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dehrmann 6 hours ago [-]
When I interviewed at Facebook in 2019, one interviewer was on an integrity team. I'm not sure if it was his take or what the org settled on, but it's that Cambridge Analytica wasn't Facebook's fault (users willingly granted access), but it was their problem. Not surprising some of the same techniques got used by others.
twothreeone 5 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure that is a mis-characterization of what actually happened: a 3rd party app collected user profile data from FB _through somebody's friend connection_ [1].
The Zuck then apologized for this undocumented API access leak and FB subsequently patched it out of their platform. It had nothing to do with running ads. We shouldn't let time paper over the details here.
I know someone at FB who worked on a project whose entire goal was to use compiler/type checker technology to prevent intentional and unintentional leaking of personal data in FB back-end code. If you can believe that. The project had a fair amount of resources and high-level support.
I don't know if it was a psy-op or deception campaign or what.
dehrmann 4 hours ago [-]
I think you're thinking of something else, but they also added "capabilities" to Hack (their main frontend language; it's a PHP fork) to make leaking data between requests or in logs painful.
matrix87 2 hours ago [-]
> but it's that Cambridge Analytica wasn't Facebook's fault (users willingly granted access), but it was their problem.
In Careless People, they mentioned that this was a strategy they wanted to employ:
They wanted facebook to become a tool for winning elections so that they would have more leverage over the politicians in power.
For example, they were trying to fight the Indian government over internet.org initiative (essentially shipping out a stripped down version of the internet to impoverished areas where they could only use facebook and a couple other apps, subsidized by telecoms). They used facebook features to incite backlash against the Indian government.
Pythonista1991 1 hours ago [-]
Careless People is not a serious work, and it shouldn't be treated as some sort of anthropological study. In any case, Cambridge Analytica (the marketing firm) had no discernible impact on either the Brexit vote or the 2016 US election, so the point is moot.
markhalonen 49 minutes ago [-]
to me it feels like the entire email exchange is scripted. Would Zuck really ask a question that would end up in a lawsuit over __email__ of all mediums?
nosioptar 4 hours ago [-]
Man, if I'd interviewed with FB and even heard the word "integrity" I'd have started laughing my ass off till I was covered in a puddle of my own piss. Not a single person at facebook has integrity, it's been that way since day one.
You can't see comments without signing in and there's dickovers so it's nice to have a privacy respecting alternative.
zer0zzz 2 hours ago [-]
I am a fan of xcancel, havent used nitter. was just joking a bit. I do use X because its the only place where ML people share anything, but its a gross gross place for sure!
Cider9986 1 hours ago [-]
Xcancel is nitter.
zer0zzz 19 minutes ago [-]
Ahh I see, thanks!
thih9 6 hours ago [-]
> [This document is from In re Facebook, Inc. Securities Litigation (2026).]
It looks like we only have access to this now? If yes, this would be development and I’d remove the “2017” from the title.
TechTechTech 5 hours ago [-]
See this video for how Alexander Nix (former CEO) presented the data he had on every adult in the united states https://youtu.be/APZUrj8SN0M?t=297 (start at 4:55 min)
gruez 5 hours ago [-]
But your video doesn't show that? It's just shows high level aggregations. It doesn't say "homer simpson living at 123 evergreen terrace, springfield" is 47 years old, votes republican, earns $50.1k, and rates 3/5 on agreeableness.
goshx 6 hours ago [-]
IMHO, that was the beginning of the deep troubles we are in right now, and cause of the political polarization. The brainwash was very effective, not only in the US, but also in Brazil.
sasaf5 5 hours ago [-]
I would date this beginning to 2013. That's around when Facebook feed ceased to be chronological. That's when everyone became rabid.
sien 3 hours ago [-]
I'm old enough to remember when it was celebrated that 'big data' was being used to rally voters.
Remember the Internet.org and FreeBasics movement which was used to muddy the Net Neutrality waters? Guess which startup was excited about Internet.org
> Onavo’s founders, Guy Rosen (CEO) and Roi Tiger (CTO), are on board with the plan. “We’re excited to join their team,” the two wrote, “and hope to play a critical role in reaching one of Internet.org’s most significant goals – using data more efficiently, so that more people around the world can connect and share. When the transaction closes, we plan to continue running the Onavo mobile utility apps as a standalone brand. As always, we remain committed to the privacy of people who use our application and that commitment will not change.”
wdr1 2 hours ago [-]
> I would date this beginning to 2013. That's around when Facebook feed ceased to be chronological. That's when everyone became rabid.
I'm not sure how old you are, but I remember things being pretty rabid in the 1980s.
35 minutes ago [-]
underlipton 4 hours ago [-]
I'd date it to around then, too, but for a different reason. Whether you think it was a good or bad thing, I don't think it's incorrect to characterize the pre-2010s web as "socially progressive libertarian". 2013 was the first time I (we?) saw unabashedly extremist right-wing sentiments break Stormfront/4chan containment (and as a deathly serious matter, rather than the ambiguously sardonic nature of the latter's meme-ing). Specifically, with the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman murder trial, and the way that that incident picked up a thread of America's deepest divide and dragged it into cyberspace. I had never heard people saying the things they were saying around that topic, things that would make an Xbox Live edgelord go, "Bro, dial it back," and certainly never from the people who were saying them. My parents never saw the need to give me "the talk", and that was my introduction to the fact that America was very much not "post-racial", in a real way, and often proudly so.
At the point, everything was on the table, and everyone was "welcome" into the everlasting flame war.
asveikau 3 hours ago [-]
I won't dispute that 2015-2017 was a turning point in many areas, but "cause of the political polarization" is a huge stretch. Political polarization has been going up for most of my life. You could perhaps put a start of it at the 1994 midterms. It was raging in the 2000s too.
rambojohnson 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
anonym00se1 5 hours ago [-]
Social media + engagement algorithms = societal cancer.
mhh__ 2 hours ago [-]
> brainwash
You have been brainwashed. Or was it Russia as well?
Everything started much longer ago. You can't go along in life just assuming everything will converge to some whig paradise.
upupupandaway 4 hours ago [-]
>but also in Brazil
Claim: Brainwash was very successful in Brazil.
Reality: The government in power for 12 years turned out to be as corrupt as any they had previously criticized, generating a massive institutional crisis.
epolanski 5 hours ago [-]
I think you're missing the forest for the tree.
Data promised to improve lifes, it has done so in many aspects, but also has made countless things worse.
From physical and digital products squeezing the last cent instead of improving user's experience, algorithms getting every single second of your attention, from deciding the kind of music and tv shows getting produced, to the kind of dull ever repeating style of everything really on every corner of the planet from hotels to restaurant and menus it's all a data-driven conversion to the mean in boring-and-safe or money-squeezing fashion.
Data has entered sports and transformed them from the times of money ball. Basket, soccer, football, are all much less enjoyable and creative because again, it's all about applying data.
And yes, data has entered politics at a level it could not before computing power and data collection and our understanding of human manipulation didn't reach those levels.
It has understood you only need 50%+1 of the votes and efforts to get 50%+2 are a waste and less efficient.
So politicians, especially in weaker democracies characterized by winner-takes-all mechanics, are incentivized to be divisive, not representing the majority of the citizens.
Again, you only want 50%+1 of the votes, if you trying to get a single more you're dispersing your efforts and decreasing the chances to win.
Intralexical 2 hours ago [-]
> And yes, data has entered politics at a level it could not before computing power and data collection and our understanding of human manipulation didn't reach those levels. It has understood you only need 50%+1 of the votes and efforts to get 50%+2 are a waste and less efficient.
>
> So politicians, especially in weaker democracies characterized by winner-takes-all mechanics, are incentivized to be divisive, not representing the majority of the citizens.
