[xibalba]

I remain unconvinced that Cambridge Analytica had any material impact on the election. Please give me some hard evidence to the contrary. This whole scandal seems like a red herring onto which people project their a) anger about their losing candidate or b) their personal and often unsubstantiated beliefs about the "harm" they could experience due to "big data".

[rumblerock]

The Senate intelligence committee report from October is the most detailed look into their operation. In sum, you're looking at an operation across platforms (FB, Twitter, etc.), with the manpower to generate endless content and avatar accounts, with this type of data in addition to what the political campaigns already had.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

[nojvek]

how would you prove the inverse of this? i.e cambridge analytics didn't have any material impact.

I think most are basing it on the assumption that CA with the help of Facebook could target millions of americans in a personalized way and display ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate.

No way to say it's a guaranteed method, but it's as effective as bill board marketers proving their ads change people's opinions about a brand.

That's where most of the presential election fund raises go to anyway right? to reach out to people and sway their opinion?

[xibalba]

> how would you prove the inverse of this?

I don't know, but that alone isn't a convincing argument.

> ...ads that would nudge them to a certain political candidate

> ...that's where most of the presential election fund raises go to...

Perhaps. The question is, what is the effect? I would wager it is very small to nil.

[nojvek]

As nil as Coca-Cola’s billboard/tv marketing ? When I still had FB, their ads/propaganda was super convincing about Hillary and her hacked email server yada yada.

It was quite a genius marketing method to reach millions.