Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindf**k tool

[Phil1111 1,182]

Cambridge Analytica. This sounds like a class action lawsuit.

For more than a year we’ve been investigating Cambridge Analytica and its links to the Brexit Leave campaign in the UK and Team Trump in the US presidential election. Now, 28-year-old Christopher Wylie goes on the record to discuss his role in hijacking the profiles of millions of Facebook users in order to target the US electorate
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump

[BIGUN 1,486]

Wow. Great journalism.

And, people wonder why I'm not on social media.
Well, except here and we were here long before the term "social media" existed (I think).

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[ryoder 1,590]

I read the story yesterday.
Really disturbing.

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

Apparently the British authorities couldn't find a judge to raid their offices tonight, so they are being raided first thing in the morning.

Apparently Facebook staff have been in their offices all night. Wonder how quickly they can feed all their hard drives through shredders.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

Nix:

The Republicans asked 3 questions, 5 minutes, done.
The Democrats asked two hours of questions.

[billvon 3,116]

>The Republicans asked 3 questions, 5 minutes, done.

"Did you do anything bad?"
"No."
"Are you sure? You really didn't do anything bad?"
"Nope."
"OK, good enough for me. We are done here."

From the Guardian's report on the CA matter:

==========================
There are other dramatic documents in Wylie’s stash, including a pitch made by Cambridge Analytica to Lukoil, Russia’s second biggest oil producer. In an email dated 17 July 2014, about the US presidential primaries, Nix wrote to Wylie: “We have been asked to write a memo to Lukoil (the Russian oil and gas company) to explain to them how our services are going to apply to the petroleum business. Nix said that “they understand behavioural microtargeting in the context of elections” but that they were “failing to make the connection between voters and their consumers”. The work, he said, would be “shared with the CEO of the business”, a former Soviet oil minister and associate of Putin, Vagit Alekperov.

“It didn’t make any sense to me,” says Wylie. “I didn’t understand either the email or the pitch presentation we did. Why would a Russian oil company want to target information on American voters?”

Mueller’s investigation traces the first stages of the Russian operation to disrupt the 2016 US election back to 2014, when the Russian state made what appears to be its first concerted efforts to harness the power of America’s social media platforms, including Facebook. And it was in late summer of the same year that Cambridge Analytica presented the Russian oil company with an outline of its datasets, capabilities and methodology. The presentation had little to do with “consumers”. Instead, documents show it focused on election disruption techniques. The first slide illustrates how a “rumour campaign” spread fear in the 2007 Nigerian election – in which the company worked – by spreading the idea that the “election would be rigged”. The final slide, branded with Lukoil’s logo and that of SCL Group and SCL Elections, headlines its “deliverables”: “psychographic messaging”.

Lukoil is a private company, but its CEO, Alekperov, answers to Putin, and it’s been used as a vehicle of Russian influence in Europe and elsewhere – including in the Czech Republic, where in 2016 it was revealed that an adviser to the strongly pro-Russian Czech president was being paid by the company.
==============================

[Phil1111 1,182]

SkyDekker

Apparently the British authorities couldn't find a judge to raid their offices tonight, so they are being raided first thing in the morning.

Apparently Facebook staff have been in their offices all night. Wonder how quickly they can feed all their hard drives through shredders.

Facebook security chief quits amid conflicts with executives
Facebook’s chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, will leave the company after disagreements over how the social network should deal with its role in spreading disinformation, The New York Times reported, citing current and former employees briefed on the matter.

Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, according to current and former employees who asked not to be identified.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/03/19/facebook-security-chief-said-leave-after-clashes-over-disinformation/gL8FFXEnZES9wiV1Ats4kI/story.html

Mark Zuckerberg is ‘working around the clock’ on the Cambridge Analytica controversy, Facebook says
And Sheryl Sandberg is too
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17144796/facebook-cambridge-analytica-crisis-mark-zuckerberg

[kallend 2,148]

"Trump’s election consultants filmed saying they use bribes and sex workers to entrap politicians"

www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation

Josef Goebbels would be proud.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[DJL 235]

kallend

"Trump’s election consultants filmed saying they use bribes and sex workers to entrap politicians"

www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation

Josef Goebbels would be proud.