This happens to some extent, particularly in the US's electoral system. But I'd argue the incentive for divisive politics is coming mostly from the fleeting nature of our communication media (plus legitimate grievances that mainstream politicians were out of touch with for a long time).
Twitter was already a politically destabilizing force even before data analysis and manipulation caught up to it. The medium itself punishes constructive interactions and ideas.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5 hours ago [-]
Data is what uncreatives turn to when out of ideas.
NeutralCrane 4 hours ago [-]
An equally cynical but opposite take is that data is what you turn to when you want to dispel with the mythology, hand-waving, and general bullshit that self-described “creatives” wrap themselves in in order to avoid admitting that they may not actually understand why something works or doesn’t work (and by extension, that their success may be dumb luck rather than talent).
I don’t think truth aligns with either extreme. Both are approaches that have their place. But if it was an “uncreative” with no ideas that simply took the time to look and discovered that the three point shot was absurdly more efficient than basically any other shot in basketball, what does that say about all the “creative” coaching geniuses who failed to discover it in half a century? And if basketball is now “less creative” because of it, that’s an indictment of the fact that the league refuses to address the underlying issue.
I think it’s telling that no one bemoans the fact that we design our medicine using data driven methods. I’m sure it would spice up our lives if the pharma companies dropped the boring data analysis and statistical methods and just slapped some compounds together through free-flowing creative passion!
_bent 4 hours ago [-]
> admitting that they may not actually understand why something works or doesn’t work
something that data can't tell you either!
Intralexical 2 hours ago [-]
Data is what neurotic people hide behind because they can't stand not being in control. Often to disastrous results.
It is often not the beginning of processes but the end of them. This is the problem with a lot of AI, i.e. it takes data and mixes it up instead of doing things afresh.
epolanski 5 hours ago [-]
Creativity doesn't win elections. Getting 50%+1 of the votes does.
And you do that today with maths, algorithms and quick information analysis and response.
mingus88 4 hours ago [-]
The response is where creativity lives. Everything falls apart if you don’t have the juice to capitalize on the insights you got from the data.
Trump’s team knew exactly where to focus their efforts for 2016. That was half of it
The other half was all the rallies and stops where he literally workshopped all of his slogans in front of an audience. That’s where “lock her up” and a dozen other creative insults and slogans were tested. Like a comedian on tour, he had to work on his material.
You can say a lot about him, but he is charismatic and none of that is data driven. He has instinct on how to hurt people. He has always been a salesman and con artist. These are creative skills
The data gave him the audience but the human angle got him those votes.
dfxm12 4 hours ago [-]
The spot the US is in now with regards to political polarization started well before this, perhaps with the end of the fairness doctrine. After that, conservative interests were allowed to consolidate ownership of media outlets, like talk radio stations. This then led to consolidation of newspapers, local and cable news and even social media.
txrx0000 2 hours ago [-]
It's part of the causal chain, but far from the beginning. The root problem, as far as humanly controllable things go, is the way we manufacture computer hardware. That's upstream of the centralized structure of the Internet which all of human civilization is beginning to mirror.
Computers can't replicate on their own, so they need entire corporations/societies to build them. A computer's reproductive locus of control is at the corporation/society level. Human individuals get sucked into that superorganism by evolutionary pressure and will eventually integrate (ENIAC -> desktop -> laptop -> smartphone -> wearables -> neural interface). Today it merely influences what you see on the phone, eventually it will be behavior-changing signals from the datacenter delivered straight into the brain. A similar thing happened in our evolutionary past when individual cells combined to form multicellular organisms.
In the long run, this cannot be fought because it's the physical tendency of matter to gather and form more complex things. There is however a second path with equally strong evolutionary precedent, which is for the human individual to integrate vertically by taking the computer in as an endosymbiont, thereby preserving the human's individual sovereignty / bodily integrity. We can pull down the computer's reproductive locus of control to the individual level, instead of being pulled up by it to become part of a larger organism at the corporation/society level. In practice, this requires miniaturizing fab tech so that each person can manufacture a custom computer from raw materials using a fridge-sized chip fab + 3D printer home appliance. We will obviously not get there immediately, but the will exists, and attempts to diffuse fab tech are already underway (such as https://fab2.com/, which started as a DIY attempt to manufacture chips at home https://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/).
It's worth noting that any evolutionary path may fail, especially the horizontally integrating kind because it must solve the very hard problem of constituent individuals becoming less likely to reproduce as a result of the environment changing in the emerging superorganism's favor. Some people think they can sidestep this problem by automating humans out of the computer production loop entirely, which removes integration pressure and creates a new digital species. Best of luck to Elon and various other mostly Chinese companies making the attempt. But that's an extremely risky bet, and it's basically giving up on yourself/humanity. We ought to attempt all available paths at once instead of putting too much faith in any single one. And that includes preserving pockets of pre-digital civilization where life happens without much technology at all, rather than dragging everybody along.
hnlmorg 6 hours ago [-]
And in Europe too.
Social media was definitely the start of that downfall. Yeah people used to spread misinformation longer before social media was a thing. But what Facebook changed was the way how misinformation could be targeted with surgical precision.
hsuduebc2 6 hours ago [-]
You can't expect that malicious actor would be fighting against malicious actors that are increase shareholder value. Tbh at this point it's governments fault. You can't expect British American Tobacco to fight against smoking. It's not really their job. Their job is increasing said shareholder value.
valleyer 5 hours ago [-]
You can't expect me to stop selling crack to kids on the streets. My job is to feed my family.
hsuduebc2 42 minutes ago [-]
I would be glad if you didn't do it but I wouldn't expect nothing else from childrens crack dealer.
Avicebron 5 hours ago [-]
I think it's fair to hold the government to account, but it's good to be cognizant of how entrenched corporatism is in our modern governance.
If your "just increasing shareholder value" is found to cause damages to the public, you should be held to account for that.
hsuduebc2 2 hours ago [-]
Just to be clear, I absolutely agree with you but corporations are made solely to create a profit and it tends to be lower when one is ethical. I would love if these companies act more responsibly, I would be very glad even for bare minimum eg. not causing harm actively but I just don't expect it. Because their sole existence is usually profit. Not public wellbeing. The "Increasing Shareholder value" is a joke because I noticed that some people are using this unironically.
hnlmorg 4 hours ago [-]
Tobacco companies are responsible for not promoting to minors.
But if we take a more relevant comparison: In the financial sector, banks are responsible for detecting abuse.
They’re not the only ones responsible, but they don’t get to absolve all responsibility because someone else committed a crime using the banks infrastructure.
arewethereyeta 6 hours ago [-]
Brainwash on what subjects?
TZubiri 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure what the claim or charge would be. While I wouldn't feel comfortable participating in political campaigns for democracies of other countries, and I would feel defensive about attempts to influence elections in my country, in the end these 'attacks' rely on actual citizens to vote, so the citizen still holds the power and makes the final decision, so I don't think it's an issue of critical severity, and I don't think it's illegitimate to try to persuade citizens of another country to vote in such matter at a constitutional level (excluding specific laws), even if I personally would feel icky about it.
Now there may be other potential issues that would elevate the matter, if disinformation is used, or if personal information about citizens is obtained illegitimately, then they could constitute crimes in their own right. Whether the crime is aggravated by its intent to subvert the democratic institution would be a legitimate question, but without the accessory crimes, I don't think political campaigns from non citizen actors are themselves illegal, just icky.
crispyambulance 4 hours ago [-]
The thing that's really disturbing is not how far Cambridge Analytica actually got in terms of influencing American voters through the "campaigns" they were hired to perform. In the end it was hard to assess how much damage they did.
But that's not the real problem here.
