
Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media - lemming
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
======
eggy
I get the gist of the article, and it is scary.

I don't recall as much scare when people found out Obama's team used machine
learning and data collection, as well as Hillary's later efforts, to influence
voters or gain support.

I am not a Trump supporter, nor a Hillary or Obama fan; I am pretty disgusted
with the US political system, however, I also recall people praising the
IT/ML/Big Data teams for Obama and Hillary without even a mention of what data
they were slinging or collecting.

I left FB years ago, and I feel much better for it, especially after reading
this article.

~~~
makomk
Yeah. I mean, there were literal pro-Clinton astroturfing efforts that tried
to pressure the media into covering the news in ways that favoured her,
crafting a narrative that any negative media coverage of her or perceived
sluggishness in running anti-Trump stories was proof of shameful Trump
support: [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/us/politics/hillary-
clint...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/us/politics/hillary-clinton-
media-david-brock.html) From what I saw, it worked; this became the dominant
narrative on at least the parts of Twitter I saw. Yet there were no breathless
headlines about Democrat "propaganda networks" that were "waging war on
mainstream media", even though that's clearly exactly what they were doing.

~~~
mistermann
"That's different!"

Both sides have no idea how alike they are.

------
pesenti
Cambridge Analytica first supported Cruz against Trump. So there is little
hard evidence that it is such a powerful weapon. Bannon is on the board of the
company and these articles feel like company-fed buzz.

I led Mercer's old team at IBM for a few year and we also developed NLP/ML-
based profiling technology. They work better than chance but not much better
(there is lots of published literature on the subject) and definitely not
enough to make a big difference from just feeding fake news to everybody
equally.

~~~
zzalpha
_They work better than chance but not much better_

When you're dealing with razor thin margins in individual electoral districts,
and 300M people, even slightly better than chance can be pretty powerful.

~~~
pjmorris
Razor thin margins seems to lead to a multitude of arguments for how a variety
of things could have swayed the election. None of these things explain why the
election was close, but that seems like a much more important thing to
understand.

------
ryanmarsh
This is the new normal. Get used to it.

I keep telling people, things are going to get really weird. You tell me, what
happens in a complex adaptive system when the cost of information
(transmission and storage) goes to zero? Yah, shit gets weird fast.

Does anyone think Cambridge Analytica is the sole proprietor of tech like
this? Will they remain the only ones? What if one person leaks the model? What
if someone open sources a better one? We know this story. After some time this
is going to become as accessible as any other tech, and Things. Are. Going.
To. Get. Really. Weird.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
It doesn't have to be. We don't have to accept manually reading through news
articles and spending precious time digesting that information and connecting
all of the dots in our flawed heads with our flawed memory.

We need tools for information digestion and management to cast more informed
votes. Unless we just want to admit that voters can't keep up with their
government and hold it accountable, in which case we need tools to manage a
government that cannot manage its own information input/output.

Critical thinking is nice and the most basic requirement, but it doesn't
enlighten you to facts that you simply don't have time to discover. You can
make educated guesses and you could be right, but they are still guesses.

To go and find all of those facts, you have to spend an enormous amount of
time reading _all_ sources of information (Breitbart, MSM, alt-right, ADL,
etc.) or you have to admit you are making decisions with incomplete
information. You also have to watch videos, listen to sound bites, and read
tweets.

Time is the real enemy and the reason so many people give up in the face of
this information-saturated reality is that no one has enough of it to continue
using their eyes and ears to parse the world's raw data. Anything that reduces
the time cost of being an informed voter is going to have the greatest impact
of managing information and governments.

~~~
pault
The problem is, reading all sources of journalism and synthesizing them into a
coherent narrative does not necessarily get you to the truth.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
It's something to be taken into account, but no, the tools will probably not
be a "truth meter". But for every 10 articles the media pumps out, maybe I
only have to read 1 article. This is always going to be lossy, but it
obviously should be less lossy than a human.

I think that it will be easier to make tools to manage and summarize
accurately than to limit the rate of growth or output of information.

------
TheRealDunkirk
Using big data and propaganda to nudge elections was already well enough known
to be a minor plot thread in House of Cards a few years ago. The one thing I
find lacking in discussing anything like this is that the articles are always
written from one side. You can say that this article is about Mercer, so it
should only focus on his activities, but it's really about controlling
influence in conservative politics, when this is all being done in the
presence of George Soros. There was enormous detail in the article. I'd rather
read half that detail, and then look at the activities from the liberal side,
and compare and contrast. To me, the interesting part isn't that one side or
the other is doing these things; it's what BOTH sides are doing to US.