For full disclosure, is this the actual person involved in Trump's campaign or is some guy from another sector. We've seen plenty of videos of employees who's work has nothing to do with a particular subject matter but they're taking as the example that proves the point. Recent examples have been NASA employees who don't believe in global warming or network employees who say their network makes up things.

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[SkyDekker 1,465]

DJL

***
"Trump’s election consultants filmed saying they use bribes and sex workers to entrap politicians"

www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation

Josef Goebbels would be proud.

For full disclosure, is this the actual person involved in Trump's campaign or is some guy from another sector. We've seen plenty of videos of employees who's work has nothing to do with a particular subject matter but they're taking as the example that proves the point. Recent examples have been NASA employees who don't believe in global warming or network employees who say their network makes up things.

My understanding is that he is the CEO. in the first segment the VP or SVP said that they do not do such things, in a subsequent email, the CEO himself plainly says that they do and even where they get the girls from.

[ryoder 1,590]

Oh man, I forgot about this.
Note the date: Dec 7, 2016
But it looks like it could have been made this past week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pFX2P7JLwA

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[gowlerk 2,275]

ryoder

Oh man, I forgot about this.
Note the date: Dec 7, 2016
But it looks like it could have been made this past week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pFX2P7JLwA

So, is it ironic that I just watched that. On YouTube? And I don't mean rushmc "ironic"!

Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

[Phil1111 1,182]

Facebook collected phone call, text message data: report
Facebook collected users' phone call and text message data for two years, according to a report from Ars Technica.

The news outlet cites various Facebook users who discovered the social media platform scraped metadata from their Android smartphones.

The data reported included the names of contacts, phone numbers, call lengths, and SMS and MMS metadata.

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/380247-facebook-collected-phone-call-text-message-data-report

[wmw999 2,588]

We users of systems are not customers, we are commodities to be exploited. Companies do not think they owe us respect or agency, they just give us the least amount of either to keep doing their business.

Business is no longer to serve the customer, but instead the owner or stockholder. And this approach is what’s wrong with our implementation of capitalism. I just don’t think Adam Smith envisioned it that way.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[gowlerk 2,275]

Quote

Business is no longer to serve the customer, but instead the owner or stockholder. And this approach is what’s wrong with our implementation of capitalism. I just don’t think Adam Smith envisioned it that way.

I'm going to disagree with Wendy. (rare event) Business has always been done this way, and capitalism can only work this way. It is up to the customer to choose wisely.

Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

[Phil1111 1,182]

gowlerk

Quote

Business is no longer to serve the customer, but instead the owner or stockholder. And this approach is what’s wrong with our implementation of capitalism. I just don’t think Adam Smith envisioned it that way.

I'm going to disagree with Wendy. (rare event) Business has always been done this way, and capitalism can only work this way. It is up to the customer to choose wisely.

I have to side with Wendy. When you buy, consume or otherwise consume a product there are mutual expectations in the transaction. Personal exploitation is not one of them.

Imagine addictive food agents placed in a candy bar. Trackers in your cell phone to sell your travel history to third parties. Recording devices in new cars to pass your conversations onto third parties.

This Is So Much Bigger Than Facebook
Data misuse is a feature, not a bug—and it’s plaguing our entire culture.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/data-misuse-bigger-than-facebook/556310/

If you substituted the state(government) for facebook. Civil war would break out.

Certainly a search warrant is required to get personal phone numbers, calls, personal data, names of friends, there phone numbers, their browsing history, etc.