The problem is that it has been demonstrated how ad-tech infrastructure can be re-purposed for political propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation. All of that power is now available to the highest bidder, and the infrastructure providers, as we are now know are utterly amoral, stronger and faster than any government regulations, beholden to their shareholders and nothing else even if the world burns.
> Now there may be other potential issues that would elevate the matter, if disinformation is used...
Disinformation was used and it is NOT a "potential issue" that merely "elevates" the matter, it's profound offense that requires a harsh and comprehensive response.
TheOtherHobbes 6 hours ago [-]
>Now there may be other potential issues that would elevate the matter, if disinformation is used, or if personal information about citizens is obtained illegitimately, then they could constitute crimes in their own right.
Both of those happened. And are still happening.
This is algorithmic behaviour modification using sophisticated psychological priming that most people - including people who consider themselves educated and rational - have no defences against.
It very much was, and is, an issue of critical severity. CA and Nix specifically sold themselves as election fixers, but most people using FB would have been completely unware they were being influenced.
cgio 5 hours ago [-]
But now people do, and it still works. How is this dissimilar to controlling the media in the past? Maybe can be more specialised, but superficially at least O don’t see significant content specialisation, rather the opposite, consumption herding.
fmbb 5 hours ago [-]
> How is this dissimilar to controlling the media in the past?
In the same way dynamic personalized pricing in the supermarket is different from supermarkets being able to set prices before.
gruez 5 hours ago [-]
>dynamic personalized pricing in the supermarket
Which I also think is overblown. The one thing that people can actually agree on is that dynamically setting sticker prices is bad, but nobody actually does this. There's less consensus on whether coupons (targeted or otherwise) are okay, even though they have the exact same effect (ie. $10 w/ $2 targeted coupon vs a Dynamic Price™ of $8).
5 hours ago [-]
5 hours ago [-]
aaron695 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
matrix87 2 hours ago [-]
Apparently they used facebook to incite backlash against the Indian government to bully them into allowing their Internet.org initiative to continue there (essentially a stripped down, anti-net-neutrality version of the internet which only allows people to use facebook and a couple other sites).
This was mentioned in Careless People. It seems like they wanted to use facebook as an electoral tool pretty early on because it gives them leverage over politicians. They might not have been deliberately involved in CA, but this is probably exactly what they wanted
jameson 4 hours ago [-]
I wonder how much this relates to existence of Super PACs and lobbying in US.
If campaign spending is strictly regulated, I imagine it would be difficult for such work.
devonsolomon 6 hours ago [-]
Cambridge Analytica developed a database for The Trump campaign that classified 3.5 million Black Americans as “Deterrence”, used as audiences in FB advertising intended to discourage voting.
We know Cambridge Analytica weren’t afraid to subvert the core principle of democracy like that because we have documents from their campaigns in Trinidad and Tobago to do the same thing, presenting not voting as an act of youth rebellion with the aim of reducing turnout among young Black Trinidadians.
(Discouraging black people from voting seems to be a theme)
Sure, as Mark says, anyone with the voter data and capital could likely create that audience and run those ads, but anyone with integrity wouldn’t. The story is not about unbelievable sophistication, it’s about using the tools Facebook provided to subvert democracy.
Mark is right that they’re nothing special. But that doesn’t dismiss them, the fact that they’re nothing special is the scary part.
dudefeliciano 6 hours ago [-]
> This document is from In re Facebook, Inc. Securities Litigation (2026).
rkrueger11 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I’d argue it shouldn’t have the (2017) added to it’s title, given that notation is supposed to be used when posting something which was published in the past, not something that simply occurred in the past.
pbalau 6 hours ago [-]
Zuk asked how the thing worked. Boz answered.
Might be a challenge to some, but one can find out things if they pay enough attention to data.
6 hours ago [-]
whatever1 6 hours ago [-]
The “Only do evil” company
jjtheblunt 6 hours ago [-]
counterpoint : animal rescues and shelters benefit greatly in getting adoptable animals before people scrolling, for super low cost to them, but of course because the scrolling people are seeing ads.
There was that leaked video of a Cambridge Analytica exec bragging that they came up with the handcuffs in the Crooked Hillary meme. Except that was hardly a big thing. The phrase Crooked Hillary was arguably “linguistic killshot” by Trump; CA’s little riff on it was insignificant - and that was them trying to sell their services with their most impressive feats.
tsunamifury 5 hours ago [-]
To argue that Facebook somehow magically tricks humans into voting against their will and overrides democracy is to argue that democracy itself inherently does not work.
It’s amazing that so many people don’t understand that.
It seems far harder to accept that people simply voted for trump because historical institutions had failed them so completely.
This would force the other party to recon with the failed parts of their platform. Which they still never have.
qarl 5 hours ago [-]
> To argue that Facebook somehow magically tricks humans into voting against their will and overrides democracy is to argue that democracy itself inherently does not work.
But we know that propaganda works. That doesn't sit well with your claims.
JMiao 27 minutes ago [-]
propaganda needs some truth
zorak8me 5 hours ago [-]
Nobody is suggesting that Facebook magically tricked people into voting against their will.
tsunamifury 4 hours ago [-]
Maybe you were alive or aware in 2016-2022 but this is exactly what was suggested.
I’m having a hard time imagining you didn’t know this.
pohl 3 hours ago [-]
Narrator: there were no allegations of magic.
qarl 4 hours ago [-]
I believe you're straw manning the situation.
smugglerFlynn 5 hours ago [-]
There is a difference between historical institutions failing people, and monkey A getting to a wrench quicker than monkey B (exactly what that email points to)
xboxnolifes 5 hours ago [-]
It doesnt quite imply democracy does not work. It implies that propaganda works. And if propaganda works, then that would mean that having the bulk of the ability to propagandize concentrated in a few hands in a threat to democracy, as it means that few people effectively have a much more powerful vote. Which, if you'll allow me to shortcut the rest of the argument, just brings us to the fundamental threat to democracy is concentrated wealth and concentrated power.
tsunamifury 4 hours ago [-]
Poor logic. The existence of propaganda working does not require concentrated wealth. It simply has more interest in it currently.
For example many players in the civil rights movement were not wealthy and did “good” propaganda which others refuse to call it as such.
The prohibition movement was a second example.
xboxnolifes 3 hours ago [-]
It doesn't require concentrated wealth, but if wealth is evenly distributed, then presumably the power to apply propaganda is also equally distributed. Propagandizing information effectively become a meta-level form of voting. With concentrated wealth and power, those with all of the resources hold all of these meta-level votes.
srean 5 hours ago [-]
Both could be true.
JMiao 5 hours ago [-]
traditional media was already failing democracy well before social media. irrelevant news is the gateway to fake news. journalism was a prestige career that relied on access to advance, and access means you cannot always speak the truths required to inform voters.
tsunamifury 5 hours ago [-]
Willing to concede that point. But parties should understand then what they are arguing for
brcmthrowaway 6 hours ago [-]
The amount of media furore over this at the time, really made me think CA was doing something illegal. Was that just Gawker/Buzzfeed journalism?
gruez 6 hours ago [-]
They had a facebook app (disguised as a quiz) that scraped the profile data of the user using it, as well as their friends. It's the latter part that was considered shady, but it was all allowed by facebook. Moreover it's not too different than similar "growth hack" tactics that other startups use to this day, eg. linkedin scraping your contacts data. Their clients being right-wing didn't help, either.
noir_lord 5 hours ago [-]
> It's the latter part that was considered shady
Because it was shady, deception is deception.
brcmthrowaway 4 hours ago [-]
Shady business practices are accepted now.
layer8 6 hours ago [-]
Content:
From: Mark Zuckerberg
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2017 8:10:16 AM
Subject: Cambridge Analytica
I'm seeing more articles like this one come out claiming the Trump's campaign used FB and analytics in very precise ways that go beyond
what others have done before:
I can't tell how much of this is just a dramatic telling the best practices of marketing today seen through the lens of survivorship bias, or how much of what they're done is truly novel and
interesting work, at least in the field of politics.
