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by gadders 1938 days ago
The usual lazy analysis asking that some wise people define what is fit for the proles to read.

Can't even get it's basic facts right:

"The notion that online disinformation can produce real-world changes in behavior gained public attention with the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the data of 87 million Facebook users were secretly harvested and used for political advertising in the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election (Isaak & Hanna, 2018)."

Er, no, Cambridge Analytica weren't involved in Brexit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54457407

1 comments

The guardian article about the same ICO report [1] points out that it wsa AggregateIQ that worked with Vote Leave. For the purposes of this article, this is a distinction without a difference.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/07/cambridge-an...

Not quite:

"One problem with the Vote Leave / AIQ / Cambridge Analytica theory floated by Wylie was that while AIQ did the actual ad-buying – the company’s speciality – its actual 'data science' was done by a different firm, ASI Data Science (now rebranded as Faculty), a low-profile company that had previously worked with the Home Office on tracking online extremism on Facebook, among other clients.

The other was that no-one could produce any evidence to suggest Cambridge Analytica and Aggregate IQ were anything other than separate companies who had seen some personnel overlap, and who had worked together."

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/were-there-any-links-bet...

"Essentially it was set up as a Canadian entity for people who wanted to work on SCL projects who didn’t want to move to London. That’s how AIQ got started: originally to service SCL and Cambridge Analytica projects,” said Wylie (who was research director for SCL the parent company of CA).

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/24/aggregateiq-...

Wylie isn't the most credible witness. He got sued by Cambridge Analytica for using their IP to start up a rival company.

Regardless, this still doesn't prove the original report was correct.