Voter manipulation techniques

[LDAHL]

Does it seem like what some are saying is that it’s alright for managers of policy and seekers of political power to use the internet....FB and social media sites....to control the opinions and ideologies of enough people by exploitation and deception to maintain or gain political control of an entire government? Once determined what your tendencies are, they can manipulated you by directing content that reinforces the ideologies they want you to have and divert alternate ideologies away from you so that critical thinking is impossible. All this is okay because you choose to participate voluntarily? Is it alright to kill the mouse because he takes the cheese?

Maybe it's the Chicago kid in me, but I have a hard time working up a panic over the internet as some kind of new existential threat. Malicious gossip, disinformation and political dirty tricks are hardly new things, and we seem to have survived. As far as controlling our opinions by controlling information we get, I think that's actually harder now than when we were limited to printing presses and broadcast media. If "Everything we hear about the world we live in is like a cartoon", would that include your posts? I'm only a click away from a polar opposite opinion.

I don't think you give people enough credit.

[iris lilies]

hateful statements like this are why there is so much division in our country.

I dont know, I thought it was funny. Not hateful.

[flowerseverywhere]

I apologize for any aspersions I may have cast on Trump or Bannon.

Not or what I meant. Statements that paint any race, political party, religion or gender bring up emotions in people and make more hate. I am guilty of it sometimes as a fallible and gullible human being. Think of all the statements we have heard and seen these past years that lump everyone in with a minority of thinkers
Some things that I think are good examples are:
all trump voters are sexist and racist. Something I can’t help but believe deep down but of course that is ridiculous.
All liberals just want to kill unborn babies.
Sluts want us to pay for their birth control (thanks Rush Limbaugh)
Our local high school has organized to rally for gun control of weapons used in the recent school massacres. Not on school grounds, not on school time, and not sanctioned by the school. They even got a permit. You would not believe the hateful comments when the story ran. Calling them snowflakes, crybabies, they need to go to their safe space. Even suggesting they had no concern about abortion because they were so liberal. How can that possible be inferred from one issue? They are sick and tired of the thoughts and prayers and scared. You know the good part of This? They are learning about the amendments, how to demonstrate and have a voice, what local laws they have to abide by, and articulate what they want. And they don’t want to take your precious guns away, just sensible gun control. We have failed them.

you catch my drift. In a race to dissolve “political correctness” we have unleashed monsters. And I believe deep down inside us all is a superiority that we believe in the only right religion, our views on immigration, death penalty, gun control, abortion, health care, welfare and so on are the right ones.

[Williamsmith]

Maybe it's the Chicago kid in me, but I have a hard time working up a panic over the internet as some kind of new existential threat. Malicious gossip, disinformation and political dirty tricks are hardly new things, and we seem to have survived. As far as controlling our opinions by controlling information we get, I think that's actually harder now than when we were limited to printing presses and broadcast media. If "Everything we hear about the world we live in is like a cartoon", would that include your posts? I'm only a click away from a polar opposite opinion.

I don't think you give people enough credit.

Not really knowing you...I can assume it’s your analytical approach to most things, which is being enhanced by storing and mining your interests. They don’t care what you are, as long as they know what you are and what they can expect from you. So the question is more rightly what personal information do they have the right to collect, store and use as a resource?

Big government is humanly corrupt. Not one single historic example can be cited to the contrary. Businesses who use big government as a proxy or partner are equally corrupt. People dont automatically get my credit, they earn it.

Yes. To the bold above. I am a cartoon of my self on this site. By choice. This is simple entertainment to me. That may be disconcerting to some, but for all you know I may be a sixteen year old in my mothers basement.

Oh yeah, like the saying goes...”It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.”

[ApatheticNoMore]

Does it seem like what some are saying is that it’s alright for managers of policy and seekers of political power to use the internet....FB and social media sites....to control the opinions and ideologies of enough people by exploitation and deception to maintain or gain political control of an entire government? Once determined what your tendencies are, they can manipulated you by directing content that reinforces the ideologies they want you to have and divert alternate ideologies away from you so that critical thinking is impossible. All this is okay because you choose to participate voluntarily? Is it alright to kill the mouse because he takes the cheese?