Can someone explain to me what they actually did from an analytics and ads perspective, and
how advanced it actually was?
From: Andrew Bosworth
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2017 9:58:03 AM
Subject: Re: Cambridge Analytica
My general understanding is the Trump campaign
actually took all the advice we gave unlike Hillary. They used all our tools. That *is* surprisingly novel as most advertisers have a "way of doing things" and are slow to adapt but speaks more of
our platform than CA. A few examples:
- They ran tens of thousands of creatives and iterated quickly to find what was working, further sub segmenting audiences (using custom audiences) based on
response.
- They used different formats early but found video was most effective so were using
that primarily by the end (90+%)
- They were primarily fundraising on Facebook, which means rallying the base instead of trying to win over marginal voters. That was an effective strategy that lead to very low CPMs and makes iterating to find market fiit for your message much easier. The rumor is that they turned tens of millions spent on FB into hundreds of millions for the campaign, which they spent
elsewhere.
I've heard separately that their entire electoral strategy was to rally the base rather than send a broadly appealing message. Few marketers are interested in doing that so it stands to reason
they would have unusual results.
Net net, my guess is that CA did have to do some interesting work to quickly take results from campaigns and spin them into the next, and the campaign had to do some interesting work to generate so much creative, but I'm skeptical that Cambridge Analytica has any data or expertise that couldn't be replicated readily by someone else. I'm suspect we will find that the majority of the advantage was using our platform to the
fullest.
boz
[This document is from In re Facebook, Inc. Securities Litigation (2026).]
hugodan 6 hours ago [-]
Before Trump they practiced on Brexit and the whole Leave.EU movement.
This link at best shows us Mark Zuckerberg playing his standard card of victim and faking (again) that he didn't know about anything, while all evidence point that he actively played a role in it.
gghhzzgghhzz 5 hours ago [-]
A large ICO investigation concluded that they were not involved in Brexit at all.
I think people wanted to believe there was some external hand at work, and it suited CA to pretend they were more capable than they were.
Cummings spoke about using normal Facebook ad segmentation to target some demographics.
Cambridge Analytica had substantial discussions with Leave.EU, the campaign associated with Arron Banks and Nigel Farage. It attended meetings, appeared at a Leave.EU press event, prepared proposals, and discussed using data and psychological profiling. At the time, both Leave.EU figures and Cambridge Analytica publicly made statements suggesting a working relationship.
gghhzzgghhzz 5 hours ago [-]
I can't find the term 'substantial' in the linked source. So I think maybe you are editorialising.
Here is the actual text from 4.7.
> We have investigated the allegation that Cambridge Analytica provided
data analytics services to Leave.EU. Our focus has been on the use of
personal data and whether Leave.EU breached the DPA98. We served
Information Notices on Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica to gather
evidence as part of our investigation.
> Information placed in the public domain by some of those subject to
investigation suggested a relationship between Cambridge Analytica and
Leave.EU, and both sides have acknowledged there was an initial
exploration of how to work together during the Referendum campaign.
Brittany Kaiser, Director of Program Development at Cambridge Analytica,
appeared at a Leave.EU news conference in 2015. Statements by
representatives of Leave.EU made in 2016 also indicated that Cambridge
Analytica had worked for them. Senior Cambridge Analytica staff also
claimed they worked with Leave.EU.
> In response to Information Notices served on them, both parties have
stated that only preliminary discussions took place, and the relationship
did not move forward when Leave.EU failed to attain the designation as
the official Leave campaign. In evidence provided to the ICO, Leave.EU
stated that four meetings took place:
> 23 October 2015 representatives of Leave EU met with CA
staff, this was a basic introductory meeting to express interest
in potentially working together
> 18 November 2015 CA appeared at a press conference with
Leave.eu
> 20 November 2015 CA went to Leave.EU’s Bristol offices and
pitched their product.
> 8 January 2016 representatives of Leave.EU met CA in
London, and CA presented a proposal for future work
together.
The ICO report does not specify that any work was carried out, or what exactly that work was.
Also worth noting that the pdf in interim report
The related findings of the final report after 3 year investigation are summerised here
> From my review of the materials recovered by the investigation I have found no further evidence to change my earlier view that SCL/CA were not involved in the EU referendum campaign in the UK - beyond some initial enquiries made by SCL/CA in relation to UKIP data in the early stages of the referendum process. This strand of work does not appear to have then been taken forward by SCL/CA.
4 hours ago [-]
netsharc 5 hours ago [-]
My "expert" (/s) conclusion of Zuck is that he's a kid who knew some PHP and got really lucky that a website he made went "viral". He's got billions but is clueless, e.g. blowing a lot of money on animated VR avatars "because it's the future", and then blowing lots of money on AI. To be fair that's what the other dumb tech billionaires are doing too, they're building datacenters full of GPUs because they think throwing money at LLM will get them AGI, and they're desperate to be first.
(And no, I don't know if they'll reach AGI, my uninformed bet is: no).
Terr_ 2 hours ago [-]
> they're building datacenters full of GPUs because they think throwing money at LLM will get them AGI, and they're desperate to be first.
Another factor (which can also be seen in the "metaverse" business) is that how our investment/economy system makes these companies "need" [0] to always be a "growth stock" with something even bigger, even after they're already enormous quasi-monopolies.
nephihaha 5 hours ago [-]
There were a lot of factors involved in Brexit. The BBC played a large part in it although it will never admit it.
johndhi 5 hours ago [-]
What evidence shows he wanted this? Why would he play the victim internally?
hugodan 5 hours ago [-]
Facebook knew about the Kogan/CA transfer in 2015 and failed to respond adequately, instead they relied largely on deletion assurances rather than immediately auditing, and users weren't informed until 2018.
But more, CA was created as consequence and a way to profit out of the 2012 Six4Three scandal, after Mark Zuckerberg personally designed/approved the permissive data-sharing ecosystem specifically for these use cases (as several internal mails show).
dash2 2 hours ago [-]
You’re arguing with a conspiracy theorist. Don’t do it, it’s not worth the effort!
qarl 5 hours ago [-]
> Why would he play the victim internally?
To create evidence that he didn't know about it?
zer0zzz 3 hours ago [-]
I really feel the news media in their crusade against tech really did the public a disservice by not explaining what happened precisely.
It’s not about whether these companies are in the right or not, but more about how we as a society address the consequences of how their products operate.
When the media mischaracterizes this stuff it makes the public perception's of what’s going on frankly becomes ridiculous and makes it easy for corporations to dismiss detractors as kooks.
zer0zzz 3 hours ago [-]
In this specific case it also takes some of the burden away from Feckless political campaigns that failed to effectively use the tools at their disposal. The public then doesn’t have as clear of a picture of who might actually be capable
Of winning next time.
hedayet 6 hours ago [-]
tl;dr; an internal thread that goes in the line,
A: Yo! did we do anything wrong?
B: No. someone else messed up. we're good.
gruez 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
futuraperdita 6 hours ago [-]
Agree with this. Regardless of the politics involved, this exchange seems pretty mundane in the grand scheme of corporate emails. Taking Bosworth at face value here, it sounds like both camps got the same advice, one acted on it in full, the other didn't, the party that did saw better results, and on top of that had a better ads/targeting strategy that maximized platform ROI. If we removed the political parties from this and made them two companies, I'm not sure HN would have much of an issue with its content.
tyre 6 hours ago [-]
I doubt the Clinton campaign could have had as much of an impact with the same strategy. The Republican Party is fortunate in that it has a limited number of constituents:
- white
- Christian
- rural
- guns
- lower and upper class
The upper class votes on taxes, so that is an easy one.
