
Cambridge Analytica: The Data That Turned the World Upside Down - lakeeffect
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/big-data-cambridge-analytica-brexit-trump
======
conistonwater
I'm loath to uncritically accept the claims of this article. It just tells you
what they did and how Cambridge Analytica thought it had an impact. How do
they actually know it worked? The claims are pretty strong, yet the article
reads a little like marketing copy for the company. After all, _a lot_ of
things happened in the election, really _a lot_. Plus, the whole thing about
"shadowy private company relying on subconscious decision-making" does kinda
set off my bullshit alarms.

~~~
zby
Cory Doctorow agrees: [https://boingboing.net/2017/02/01/trumps-big-data-
secret-sau...](https://boingboing.net/2017/02/01/trumps-big-data-secret-
sau.html)

And a more thorough debunking: [http://civichall.org/civicist/will-the-real-
psychometric-tar...](http://civichall.org/civicist/will-the-real-psychometric-
targeters-please-stand-up/)

With this quote: "I have described them as the Theranos of political data: I
think they have a tremendous marketing department, coupled with a team of
research scientists who provide on virtually none of those marketing
promises." :)

But on a second thought. Planting this story is a masterpiece of promotion -
and isn't this kind of similar to promoting a politician?

~~~
edjw
It looks like it's more that Cory Doctorow agrees with Cathy O'Neil
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-
s-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-secret-
sauce-is-just-more-ketchup)

------
crawfordcomeaux
Whether or not I agree with the premise of Cambridge Analytics's services
directly leading to the Trump campaign emotionally manipulating loads of
disparate groups into electing him, it's alarming how easy it is to conceive
of someone intentionally doing such a thing at such a scale.

YC made a request for startups targeting news and democracy the other day. I'd
like to propose additional underlying unmet societal needs:

Emotional resiliency & nonviolent communication.

~~~
wheelerwj
We've all known that this has been coming for a long, long time. Education
won't get the job done. Strong business ethics won't either.

No, this shit needs to be regulated into the ground. No more of this opt in
bullshit, no more selling data that was never yours to sell, we have to cut
out immediately. We MUST limit the amount of datapoints that can be used for
advertising and we must limit access to that data with much stronger privacy
laws by outlining EXACTLY what data is being collected, providing consumers
access to that data, and not allowing business to sell data that to other
business. Internal use only, that has to be the rule.

Freedom of thought is at stake, we have to act fast or we are totally boned.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You lose the "freedom of thought" simply because a computer does exactly the
same thing that a good salesman would do, simply at scale?

~~~
dredmorbius
A hydrogen bomb does the same thing that Greek Fire does, at scale.

The gas turbine does the same thing the ox does, at scale.

Mustard gas does the same thing a bee does, at scale.

 _Scale fucking matters._

~~~
yummyfajitas
Your examples illustrate my point quite well. It is (and should be) illegal to
pour greek fire on even 1 person - small scale doesn't make the action ok.

Does this mean we should pass a law against salesmen, and just general
interpersonal persuasion? If not, why not?

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm going to try to put my finger on the nature of your comments that's
troubled me for quite some time.

A key element that's lacking seems to be the principle of charity: seeking a
sympathetic understanding of an idea presented, and interpretation of ideas in
their most persuasive form.

I don't believe I've ever seen you do that. You might care to give it a
thought.

[http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html](http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html)

I'll through your questions back at you:

How is Greek Fire unlike a hydrogen bomb? How might considerations of these be
different? What else that shares elements of what a hydrogen bomb is, or does,
still substantively different in a way that would not require some sort of
regulatory treatment?

Why is it we pass laws, generally? What are the hallmarks of a good, or a bad
law?

~~~
dredmorbius
Gah. "Throw", not "through".

------
frebord
We royally fucked up with the internet. I literally have to question my own
motives for things, and often wonder if I have been manipulated into my
beliefs, opinions, and desires. It is kind of scary to think about!

How do we move to a less centralized internet and is it too late?

~~~
frebord
I mean Facebook for example, at its core for an end user it really just
mirrors what the Internet was built to do. I can easily host my own profile
and allow people to log in to it and talk to me. How did it become so
dangerously centralized?

