Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage

by lemming • 9 years ago

222 164 9 years ago

theguardian.com

nabla9• 9 years ago

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.

dukeluke• 9 years ago

Does it surprise you? People smart enough to interpret these social datasets would be the ones who recognize its potential to manipulate the population.

facetube9• 9 years ago

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.

rtx3• 9 years ago

Inform the electorate about their view point.

eggy2• 9 years ago

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.

throwaway_3742• 9 years ago

I think the issue is exploitation to stoke hatred against minorities and women. Have you ever read the comments section on Breitbart? It's the new normalized Stormfront.

eggy2• 9 years ago

Yes, I am fully aware of the vitriol, and again, not making a case for it. I am simply trying to be objective on the way manipulating media is perceived by the public and press. The ends don't justify the means for either side is what I am saying, and how surprised you don't find any cautionary tales from the other campaigns mentioned. I am a privacy advocate, and since taking media classes at NYU in 1982, I have always known this was going to happen - control of the media and public mindset. Polarization of the US into just a two-party system has allowed this to happen. It's good guys vs. bad guys simplicity - a much easier sell on the public for either side.

facepalm8• 9 years ago

Is it fair to judge a web site by their comments section? I'm sure "The Guardian" or even Hacker News get pretty nasty comments, too. You could demand censorship, but maybe some people simply are against it.

facetube9• 9 years ago

There is no comprehensible moral equivalence between outfits like Breitbart News (N.B. Steve Bannon is on the board of Cambridge Analytica) and the Obama campaign. What people use their tools for matters.

patrickg_zill2• 9 years ago

Yes, breitbart never drone bombed innocents in a foreign country without a declaration of war, and never used depleted uranium rounds against for instance, Syrians--and then lied about it.

Mendenhall3• 9 years ago

What I find fascinating is many people on this forum work for companies etc that make this very thing possible. Its interesting to see their opinions, concerns or more telling the lack thereof.

yummyfajitas5• 9 years ago

I'll provide my opinion as a person who does this stuff.

This is all submarine marketing by Cambridge Analytica.

http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Tools exist to do all the things that these articles describe. And the reality is very far from what these articles are describing.

Given behavioral targeting (highly effective), demographic targeting (less effective) and A/B testing (highly effective), you can construct customized messages to improve your conversion rates. You can sell skin cream to the hippie by emphasizing the organic ingredients, and to the vain lady by showing her a pretty lady with great skin using the cream.

That might get your conversion rate from 5% to 6%, which is HUGE WIN for your company - a 20% boost in revenue. That's also very far from the mind control being described here.

If you want to understand what Trump did, rather than paying attention to the people who completely failed to predict his victory (i.e. the mainstream media), I'd focus on the people who predicted it perfectly (i.e. Scott Adams and similar folks). It's only in the mainstream media that a sequence of failed predictions somehow makes a person worth listening to.

makomk3• 9 years ago

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... 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• 9 years ago

"That's different!"

Both sides have no idea how alike they are.

oh_sigh2• 9 years ago

Also see the media reporting on Trump's "voter suppression efforts", which were targeted advertisements to, say, Haitian-US citizens about some horrible things the Clinton Foundation did in Haiti. Apparently informing people of bad things a candidate is associated with is 'voter suppression', because it will increase the odds that the people won't go out and vote for that candidate. Using the same terminology, the Trump Access Hollywood tape was far more of a voter suppression effort than any targeted facebook advertising, but that for some reason falls under the guise of relevant and informative information.

jckt• 9 years ago

Wasn't the Obama campaign tech effort more about coordinating organisers/canvassers/etc in a "data-driven" way, rather than the Cambridge Analytica "propaganda network" type?

Clinton did indeed have a programme similar to Obama's, which has since (perhaps uselessly overdue?) been panned heavily in the MSM[1].

This isn't to say that Obama/Clinton wouldn't have relied on a Cambridge Analytica type service for moral reasons (in fact IIRC Clinton's campaign did do something similar, but at a much smaller scale), though, but more that they underestimated its potency...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/11...

oh_sigh2• 9 years ago

Obama and Clinton both had a 'consortium of behavioral scientists', who helped with such things as how to craft messages for maximum impact, and how to counter what they felt were lies floating around about their candidate. If Trump had the same thing, they would be labeled cold blooded propagandists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/health/dream-team-of-behav...

ChicagoDave2• 9 years ago

As I recall, the Obama IT effort was used to identify voters and get out the vote. This Mercer thing is pure psyops. It's intentionally trying to alter mass psychology for its own benefit.

noobermin• 9 years ago

Conservatives have admitted in the past[0] that they win by suppressing the vote. That happens while Liberals usually win by getting out the vote.

Saying "both sides do it" is just plain unfair and borderline propaganda.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw

ChicagoDave2• 9 years ago

I'd like to add that one of their primary intentions isn't to change minds. My guess is they use this big data social media system to influence people negatively. They identify independent liberal-leaning voters and influence them in a way so that they are turned off from politics and won't bother voting. So these potential voters probably see a lot of ads showing how equally horrible any candidate is, how nothing matters, and that no single vote is going to make a difference.

