engineering position after some
people in my network went over there. Didn't get the gig but I came away
impressed with the team and the mission. It's a unique opportunity to build a
state-of-the-art data system with unlimited resources. I've heard that the
comp is very, very good but can't confirm that from my own experiences. If you
think you can survive the sprint, I think it's a great opportunity.

Jeff, if you're still lurking in the thread -- we've chatted at the Kairos &
the Arena summits. I've got the political and tech background to make an
impact. If you're willing to take a flier on me, I'm all-in. Email is in my
profile.

~~~
Jamwinner
'Unlimited resources' are exactly the thing we don't need shaping a democratic
election. Shame on you and anyone else seeking to work for such a firm. Ill
take my downvotes, this is bedrock ethics.

~~~
sbuccini
Unfortunately, this is our reality. I’d highly recommend Dark Money by Jane
Mayer if you haven’t read it already. Of course, this same machinery has
already been built time and time again in the Valley.

~~~
adventured
> Unfortunately, this is our reality.

It's not. Sanders is going to stomp Bloomberg in the primary, with a tiny
fraction of the resources behind him that Bloomberg has and a magnitude more
of the public support.

Trump won while spending a lot less money than what Clinton vaporized in her
election campaign. He decimated the formidable Bush money machine right out of
the gate, humiliating Jeb Bush as a weak candidate before the first inning was
over.

This is increasingly the era of populism. It's raging all over the planet
right now (Trump in the US, Brexit in UK, SD in Sweden, riots in Iran and
everywhere else, and so on). The establishment candidates, such as Bloomberg,
can't win under any scenario no matter how much money they burn.

Sanders and Warren are the only real competing candiates to Trump, as they're
both populists. If the Democrats make the mistake of running Biden, he'll be
embarrassed in the general election. Spending $500m vs $1 billion versus $2
billion will not matter in the least in 2020.

~~~
sbuccini
You're missing the big picture if you're just focusing on the Presidential
election. Jane Mayer does a great job of showing how money pervades politics
at all levels, down to the most local judicial races. I've also seen it
firsthand. It's also important to remember that Hawkfish =/= Bloomberg 2020
and their output will be available to Democratic candidates up and down the
ballot.

------
dillondoyle
The possibilities of Bloomberg money & commitment to invest in
digital/experiment are huge. My political digital wet-dream: an org with
enough $$$ to get access to bid-stream + processing/compute/intelligence +
large audience graph tied to voter data = biggest coup in voter profiling and
targeting ever.

Modeled issue/turnout scores updated in near real time using a large % of
every individual's entire web surfing/app usage history. Even a user graph
graphed to 20% of voter file + bidstream data would be an unimaginably
ginormous amount of data.

Like imagine receiving a field call & digital ads after reading an oped on
universal healthcare by Bloomberg in nytimes, receiving call about that issue
that night and a series of healthcare digital ads following you everywhere
after reading.

it would be 'fb is listening to my phone' level of effectiveness - and as I'm
sure nearly everyone here would say creepy/horrible.

i think a lot of DSP/players are now afraid of working in politics, but
perhaps someone like beeswax or hell directly from IPONWEB would do it for the
right money with the right protections built in. i bet bloomberg could also
call up Oracle who has sucked up all the data companies recently.

------
nickpinkston
I'm not a supporter of Bloomberg's candidacy, but we need to thank him and
other tech leaders who are contributing to Democratic politics, especially the
political infrastructure we so desperately need.

Critics are right to be skeptical about rich people spending a lot of money in
politics, but that doesn't automatically mean every big money tech political
initiative is in the wrong.

In the eyes of tech critics, tech is either not engaged enough in politics, or
we're donating too much to political organizations, or we're turned away from
directly giving money to Warren and other progressives.

Can someone tell me what critics really want the tech community to do aside
from cease to exist?

------
ocdtrekkie
This just sounds a lot like The Groundwork, which was the Eric Schmidt-funded
company that did all of Hillary Clinton's campaign technology work. During the
2016 campaign, The Groundwork's site consisted solely of an Illuminati-esque
logo, but today has a more informative/generic site offering their services to
people that are not Hillary Clinton.

