Most internet savvy folk understood this eventuality about a decade ago.. whereupon you either locked down your security settings or looked forward to a more personalised browsing experience.

Who is this panic being generated by?

>By the way, some people seem in doubt whether Cambridge Analytica were involved in the brexit campaign

Still absolutely no evidence they can influence their way out of a paper bag, let alone anyone else…..

Most people seem quite happy to share their information online, hence FB, Twitter, Google etc all build up profiles of us and there is no massive outrage

Most people are unaware of how their information is being used to manipulate them. If you can’t see why it’s very different to voluntarily talking to a canvasser, I give up.

Who is this panic being generated by?

Harvested data allegedly helps Obama to win. ORSUMNEZZ!

Harvested data allegedly helps Trump to win. #deletefacebook

>Most people are unaware of how their information is being used to manipulate them.

There’s no actual evidence that anyone has been manipulated at all (there may have been intent to do so, but every politician has the intent to persuade people to vote for them).

>If you can’t see why it’s very different to voluntarily talking to a canvasser, I give up.

That’s your prerogative.

CA/FB seems to be completely the wrong target. I’m much more concerned that a handful of billionaires control 85% of the UK printed press and use it to push their political agenda with total impunity. I honestly don’t GAS about a few poorly targeted FB ads.

Harvested data allegedly helps Trump to win. #deletefacebook

There are a few subtle differences between the two.

footflaps

There’s no actual evidence that anyone has been manipulated at all (there may have been intent to do so, but every politician has the intent to persuade people to vote for them).

And there won’t be, because Facebook won’t reveal what external sites were marketed, who they were marketed to, or the content therein. So whilst print is a physical record of who said what the nature of these campaigns (it has been alleged) is that they are pedaling messages that conform to no journalistic or legal standard whatsoever.

footflaps

CA/FB seems to be completely the wrong target. I’m much more concerned that a handful of billionaires control 85% of the UK printed press and use it to push their political agenda with total impunity. I honestly don’t GAS about a few poorly targeted FB ads.

Ah right, so Facebook ads are poorly targeted and innocuous but the big bad newspapers are the problem. There are some laws regarding print, and someone puts their name to it, there were no such checks and balances with the aleged hacking of the US election and Brexit. Oh and $40million dollars spent on Facebook reaches a lot more than it does in print. 60% of adults in the US are on Facebook. I wonder if any newspaper has that reach. To put it in context, the most watched news network in the states (Fox) gets 2.3 million viewers.

Ah right, so Facebook ads are poorly targeted and innocuous but the big bad newspapers are the problem.

Well yes essentially, and for the very reasons that you stated about regulated press.

People look at propaganda on facebook and take it with a pinch of salt. Another bitchy meme about Corbyn or trump? Another shouty badly photoshopped  rant…..? Another post that originated from one slightly radical group or another? More fake news? yaaaaaaaaaaawn, NEXT! If it ever worked, the cat has been well and truly out of the bag for some time and only the most dull-witted consumers ever fell for it at all.

We expect better of the regulated press. We expect truth and insight. We trust the regulators to ensure that we are delivered a quality product. We are lulled into a false sense of security and then we forget that most choose to only tell us that side of the story which best suits their owner’s corporate agenda.. we sleepwalk into a future of their choosing.

There was a programme on BBC4 last night about a potential pandemic and how it would spread, etc. The team built a tracking app that passed the contagion on if they came close to someone else with the app on their smartphone – a bit like an STI version of Tinder 🙂 One age group that have been under-represented in previous modelling scenarios were the under 25s and they were looking at ways to improve that so they turned to social media and had some group come up with a video to push/promote through FB.

The rough numbers were:

Just over 1 million people had the video appear in their feed.

About 250,000 actually watched the video.

Just under 3,000 installed the app.

So they influenced about 1 in 3,500 of those who had chance to view the video. Obviously this was a single route of influence and a fairly up front message and subtler messages might have more impact. But apply that 1 in 3,500 to a parliamentary constituency of around 70,000 voters and that’s roughly 20 people assuming everyone turns out to vote.

and only the most dull-witted consumers ever fell for it at all

so yeah about 1.9bn of the world’s population, or 60% of the US population (and probably similar % of UK population) then 😉

Judging by the robotic nature of auto-liking practically anything and everything shared on the book of farce, a very siginificant proportion clearly do believe anything. Even those that are clearly well educated, clever, tech savvy.

Propagate a lie enough times and it becomes accepted truth. The papers are 100% guilty of that. Farcebook is 100% guilty for providing a very fast moving means for that.

yunki

Ah right, so Facebook ads are poorly targeted and innocuous but the big bad newspapers are the problem.

Well yes essentially, and for the very reasons that you stated about regulated press.

People look at propaganda on facebook and take it with a pinch of salt. Another bitchy meme about Corbyn or trump? Another shouty badly photoshopped  rant…..? Another post that originated from one slightly radical group or another? More fake news? yaaaaaaaaaaawn, NEXT!