~~~
kristianc
And there you've slung just enough mud to implicate Obama in the same kind of
antics without offering any tangible proof. And conflated Big Data and
propaganda too. Nice.

The Obama campaign's use of technology was well documented - a two minute
Google threw up detailed articles from MIT, Forbes, Technology Review.

If you have a substantive point to make about any of that, or any proof at all
that the Obama campaign has indulged in the kind of propaganda Bannon et al
are neck deep in, you should make it instead of resorting to hand wavy
arguments like this.

~~~
edblarney
"And there you've slung just enough mud to implicate Obama in the same kind of
antics without offering any tangible proof. "

Are you kidding? Obama invented the use of social tools to get elected. [1]

Google, who, as an org make up probably 95% Obama voters, have a deep
relationship with government [2]. And Sheryl Sandberg worked for the
Democratic apparatus.

There's nothing entirely wrong with either things (possibly), but the point is
that it's 'nefarious' when conservatives have money and access but not when
massive and institutional entities like Google do for the Democrats? Google
and Facebook are two organizations that, if they chose to, could control the
outcome of the election - that's a pretty scary conflict of interest. Exxon
certainly couldn't. Where is the uproar?

Surely, it's worth pointing out where 'big money/business and politics
collide', but it's very hypocritical to scream about the plight of one side,
and not the other.

If anything - this somewhat hypocritical posturing, generally supported by the
MSM, gives credence to those who argue the MSM is at least softly biased in
one direction. Though I tend to generally trust most of the big news orgs, I
believe there is a degree of 'sidedness' on this issue.

[1] [http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-
social-m...](http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-social-media-
battle-in-the-2012-presidential-campaign/)

[2] [https://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-
revol...](https://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-revolving-
door-us)

~~~
makomk
Yeah, there was a whole wave of breathless reporting about the wonders of the
Obama campaign's use of big data, microtargeting, social media, etc after the
2008 and 2012 elections and how the Republicans' failure to do this proved
they were behind the times. It takes about five seconds with Google to
discover this. Compare, for example, this article with
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/2012/10/obama_s_secret_weapon_democrats_have_a_massive_advantage_in_targeting_and.html)
or [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/harper-reed-
obam...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/harper-reed-obama-
campaign-microtargeting)

~~~
nickpsecurity
"how the Republicans' failure to do this proved they were behind the times"

I distinctly remember that. Then there's a fit now among liberals that the
Republicans are doing what liberals say they should've been doing. Hell,
they're doing it better. Liberals will need to up their game plus have a final
candidate that's worth something in next election.

~~~
metaobject
Up their game by enlisting the help of a foreign nation to help stand up an
entire group of social network trolls whose entire mission is to muddy the
waters and push fabricated stories?

~~~
nickpsecurity
Elections have always been dirty. It seems winners now use social media or
trolls. So be it until that is banned and policed. Losing a Presidency because
you followed the rules feels much worse than gaining it breaking some. I don't
even think it's possible any more for honest plays to happen given superficial
voters with conflicting needs/wants that cost average of $200 mil of others's
money to reach.

------
ed_blackburn
As a Brit it concerns me that somebody can donate the use of such a powerful
tool for a political campaign without registration. Especially as the donation
was from a foreign citizen.

There is far too much shadiness going on. Yes the horse has bolted with Brexit
but there are more elections around the world and if the democratic process
_may_ be being distorted then I think it needs investigation.

~~~
crusso
What is distortion of democratic process, specifically?

Most political processes are distortion. Political ads are never basic
presentations of fact. At best, they're just exercises in cherry picking, but
typically they're spin and outright lies.

Major media outlets all have their political slants and their subsets of
slants presented by their various journalists. More distortion.

Is it political distortion when you bus in voters of a particular party to the
polling places who would otherwise not have bothered to vote?

~~~
ed_blackburn
We don't really have political ads in the UK, it's certainly illegal to lie in
any advertisement in the UK.

I meant a tool was used and was not registered as a donation. This may have
distorted the campaigns because the two sides had to disclose all donations.

That one chose not to, is in my view dishonest, thoroughly inappropriate and
may very well have been ilegal.

I am not naive, hence my comment. For future elections election officials will
need to be observant.

------
flocial
Social media optimisation could very well be the cancer that kills democracy.
Still I find it hard to imagine the likes of Trump or Farage to be these evil
masterminds orchestrating media manipulation and shifting popular sentiment
with advanced AI. Perhaps they are mere pawns of technocratic billionaires
fulfilling a grand plan like Asimov's Foundation series.

