S
Smarty
Guest
There have been several articles in the past year about Cambridge Analytica and how they are the tool of psychological warfare, but none have been so in-depth as the effort made by the joint operation of The Guardian and The Observer to lay it bare. It helps that a certain key employee is now whistle blower.
Here's a brief run-down:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/17/facebook-cambridge-analytica-kogan-data-algorithm
And here an in-depth article with the whistle blower who worked for CA:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...er-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump
To summarize, CA (heavily invested by billionaire Mercer) have been harvesting and analyzing about 50 million US accounts for likes, way past the 30-something thousand they had clearance for from FB "for research purposes" (the data was collected from a panel who consented in participation, but all their friend connections have also been data mined without anyone's approval). By assessing the likes they were able to build up very detailed personal profiles, and this data has subsequently been used for personally targeted add campaigns of yet unknown scales. For the US elections, key states were targeted (but make no mistake, they have collected data well beyond them) and for Brexit, they are expected to have tilted the opinion in favor of Leave. I would not be surprised if elections elsewhere have also been victim - Cambridge Analytics is a commercial enterprise and happy to sell to whomever is buying.
Facebook was pivotal in this plot - they have provided the platform for data collection as well as targeted advertising, although you could argue that this was without their explicit consent. However, they should not be given a free pass - they have consistently downplayed their role again and again, and they have failed to meet any obligations concerning reporting data breaches to their customers. They knew, and did not care.
I know there are some conspiracy cranks on this forum, but man, this mind control scheme must have all your senses tingling.
There is enough reason to believe that the 'dark ads' are an effective persuasion method:
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ds-can-swing-opinions-politics-research-shows
FB have taken the step of throwing CA from their platform (last week, instead of when it was happening). The whistle blower wants to start undoing the damage somehow, and, well, blowing the whistle was his first step.
The whole story just wants to make me unplug from anything social media in disgust. I somewhat feel lucky that I hardly did anything more on FB than subscribing, and now I think there is little more to do than suspend the entire account. But I'm not as dependent on it for my social contacts as others, and the gap may be more difficult to bridge for those invested a lot of time and care into upholding relations in it.
So, the question - what are you going to do? Would you ditch Facebook, or other susceptible platforms like YouTube or Twitter, or stay? Do you even care? Do you see ways to get rid of these hive mind kind of activities on the net? Or do you think you can withstand the add pressure, or see through it?
Here's a brief run-down:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/17/facebook-cambridge-analytica-kogan-data-algorithm
And here an in-depth article with the whistle blower who worked for CA:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...er-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump
To summarize, CA (heavily invested by billionaire Mercer) have been harvesting and analyzing about 50 million US accounts for likes, way past the 30-something thousand they had clearance for from FB "for research purposes" (the data was collected from a panel who consented in participation, but all their friend connections have also been data mined without anyone's approval). By assessing the likes they were able to build up very detailed personal profiles, and this data has subsequently been used for personally targeted add campaigns of yet unknown scales. For the US elections, key states were targeted (but make no mistake, they have collected data well beyond them) and for Brexit, they are expected to have tilted the opinion in favor of Leave. I would not be surprised if elections elsewhere have also been victim - Cambridge Analytics is a commercial enterprise and happy to sell to whomever is buying.
Facebook was pivotal in this plot - they have provided the platform for data collection as well as targeted advertising, although you could argue that this was without their explicit consent. However, they should not be given a free pass - they have consistently downplayed their role again and again, and they have failed to meet any obligations concerning reporting data breaches to their customers. They knew, and did not care.
I know there are some conspiracy cranks on this forum, but man, this mind control scheme must have all your senses tingling.
There is enough reason to believe that the 'dark ads' are an effective persuasion method:
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ds-can-swing-opinions-politics-research-shows
FB have taken the step of throwing CA from their platform (last week, instead of when it was happening). The whistle blower wants to start undoing the damage somehow, and, well, blowing the whistle was his first step.
The whole story just wants to make me unplug from anything social media in disgust. I somewhat feel lucky that I hardly did anything more on FB than subscribing, and now I think there is little more to do than suspend the entire account. But I'm not as dependent on it for my social contacts as others, and the gap may be more difficult to bridge for those invested a lot of time and care into upholding relations in it.
So, the question - what are you going to do? Would you ditch Facebook, or other susceptible platforms like YouTube or Twitter, or stay? Do you even care? Do you see ways to get rid of these hive mind kind of activities on the net? Or do you think you can withstand the add pressure, or see through it?
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