[conistonwater]

I'm loath to uncritically accept the claims of this article. It just tells you what they did and how Cambridge Analytica thought it had an impact. How do they actually know it worked? The claims are pretty strong, yet the article reads a little like marketing copy for the company. After all, a lot of things happened in the election, really a lot. Plus, the whole thing about "shadowy private company relying on subconscious decision-making" does kinda set off my bullshit alarms.

[zby]

Cory Doctorow agrees: https://boingboing.net/2017/02/01/trumps-big-data-secret-sau...

And a more thorough debunking: http://civichall.org/civicist/will-the-real-psychometric-tar...

With this quote: "I have described them as the Theranos of political data: I think they have a tremendous marketing department, coupled with a team of research scientists who provide on virtually none of those marketing promises." :)

But on a second thought. Planting this story is a masterpiece of promotion - and isn't this kind of similar to promoting a politician?

[edjw]

It looks like it's more that Cory Doctorow agrees with Cathy O'Neil https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/trump-s-s...

[IsaacL]

Yeah, I was recently thinking of applying to work at Cambridge Analytica, so I had reason to do some digging on them. Like a lot of people applying data science to problems, they're riding off hype, buzzwords and clients not fully understanding what they're doing.

One reason I didn't end up applying is, though I lean to the right politically, I'm not at all a Trump supporter and couldn't bring myself to work on getting him elected. The second reason is that, even if I was working on a non-Trump project, it wasn't clear that their product added that much value. Some media references to them agreed with this, pointing out that, e.g., their model requires campaigns to create multiple adverts targeting different personality profiles, but most don't have the resources.

[pbadg3r]

I think the primary evidence is near the end of the article:

"Kosinski has observed all of this from his office at Stanford. Following the US election, the university is in turmoil. Kosinski is responding to developments with the sharpest weapon available to a researcher: a scientific analysis. Together with his research colleague Sandra Matz, he has conducted a series of tests, which will soon be published. The initial results are alarming: The study shows the effectiveness of personality targeting by showing that marketers can attract up to 63 percent more clicks and up to 1,400 more conversions in real-life advertising campaigns on Facebook when matching products and marketing messages to consumers' personality characteristics."

[bigbugbag]

The subject of big data and the role of data brokers in elections seems to be trendy. I've seen a few pieces around on Cambridge Analytica due to Trump ending up POTU but also on the bigger players: Experian, Equifax, Epsilon, Acxiom.

Those are very real and do play a role in influencing targeted voters in elections, but the question is not about who do what and how it works. It is about how this way of campaigning is changing the way candidates convince voters ( I was gonna say democracy but there are no actual democracy anywhere right now ).

https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-...

[RodericDay]

Believing Cambridge Analytica are a bunch of geniuses doesn't only benefit CA, but also to the people that CA defeated. If Trump had a crazy amazing data science team, it means that Clinton and the "Mook Mafia" didn't mess up, they were just outplayed.

I think this whole pro-data story is incorrect. Trump's huge unpopularity right now shows that what happened this election was Clinton messing up her own campaign by religiously following data and not doing basic things like visit Wisconsin. And from the journalism end, the NYT telling readers that Clinton had an 80+% chance of winning, sending a loud and clear message: Stay home if you wish to protest vote.

Even after massive, massive predictive failures, fortune-tellers always manage to give excuses and stick around.

[mrmaximus]

"Trump's huge unpopularity right now shows..." After watching what happened with the election, I don't think it's safe to say Trump is unpopular. Sure the mainstream media and loud social media voices say so, but that looming "silent majority" are still silent. Assessing his popularity among those willing to speak only tells us how popular he is among that group.

[dashundchen]

He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.

His disapproval rating has eclipsed 50% in record time for a modern president - 8 days. 42 vs 51, approve/disapprove https://www.rt.com/usa/375715-trump-majority-disapproval-8-d...

President Obama had an approval rating twice as large following his inauguration. 84/14

Over 3 million people marched against him just two weeks ago and continue to mobilize.

I can't find any evidence that there is some silent majority supporting him. I'm more inclined to think it's a vocal minority.

[Chris2048]

> He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes

Maybe if it mattered he would have campaigned differently. You can't judge on a metric that isn't the target.

> His disapproval rating

opinion polls?

> I can't find any evidence that there is some silent majority supporting him

He won the election...

[selllikesybok]

What, do we use the Electoral Popularity College now, too?

And Trump actually got amazing positive opinion polling 6 months ago. Now that it's not in his favor, though, ignore?

And you can absolutely win an election with both minority vote share and a lack of popularity.

[Chris2048]

> Now that it's not in his favor, though, ignore?

I've never payed attention to them. They seem to be used more for the political purpose of manipulation, than for producing an innocent, yet unnecessary, prediction of results

> And you can absolutely win an election with both minority vote share and a lack of popularity.

No, you still need a certain amount of voter popularity, with the right distribution; unless you are talking about something else.

[mark_edward]

If they repeat it long enough, they hope to make it true.

He didn't even get more votes.