Trump/Russia/SDNY investigation

@Brwned it doesn't need to be hugely influential. Small margins, little nudges here and there, it makes a difference. It's easily observable on social media and in meme culture...

It's a problem that needs to be taken seriously imo, there are a lot of people that are less enlightened than yourself who are vulnerable to things like this. Anecdotally I know people who seem to go with whatever is trending on social media just because. It'll only get worse if we downplay/ignore it as the software will be honed and the AI will improve.

That's my take anyway...
 
Brwned said:
The real story is about your man Kogan sharing the data to a 3rd party, violating Facebook's privacy regulations and possibly breaking the law. The fact he's got Russian links does seem like quite an incredible coincidence...

It's definitely a concern how little Facebook care about ensuring their data is used according to their regulations. But the power of that data is grossly exaggerated at this stage.
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Yup and I suspect little will be done to address it. Facebook are close to becoming complicit....
 
niMic said:
Hang on... since when have you been back?

Were you ever gone?

Is this the Matrix?
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I think of it more as a kind of purgatory...

afrocentricity said:
@Brwned it doesn't need to be hugely influential. Small margins, little nudges here and there, it makes a difference. It's easily observable on social media and in meme culture...

It's a problem that needs to be taken seriously imo, there are a lot of people that are less enlightened than yourself who are vulnerable to things like this. Anecdotally I know people who seem to go with whatever is trending on social media just because. It'll only get worse if we downplay/ignore it as the software will be honed and the AI will improve.

That's my take anyway...
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I agree it doesn't need to be hugely influential when the margins of the elections defeat were so small. Ultimately though, if the core outputs of the data modelling are fundamentally flawed - as my test results seemed to suggest - then it's not much different to any other political advertising. You're targeting it at specific people, but what you know about those people is in some cases simply made up, and the messages targeted at that person is then equally as useless as any other advertising through mass media...it's just smaller and cheaper. It is potentially very dangerous but we are nowhere near that stage yet, based on the results of that API and the discussions that happen in my industry.

We should definitely implement regulations to protect against that possibility though! Things like GDPR in Europe are a small step in the right direction.
 
Brwned said:
I think of it more as a kind of purgatory...

I agree it doesn't need to be hugely influential when the margins of the elections defeat were so small. Ultimately though, if the core outputs of the data modelling are fundamentally flawed - as my test results seemed to suggest - then it's not much different to any other political advertising. You're targeting it at specific people, but what you know about those people is in some cases simply made up, and the messages targeted at that person is then equally as useless as any other advertising through mass media...it's just smaller and cheaper. It is potentially very dangerous but we are nowhere near that stage yet, based on the results of that API and the discussions that happen in my industry.

We should definitely implement regulations to protect against that possibility though! Things like GDPR in Europe are a small step in the right direction.
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You’re basing your scepticism on a single case, your own. You know why anecdotal evidence is worthless.
 
Kentonio said:
You’re basing your scepticism on a single case, your own. You know why anecdotal evidence is worthless.
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No I'm basing it on working for a company that is paid millions to do the kind of things CA talk about doing, and seeing that invested in accumulating data sources, building tools to analyse those data sources and disseminating the results. It's not my experience but the experience of experts throughout that particular supply chain. At this stage neither the infrastructure nor the psychological understanding is there. The only reason people think otherwise is because people like Alexander Nix make money off bullshit and because fear helps sell newspapers. It is propaganda.

I just decided to try out their particular model and show the results. When you have two instruments from the same organisation giving you fundamentally opposing answers from the same "data point", you can say, without question, one of those two tools doesn't work as it is claimed to. It is a cut-and-dry situation. I'm not disputing whether the social media analysis gave an accurate assessment of my character, I'm disputing the validity of the methodology at its core and the claims made around it. There's quite a good argument to be made that neither the social media analysis nor the questionnaire work, in truth. The fundamental principles of either aren't exactly undisputed.
 
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Brwned said:
Yeah, it's hardly surprising given what we know about Cambridge Analytica. Lots of bluster.

Using social media data to build personality profiles and send targeted messages based on those profiles has been done at scale for years. The fact it was used in political messaging makes it seem more nefarious, but the kind of "regulated" political messaging that exists in all other media is obscene as it is. The theory underpinning the political messaging is the same across all media - social media is just a new iteration of it, not a new dimension like lots of people associated with Cambridge Analytica claimed at one point or another.