~~~
mjevans
The average user is lazy, cheep, and unaware of how valuable their freedom is.

~~~
willemmali
Did you mean "sheep" or "cheap"?

~~~
tombrossman
I think we've just witnessed the birth of a new technology portmanteau on HN-
"Cheep: (noun) Member of one or more online herds of users who are exploited
for personal data". I like it.

 _(sadly, cheep.com is already taken or I 'd be on that like white on
rice...)_

------
chkuendig
Not again this story. This is a very sensationalist take on the impact of
micro-targeting. It probably has some impact, but every political campaign has
been doing this for years and there isn't something inherently special about
Cambridge Analytica's approach (other then being funded by the Mercers and
hence Trumps go-to firm).

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-
s-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-secret-
sauce-is-just-more-ketchup)

~~~
Raphomet
Thanks for sharing. Cathy O'Neil is one of the most credible voices in the
room when it comes to understanding the unintended consequences of applied big
data algorithms.

The original post is sensationalistic and massively overstates what's
currently possible when it comes to micro-targeting.

------
snowwrestler
From a satirical article published on Halloween last year:

> [Campaign] has also hired a firm specializing in big data and advanced
> intrapsychologic modeling. [Data firm] then takes data from Cookie Monster
> and analyzes it using their own proprietary Artificial Intelligence-powered
> (AI) algorithm, which allows the campaign to not only identify key voters,
> but to also identify key parts of their brains that are activated by certain
> messages.

> “Most campaigns only look at individual voters. We take it a step further
> and dig down into key parts of the voter’s subconscious. That way, we can
> say, ‘This meme penetrated a voter’s volitional association area of their
> prefrontal cortex — let’s double down on this message.’”

[https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/every-political-reporters-
camp...](https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/every-political-reporters-campaign-
tech-article-ever-d46fe7b7e54f#.d1uejpogs)

I'm sure Cambridge Analytica would love us to think they had an unprecedented
impact. I haven't seen any actual evidence though.

------
bahatur
There are several elements of this article that are refuted by Dominic
Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave campaign (a different organization than
Leave.EU).

You can read a more detailed description by an insider for the software Vote
Leave used at his personal blog, here:
[https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/on-the-
refe...](https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/on-the-
referendum-20-the-campaign-physics-and-data-science-vote-leaves-voter-
intention-collection-system-vics-now-available-for-all/)

------
harshaw
The impression I got when I originally read this article was that:

1) Trump outsmarted Clinton (and the presumed technology advantage she
inherited from the Obama campaign apparatus) with psychometric local targeted
propaganda / communication

2) Some of that communication may have been deliberately targeted at
discouraging democratic voters by putting negative articles about Clinton in
their social media feed.

This is interesting in the context that Trump only won by a 70K voter
advantage split over three states.

~~~
Retric
Clinton was predicted to win which really hurt her turnout. She was also
relatively unpopular as her numbers would often drop after a personal
apearance.

While she won the popular vote by 3 or so million people, trump's message was
very targeted to areas that mattered. A republican with the slogan 'your
fired' ended up being the pro worker candidate in many areas. That takes very
skillful image manipulation and a gullible electorate.

PS: Don't forget he was predicted to have around a 40% win chance. That's far
from negligible despite what people where thinking.

~~~
anonbanker
> Clinton was predicted to win which really hurt her turnout.

I'm not sure this claim can be backed up by data.

~~~
Retric
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-
non...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-non-voters-
who-decided-the-election-trump-won-because-of-lower-democratic-
turnout/#631fc6fa40a1)

Is some support for turnout being a problem. "Wisconsin tells the same numbers
story, even more dramatically. Trump got no new votes. He received exactly the
same number of votes in America’s Dairyland as Romney did in 2012. Both
received 1,409,000 votes. But Clinton again could not spark many Obama voters
to turn out for her: she tallied 230,000 votes less than Obama did in 2012.
This is how a 200,000-vote victory margin for Obama in the Badger State became
a 30,000-vote defeat for Clinton."

