To avoid blog harassment by the few, here my reply to das monde…
- Dems are not even trying to spotlight truly important stuff, since Dukakis or so. Rather, they are earnest
collaborators to a flow of distractions. “Hey, sex!” and one next moral outrage… Cambridge Analytica has
good profiles on us, progressive cats. DNC is a corporate subsidiary, just as the media?
A Lots of People Are Saying Trump’s New Data Team is Shady | Wired – Aug. 2016 |
Trump’s team has hired Cambridge Analytica, which claims to target voters based upon their psychological profiles. The National Review first broke the news, citing an unnamed Trump campaign official, and WIRED has confirmed the development. “In something so big, we want to bring in multiple data sources,” a Trump aide says, “to make sure we have the best opportunities to find the most persuadable voters and get people out to vote.”
As with all things involving Trump, this is not without controversy. Although Cambridge Analytica worked with Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Carson during the primaries, several Republican operatives tell WIRED they question the firm’s methodology, willingness to collaborate, and claims of involvement in major projects like Brexit. And the fact that Robert Mercer, a major GOP donor, is an owner of the company leaves some wondering if nepotism plays a role in any contracts the company lands.
Add Paul Singer contriburing the GPS Fusion/Steele dossier, it’s clear the Reds in Moscow tripped up the Democrats in ’16.
More below the fold …
[Update-1] #Russiagate
Maybe, just maybe the Robert Mueller investigation is looking at Cambridge Analytica, Rebekah and Robert Mercer and their Brexit campaign?
○ Cambridge Analytca: the Geotargeting and Emotional Data Mining Scrtipts
Believe me, Twitter and Facebook earned multiple thousands of dollars from the Trump Election campaign compared to Russian ads from a few minor bots doing the Kremlin’s bidding. Specialists from Facebook and Twitter were embedded in the centra run by Brad Parscale for Trump.
Is There Any There There? | Wired – Aug. 2016 |
The British number-crunchers and PhDs started working with down-ballot candidates in the US two years ago, and came to prominence this year touting its “psychographic targeting.” The approach supposedly builds on traditional ad targeting metrics like demographics (age, race, income) and behavior (voting, spending, online habits) by adding a person’s psychological profile.
To generate models, Cambridge, which employs data scientists and psychologists, draws on personality surveys it has conducted by telephone, email, and social media since 2013. It uses those samples to predict the personality traits of voters—traits like, say, neuroticism. Candidates can use those findings to tailor their message to a specific audience.
Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix claims his company’s data models “absolutely, indefatigably” raised Cruz’s poll numbers. “Every decision of the campaign—where to spend the money, who to target, how to target them, what to speak to them about, what channels of communications to use, what messages to send—was all driven by our data,” says Nix, who was among those included in WIRED’s Next List of business leaders.
○ The Power of Big Data and Psychographics