The only difference with social media is that it's more "targeted", but there's not a whole lot of evidence that this is actually more effective. And there's lots of questions about the validity of using social media likes and comments to build out a remotely useful picture of a person. The vast majority of people don't use social media in a way that tells people much about their values and their emotional triggers in a political context. It's a lot of guesstimating. We do a lot of the same guesstimating in my office. So this story about a "powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box" isn't much of a story, because everyone's doing it and most of it doesn't do what it claims to.

The real story is about your man Kogan sharing the data to a 3rd party, violating Facebook's privacy regulations and possibly breaking the law. The fact he's got Russian links does seem like quite an incredible coincidence...



It's definitely a concern how little Facebook care about ensuring their data is used according to their regulations. But the power of that data is grossly exaggerated at this stage.
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Exactly. There is nothing groundbreaking or new here. These kinds of companies/businesses are commonplace in the age of social media. What scares me more than anything is how hard the media is trying to spin this article to fit the left's agenda. This echo chamber style rhetoric achieves nothing and will only lead us back to where we started without never having addressed the issues that need attention.
 
I'm struggling to grasp the point you two are making, do you think this stuff is a red herring? Unimportant?
 
I don't understand why exactly the whole Cambridge Analytica thing has boiled up again? There was a huge media wave about it shortly after Trump won but than people slowly started to put it into perspective and it turned out they were mostly a much self-promoted PR stunt trying to convince the world that they had created a monster influencing people en masse.
http://littleatoms.com/news-science/donald-trump-didnt-win-election-through-facebook

I haven't followed the recent developments. So why are they suddenly a topic again?
 
afrocentricity said:
I'm struggling to grasp the point you two are making, do you think this stuff is a red herring? Unimportant?
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It's important from a data protection perspective but not from a political perspective, in my view. The data they used is just as likely to have harmed as it is to have helped. It is a potential long-term concern but we're a long way away from that. The article Kasper shared made that point in a much clearer way:
So if you step right back and look at all this, what do we see? We see a data science firm with Steve Bannon on the board, bigly claims about its powers, whose exact methodology is unclear to us. We see a candidate, Donald Trump, who used the same successful strategy right the way through his campaign whether he was employing Cambridge Analytica or a random dude with HTML skills. We have another candidate, Ted Cruz, who used the same firm and tanked. We have another candidate, Hillary Clinton, who used something very similar to Cambridge Analytica and also lost.

How exactly do you turn all that into the story of an unstoppable data science behemoth?
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Kasper said:
I don't understand why exactly the whole Cambridge Analytica thing has boiled up again? There was a huge media wave about it shortly after Trump won but than people slowly started to put it into perspective and it turned out they were mostly a much self-promoted PR stunt trying to convince the world that they had created a monster influencing people en masse.
http://littleatoms.com/news-science/donald-trump-didnt-win-election-through-facebook

I haven't followed the recent developments. So why are they suddenly a topic again?
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The Facebook data that was a fundamental component of their value proposition was used unethically and possibly illegally. A university lecturer (who happens to work in St Petersburg...) obtained the data for research purposes, and then sold it into Cambridge Analytica for commercial purposes, fundamentally violating Facebook's explicit terms of use. Throughout this time they've repeatedly claimed they didn't use such data but a whistleblower's came out and provided substantial evidence to the contrary.
Kogan, who has previously unreported links to a Russian university and took Russian grants for research, had a licence from Facebook to collect profile data, but it was for research purposes only. So when he hoovered up information for the commercial venture, he was violating the company’s terms. Kogan maintains everything he did was legal, and says he had a “close working relationship” with Facebook, which had granted him permission for his apps.
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@Brwned @entropy @Kasper

I'm coming from a different perspective, peeps need to be more critical/sceptical of the information they consume from these platforms because as you both already accept, it's tailored, to influence as well as other things. They should also be mindful of the information they put on these platforms as this information can be used in many ways, a lot of them harmful, to varying degrees.