[https://thegroundwork.com/](https://thegroundwork.com/)

Presumably it's cool to start a company in this space solely to elect one
person, because if you can say you got a President elected, it's going to be
good business after that?

~~~
woodhull
Except the groundwork has effectively gone out of business and no longer has
anyone working there.

They made a good faith effort to find non HRC campaign and non profit
customers after the election but never found meaningful market fit. It was an
odd assortment of tech that felt like what it was: an attempt to productize an
enormous consulting engagement to build whatever the campaign wanted.

It's all an interesting campaign finance loophole though. You can fund money
loosing tech companies to work with candidates and as long as they charge the
campaign something, it's an interesting way to spend huge amounts of dark
money on elections.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Whoa, the front of the site would give you no idea of that!

Though the blog is an intriguing hint that something's amiss:
[https://thegroundwork.com/blog/](https://thegroundwork.com/blog/)

It's all SEO spam.

------
mmanfrin
Part of the problem that Cambridge Analytica ran in to was that it was a
"foreign agent". A lot of what it did would be legal under an American entity,
and I think many in politics know this.

~~~
paulgb
AFAICT, the foreign agent stuff happened in the 2014 mid-terms and was only
exposed when they came under fire for the data breach. I think why CA went
down is not because the core of what they were doing was illegal, but because
after their data scandal no campaign would have wanted to associate with them.

Ironically, there are so many snake oil peddlers in the data brokerage
business that my hunch is that they probably didn't actually derive much value
from the data they got in trouble for having.

------
Vervious
Money in politics <-> Data in politics

Sounds like a new conversation to be had

~~~
taxidump
This is another data race.

Campaigns are highly regulated for a reason and I hope some movement to
protect voters against data attacks and manipulation will go above and beyond
what your average adword target would be protected for.

~~~
ngokevin
Maybe data as a property right? [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-
property-right/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/)

------
smn1234
“In God we trust. Everyone else bring data.”

So, it's a data analytics company ?

~~~
Jglueck46
Yes, to address as part of Hawkfish, it's a data and tech platform for
progressive candidates and causes, including voter segmentation and digital
activation and engagement. Really Dems have been quite behind the Republican
data trust which has been funded for a decade by right-wing special interests,
and the goal of Hawkfish is to level the playing field, for democratic
candidates up and down the ballot, and advocacy groups for climate, women's
rights, education, gun safety common sense, and more.

For folks interested in jobs from the data science and full-stack Eng side,
job postings are here:

[https://boards.greenhouse.io/hawkfish/](https://boards.greenhouse.io/hawkfish/)

Jeff Glueck

~~~
steve19
> Really Dems have been quite behind the Republican data trust

Do you have any actual evidence for that? Because mainstream media have been
saying the opposite since Obama.

What you said is exactly what a company looking for dem dollars would say.
Which is pretty much what Cambridge Analytic said to the gop candidates.

~~~
caseysoftware
You're thinking of Project Narwhal: [https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2012/02/project-narwhal-...](https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2012/02/project-narwhal-how-a-top-secret-obama-campaign-program-
could-change-the-2012-race.html)

I think the distinction here may be "the Obama campaign" vs "the DNC" but yes,
the media lauded expansive data collection, microtargeting, and get out to
vote (gotv) efforts in the ancient days of 2012-2015.

------
rvz
Well couldn't the signs be any clearer?

$100M + Mr Bloomberg + "secretive tech firm" \+ "Your Data" * 1 billion =
Palantir 9.0

------
sigzero
It's not going to be "good", whatever it is.

------
spiderfarmer
I hate everything about this.

------
saagarjha
> “It’s clear to me and other tech leaders that Trump and the GOP are better
> at creating and sharing engaging online content than anyone on the
> Democratic side,” Conway said in explaining his conversation with Bloomberg.

No no no. I don’t want bipartisan “engaging” content, I want data analytics
use for hyper-targeted political advertising pulled from the list of allowable
political tactics.

------
chmaynard
I find this encouraging. If Bloomberg can convince Sanders or Warren to be his
VP candidate, together they could give Trump a run for his money.