My thoughts where people would have been more willing to hold their noses and
vote for her if they thought it was going to be a very close election. Few
democrats in Michigan really thought the state was up for grabs at something
like 78.9% vs 21.1% [https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-
forecast/...](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-
forecast/michigan/)

More support for this is new-hampshire (70-30) was predicted as a closer state
than Pennsylvania (77-23), but ended-up very comfortably with Clinton.
Remember, Pennsylvania (20) + Wisconsin (10) + Michigan (16) + 227 = 273 and a
win.

Now, I am not saying the effect was huge, but in tight elections it does not
take much. Further, both the Senate +2 and House +6 shifted toward democrats
though maintaining republican leaning.

~~~
snarf21
"Democrats close to Bill Clinton said Thursday that one mistake Clinton’s top
aides made was not listening to the former president more when he urged the
campaign to spend more time focusing on disaffected white, working class
voters.

Many in Clinton’s campaign viewed these voters as Trump’s base, people so
committed to the Republican nominee that no amount of visits or messaging
could sway them. Clinton made no visits to Wisconsin as the Democratic
nominee, and only pushed a late charge in Michigan once internal polling
showed the race tightening.

Bill Clinton, advisers said, pushed the campaign early on to focus on these
voters, many of whom helped elected him twice to the White House. The former
president, a Clinton aide said, would regularly call Robby Mook to talk about
strategy and offer advice.

But aides said the Clinton campaign’s top strategists largely ignored the
former president, instead focusing on consolidating the base of voters that
helped elect President Barack Obama to the White House. In the closing days of
the campaign, Clinton targeted young people, Hispanics and African-Americans
with laser like focus, casting Trump as a racist who only sought the
presidency to benefit himself."

[http://wtvr.com/2016/11/11/bill-clinton-
strategy/](http://wtvr.com/2016/11/11/bill-clinton-strategy/)

~~~
nl
Not sure where that says anything about a turn-out issue?

------
TeMPOraL
I wonder if this isn't some kind of mass denial happening in some subset of
the world. I've been seeing a lot of theories abot why Trump won, including
mass manipulation and Russian influence. But what about the simplest
explanation - that he won because _people voted for him_ (usual vote counting
shenanigans that happen every election aside)? Is this fact so scary people
need to rationalize it away?

~~~
snowwrestler
Saying "he won the election because he got more votes" doesn't explain
anything. The question is who voted for him, and why.

And that's not about Trump specifically, it gets asked after every election.

------
k_sze
What if CA could not, in fact, _influence_ the outcome of the election, but
instead _predict_ it, and then they just made the bet to approach the winning
party and got $$$?

And then they just keep doing this at each election or referendum and claim
each time to have been influential?

What if?

------
danielam
[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)

~~~
conistonwater
There's another one at
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-
s-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-secret-
sauce-is-just-more-ketchup)

------
kriro
So they received 15 million for being able to influence people on a massive
scale (at least that's the claim). The article makes it sound like they can
micro-target a solid percentage of the US population into action or non-
action. If this were true, 15 million is a ridiculously low amount of money
they got for that ability. I mean the money they should be raking in from
advertising should be...tons. If they can change the election behavior of
millions of people surely they can get millions of people to buy an extra soft
drink here and there...

------
mirimir
So maybe this is an advertorial for CA, or maybe it's Chicken Little
clickbait. Or maybe both. But even Kosinski's work alone is frightening. This
is one way that AIs will pwn us. Indeed, how AIs _are_ pwning us.

------
Lintaris
There were several articles on Cambridge Analytics and Trump but none made it
to the HN front page, including the English translation of the original German
article.

~~~
conistonwater
I think this is an (another?) English translation of that Das Magazin article.

------
petercooper
Is this title just the six most used words in the article? :-D

~~~
jat850
It's incomprehensible to me - after some time I just started parsing it as
"Big Data, Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, Trump". It'd be better if it was just
re-titled to use the article headline, I think.

------
rabboRubble
This HN title is word salad.

~~~
rabboRubble
Article's title has been improved. It was baaaad in its first version.