TheRealDunkirk• 9 years ago

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.

kristianc3• 9 years ago

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.

HarryHirsch2• 9 years ago

The substantive point is nudging people on their unconscious biases has always been iffy. The practice doesn't turn distasteful when a nasty figure employs the tool, it had always been that way, even in the hands of the good guys.

edblarney• 9 years ago

"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...

[2] https://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-revol...

facepalm8• 9 years ago

What "antics" - using data to advertise?

ed_blackburn2• 9 years ago

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.

sjg007• 9 years ago

Big data wars 2.0

crusso• 9 years ago

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_blackburn2• 9 years ago

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.

techrich• 9 years ago

If you dont use facebag they have no power!

domfletcher• 9 years ago

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

Mendenhall3• 9 years ago

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.

flocial• 9 years ago

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.

nickpsecurity11• 9 years ago

" 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.

davidf187• 9 years ago

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...

[2] http://jpupdates.com/2014/08/03/rep-ellison-explains-anti-ir...

[3] http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/17/democrats-must-scrutinize-...

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...

jsmthrowaway2• 9 years ago

An opportunity to link to CNN, of all places? Why would I pass that up?

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/politics/keith-ellison-anti-de...

They even quoted "disqualifying" in the lede.

blurbleblurble3• 9 years ago

Please don't conflate Israeli nationalism with support for Jewish people on the whole. And don't conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. As a matter of fact, the majority of Jewish people I know, American and Israeli as well, are quite critical of the Israeli state as it has acted historically.

davidf187• 9 years ago

Please read the Anti-Defamation League statement regarding Ellison. What is notable is that MSM did not report the ADL statement of Dec 1, 2016 when it was very much newsworthy. The point is that one can't rely on MSM to give us important reliable news.

As a matter of fact, the majority of Jewish people I know.

Well, the majority I know, both American and Israeli are not critical of how the state was re-established, rather they understand that the Palestinians turned down their state in 1948 and tried to destroy the newly established Jewish nation.

It is useful news to know that the DNC was supporting a candidate who was one of only 8 to vote against Iron Dome anti-missle system funding meant to help protect Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets.

ryanmarsh3• 9 years ago

Indeed. Bias is unavoidable. Mistakes are unavoidable. Outright lies are unavoidable. Today's news operation is a blazing fast click bait operation. But even back in the days of slow news the MSM got things really wrong on a regular basis. That's largely how people like Rush Limbaugh built their right wing media empires, by pantsing the MSM on a daily basis for decades. The narrative that the MSM is biased/wrong/propaganda is such a bedrock multi-decades old belief on the right that all Breitbart and CSN had to do was SHOW UP.

gizmo3• 9 years ago

Well put, but I take issue with one part:

even back in the days of slow news the MSM got things really wrong on a regular basis

This is false nostalgia. The mainstream media may be terrible today (and I think it is) but it's still better than it has ever been. Not long ago people subscribed to a single newspaper that never needed to print retractions. There were no comment sections to set the record straight. Journalists wouldn't get held to account on twitter. Journalists used to be middle-class white men, now it's more diverse.

raldi• 9 years ago

MSM called Steve Bannon an anti-Semite when he is in fact very, pro-Israel

You can be anti-Semitic and pro-Israel, just like how in the 1960's you could support South Vietnam while holding totally racist views about them.

tptacek4• 9 years ago

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.

davidf187• 9 years ago

That is because the ADL withdrew their statement of Bannon [1], again not reported by MSM even though MSM reported the original ADL statement. Proves my point that you cannot rely on MSM to give you newsworthy information.

[1] http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/17/bannon-br...

yummyfajitas5• 9 years ago

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-...

andy_ppp• 9 years ago

I find Bannon's positions quite comical to be honest; when he says the Judeo-Christian religion my opinion is that this is code for "white people". I have this ominous feeling that they really are going to attempt to round up the 11 million illegal Mexicans, which really doesn't bare thinking about. They don't say it directly because they really believe they aren't racist, they just want America for white people, like it used to be, never.

quirkafleeg3• 9 years ago

MSM chose not to report the Anti-Defamation League statement about Ellison

Do you seriously think you can make stuff up here and nobody is going to bother checking it? You literally just have to type Keith Ellison ADL into Google to demonstrate your claim is false.

davidf187• 9 years ago

Really? Where is the NY Times citation, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic? Please cite links that refer to the ADL statement about Ellison before the DNC election.

I did google each of these publications and found nothing. Nor did I find anything that cited how he was one of 8 members of Congress to vote against the Iron Dome anti-missle system that has protected many Israelis civilians from Hamas missiles.

ryanmarsh3• 9 years ago

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-YOU2• 9 years ago

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• 9 years ago

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

intended2• 9 years ago

This was the old problem. It was solved by having groups of experts and journalists.