The rest are relatively easy to target.
The Democratic Party tries to capture everyone else, which is more people but hugely diverse. There’s hardly a single message (or single digit number of them) that resonates universally.
Identifying someone as Republican gives your clear signal for targeting if you want to get out the base, as Trump did.
Identifying someone as Democratic means they could care about a huge range of things, but you don’t know what.
pc86 5 hours ago [-]
I can understand why you would think this - or rather, why you'd want to think this - because it lets you lean really hard into the "Republicans dumb lol" trope. But just to pick two of your examples, there are plenty of establishment Republicans who are quick to vote for increased gun control, and at least a few establishment Democrats who need quite a bit of convincing to do so. One side is better than the other (which is which depends on which side you're on, of course), but I'd say it's 80/20 when the media presents it more like 95/5.
And I don't know what "low class" means but if you're referring to socioeconomic status that doesn't match what you said either. According to Pew the bottom quintile (<36k/yr) is about 60/35 Democrat. The top quintile (215k/yr+) is about 53/46. Upper-middle ($144-215k/yr) is the only one with a Republican edge, and the other two (36-48, 48-144) are within the margin of error to 50/50.
I think of all your examples you probably have the strongest case to make with "rural" but I've met plenty of rural Dems in my life.
> The Republican Party is fortunate in that it has a limited number of constituents:
That's not at all true. The biggest contradiction is on trade. The "business" faction is against tariffs, but the worker base was for it. Same for immigration. Business is generally for it, the worker base is against it.
zug_zug 6 hours ago [-]
Hopefully it’s apparent to you now at least, that providing names and political affiliations to the current administration is dangerous.
goodluckchuck 6 hours ago [-]
Voters tell their names and affiliations when registering to vote. Registration rolls are readily available public data.
za_creature 6 hours ago [-]
Lok tar ogar!
… or swobu
said the french
neuronexmachina 5 hours ago [-]
> 1. they apparently gave advice to both the clinton and trump campaign
Just because this is worded ambiguously, to clarify the "they" is Facebook. CA on the other hand was effectively the Trump's digital ad campaign.
> 2. the trump campaign did targeted marketing better (ie. targeting the base rather than the marginal voter)
This ignores that a lot of what made CA different is that they used microtargeting to discourage turnout via fake news stories.
3. "I'm skeptical that Cambridge Analytica has any data or expertise that couldn't be replicated readily by someone else"
After CA's methods and actions became public, FB massively limited what you could do via their API.
gruez 5 hours ago [-]
>Just because this is worded ambiguously, to clarify the "they" is Facebook. CA on the other hand was effectively the Trump's digital ad campaign.
Given that "cambridge analytica" wasn't even mentioned in my comment, and "facebook" was the last subject mentioned (ie. "facebook was ..."), I don't see how anyone could have interpreted "they" to mean cambridge analytica.
>This ignores that a lot of what made CA different is that they used microtargeting to discourage turnout via fake news stories.
What does this have to do with the email? Everything you mentioned was already known before this email was released. Is the complaint that boz didn't also tell zuckerberg "btw cambridge analytica works with conservatives are are super evil"?
>After CA's methods and actions became public, FB massively limited what you could do via their API.
Was the email sent before or after they locked down the API? Also, this feels like a nitpick, eg. suppose a mass shooter killed a bunch people with an assault rifle, and then the government banned assault rifles, it would still be correct to say "anyone could bought the weapons the mass shooter used", even though it wasn't true in the present.
Exoristos 6 hours ago [-]
It's not much of a stretch to see this as certain powers punishing Facebook for not having actively suppressed the Trump campaign.
andersonpico 5 hours ago [-]
It wouldn't be a stretch but only it the rest of the investigation didn't happen and we knew absolutely nothing else about Cambridge Analytica or Facebook. As that is not the reality we live in, you could read more about the case or not let you biases show so clearly.
ares623 6 hours ago [-]
> so does that mean we should be up and arms about the mamdani campaign?
No, we should be up and arms about TikTok.
gruez 6 hours ago [-]
And what else? Cable news? Talk radio? Printing press?
ares623 6 hours ago [-]
Uhh, until recently, didn't those three undergo exactly the same kind of scrutiny and have had the regulations we are talking about here put in place for them?
Of course, all that existing regulation is being undone, thanks in part to TikTok, Facebook, etc.
gruez 6 hours ago [-]
>Uhh, until recently, didn't those three undergo exactly the same kind of scrutiny and have had the regulations we are talking about here put in place for them?
Newspapers were never regulated, with "the press" being specifically mentioned in the first amendment. Talk radio and broadcast TV were only regulated because the airwaves were a shared resource and therefore subject to government regulation. Cable news was never subject to the fairness doctrine.
ViktorRay 5 hours ago [-]
The only restriction currently[1] in place on newspapers in the United States is that you cannot write libel i.e you cannot knowingly falsely write something that hurts another’s reputation. This is the same restriction as in verbal speech where you cannot say slander which is like libel but spoken.
[1] There have been other restrictions placed at various times but these other restrictions have over time been found to be contrary to the First Amendment.
TZubiri 6 hours ago [-]
I think it would be an inmensely naive and unnuanced take to look at this email and think that the truth is finally being revealed about CA.
What's going on is that this is a very early email, and it's being brought up during discovery on a current legal proceeding (and it's not necessarily the first time it's made public).
It's also clear to anyone that knows about the case that this isn't an accurate explanation of what Cambridge Analytica was doing and why it was causing concern. There's no mention of Facebook Apps unrelated to politics being used to collect user data, and there's no mention of the data being collected not only of the users that install these apps, but also their friends (which would lead to the revision of the Graph API and the implementation of minimum demographic controls).
So to me it reads like a document that Meta puts forward to prove that Zuckerberg:
- Had no idea at the time of what was going on
- Was making efforts to understand what was going on
I haven't checked which party used this document as an exhibit in an argument, although this might be available information, but I'd wager a guess that it will or has been used by Meta.
So if you are looking at this document as "the truth uncovered", I'd suggest to look for more nuance instead of easy answers.
gruez 6 hours ago [-]
>I think it would be an inmensely naive and unnuanced take to look at this email and think that the truth is finally being revealed about CA.
What was revealed that we didn't already know?
>I'd suggest to look for more nuance instead of easy answers.
Shouldn't you be looking for said answers and presenting them, instead of chastising me for not having the answers?
andersonpico 5 hours ago [-]
> instead of chastising me
Oh quit clutching your pearls, he was perfectly civil.
You're the one trying to downplay things we know weren't at all covered in full by these emails (and we've known that for quite a long time). And know about them since you're downplaying them in other comments in this thread (things like exploring the quizz apps and how Facebook knew CA had exploited the API since 2015, how CA initially said the data was for academic purposes, etc).
The latter part of your comment ("how far should we go, the invention of the printing press?") shows me you're not only crying about being corrected but being disingenuous to push a narrative based on lies. Since you're doubling down and running cover for Facebook/CA/Trump's campaign all over the thread it suggests there's more than plain stupidity and dishonesty as motives.
gruez 5 hours ago [-]
>Oh quit clutching your pearls, he was perfectly civil.
I'm not criticizing him for not being "civil", I'm criticizing him for criticizing me for a failing that he himself is committing.
>You're the one trying to downplay things we know weren't at all covered in full by these emails (and we've known that for quite a long time). And know about them since you're downplaying them in other comments in this thread (things like exploring the quizz apps and how Facebook knew CA had exploited the API since 2015, how CA initially said the data was for academic purposes, etc).
>The latter part of your comment ("how far should we go, the invention of the printing press?") shows me you're not only crying about being corrected but being disingenuous to push a narrative based on lies. Since you're doubling down and running cover for Facebook/CA/Trump's campaign all over the thread it suggests there's more than plain stupidity and dishonesty as motives.
