[mirimir]

The concern here isn't about who won, in the UK or the US. The concern is about personalized propaganda. There's nothing new about propaganda. There's nothing new about astroturfing. There's nothing new about targeted advertising. What's new is how effectively Cambridge Analytics combined and leveraged them.

[gydfi]

Then why is all the discussion in terms of who did win? People who don't like the result are "blaming" this phenomenon, without regard for the fact that this is something that everyone is presumably doing.

When Obama won, I seem to remember a lot of people around here praising the success of his social media strategy.

[mirimir]

Yes, after Obama won, there was talk of using his social network to help drive his agenda. That didn't work out so well, I think. But the Brexit and Trump teams did a far better job of it.

So yes, we have an arms race, and those with the best AI will become the power brokers. I like the analogy to high-frequency trading. Neither market valuation nor democratic process are very meaningful when driven by machine learning.