[DJL 235]

Things like FB allow a free service in order to data mine your life. This should be not surprise to anyone. That doesn't make it any more or less ethical and your data needs to be used for ethical purposes. I think everyone on facebook or what has a phone has been prompted to import their contacts or friend list one way or the other and never read the EUL. None of this should be any surprise.

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[billvon 3,116]

>When you buy, consume or otherwise consume a product there are mutual expectations
>in the transaction.

Agreed. And if you were buying a candy bar, the transaction is simple and well-understood - you get a candy bar and they get some money.

In the case of Facebook, you get a place to post pictures, comments and stories and a conduit to see what your friends post. What do they get?

It's important to understand that last question in any transaction (not just Facebook.) All "free" services get something from you, whether it's your attention (i.e. ads) your personal info (i.e. ads again and shopping habits) or something else of value. Make sure you are OK with what the "free" service costs before you avail yourself of it.

[Phil1111 1,182]

billvon

>When you buy, consume or otherwise consume a product there are mutual expectations
>in the transaction.

Agreed. And if you were buying a candy bar, the transaction is simple and well-understood - you get a candy bar and they get some money.

In the case of Facebook, you get a place to post pictures, comments and stories and a conduit to see what your friends post. What do they get?

It's important to understand that last question in any transaction (not just Facebook.) All "free" services get something from you, whether it's your attention (i.e. ads) your personal info (i.e. ads again and shopping habits) or something else of value. Make sure you are OK with what the "free" service costs before you avail yourself of it.

Agree. I think everyone understands that there is advertising as a cost. Sales of psychological profiles of the user and anyone associating with them to third parties is an issue.

"The turmoil has blown about $90 billion of market value out of Facebook stock in the past 10 days, after reports that Cambridge Analytica, the data-analysis company that helped with President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, kept data from 50 million users even after telling Facebook it had destroyed the information. The shares dropped 2.4 percent to $155.55 at 12:49 p.m. in New York, extending this year’s decline to 12 percent, the fifth-worst performance among 70 companies in the S&P 500 Information Technology Index."
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/2018/03/26/facebook-turns-toxic-for-some-esg-funds-as-shares-sink-again

To date a $90 billion US dollar issue.

[billvon 3,116]

>To date a $90 billion US dollar issue.

To cover the entire issue of the sale of personal information (in the form of market preferences) you'd need way more than $90 billion. Consumer data alone - i.e. generalized marketing data - is a $300 billion industry, for example.

This is something that's been going on for decades; computers merely allow collection of more information and allow better processing of the results. It's this more accurate parsing of a larger amount of information that's allowed companies to build such detailed pictures of people's buying habits compared to say 30 years ago, where tracking was more direct and easy to understand.

It's also hard to regulate, since the data is freely available and people give it willingly. And a lot of it is actually useful to consumers - it avoids the 20something single guy having to wade through junk mail and email about tampons, baby clothes and cosmetics.

I think one thing that would help are regulations that require clearer notifications of what sort of data your device is gathering. Most people click "OK" when their new Wal-Mart app asks "can we use your location data" thinking that that will help the app locate the Wal-Mart closest to them - when in fact it's often used to pinpoint where you go in the store, what displays you stop in front of, how long you spend there and where/when you check out (so they can correlate your habits with a credit card number.) As now, a great many people will still click "OK" even if the permission request is more detailed, but at least people would be better aware of where their data is going.

[jcd11235 0]

billvon

>When you buy, consume or otherwise consume a product there are mutual expectations
>in the transaction.

Agreed. And if you were buying a candy bar, the transaction is simple and well-understood - you get a candy bar and they get some money.

In the case of Facebook, you get a place to post pictures, comments and stories and a conduit to see what your friends post. What do they get?

It's important to understand that last question in any transaction (not just Facebook.) All "free" services get something from you, whether it's your attention (i.e. ads) your personal info (i.e. ads again and shopping habits) or something else of value. Make sure you are OK with what the "free" service costs before you avail yourself of it.