You can't seem to distinguish between me questioning the importance/implication of this email with me "downplaying" facebook or cambridge analytica's ill deeds, and unlike the parent commenter, are not being civil. I think most people got the first part, otherwise they would replied with "yeah, but facebook and cambridge analytica is still evil/destroys democracy because of all the other things we know".
someothherguyy 6 hours ago [-]
FA and CA lied to users, and sent data from all the friends of users who filled out a form to CA
>If that was the advice, it seems pretty terrible.
If you read either my comment or the email, you'd know what the advice was.
firasd 6 hours ago [-]
This was a fake scandal. "Democrats seem to like Harry Potter" is not some genius psychographic ad targeting strategy. The Cambridge Analytica people were selling snake oil
That said they did buy user data from a quiz app which is not really how you were supposed to use the Facebook Platform so that still wasn't really FB's fault I think
So the real issue was just people trying to blame the 2016 election (adverse to their interests if they were anti-Trump) on Zuck.
Heck to this day Ben Shapiro is one of the biggest podcasts and Tucker's show is even bigger than him so the right wing is a real force in American politics and not just propped up by FB's old newsfeed algo
throw83940484 6 hours ago [-]
They were selling private hacked data. It is amazing they are not all in prison.
Whatever it was some amazing insight is irelevant!
upupupandaway 4 hours ago [-]
It's pretty incredible that people claim CA was somehow running the world and magically turning elections and brainwashing masses.
cm2012 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gghhzzgghhzz 5 hours ago [-]
We had the same issue with Brexit
It was in CA's interest to have people believe they had some sort of magic algorithm.
And it was on the losing side's interest to believe that they would have won the vote if not interference by magic.
The Information Commissioner Office carried out an extensive investigation and concluded that CA were not involved at all with either of the two leave supporting organisations.
But this fact is simply ignored and undefined campaign by CA still used as the simple excuse for why they lost.
The Zuck then apologized for this undocumented API access leak and FB subsequently patched it out of their platform. It had nothing to do with running ads. We shouldn't let time paper over the details here.
[1] "It also gathered data from their Facebook friends, which reportedly resulted in Kogan having access to the data of millions of Facebook profiles". https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica...
I don't know if it was a psy-op or deception campaign or what.
In Careless People, they mentioned that this was a strategy they wanted to employ:
They wanted facebook to become a tool for winning elections so that they would have more leverage over the politicians in power.
For example, they were trying to fight the Indian government over internet.org initiative (essentially shipping out a stripped down version of the internet to impoverished areas where they could only use facebook and a couple other apps, subsidized by telecoms). They used facebook features to incite backlash against the Indian government.
It looks like we only have access to this now? If yes, this would be development and I’d remove the “2017” from the title.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/12/19/114510/how-obama...
This was in 2012.
These tools were used around the place. They have an influence. They don't decide who wins and what big issues are.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/facebook-acquires-israeli-app-...
2018 - Facebook tells Congress that it uses security app Onavo to analyze what people are doing in other apps
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/facebook-explains-to-congres...
Remember the Internet.org and FreeBasics movement which was used to muddy the Net Neutrality waters? Guess which startup was excited about Internet.org
> Onavo’s founders, Guy Rosen (CEO) and Roi Tiger (CTO), are on board with the plan. “We’re excited to join their team,” the two wrote, “and hope to play a critical role in reaching one of Internet.org’s most significant goals – using data more efficiently, so that more people around the world can connect and share. When the transaction closes, we plan to continue running the Onavo mobile utility apps as a standalone brand. As always, we remain committed to the privacy of people who use our application and that commitment will not change.”
I'm not sure how old you are, but I remember things being pretty rabid in the 1980s.
At the point, everything was on the table, and everyone was "welcome" into the everlasting flame war.
You have been brainwashed. Or was it Russia as well?
Everything started much longer ago. You can't go along in life just assuming everything will converge to some whig paradise.
Claim: Brainwash was very successful in Brazil. Reality: The government in power for 12 years turned out to be as corrupt as any they had previously criticized, generating a massive institutional crisis.
Data promised to improve lifes, it has done so in many aspects, but also has made countless things worse.
From physical and digital products squeezing the last cent instead of improving user's experience, algorithms getting every single second of your attention, from deciding the kind of music and tv shows getting produced, to the kind of dull ever repeating style of everything really on every corner of the planet from hotels to restaurant and menus it's all a data-driven conversion to the mean in boring-and-safe or money-squeezing fashion.
Data has entered sports and transformed them from the times of money ball. Basket, soccer, football, are all much less enjoyable and creative because again, it's all about applying data.
And yes, data has entered politics at a level it could not before computing power and data collection and our understanding of human manipulation didn't reach those levels.
It has understood you only need 50%+1 of the votes and efforts to get 50%+2 are a waste and less efficient.
So politicians, especially in weaker democracies characterized by winner-takes-all mechanics, are incentivized to be divisive, not representing the majority of the citizens.
Again, you only want 50%+1 of the votes, if you trying to get a single more you're dispersing your efforts and decreasing the chances to win.
This happens to some extent, particularly in the US's electoral system. But I'd argue the incentive for divisive politics is coming mostly from the fleeting nature of our communication media (plus legitimate grievances that mainstream politicians were out of touch with for a long time).
Twitter was already a politically destabilizing force even before data analysis and manipulation caught up to it. The medium itself punishes constructive interactions and ideas.
I don’t think truth aligns with either extreme. Both are approaches that have their place. But if it was an “uncreative” with no ideas that simply took the time to look and discovered that the three point shot was absurdly more efficient than basically any other shot in basketball, what does that say about all the “creative” coaching geniuses who failed to discover it in half a century? And if basketball is now “less creative” because of it, that’s an indictment of the fact that the league refuses to address the underlying issue.
I think it’s telling that no one bemoans the fact that we design our medicine using data driven methods. I’m sure it would spice up our lives if the pharma companies dropped the boring data analysis and statistical methods and just slapped some compounds together through free-flowing creative passion!
something that data can't tell you either!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
And you do that today with maths, algorithms and quick information analysis and response.
Trump’s team knew exactly where to focus their efforts for 2016. That was half of it
The other half was all the rallies and stops where he literally workshopped all of his slogans in front of an audience. That’s where “lock her up” and a dozen other creative insults and slogans were tested. Like a comedian on tour, he had to work on his material.
You can say a lot about him, but he is charismatic and none of that is data driven. He has instinct on how to hurt people. He has always been a salesman and con artist. These are creative skills
The data gave him the audience but the human angle got him those votes.
Computers can't replicate on their own, so they need entire corporations/societies to build them. A computer's reproductive locus of control is at the corporation/society level. Human individuals get sucked into that superorganism by evolutionary pressure and will eventually integrate (ENIAC -> desktop -> laptop -> smartphone -> wearables -> neural interface). Today it merely influences what you see on the phone, eventually it will be behavior-changing signals from the datacenter delivered straight into the brain. A similar thing happened in our evolutionary past when individual cells combined to form multicellular organisms.
In the long run, this cannot be fought because it's the physical tendency of matter to gather and form more complex things. There is however a second path with equally strong evolutionary precedent, which is for the human individual to integrate vertically by taking the computer in as an endosymbiont, thereby preserving the human's individual sovereignty / bodily integrity. We can pull down the computer's reproductive locus of control to the individual level, instead of being pulled up by it to become part of a larger organism at the corporation/society level. In practice, this requires miniaturizing fab tech so that each person can manufacture a custom computer from raw materials using a fridge-sized chip fab + 3D printer home appliance. We will obviously not get there immediately, but the will exists, and attempts to diffuse fab tech are already underway (such as https://fab2.com/, which started as a DIY attempt to manufacture chips at home https://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/).