When you say what they (CA) are doing is overstated, or old news it seems beside the point to me. They aren't the only ones doing data analysis, and FB are not the only vulnerable platform. It's also up for debate how influential or dangerous it can or will be. There's enough there for it to be taken seriously.

I think it's much larger than the election just gone or brexit or whatever other similar occurrence you want to look at in isolation. It makes no sense to me to keep saying it's not an issue or it's overblown until it actually becomes an issue. Take it seriously and be proactive about it....

More and more people are using these services, they should be made aware.
More entities will be aiming to take advantage of this data, there should be an attempt to combat this or at the last protect against it.
Algorithms and AI will improve over time as will the understanding and psychology of it all.
It's not going away....

Anyway I'm off topic....
 
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afrocentricity said:
@Brwned @entropy @Kasper

I'm coming from a different perspective, peeps need to be more critical/sceptical of the information they consume from these platforms because as you both already accept, it's tailored, to influence as well as other things. They should also be mindful of the information they put on these platforms as this information can be used in many ways, a lot of them harmful, to varying degrees.

When you say what they (CA) are doing is overstated, or old news it seems beside the point to me. They aren't the only ones doing data analysis, and FB are not the only vulnerable platform. It's also up for debate how influential or dangerous it can or will be. There's enough there for it to be taken seriously.

I think it's much larger than the election just gone or brexit or whatever other similar occurrence you want to look at in isolation. It makes no sense to me to keep saying it's not an issue or it's overblown until it actually becomes an issue. Take it seriously and be proactive about it....

More and more people are using these services, they should be made aware.
More entities will be aiming to take advantage of this data, there should be an attempt to combat this or at the last protect against it.
Algorithms and AI will improve over time as will the understanding and psychology of it all.
It's not going away....

Anyway I'm off topic....
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You can only achieve that by holding social media cos like fb accountable.
 
afrocentricity said:
@Brwned @entropy @Kasper

I'm coming from a different perspective, peeps need to be more critical/sceptical of the information they consume from these platforms because as you both already accept, it's tailored, to influence as well as other things. They should also be mindful of the information they put on these platforms as this information can be used in many ways, a lot of them harmful, to varying degrees.

When you say what they (CA) are doing is overstated, or old news it seems beside the point to me. They aren't the only ones doing data analysis, and FB are not the only vulnerable platform. It's also up for debate how influential or dangerous it can or will be. There's enough there for it to be taken seriously.

I think it's much larger than the election just gone or brexit or whatever other similar occurrence you want to look at in isolation. It makes no sense to me to keep saying it's not an issue or it's overblown until it actually becomes an issue. Take it seriously and be proactive about it....

More and more people are using these services, they should be made aware.
More entities will be aiming to take advantage of this data, there should be an attempt to combat this or at the last protect against it.
Algorithms and AI will improve over time as will the understanding and psychology of it all.
It's not going away....

Anyway I'm off topic....
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I think of all of the related issues it's one of the most overblown and quite possibly in a decade with new technologies will be something never thought about again. Social media is not that influential that it should be looked at in isolation. All of the media we consume has been targeted to us as individuals for decades and a lot of the content is manipulative and dangerous. Political attack ads in mass media are almost uniformly obscene in my view. New technologies have made that easier and better but I don't think it's as much of a step change as we're told, coming from a position of working in the media industry in a research role.

However I wholeheartedly agree with you about the culture change aspect. We are wayyyyyy too loose with our personal information and I suspect we'll be the first generation to see some very severe consequences of that. I worry more about private companies exploiting that than the government personally. Some of the stuff that you can find out about people in the public domain with some pretty basic commercial tools is downright creepy, so I can't imagine what Google knows. Far more than Facebook in my view. You're vaguely aware of the fact you're giving up that information but when you see it aggregated and summarised in a way that paints a picture of you is striking...
 
Conaway claims they found no collusion. When asked whether he interviewed Pappadopolous, who the entire case was started by, he says no because that's Mueller's business. So basically the House committee found no collusion whilst not interviewing the primary witnesses who may be able to elucidate whether there was any collusion.

 
Brwned said:
I think of all of the related issues it's one of the most overblown and quite possibly in a decade with new technologies will be something never thought about again. Social media is not that influential that it should be looked at in isolation. All of the media we consume has been targeted to us as individuals for decades and a lot of the content is manipulative and dangerous. Political attack ads in mass media are almost uniformly obscene in my view. New technologies have made that easier and better but I don't think it's as much of a step change as we're told, coming from a position of working in the media industry in a research role.
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I would have to disagree there.