~~~
nickpsecurity
" Still I find it hard to imagine the likes of Trump or Farage to be these
evil masterminds orchestrating media manipulation and shifting popular
sentiment with advanced AI."

Think of it more like CEO's with their executive dashboards, Wall Street
journal, stock tickers, and trusted advisors. They're going day-to-day with
their finger on the pulse of the company and markets. They have people
constantly advising them on various things that pop up. They mix their own
style and ideas with that advise to determine course of action. It happens so
much it becomes natural for them.

Probably like that but in direct & orchestrated way given how election
campaigns work.

------
nabla9
Is it just me, or do these new players who operate in the background have more
technical knowledge, quant mindset and solid data analytics connections.

Mercer is CEO of Renaissance Technologies and seems to own piece of Cambridge
Analytica. Peter Thiel and Palantir. Even Mark Zuckerberg seems to have
political ambitions.

~~~
facetube
Steve Bannon (the Breitbart News figurehead) is on Cambridge Analytica's
board. Yes, that Steve Bannon, chief strategist for President Trump: a guy who
– completely coincidentally – has already started his campaign for 2020.

Big data, microtargeting, and social graph analysis are being used to
manipulate the electorate.

~~~
rtx
Inform the electorate about their view point.

~~~
facetube
Their view point and reality are incompatible. For instance, Breitbart
repeatedly claimed that the airport protests were "terrorist-funded" by CAIR.
There is no factual evidence that the airport travel ban protests were funded
by any politically-motivated group seeking to wage violence against the United
States. It's a viewpoint, sure. But it's wrong.

------
pohl
This feels like the invention of gunpowder, to me – but for the art of
deception rather than war. Up to this point, a politician could say a
different thing depending on who was in the room, and we would get an
occasional peek at that: like HRC's public & private positions on Wall Street,
or Romney's 47% comment. But now there can be 220 million different things to
say in 220 million psychometrically-crafted rooms. That feels disruptive.

------
coding123
I went through the tweets of a trump troll on Twitter, non-stop pro trump co
tent nearly 24/7, no way this person has any job other than literally being a
Twitter troll. Someone is bankrolling this and much more.

------
Mendenhall
Sad that political sides is what rises to the top in this conversation. I
would hope the "big data" and how its used could be looked at by both sides
with the same thought "is this a good idea?"

I hope whatever side of politics you fall on that you can see its not a single
party or even just the government,its the propagation and use from every day
citizens and their ignorance of what and how information will be used.

------
sehugg
There's another Guardian article from yesterday about how Mercer donated free
help to the Brexit Leave campaign:
[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-
billiona...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-billionaire-
mercer-helped-back-brexit?CMP=share_btn_tw)

------
dghughes
I don't know what or who to beleive anymore even these comments here and
should I even be commenting now! Maybe that was the plan to make everyone
paranoid? Is this just another bit of data about me for "The Machine or
Samaritan" to consume.

------
fixxer
> Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological
> profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American
> voters – its USP is to use this data to understand people’s deepest emotions
> and then target them accordingly.

This is nothing new. This is the Obama data machine/Civis/270/etc etc (who
didn't Eric Schmidt fund after 2012?), AFL-CIO/Catalist, the party
databases... This is the basic strategy today regardless of side. Whatever
business layer Cambridge Analytica has on top of that data is not novel.

The "conspiracy" to manipulate is truly bipartisan now.

~~~
sitkack
There is a distinction between deeply understanding someone at scale and using
that understanding to either bait them computer generated propaganda or
suppress their vote.

~~~
nickpsecurity
That's my take. They kicked it up a notch from human execution to computerized
execution of the models they were collecting before. Their models might be
better, too.

~~~
sitkack
If I was a federal prosecutor, I'd go after Cambridge Analytica for computer
mediated election fraud. Effectively, it is using AI to run a dynamic con job.

Map out exactly what the voter wants to hear, bury your message inside a
wrapper of fake news that speaks directly to them.

The part that makes it so insidious, is that ad targeting is so fine grained,
that only the victim will be able to see the ads, it is an imperceptible
enemy. Literally zero rebuttals given.

~~~
rtx
No they should be going after voters who voted for Trump.