All true

We should keep in mind that not all "personal" data collection is for nefarious purposes. I'll offer as an example the shoppers cards many grocery chains require for sale prices. They basically want to collect real world shopping histories so that they can tweak product location in the store a effective combinations to run on sale. Most don't even require registering the card in any way; they aren't interested in whose shopping history it is. They aren't trying to exploit anyone; they're try to offer their goods & services in a manner that adds the most value to the customer.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

jcd11235

All true

We should keep in mind that not all "personal" data collection is for nefarious purposes. I'll offer as an example the shoppers cards many grocery chains require for sale prices. They basically want to collect real world shopping histories so that they can tweak product location in the store a effective combinations to run on sale. Most don't even require registering the card in any way; they aren't interested in whose shopping history it is. They aren't trying to exploit anyone; they're try to offer their goods & services in a manner that adds the most value to the customer.

Well, yes and no.

Some of them collect the data on what you buy, and then offer discounts related to that.

For example, my grocery store sends me coupons every month or so. They are based on my prior purchases (recorded by my card) and are usually for stuff I don't buy, but that their data says they can induce me to try with the coupon (and in theory, buy at full price in the future). Maybe a different brand of what I already buy, or a different version. For example, I got a coupon for "Powerade Zero" (sugar free sports drink), when I regularly buy the sugared version of it.

I don't consider that 'nefarious', but it's a bit intrusive. Not enough to bother me (or give me any incentive to get a new card with either no personal data or incorrect data).

I'm not sure if I consider that "offering the most value to the consumer" or 'getting the maximum dollars out of the consumer'.

A similar technique is the 'smart coupon dispenser' at the checkout. It takes note of what you purchase and prints out coupons for that.
One that I always found amusing was when I bought a 6 pack of single serving V-8 juice, I would often get a "discount off purchase of next 6-pack". If I used that coupon, I'd get a "discount off purchase of 2 6-packs." If I used that coupon, I'd get a "discount off purchase of 3 6-packs.
I kept getting coupons, but the effective value dropped as I used them.

My sister's husband is in digital marketing, and he has lots of opinions on this sort of stuff. He publishes some of them every now and then.
It's really a fascinating area.

"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

[jcd11235 0]

wolfriverjoe

I'm not sure if I consider that "offering the most value to the consumer" or 'getting the maximum dollars out of the consumer'.

I used grocery stores as an example because most of them are very low margin, 1-3%. They rely on repeat business. It works, because everybody has to eat. However, in most places there is competition, often with little distinguishing differences. The number one goal is to bring you back next week, not to get you to buy any particular item.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[billvon 3,116]

>We should keep in mind that not all "personal" data collection is for nefarious purposes.

Indeed, 99.9% of it isn't. It's that .1% that's problematic.

>They basically want to collect real world shopping histories so that they can tweak
>product location in the store a effective combinations to run on sale.

And feed that back to their suppliers so they can say "no one is buying your dumb toy! They don't even _look_ at it! Make it cheaper or we are going to drop it."

And sell that information to other retailers so they can better target their audience.

And use that to make social media more attractive to users. "Hey, you're in the whiskey section! Click here to see the ten craziest things people have done with whiskey. And you won't believe this one simple trick to make the best whiskey drinks ever."

And use that to sell to online retailers to better sell stuff. "I have a list of people who spent more than five minutes in the red wine section and then spent over $100 on wine. 357,000 names! Who wants it? Only $200."

And use that in staffing decisions. "No one is ever in the deli section after 8pm. The fish guy can cover it on second shift."

And use as a tool for earned advertisement. "Millennials are flocking to fishing stores in record numbers! Story tonight at 11."

All of that isn't that odious or exploitative, even if it's a little creepy. Unless you are the deli guy or a recovering alcoholic of course.

[ryoder 1,590]

"The Great Hack" on Netflix, released 2019-07-24.

The story of Cambridge Analytica: