[ananonymoususer]

Why is it that the Cambridge Analytica "hack" is even an issue? The reason is because the data was used to get an "evil" republican elected. The exact same tactics were used to get Obama elected, and nobody seems to be complaining.

[SyneRyder]

Indeed, the system Harper Reed built for the 2012 Obama campaign was widely hailed at the time for how it personalized campaigns to each individual voter, by building a big data store about every voter in the US:

"Those apps include sophisticated analytics programs like Dreamcatcher, a tool developed to "microtarget" voters based on sentiments within text."

"All of the data collected through various volunteer interactions and other outreach found its way into Narwhal's data store, where it could be mined for other purposes. Much of the data was streamed into Dreamcatcher and into a Vertica columnar database cluster used by the analytics team for deep dives into the data."

[1] from Ars Technica: Built to win: Deep inside Obama’s campaign tech https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/built...

[tunesmith]

This seems to over-abstract the issue by treating the content of each campaign as irrelevant.

[daleco]

It’s harder to manipulate millions of people rather than 70k.

You’re right, it was also used to get Obama elected. It’s still wrong.

[choppaface]

Though Obama won the popular vote, too, by 8% and 4%, respectively. Obama would still be elected under these changes.