What Social Media does very successfully is to create an echo chamber which almost ensures that you're only exposed to views of one side of the spectrum unless you make a conscious decision to seek out differing. And this is true of both sides of the spectrum. You like a left wing facebook page, and you're bombarded with suggestions of other similar pages. You watch a right wing Youtube video and youtube simply directs you to more such videos until there's almost nothing else on your suggestions page. What this seemingly serves to do is just reinforce your own views and does not challenge them. This is without even going to pages which exclusively deal with fake news. Not everyone has the time to fact check every little information they receive and as a result you end up with large swathes of people forming opinions based on exaggerations or flat out lies. And given the number of people with access to Social Media these days not only do I think this influences people but I think it's quite dangerous. There's a reason political parties spend considerable time and energy on social media. Not sure what if anything can be done to curb this however.
 
Hitchez said:
I would have to disagree there.

What Social Media does very successfully is to create an echo chamber which almost ensures that you're only exposed to views of one side of the spectrum unless you make a conscious decision to seek out differing. And this is true of both sides of the spectrum. You like a left wing facebook page, and you're bombarded with suggestions of other similar pages. You watch a right wing Youtube video and youtube simply directs you to more such videos until there's almost nothing else on your suggestions page. What this seemingly serves to do is just reinforce your own views and does not challenge them. This is without even going to pages which exclusively deal with fake news. Not everyone has the time to fact check every little information they receive and as a result you end up with large swathes of people forming opinions based on exaggerations or flat out lies. And given the number of people with access to Social Media these days not only do I think this influences people but I think it's quite dangerous. There's a reason political parties spend considerable time and energy on social media. Not sure what if anything can be done to curb this however.
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Meh. People have lived in echo chambers for decades, we just have better data on it now. I'm totally off social media at the moment but I still live in an echo chamber of left wing media - the Guardian in the UK, the Atlantic for world news, New Yorker and MSNBC for US news. There are loads of people who have been reading the same newspapers and having the same conversations among the same group of friends for decades. We're creatures of habits who love nothing more than being told what we think and how we feel is correct.

I'm not saying that social media hasn't changed anything but the contrast to other media really is not that stark. You'd think everyone was wonderfully informed and balanced 50 years ago! The reality is people lived in much smaller bubbles then, and the bubbles were created by much more worrying social constructs. There were undoubtedly much fewer of those bubbles and there was less polarisation, but the fundamental issues were still very much there.
 
I just read that dem senators could hire McCabe for two days in a Federal position to ensure he gets his full pension. That would make Trump explode if true.
 
McCabe doesn't even need his full pension, his wife is a paediatrician and he'll have a very successful law career after his FBI experience if he chooses to do so.
 
They've got questions from Mueller and you'd hope that

a) they aren't all the questions Mueller has
b) they've shit themselves over what they've been asked
c) they've realised that it won't be all Mueller wants to ask and he probably already knows the answer furthering b
d) all the recent shit that Trump has done has been because he's scared of what's going on with Mueller
 
Grinner said:
I just read that dem senators could hire McCabe for two days in a Federal position to ensure he gets his full pension. That would make Trump explode if true.
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Possibly... though it also gives him more opportunity to say McCabe was always working with the democrats... drain the swamp... crooked hillary etc etc
 
Wednesday at Stoke said:
McCabe doesn't even need his full pension, his wife is a paediatrician and he'll have a very successful law career after his FBI experience if he chooses to do so.
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While McCabe is going to have a comfortable life, the president being allowed to deny people their full pension for petty reasons would have repercussions on people who won't be fine without their pensions in later life, it's an especially bad precedent to set at a time when our ability to retire is only ever eroding.
 
Silva said:
While McCabe is going to have a comfortable life, the president being allowed to deny people their full pension for petty reasons would have repercussions on people who won't be fine without their pensions in later life, it's an especially bad precedent to set at a time when our ability to retire is only ever eroding.
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Yeah sure the surefire way to get government employees to flip their lid is threatening their pensions.
 
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