It's worth noting that any evolutionary path may fail, especially the horizontally integrating kind because it must solve the very hard problem of constituent individuals becoming less likely to reproduce as a result of the environment changing in the emerging superorganism's favor. Some people think they can sidestep this problem by automating humans out of the computer production loop entirely, which removes integration pressure and creates a new digital species. Best of luck to Elon and various other mostly Chinese companies making the attempt. But that's an extremely risky bet, and it's basically giving up on yourself/humanity. We ought to attempt all available paths at once instead of putting too much faith in any single one. And that includes preserving pockets of pre-digital civilization where life happens without much technology at all, rather than dragging everybody along.
Social media was definitely the start of that downfall. Yeah people used to spread misinformation longer before social media was a thing. But what Facebook changed was the way how misinformation could be targeted with surgical precision.
If your "just increasing shareholder value" is found to cause damages to the public, you should be held to account for that.
But if we take a more relevant comparison: In the financial sector, banks are responsible for detecting abuse.
They’re not the only ones responsible, but they don’t get to absolve all responsibility because someone else committed a crime using the banks infrastructure.
Now there may be other potential issues that would elevate the matter, if disinformation is used, or if personal information about citizens is obtained illegitimately, then they could constitute crimes in their own right. Whether the crime is aggravated by its intent to subvert the democratic institution would be a legitimate question, but without the accessory crimes, I don't think political campaigns from non citizen actors are themselves illegal, just icky.
But that's not the real problem here.
The problem is that it has been demonstrated how ad-tech infrastructure can be re-purposed for political propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation. All of that power is now available to the highest bidder, and the infrastructure providers, as we are now know are utterly amoral, stronger and faster than any government regulations, beholden to their shareholders and nothing else even if the world burns.
Disinformation was used and it is NOT a "potential issue" that merely "elevates" the matter, it's profound offense that requires a harsh and comprehensive response.Both of those happened. And are still happening.
This is algorithmic behaviour modification using sophisticated psychological priming that most people - including people who consider themselves educated and rational - have no defences against.
It very much was, and is, an issue of critical severity. CA and Nix specifically sold themselves as election fixers, but most people using FB would have been completely unware they were being influenced.
In the same way dynamic personalized pricing in the supermarket is different from supermarkets being able to set prices before.
Which I also think is overblown. The one thing that people can actually agree on is that dynamically setting sticker prices is bad, but nobody actually does this. There's less consensus on whether coupons (targeted or otherwise) are okay, even though they have the exact same effect (ie. $10 w/ $2 targeted coupon vs a Dynamic Price™ of $8).
This was mentioned in Careless People. It seems like they wanted to use facebook as an electoral tool pretty early on because it gives them leverage over politicians. They might not have been deliberately involved in CA, but this is probably exactly what they wanted
If campaign spending is strictly regulated, I imagine it would be difficult for such work.
We know Cambridge Analytica weren’t afraid to subvert the core principle of democracy like that because we have documents from their campaigns in Trinidad and Tobago to do the same thing, presenting not voting as an act of youth rebellion with the aim of reducing turnout among young Black Trinidadians.
(Discouraging black people from voting seems to be a theme)
Sure, as Mark says, anyone with the voter data and capital could likely create that audience and run those ads, but anyone with integrity wouldn’t. The story is not about unbelievable sophistication, it’s about using the tools Facebook provided to subvert democracy.
Mark is right that they’re nothing special. But that doesn’t dismiss them, the fact that they’re nothing special is the scary part.
Might be a challenge to some, but one can find out things if they pay enough attention to data.
It’s amazing that so many people don’t understand that.
It seems far harder to accept that people simply voted for trump because historical institutions had failed them so completely.
This would force the other party to recon with the failed parts of their platform. Which they still never have.
But we know that propaganda works. That doesn't sit well with your claims.
I’m having a hard time imagining you didn’t know this.
For example many players in the civil rights movement were not wealthy and did “good” propaganda which others refuse to call it as such.
The prohibition movement was a second example.
Because it was shady, deception is deception.
https://motherboard.vice.com/read/big-data-cambridge-analyti...
I can't tell how much of this is just a dramatic telling the best practices of marketing today seen through the lens of survivorship bias, or how much of what they're done is truly novel and interesting work, at least in the field of politics.
Can someone explain to me what they actually did from an analytics and ads perspective, and how advanced it actually was?
My general understanding is the Trump campaign actually took all the advice we gave unlike Hillary. They used all our tools. That *is* surprisingly novel as most advertisers have a "way of doing things" and are slow to adapt but speaks more of our platform than CA. A few examples:- They ran tens of thousands of creatives and iterated quickly to find what was working, further sub segmenting audiences (using custom audiences) based on response.
- They used different formats early but found video was most effective so were using that primarily by the end (90+%)
- They were primarily fundraising on Facebook, which means rallying the base instead of trying to win over marginal voters. That was an effective strategy that lead to very low CPMs and makes iterating to find market fiit for your message much easier. The rumor is that they turned tens of millions spent on FB into hundreds of millions for the campaign, which they spent elsewhere.
I've heard separately that their entire electoral strategy was to rally the base rather than send a broadly appealing message. Few marketers are interested in doing that so it stands to reason they would have unusual results.
Net net, my guess is that CA did have to do some interesting work to quickly take results from campaigns and spin them into the next, and the campaign had to do some interesting work to generate so much creative, but I'm skeptical that Cambridge Analytica has any data or expertise that couldn't be replicated readily by someone else. I'm suspect we will find that the majority of the advantage was using our platform to the fullest.
boz
[This document is from In re Facebook, Inc. Securities Litigation (2026).]
This link at best shows us Mark Zuckerberg playing his standard card of victim and faking (again) that he didn't know about anything, while all evidence point that he actively played a role in it.
I think people wanted to believe there was some external hand at work, and it suited CA to pretend they were more capable than they were.
Cummings spoke about using normal Facebook ad segmentation to target some demographics.
Cambridge Analytica had substantial discussions with Leave.EU, the campaign associated with Arron Banks and Nigel Farage. It attended meetings, appeared at a Leave.EU press event, prepared proposals, and discussed using data and psychological profiling. At the time, both Leave.EU figures and Cambridge Analytica publicly made statements suggesting a working relationship.
Here is the actual text from 4.7.
> We have investigated the allegation that Cambridge Analytica provided data analytics services to Leave.EU. Our focus has been on the use of personal data and whether Leave.EU breached the DPA98. We served Information Notices on Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica to gather evidence as part of our investigation.
> Information placed in the public domain by some of those subject to investigation suggested a relationship between Cambridge Analytica and Leave.EU, and both sides have acknowledged there was an initial exploration of how to work together during the Referendum campaign. Brittany Kaiser, Director of Program Development at Cambridge Analytica, appeared at a Leave.EU news conference in 2015. Statements by representatives of Leave.EU made in 2016 also indicated that Cambridge Analytica had worked for them. Senior Cambridge Analytica staff also claimed they worked with Leave.EU.
> In response to Information Notices served on them, both parties have stated that only preliminary discussions took place, and the relationship did not move forward when Leave.EU failed to attain the designation as the official Leave campaign. In evidence provided to the ICO, Leave.EU stated that four meetings took place:
> 23 October 2015 representatives of Leave EU met with CA staff, this was a basic introductory meeting to express interest in potentially working together
> 18 November 2015 CA appeared at a press conference with Leave.eu
> 20 November 2015 CA went to Leave.EU’s Bristol offices and pitched their product.
> 8 January 2016 representatives of Leave.EU met CA in London, and CA presented a proposal for future work together.
The ICO report does not specify that any work was carried out, or what exactly that work was.