This wasn't popular because one group of people kept Having their feelings and biases attacked. They were later served by the media empires built to serve their views.

They got their experts and their talking heads to say things they felt needed to be said.

In so doing the first false dichotomy was established - feelings and opinions are the same no matter the facts and the experts disagree.

So the first layer of agreement/expert concord was breached.

This results in the problem you describe.

What we face now is fiction being camouflaged as news sites, and super insulation/echo chambers.

This is happening at the margins. Topics and people which are capable of being attacked in this manner. Later the surface are of attack will increase as technology, technique improve while human fatigue sets in.

halflings• 9 years ago

There is little evidence that there is much to "leak", really. Cambridge Analytica is just one company among others providing these services, and nothing proves that they have played an important role in this election, it's all conjectures.

ryanmarsh3• 9 years ago

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

pesenti2• 9 years ago

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.

raverbashing• 9 years ago

So maybe the secret is in the marketing

AJ007• 9 years ago

The key to success with Facebook advertising is making ads which get more attention than all of the other potential ads that could be shown to the user at that time. Because it is an auction system that requires only a very tiny advantage over the competition.

Politics, in my opinion, is creating a product capable of fitting more people inside than the other candidate can. Certainly it is vastly easier to make out-performing political ads based on data points like pro-gun, hunter verse making ads for Coca-Cola based on data points like breast feeding, yoga.

Perhaps this is more about category discovery and targeting (vastly more difficult without Facebook) than any cutting machine learning.

jacobolus• 9 years ago

Friendly note: you want “versus” or “vs.”, not “verse”.

zzalpha• 9 years ago

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.

pesenti2• 9 years ago

Yes but so are many other factors. In a tight election you can attribute the win to a plethora of factors, doesn't make each of them more meaningful. Plus the profiling itself not being very reliable, I have big doubt as to their ability to change people's opinion based on that.

pjmorris• 9 years ago

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.

nickpsecurity11• 9 years ago

Remember that they're responding to demand. Trump was closer to what the Red states wanted than Cruz. Demand shifted in his favor. So, then the tools for responding to demand had to shift to Trump. It's just like in marketing where you always have to target the offering to what the audience wants.

If you want to understand that demand, below is my favorite article on what Trump was tapping into and how liberals were coming across to them. Next liberal candidate needs to change marketing to appeal to some of these in the swing states. They certainly had opportunities but substituted mockery for appeal to them.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...

chillwaves2• 9 years ago

That article is ridiculous. Yes, I understand there is a country culture that supports Trump, but let's not pretend they live some special life of toil and oppression at the hands of the liberal elite.

Sure, they might believe in their victimhood, and Trump is fluent in speaking that language. Doesn't make it true. We all struggle to survive in this economy and we all have our own problems -- the difference is those of us who will not drag the country down by supporting a transparently dishonest conman in an attempt to lash out at those we perceive to be doing better but undeserving.

Justifying this perspective is a fallacy.

binarray2000• 9 years ago

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."

nickpsecurity11• 9 years ago

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• 9 years ago

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.

blurbleblurble3• 9 years ago

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• 9 years ago

You may be interested in patchwork:

https://github.com/mmckegg/patchwork-next/blob/master/README...

rtx3• 9 years ago

Who will be responsible for security?

fixxer4• 9 years ago

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.

sitkack5• 9 years ago

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.

nickpsecurity11• 9 years ago

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.

return0• 9 years ago

Good to see the all powerful msm have some competition

hrodriguez• 9 years ago

/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.

nickpsecurity11• 9 years ago

"/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.

facepalm8• 9 years ago

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.

nickpsecurity11• 9 years ago

"The article seems to be a good example of why people don't trust the press anymore."

I agree it's possible. It's a combo of facts either side might use, facts cherry-picked for one side, logical fallacies, and pure rhetoric. I think there's more to it, though. These techniques go way back to point that my first analysis of logical and rhetorical persuasion was the Declaration of Independence that used both. Old media articles are a laugh, too, given their bias was so obvious.

facepalm8• 9 years ago

Maybe it is precisely because people have more information sources available now that they realize more often how lacking some articles are.

For example, I have witnessed first hand the campaign for banning ads on Breitbart (which was often pointing to Milo articles like "the pill is making women ugly", falsely claiming they were mysognist), and I have followed Milo for a long time. I was following him on Twitter when he was banned, so I know he didn't call for racist attacks on the Ghostbusters actress as many articles claim. I have asked people to prove to me that Breitbart is antisemitic (while employing Jews like Milo) and received no replies. Therefore the article simply seems laughable to me. In fact the way Milo is mentioned is often a quick way to judge an article - if they claim he called for harassment of the Ghostbusters actress, it is bunk.

heisenbit• 9 years ago

"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.

facepalm8• 9 years ago

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.

sehugg• 9 years ago

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...

dghughes• 9 years ago

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.

coding1232• 9 years ago

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.

pohl• 9 years ago

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.

Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media

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