Facebook recently suspended Cambridge Analytica and it’s parent company, Strategic Communications Laboratory (SCL) for violating its data privacy policy. Why would they do this? Facebook says they illegally shared massive amounts of data to a third party, supposed academic data Facebook aleges should have been deleted. So what do these companies do? From NBC news
Cambridge Analytica says it uses "behavioral microtargeting," or combining analysis of people’s personalities with demographics, to predict and influence mass behavior. It says it has data on 220 million Americans, two thirds of the U.S. population.
Very scary stuff.
Even scarier is who is behind these companies. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former henchmen and then Chairman of Breitbart and billionaire Republican donor, Robert Mercer. Robert Mercer and his hedge fund revolutionized trading using AI and machine translation. He became a billionaire by firing traditional hedge fund managers and hiring programmers to write algorithms instead. These two Alt-right politicos sunk their teeth into 24 year old genius Christopher Wylie, a liberal political analyst with a revolutionary idea to use big data to influence elections
Mr. Wylie is not happy with the role he played. It looks like the self described vegan, gay and liberal young man is going to do his best to undo as much damage as he can and testify against his former employer. I would expect he would have some damning evidence to present at an impeachment hearing. One of the biggest ironies to this story is Wylies rejection by the liberal political machine of which he was working for at the time the idea struck him. How different the world might be had they listened.
From an outstanding must read article in the Guardian by Carole Cadwalladr
Russia, Facebook, Trump, Mercer, Bannon, Brexit. Every one of these threads runs through Cambridge Analytica. Even in the past few weeks, it seems as if the understanding of Facebook’s role has broadened and deepened. The Mueller indictments were part of that, but Paul-Olivier Dehaye – a data expert and academic based in Switzerland, who published some of the first research into Cambridge Analytica’s processes – says it’s become increasingly apparent that Facebook is “abusive by design”. If there is evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it will be in the platform’s data flows, he says. And Wylie’s revelations only move it on again.
Hunter S. Thompson would say the screwheads are winning, what do you think? How do you even begin to put the toothpaste back in the tube? The damage has already been done. Every political campaign must take notice of this powerful weapon. Governments must recognize their vulnerabilities to the new age of emerging information technologies. How are we going to protect the continuity and trust of any election going forward? Who will police the impact of social media manipulation on elections? Not Facebook
Let Me know what you think in the comments below
Photo credit: Guardian.com
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