Overview: Politics

The current Trump campaign, on the record, said they didn't do #psychographic profiling. "Well, why do I have one in my file? It works as a suppression system.., to subvert the will of the people"

Tours election technology from 2008 to 2018 "and beyond".2008: Obama integrated e-mail, cell phones and websites to both convey the candidate’s message and enable his supporters to connect and self-organize - supporting grassroots community. MyBarackObama allowed users to form groups, raise money, organise events, get info on local vote…

The president’s reelection campaign ... multimillion-dollar ad blitz ... shaping Americans’ understanding of ... impeachment ... micro-targeted ads ... portraying Trump as a heroic reformer ... while Democrats plotted a coup... An alternate information ecosystem was taking shape ... I wanted to see it from the inside...I was surprised by the effec…

Facebook deliberately broke privacy and competition law and should urgently be subject to statutory regulation, according to a devastating parliamentary report...The Cambridge Analytica scandal was facilitated by Facebook’s policies

Cambridge Analytica conducted data research for one of the leading Brexit campaign groups and then misled the public and MPs over the work ... the work with Leave.EU involved analysis of data provided by Ukip... Nix has repeatedly denied there was any involvement... "We have not undertaken any paid or unpaid work for them, OK?”... Leave.EU did no…

The episode fits an established pattern of sloppiness towards privacy, tolerance of inaccuracy and reluctance to admit mistakes... the chances of a regulatory backlash are growing... Facebook needs a full, independent examination of its approach to content, privacy and data... role in the 2016 election and the Brexit referendum... Facebook and o…

Wylie ... the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating “Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindfuck tool”.... In 2014 Steve Bannon ... was Wylie’s boss. And Robert Mercer... Republican donor, was Cambridge Analytica’s investor... to bring big data and social media to an established military methodology – “information operations” – then t…

Cambridge Analytica (part of SCL Group Ltd.) constructed a significant data set based on US voter rolls... Some respected observers argue the firm’s psychographic profiling methodologies may not be nearly as potent as its sales pitch suggests... the firm’s psychographic practices remain as unreviewable as the campaign’s voter advertising. Journal…

interviews ...suggest that its psychological approach was not actually used by the Trump campaign and, furthermore, the company has never provided evidence that it even works.

A work in progress from an upcoming eponymous post. Another experiment with the enewsletter format: some initial thoughts on this seemingly intractable problem, with some of the source materials I’m studying.