~~~
grzm
This kind of partisanship helps absolutely no one.

------
macawfish
We need trusted, asynchronous, peer to peer, encrypted streaming applications,
and we need them to become normal! These centralized data repositories need to
rot in the ground!

Why couldn't something like Twitter or instagram be built out of p2p
protocols? Where users actively curate their connections predominately in
person with people they actually know? I think there's actually a demand for
this. People I know are tired of the polluted mainstream social media
channels, but know no other options.

~~~
cschmittiey
You may be interested in patchwork:

[https://github.com/mmckegg/patchwork-
next/blob/master/README...](https://github.com/mmckegg/patchwork-
next/blob/master/README.md)

------
davidf18
Mercer does have a point about bias in MSM. MSM called Steve Bannon an anti-
Semite when he is in fact very, pro-Israel and very much against anti-
Semitism. However, they failed to report that the Democratic National
Committee candidate who almost won, Keith Ellison, was mentioned by the Anti-
Defamation League, "Ellison’s remarks ‘deeply disturbing and disqualifying’".
[1]

He was one of only 8 members of Congress to vote against the Iron Dome anti-
missle system which protected Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets. [2]

[1] [http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/israel-
middle...](http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/israel-middle-
east/speech-raises-new-doubts-about-Rep-Ellisons-ability.html)

[2] [http://jpupdates.com/2014/08/03/rep-ellison-explains-anti-
ir...](http://jpupdates.com/2014/08/03/rep-ellison-explains-anti-iron-dome-
funding-vote-need-cease-fire/)

[3] [http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/17/democrats-must-
scrutinize-...](http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/17/democrats-must-scrutinize-
keith-ellisons-anti-semitic-past-and-ties-to-radical-islam/)

MSM chose not to report the Anti-Defamation League statement (ADL says Bannon
is not anti-Semitic BTW) about Ellison nor did it report that he was one of 8
members of Congress to vote against Iron Dome, an anti-missle system that
protected Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets.

EDIT: After the DNC election which Ellison lost, the Wall Street Journal
disclosed the following:

"Mr. Ellison, who is an African-American Muslim, also faced complaints about
his past associations with the Nation of Islam and statements he has made that
were perceived as criticizing Israel. Haim Saban, an Israeli-American donor
who funded the construction of the DNC’s Washington headquarters, in December
publicly called Mr. Ellison “clearly an anti-Semite.”"[4]

But they should have disclosed this information before the election.

[4] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-elect-tom-perez-
party...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-elect-tom-perez-party-
chairman-1488054192)

~~~
tptacek
Well, that's just about the misleading conceivable way to cite the ADL, which
has an whole page that is entirely critical of Bannon, its first headline
reading "BANNON HAS EMBRACED THE ALT RIGHT, A LOOSE NETWORK OF WHITE
NATIONALISTS AND ANTI-SEMITES." (em. original) and, in literally the next
paragraph after the one you're paraphrasing about his antisemitism, says:

 _Nevertheless, Bannon essentially has established himself as the chief
curator for the alt right. Under his stewardship, Breitbart has emerged as the
leading source for the extreme views of a vocal minority who peddle bigotry
and promote hate._

~~~
yummyfajitas
Embracing the alt-right is not being antisemitic. Particularly given the fact
that, as the ADL documents and any casual perusal of Breitbart would reveal,
Breitbart is mainly anti-Muslim and pro-Jewish. From what I can tell, Bannon's
view is that the west should embrace it's Judeo Christian heritage in order to
win an upcoming war against Islam. He also seems to feel that Israel and the
Jewish people are important allies in this fight.

That's not antisemitism. It's certainly anti-left, but that doesn't make it
antisemitic.

Similarly, a protestant's failure to be catholic doesn't make them a satanist.

More or less the same applies to Trump as well. Here's an article that lays
this out quite well, though I suspect you'll refuse to engage with it:
[http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/01/17/aggressive-
stupidity-...](http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/01/17/aggressive-stupidity-
trump-russia-narrative/)

~~~
tptacek
Take it up with the ADL. This whole story really doesn't belong on HN, and I
flagged it, but I couldn't let that misleading comment go without a rebuttal.

~~~
davidf18
The point is the ADL issued a statement about Ellison and his fitness of
leadership for the DNC. Certainly newsworthy, but the NY Times, Washington
Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and other news organizations declined
to report this vital piece of information.

