I believe the Obama campaign used Facebook friend connections to target individual voters [1]
("Online, the get-out-the-vote effort continued with a first-ever attempt at using Facebook on a mass scale to replicate the door-knocking efforts of field organizers. In the final weeks of the campaign, people who had downloaded an app were sent messages with pictures of their friends in swing states. They were told to click a button to automatically urge those targeted voters to take certain actions, such as registering to vote, voting early or getting to the polls.")
Note that I specifically picked an article from 2012 because the past 48 hours has seen quite a few articles discussing the Obama Facebook campaign -- articles which I'd argue are likely subject to a taint of bias, given the recent CA events (I'd guess that journalists are digging for a story, which tends to skew perspectives). Anyway, this kind of targeting is, in hindsight, not really OK with me -- but I think the line here is that the Obama campaign collected information and asked your friends (who supported the campaign) to pitch in by asking particular friends to vote. This year's election was much more subtle, since instead targeted voters were treated to a slew of biased ads and propaganda stories. At least, that's how I see it.
Also, while I don't disagree with your analogy, anything involving sexual assault is probably going to hurt rather than help your arguments with most crowds. I don't think it's something we should ignore, of course, but we should keep in mind that it's a strong metaphor -- akin to calling someone "literally Hitler" -- so you might want to reconsider that in the future. Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to be helpful, so feel free to ignore my unsolicited advice.
("Online, the get-out-the-vote effort continued with a first-ever attempt at using Facebook on a mass scale to replicate the door-knocking efforts of field organizers. In the final weeks of the campaign, people who had downloaded an app were sent messages with pictures of their friends in swing states. They were told to click a button to automatically urge those targeted voters to take certain actions, such as registering to vote, voting early or getting to the polls.")
Note that I specifically picked an article from 2012 because the past 48 hours has seen quite a few articles discussing the Obama Facebook campaign -- articles which I'd argue are likely subject to a taint of bias, given the recent CA events (I'd guess that journalists are digging for a story, which tends to skew perspectives). Anyway, this kind of targeting is, in hindsight, not really OK with me -- but I think the line here is that the Obama campaign collected information and asked your friends (who supported the campaign) to pitch in by asking particular friends to vote. This year's election was much more subtle, since instead targeted voters were treated to a slew of biased ads and propaganda stories. At least, that's how I see it.
Also, while I don't disagree with your analogy, anything involving sexual assault is probably going to hurt rather than help your arguments with most crowds. I don't think it's something we should ignore, of course, but we should keep in mind that it's a strong metaphor -- akin to calling someone "literally Hitler" -- so you might want to reconsider that in the future. Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to be helpful, so feel free to ignore my unsolicited advice.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/tech/web/obama-campaign-tech-...