This isn’t the issue though, not even close, and I suppose that’s why it works, you spot the lazy generic meme material and think you’re savy. It’s all just blown out of proportion, meanwhile another source which you think is completely legitimate, above board or even A-political is the one that’s carrying the core message.

We expect better of the regulated press. We expect truth and insight.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. The fact that the press is flawed doesn’t mean Facebook is harmless/blameless.

I suppose that we’re maybe not the target audience.

Some people will believe anything though.. even that facebook has been controlling our minds without our consent.

French newspaper owners were particularly concerned by the uptake of
the new medium, as they faced up to the challenge radio posed to the
political influence and economic viability of the press. One response,
prefiguring that adopted by press groups in adjusting to the legalization of
private local stations in the 1980s, was to acquire their own stake in
radio. In 1924, for instance, Le Petit Parisien was the first newspaper to
establish a radio station, Le Poste Parisien. As competition between public
and private stations intensified, news bulletins became part of the
programme output of radio, raising issues of political balance and
impartiality. Worried about losing readership, the press in general was
opposed to coverage of politics on the radio. However, as newspaper
owners were unable to prevent this development, they adapted to the new
circumstances by encouraging listeners to purchase their company’s
newspapers so as to complement their audio news diet. Radio also began
to make an impact on French political debate, with the medium first being
formally used in an election campaign in 1936. Before the outbreak of the
Second World War, however, French politicians were only just beginning
to appreciate the potential of radio as a means of mass persuasion.

Sort of interesting

I think we maybe need to just admit that the waters around us have grown.

yunki

I suppose that we’re not the target audience.

You personally might not be. If your social media behavior showed that you were extremely vocal and proactive for one party, constantly liking and sharing material for that party or one candidate then you (or your demographic) are probably not going to have your mind changed. A person could be quite evidently stupid, gullible even for one particular flavour of news or politics but it’s not worth the time or money trying to change their mind and make them do a 180.

However if you’ve shown to be on the fence, or even disinterested and you’re part of a demographic who could influence the outcome in a given state or county then you’re of much greater interest. It’s much easier to convince people to do nothing than to take action so you sow seeds of doubt about your opponent, rather than push your own message. This message can appear completely A-political and constructed around something you are interested. This doesn’t mean that you, the target, is stupid, or that the message is simple or obvious, quite the opposite. It’s leading you down a path that they already know you’re interested in, sport for example, and tying a very subtle poilitcal message to that article, video, community etc.

Small gains to influence key constituencies and win the narrow margins.

What? Sorry, I got distracted…..

No you’re right of course.

I like to hope that maybe it’s going to have a very short-lived success rate though, as people wise up. The next generation of voters might even be a lot more politically motivated as they are aware of having to sift through the noise and static.

Labour party membership: 600,000, average age 52

Tory party membership: 100,000 average age 72

Labour has a lot of younger and enthusiastic new recruits. Tory membership is much less likely to be out on the stump or on the knocker but the Tories have very wealthy backers. Consequently their focus is and will be to work on people via the mass media and the net. Also interventions on their behalf will not be included in election expenses.

>So they influenced about 1 in 3,500 of those who had chance to view the video.

Well 1 in 3,500 may have watched the video, which is not the same as saying they were influenced by it to any measurable effect.

>And there won’t be, because Facebook won’t reveal what external sites were marketed, who they were marketed to, or the content therein.

Completely missing the point. Just because you see one 10 sec advert (or part thereof more likely) doesn’t mean it changes your behaviour. I’d be more worried by the constant barge of overtly racist material eg we have pretty much all the red-tops spewing out racial hatred / anti-EU messages 7 days a week for years on end. And to cap it all, the PM responds to it all, thus reinforcing the message as legitimate.

>Oh and $40million dollars spent on Facebook reaches a lot more than it does in print.

Reach figures for adverts on social media are a joke. There’s a huge push back from the likes of Martin Sorrel and WPP etc as Google et al count 1 sec of a video playing in the corner of your screen as you scroll past it as a ‘full play’. Essentially ripping off the companies paying for advertising. On top of that you have bots watching videos to get the numbers up for the social media platform.

You’ve misread what I wrote 🙂

I said 1 in 3,500 (actually, I’m a factor of ten out – it should be 1 in 350) of those who had the chance to watch it, i.e. of the 1 million plus impressions/reach or whatever the term is there were around 3000 downloads. The “watch the full video” rate was roughly 1 in 4 of the reach. The “conversion rate” of those who watched it in full was about 1 in 80.

Of course some of those who downloaded the app may have done so because they already knew about it and the video jogged their memory so not “influencing” as such.

As flasheart said, old news….obama’s team used this data on his campaign trail and nobody raised an eyebrow…trump’s team use it and it’s suddenly another stick with which to beat him…the losers from the US election really are bitter, it’s this kind of fixation on the mundane that will see Trump get reelected….while CNN and the rest focus on alleged Russia links, data harvesting, the size of Trump’s hands and whatever porn stars he has or hasn’t slept with…Trump will merrily cruise back into the White House in 2020…monkeys learn faster than the left leaning media.

