Data mining firm behind Trump election built psychological profiles of nearly every American voter

[applegrove]

by Brent Bambury CBC News

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-359-harvey-weinstein-a-stock-market-for-sneakers-trump-s-data-mining-the-curious-incident-more-1.4348278/data-mining-firm-behind-trump-election-built-psychological-profiles-of-nearly-every-american-voter-1.4348283

"SNIP........


"They claim to have figured out how to project our voting behavior based on our consumer behavior. So it's important for citizens to be able to understand this because it would affect our ability to understand how we're being targeted by campaigns and how the messages that we're seeing on Facebook and television are being directed at us to manipulate us."

"I think it is a matter of the relationship between privacy and democracy."
        

Modelling psychographics

Earlier this year, David Carroll requested his profile from Cambridge Analytica and eventually received a document that he says was incomplete but accurate.

   
.....
   

"It characterizes me as a very unlikely Republican and with a high propensity to participate in the election. And they had ranked 10 political issues in order of importance, somehow."



........SNIP"

[NightWatcher]

1. And you thought those "Which superhero are you" quizzes were funny.

How often to we volunteer information about ourselves?

Shit I do it here all the time. All of our info gets run through algorithms and predicts what we'll think and buy.

I looked up my used cars value and now I get car ads all over the place online. We've been decoded, reprogrammed, and monetized. We're a predictable consumer.

[sharedvalues]

2. Worse is that they used Facebook to target LIES to selected individual voters

They could use Facebook Custom Audiences to identify ANY person. And then show them a "dark ad", with non-public contents, that could well be a complete lie.

Our democracy cannot survive if this is possible.

[MFM008]

3. they dont want to read mine

and my opinion of republicans, they especially dont want to read my opinion of the maggot in chief.

[Loki Liesmith]

4. They are overrated

I know their work. Their "special sauce" is garbage. They got lucky.

[BigmanPigman]

5. The former head of the CIA John Brennan told a MSNBC reporter

Last edited Thu Oct 19, 2017, 12:57 AM - Edit history (1)

(I think it was Andrea Mitchell) that he is almost certain that Russia couldn't have targeted the voters in states like Wisconsin as well as they did without the help of Americans. He hasn't been called by Mueller to get an interview so far.

[Initech]

6. This is why too much data mining is dangerous.

And the last thing we need to do is give them more data. If they did this in 2016, what's to stop them in 2018, 2020 and beyond?

[applegrove]

7. Maybe we should all visit the NRA website every time we log onto our computers?

Till electiin time.

[ProudLib72]

8. I am glad you posted this

A few weeks ago I was hesitating over a post I wanted to make about oversight for these large data analytics companies, but now seems the perfect time to pose the question: Does any oversight exist? If so, are there actual laws, or is it just maintaining good "ethical" policy?

I know this might seem like a knee jerk reaction to something that has been going on for... well how long have we been selling things? However, the data mining capabilities have gone off the chart. This isn't someone with a click counter standing at the entrance to the supermarket; this is hypercubes containing every piece of data imaginable that can be retrieved and dissected using every metric imaginable.

[applegrove]

9. I know. It is scary.

[wasupaloopa]

10. One mailing from the DNC if responded to

has all that information.

Hack the DNC voter list and voter data would give you all you want in one effort.

[hamsterjill]

11. Im just not sure how much of this stuff I really believe is effective.

Was the election tampered with? Absolutely, but I believe in a more concrete way.

Are there really that many American voters who can be persuaded one way or the other by ads and stories on a website? They can’t think for themselves? If true...and it certainly can be true, it’s scarier than shit.

Because those types of people could be persuaded to do anything.

[xor]

12. This stuff is inevitable.

Not even sure how to avoid it short of completely disconnecting from society. But then again, even that would be used to build a profile on us.