~~~
greeneggs
News organizations certainly reported on it. Here's one example:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/jewish-groups-and-
unio...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/jewish-groups-and-unions-grow-
uneasy-with-keith-ellison.html)

I'm sure there are lots of other examples. I certainly heard of it repeatedly.
But I would not call it "vital."

~~~
davidf18
Thanks for the reference. I hadn't seen anything at all until yesterday.
Curiously, the article was on page A18 -- way back on in the "A" section. Nor
did it mention that he was one of 8 Congressmen to vote against funding for
additional missiles for the Iron Dome anti-missle system that protected
Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets.

There was at least one Op-Ed about Steve Bannon and anti-Semitism but no
opinion piece of Op-Ed in the NYTimes or otherwise about Ellison and his
views.

------
ryanmarsh
I love how the article uses the phrase "our data". LOL. We shout from mountain
tops and then whine when people record us.

------
hrodriguez
/rant/ So another hit piece on someone that supports Trump. This is the new
left-wing extremist strategy... ie, destroy powerful voices fighting to
safeguard our country and improve American lives. The Mainstream Media wants
to be taken seriously with this tactic. Never heard of cnsnews.com either.
Went through it and it's rather right-wing conventional. Nothing like this
over-the-top ranting lunacy of an "article" disguised as journalism.

The author made sure to paint another Trump supporter in a bad light by using
words like antisemitic, islamophobic, scary, brainwashing, disrupting the MSM,
extremist sites, creepy, propaganda, amplify particular political narratives,
playing to emotions. These words and many others have become their divisive
talking points. I was surprised that I didn't see Hitler, Fascist, Racist and
Sexist too. It's laughable if they weren't so transparently vulgar.

There's also stuff about tracking and usage habits but not a word about
Google, Facebook, Twitter, George Soros (and his countless disruptive sites)
and the REAL power (the MSM) - all engaged in extremist misrepresentation,
censorship, outright lies, news coverups, blacklisted topics, paid rioters,
banning users, manipulation of trending topics, physical assaults on the
public by paid thugs. He mud-slings terms like "ethical regulations" in regard
to Mercer when the real power has been documented to have long crossed the
line and hold the details of our lives in their data-sharing databases with NO
accountability.

He segues into "playing the victim". The privileged elite that has long held
the reins of manipulating public opinion is (laughably) the victim now. The
MSM, which has engaged in massive coverups to support their candidate, that
has used fear-mongering through misinformation, that holds ALL the keys and
power is now the victim. I would borrow the following from the race-baiting
left... _" check you privilege at the door"_, in response.

I started off as a fairly objective person during the political process. I
liked Bernie, grew to despise Hillary and her divisive rhetoric (and noted how
often the MSM media blacklisted explosive stories about this corrupt
politician who was selling our country away, piece by piece). I wasn't even a
Trump supporter and NEVER visited anything right-wing. I was long sold on the
idea that the right-wing was racist. I got ALL my news from the MSM. They
betrayed my trust and continue to do so daily. The author has learned nothing.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"/rant/ So another hit piece on someone that supports Trump. This is the new
left-wing extremist strategy... ie, destroy powerful voices fighting to
safeguard our country and improve American lives. "

They haven't safeguarded anything. The last time Republicans were in control
of the military-intelligence complex led to wars on false pretenses that
killed more Americans and foreigners than 9/11\. The cost was hundreds of
billions of dollars with estimates of several trillion in long-term liability.
Money that could've been spent on education, healthcare, infrastructure
improvements, business subsidies... anything with provable benefit to
Americans' lives. ISIS formed as a direct result the Iraq war as predicted
those of us protesting. They killed even more people. The local surveillance
then failed to spot a guy in Boston spewing out hate speech online and
visiting red flag countries... the ideal case for mass surveillance.

So, conservative policies previously led to the murder of thousands of
Americans, maiming of thousands more, more terrorists in Middle East, tons of
tax dollars lost w/ no gain to average voter, and some defense CEO's getting
richer. That's not safeguarding our country. That's an active threat to it. It
will be interesting to see whether history repeats given the new Republican
President is quite different from priors. More like a knockoff of Silvia
Berlusconi in Italy given all the campaign stunts/claims on top of corrupt,
business dealings.

------
return0
Good to see the all powerful msm have some competition

------
techrich
If you dont use facebag they have no power!