….in more bleeding obvious news, those voice activated search/shopping devices people are clamouring to install in their homes (Alexa, Echo, Google Home, Apple Homepod etc) all have mics and log your searches, history, commands etc like your phone and laptop do…it’s obvious what’s coming next but it’ll be funny anyway in a couple of years time when people get the hump that the listening device they’ve voluntarily installed in their home is…listening to everything.

Why you would choose to bug yourself is beyond me but it takes all sorts I suppose, Facebook, Apple and Google have shown themselves to be in cahoots with governments and slap dash with your information…don’t just give them an easy time of it.

I attended a course recently whereby it started by all of us taking our places at the table, in front of us was a stack of A4 paper of varying heights…the tutor began by telling us that the information in front of us was our entire internet history…skeptical I dived in to have a look; he was right, stuff I’d long forgotten about was staring right back at me…passwords, websites I visited once about 10yrs ago, regular forums, pics I’d thought were secure in the cloud etc…

…this was all accessed in their offices with just my name as the starting point…nobody had to break into my house, nobody bugged my phone etc…and yet people seem surprised this information exists and is used by governments…weird.

Deviant

As flasheart said, old news….obama’s team used this data on his campaign trail and nobody raised an eyebrow…trump’s team use it and it’s suddenly another stick with which to beat him…the losers from the US election really are bitter, it’s this kind of fixation on the mundane that will see Trump get reelected

That’s not a valid comparison though, Obama’s Facebook campaign was an app which people downloaded willingly with the intention of prompting other Democrats in their friend list to go out and vote – the privileges they okay’d within the app required deliberate, conscious permission. I agree with the latter half of your paragraph though.

footflaps

>And there won’t be, because Facebook won’t reveal what external sites were marketed, who they were marketed to, or the content therein.

Completely missing the point. Just because you see one 10 sec advert (or part thereof more likely) doesn’t mean it changes your behaviour. I’d be more worried by the constant barge of overtly racist material eg we have pretty much all the red-tops spewing out racial hatred / anti-EU messages 7 days a week for years on end. And to cap it all, the PM responds to it all, thus reinforcing the message as legitimate.

Well obviously we’ll just go back and forth telling each other we’re missing the point but the racism and racial hatred spread by Trump was individually targeted and directed at people’s “hot button” issues.

>Oh and $40million dollars spent on Facebook reaches a lot more than it does in print.

Reach figures for adverts on social media are a joke.

Yeah, everything’s a joke apart from newspapers. Newspapers and tv news is the real serious business. Remember how they accurately predicted the US election and Brexit? I’m at a loss as to why you think social media is a piffling matter or that print media is somehow more effective. You can reach thousands of people for $10, so I’ll just re-iterate that $40 million on Facebook gets a lot more attention than it does in print, and this is before we get into fake Russian accounts and bot farms.

Everyone making the comparison with the previous Obama campaign use of facebook is either a) totally unaware of the differences and therefore should be ignored or b) trying to mislead you and should be ignored. It’s another one of those useful diagnostics, like saying “snowflake” unironically.

>Remember how they accurately predicted the US election and Brexit?

What is the relevance of that wrt the racial hatred etc they spew out daily. Virtually no one corrected predicted the elections, so what? That’s not proof by any means that FB/CA somehow influenced them.

The main difference with newspapers (bar the odd free one) is people willingly buy them and I guess read them to some extent. The data on how effective social media ads are is zero. The stats on number of views are fraudulent which is why WPP etc are kicking up such a fuss (as they realise they’re being charged for 10-100x as many views as there actually are). So, in my mind, there is a big world of difference between the two. If the Mail leads with a controversial headline, it can very often dictate PMQs the next day, you get no such effect from FB ads.

Here is great fact (only one data point) on social media advertising effectiveness. One of the biggest advertisers cut their ad spend by $140m, over concerns about fake viewing figures, and saw no noticeable dip in sales figures. http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/p-g-slashe/309936/

To be honest, when the post starts with:

deviant – Member

you can just ignore it anyway. He just copies and pastes shite he’s read elsewhere.

Anyway, this tweet went a bit viral today – I read through a bit of it, but didn’t have time to go through it all. Anybody else come across it?

Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file

Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum pic.twitter.com/CIRUguf4vD

— Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 21, 2018

>somehow it has my entire call history with my partner’s mum

I’m guessing from WhatsApp call records.

I think you need to read further through the thread. But yeah, it’s just like a canvasser knocking on your door.

But apply that 1 in 3,500 to a parliamentary constituency of around 70,000…

How can you use the conversion rate on a single viral campaign designed to persuade people to install an app, to make an estimate of how many people’s voting intentions were influenced by individually targeted political ads?

Different techniques, different conversion outcome, different everything!

I can believe targeted ads have an effect, because people are dangerously influenced by the most incredible nonsense on the internet. I had Canadian relatives emailing to tell me that the UK had “erased the Holocaust from the curriculum to avoid offending Muslims”.