Also worth noting that the pdf in interim report The related findings of the final report after 3 year investigation are summerised here
https://cy.ico.org.uk/media2/migrated/2618383/20201002_ico-o...
> From my review of the materials recovered by the investigation I have found no further evidence to change my earlier view that SCL/CA were not involved in the EU referendum campaign in the UK - beyond some initial enquiries made by SCL/CA in relation to UKIP data in the early stages of the referendum process. This strand of work does not appear to have then been taken forward by SCL/CA.
(And no, I don't know if they'll reach AGI, my uninformed bet is: no).
Another factor (which can also be seen in the "metaverse" business) is that how our investment/economy system makes these companies "need" [0] to always be a "growth stock" with something even bigger, even after they're already enormous quasi-monopolies.
But more, CA was created as consequence and a way to profit out of the 2012 Six4Three scandal, after Mark Zuckerberg personally designed/approved the permissive data-sharing ecosystem specifically for these use cases (as several internal mails show).
To create evidence that he didn't know about it?
It’s not about whether these companies are in the right or not, but more about how we as a society address the consequences of how their products operate.
When the media mischaracterizes this stuff it makes the public perception's of what’s going on frankly becomes ridiculous and makes it easy for corporations to dismiss detractors as kooks.
A: Yo! did we do anything wrong?
B: No. someone else messed up. we're good.
- white
- Christian
- rural
- guns
- lower and upper class
The upper class votes on taxes, so that is an easy one.
The rest are relatively easy to target.
The Democratic Party tries to capture everyone else, which is more people but hugely diverse. There’s hardly a single message (or single digit number of them) that resonates universally.
Identifying someone as Republican gives your clear signal for targeting if you want to get out the base, as Trump did.
Identifying someone as Democratic means they could care about a huge range of things, but you don’t know what.
And I don't know what "low class" means but if you're referring to socioeconomic status that doesn't match what you said either. According to Pew the bottom quintile (<36k/yr) is about 60/35 Democrat. The top quintile (215k/yr+) is about 53/46. Upper-middle ($144-215k/yr) is the only one with a Republican edge, and the other two (36-48, 48-144) are within the margin of error to 50/50.
I think of all your examples you probably have the strongest case to make with "rural" but I've met plenty of rural Dems in my life.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisan-coa...
That's not at all true. The biggest contradiction is on trade. The "business" faction is against tariffs, but the worker base was for it. Same for immigration. Business is generally for it, the worker base is against it.
… or swobu
said the french
Just because this is worded ambiguously, to clarify the "they" is Facebook. CA on the other hand was effectively the Trump's digital ad campaign.
> 2. the trump campaign did targeted marketing better (ie. targeting the base rather than the marginal voter)
This ignores that a lot of what made CA different is that they used microtargeting to discourage turnout via fake news stories.
3. "I'm skeptical that Cambridge Analytica has any data or expertise that couldn't be replicated readily by someone else"
After CA's methods and actions became public, FB massively limited what you could do via their API.
Given that "cambridge analytica" wasn't even mentioned in my comment, and "facebook" was the last subject mentioned (ie. "facebook was ..."), I don't see how anyone could have interpreted "they" to mean cambridge analytica.
>This ignores that a lot of what made CA different is that they used microtargeting to discourage turnout via fake news stories.
What does this have to do with the email? Everything you mentioned was already known before this email was released. Is the complaint that boz didn't also tell zuckerberg "btw cambridge analytica works with conservatives are are super evil"?
>After CA's methods and actions became public, FB massively limited what you could do via their API.
Was the email sent before or after they locked down the API? Also, this feels like a nitpick, eg. suppose a mass shooter killed a bunch people with an assault rifle, and then the government banned assault rifles, it would still be correct to say "anyone could bought the weapons the mass shooter used", even though it wasn't true in the present.
No, we should be up and arms about TikTok.
Of course, all that existing regulation is being undone, thanks in part to TikTok, Facebook, etc.
Newspapers were never regulated, with "the press" being specifically mentioned in the first amendment. Talk radio and broadcast TV were only regulated because the airwaves were a shared resource and therefore subject to government regulation. Cable news was never subject to the fairness doctrine.
[1] There have been other restrictions placed at various times but these other restrictions have over time been found to be contrary to the First Amendment.
What's going on is that this is a very early email, and it's being brought up during discovery on a current legal proceeding (and it's not necessarily the first time it's made public).
It's also clear to anyone that knows about the case that this isn't an accurate explanation of what Cambridge Analytica was doing and why it was causing concern. There's no mention of Facebook Apps unrelated to politics being used to collect user data, and there's no mention of the data being collected not only of the users that install these apps, but also their friends (which would lead to the revision of the Graph API and the implementation of minimum demographic controls).
So to me it reads like a document that Meta puts forward to prove that Zuckerberg:
- Had no idea at the time of what was going on
- Was making efforts to understand what was going on
I haven't checked which party used this document as an exhibit in an argument, although this might be available information, but I'd wager a guess that it will or has been used by Meta.
So if you are looking at this document as "the truth uncovered", I'd suggest to look for more nuance instead of easy answers.
What was revealed that we didn't already know?
>I'd suggest to look for more nuance instead of easy answers.
Shouldn't you be looking for said answers and presenting them, instead of chastising me for not having the answers?
Oh quit clutching your pearls, he was perfectly civil.
You're the one trying to downplay things we know weren't at all covered in full by these emails (and we've known that for quite a long time). And know about them since you're downplaying them in other comments in this thread (things like exploring the quizz apps and how Facebook knew CA had exploited the API since 2015, how CA initially said the data was for academic purposes, etc).
The latter part of your comment ("how far should we go, the invention of the printing press?") shows me you're not only crying about being corrected but being disingenuous to push a narrative based on lies. Since you're doubling down and running cover for Facebook/CA/Trump's campaign all over the thread it suggests there's more than plain stupidity and dishonesty as motives.
I'm not criticizing him for not being "civil", I'm criticizing him for criticizing me for a failing that he himself is committing.
>You're the one trying to downplay things we know weren't at all covered in full by these emails (and we've known that for quite a long time). And know about them since you're downplaying them in other comments in this thread (things like exploring the quizz apps and how Facebook knew CA had exploited the API since 2015, how CA initially said the data was for academic purposes, etc).
>The latter part of your comment ("how far should we go, the invention of the printing press?") shows me you're not only crying about being corrected but being disingenuous to push a narrative based on lies. Since you're doubling down and running cover for Facebook/CA/Trump's campaign all over the thread it suggests there's more than plain stupidity and dishonesty as motives.
You can't seem to distinguish between me questioning the importance/implication of this email with me "downplaying" facebook or cambridge analytica's ill deeds, and unlike the parent commenter, are not being civil. I think most people got the first part, otherwise they would replied with "yeah, but facebook and cambridge analytica is still evil/destroys democracy because of all the other things we know".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
If that was the advice, it seems pretty terrible.
Where's the lie?
>If that was the advice, it seems pretty terrible.
If you read either my comment or the email, you'd know what the advice was.
That said they did buy user data from a quiz app which is not really how you were supposed to use the Facebook Platform so that still wasn't really FB's fault I think
So the real issue was just people trying to blame the 2016 election (adverse to their interests if they were anti-Trump) on Zuck.
Heck to this day Ben Shapiro is one of the biggest podcasts and Tucker's show is even bigger than him so the right wing is a real force in American politics and not just propped up by FB's old newsfeed algo
Whatever it was some amazing insight is irelevant!
It was in CA's interest to have people believe they had some sort of magic algorithm.
And it was on the losing side's interest to believe that they would have won the vote if not interference by magic.
The Information Commissioner Office carried out an extensive investigation and concluded that CA were not involved at all with either of the two leave supporting organisations.
But this fact is simply ignored and undefined campaign by CA still used as the simple excuse for why they lost.