~~~
domfletcher
No, if everyone doesn't use Facebook then they have no power. My decision has,
at best, a tiny marginal impact.

------
binarray2000
Should we take this journalist seriously when she writes:

"This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the
world according to his personal beliefs."

~~~
nickpsecurity
I don't know. I've noticed many people reading articles, including Trump
supports I met, think that a billionaire is necessarily more knowledgeable in
business... more areas than they made billions... in general. Additionally,
many of them sincerely believed a billionaire saying he wanted to get rid of
corrupt politicians and that he was honest. Maybe this is what author had in
mind when reminding readers that billionaires are usually incredibly selfish
people that, like all people, want to influence the world based on their own
beliefs and preferences. People can forget sometimes that they're people, too.
Very, aggressive people with money to make stuff happen.

------
Trundle
>This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the
world according to his personal beliefs.

This is what anyone who votes or participates in the election process is
doing. Hell, it's what this journalist is doing.

>They’re dead, I learn, because they – we, I – “cannot be trusted”.

Please, as if you hadn't worked out you can't be trusted before. You knew what
you were doing with the above line.

------
facepalm
The article seems to be a good example of why people don't trust the press
anymore. Little actual information, but a lot of fear mongering: "billionaire
trying to control the world", "data analysts controlling our emotions", the ad
ban on Breitbart as a proof that they are evil and antisemitic (rather than
showing examples of them being evil and antisemitic), and so on.

Obama already used data science in his campaigns, and Hillary spent more money
than Trump afaik. Advertising and user targeting are not new inventions.

~~~
heisenbit
"data analysts controlling our emotions"

is really nothing new. Sensing the emotions expressed by someone and then
nudging them through targeted advertisement is a multi-billion business. It is
proven to be effective in that realm. Is it fear mongering when one wonders
about the political impact of this technology when employed on a massive
scale?

Little actual information?

"Cambridge Analytica worked for the Trump campaign ... it was reported that
until recently he had a seat on the board."

"A few weeks later, the Observer received a letter."

"earlier this week, I ended up in a Pret a Manger near Westminster with Andy
Wigmore, Leave.EU’s affable communications director"

Concrete facts about how people and organizations relate. Events and named
sources. First hand interviews.

~~~
facepalm
It's not news that Trump employed Cambridge Analytics. Their actual impact is
overblown. I think that has been discussed several times before.

In any case, as you say, it is nothing new, and open to everyone with enough
money (as Clinton had). If you want to suggest it was unfair play, then maybe
you should rethink how the president is elected in general. Should TV
advertisements be allowed? They also manipulate people, and favor the
candidate with the most money. How could you ensure that people vote without
having been manipulated? Maybe nobody should be allowed to consume any media
for 2 years prior to the election?

There are also presumably entities with far more data available than Cambridge
Analytics, as have been mentioned on HN frequently before. Advertisers have
been collecting data on people for a long time.

~~~
grzm
_If you want to suggest it was unfair play, then maybe you should rethink how
the president is elected in general. Should TV advertisements be allowed? They
also manipulate people, and favor the candidate with the most money._

There are definitely people who are looking to reform election campaign rules
and the influence of money. There's been plenty of debate regarding cases such
as Citizens United.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC)

To imply that people aren't _also_ concerned about factors beyond Cambridge
Analytics is disingenuous.

~~~
facepalm
The point is - everybody could have employed CA, or other firms with similar
offerings. That is the game of the presidential election, which one candidate
won. To suggest something sinister went on is far off.

~~~
grzm
That's a lot of extra text (eyeballing, looks like about 50%) to support
something that wasn't your point.

~~~
facepalm
What do you mean?

Edit, since HN doesn't let me reply: the point is the article suggest
something sinister going on, whereas it is mostly just business as usual. Note
that claims about the effectiveness of CA also come mostly from CA executives.
It could almost be a PR article for CA...

Other aspects also reek of conspiracy theory, like the "you set up outlets
like Breitbart to replae the established media" \- really, just like that, you
set up news sites that are more popular than the established ones? And with a
shocking, enourmus investment of 2 million dollars, too? It really seems as if
Billionaires control everything, don't they? In fact, reading the article, I
get the impression that rich people are generally evil - leftist ideology
much?

~~~
grzm
Half of your comment addresses questioning how presidents are elected,
implying that the parent ignores other issues with election campaigns. It does
not support your point that using services like CA were open to anyone with
money.