I don't know, I said it should probably be banned, just I don't know how one would get there from here (are there laws that would prohibit this elsewhere than the U.S.?). A fanciful side of me wonders if this is akin to involuntary human experimentation but i don't know if the laws are really there. And yes I think willing doing business with a manipulator like FB is asking for manipulation as well, although a mitigating factor might be that *some* of this data was collected before we knew of other things like the mood manipulation experiments, so before we knew all that Facebook was up to.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Yes. To the bold above. I am a cartoon of my self on this site. By choice. This is simple entertainment to me. That may be disconcerting to some, but for all you know I may be a sixteen year old in my mothers basement.

personally I think if one wants to be a cartoon of themselves they should at least be paid for it as it's a way to make a living (nah that's not a comment on life in corporate America or something, but on people who literally sell a persona). But maybe I think the same for participating in social science experiments - you know people usually get some petty cash for that ... everyone plays roles everwhere, but the persona thing is usually more advanced than that, it's deliberately crafted to get people to shell out cash. But since productive work that actually does anything is hard to find in the modern world, it's widespread (won't you watch my youtubes?).

[Williamsmith]

I don't know, I said it should probably be banned, just I don't know how one would get there from here (are there laws that would prohibit this elsewhere than the U.S.?). A fanciful side of me wonders if this is akin to involuntary human experimentation but i don't know if the laws are really there. And yes I think willing doing business with a manipulator like FB is asking for manipulation as well, although a mitigating factor might be that *some* of this data was collected before we knew of other things like the mood manipulation experiments, so before we knew all that Facebook was up to.

It is entertaining to see the “left” attacking Zuckerberg for this. Having apparently profited from selling valuable information as a resource to Trump (the enemy) he now becomes a traitor. And it undermines the fantasy of Russian meddling as an unintentioned consequence. What Trump did was use the nefarious nature of FB to his advantage, recognizing that he could galvanize people’s hatred, bias and or simply their lean toward him by reflecting back those memes in their social media. He created a motivated voting base enough to triumph over the underwhelming personality of Hillary Clinton who apparently was less social media savvy than a hermit living off grid. The story for me is the utter incompetence of the Democrat machine. Not their “righteousness.”

[catherine]

Big government is humanly corrupt. Not one single historic example can be cited to the contrary. Businesses who use big government as a proxy or partner are equally corrupt. People dont automatically get my credit, they earn it.
...

Oh yeah, like the saying goes...”It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.”

I agree.

As far as existential threats--there have been a ton of existential threats that we lived quite comfortably with for at least a while until their threat was exposed. Hitler. Agent Orange. Thalidomide. Smoking.

I do not trust business to "promote the general welfare." Unfortunately, the government too often turns a blind eye when it comes to that minor point in the Constitution's preamble, because our representatives are too busy taking legal bribes from self-interested parties.

When it comes to dealing in data, I have to backtrack a little, because I thought that this whole thing was JUST market research. When I do market research, we sign consents on both sides that our confidentiality will be protected and the data will only be used for research purposes. If that's not what Cambridge Analytica was doing, that's cheating.

It's easy to sit back and trust the Powers that Be. Who wants to risk one's armchair comfort with uncomfortable truths?

[Williamsmith]

There is nothing simple about planned voter manipulation but it needs to be discussed

Voters need to be alert regardless of which country is voting for its leaders. I had heard rumours that such voter manipulation was possible but this is confirmation in terms that I understand better what is meant. Another reason for watching what you post online.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ca...sers-1.4581847

Quotes:
"A Canadian data analytics expert says he wanted to expose a "problematic" invasion of privacy when he sounded the alarm and alleged a data company he helped found misused personal information from millions of Facebook users while working for Donald Trump's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

In an interview with The National's Adrienne Arsenault, Christopher Wylie said he was tasked with "psychological profiling" while working at Cambridge Analytica and was able to pull data from users through apps that required the use of Facebook.

"They would fill out psychological surveys and then that app would then go and pull all of of their Facebook data," said the 28-year-old from B.C.

Day 6
The data mining firm that helped elect Trump has built psychological profiles of nearly every American voter
LISTEN 00:00 09:07 [follow the CBC link above to hear this].

"From that, we were able to make inferences or predictions about people who we haven't yet spoken to," Wylie added.

"It allowed us to profile upwards of 50 million Americans over a span of a couple of months and understand not only their personality traits but how they think... and what exactly we need to do in order to pick at certain mental or emotional vulnerabilities so that those people would behave in a particular way that was conducive to [Trump campaign chief executive] Steve Bannon's objective."

Wylie said he decided to go the press with his story — first reported by The New York Times and The Observer of London — after seeing Trump become president and the rise of the alt-right.

"It really made me reflect on the impact that Cambridge Analytica has had," he said.

"I reflected on it... I said to myself that I need to speak out now because I have seen the impact that this company has had and I think people should know about how it works."


Data mining firm behind Trump election built psychological profiles of nearly every American voter
Wylie also said the company's practices were unethical and needed to be called out.

"I think that the algorithms that they have built... using that private data they acquired without consent, is problematic."

Facebook said a Cambridge University psychology professor had lied to the company and violated its policies by passing data to Cambridge Analytica from an app he had developed. It suspended the firm from Facebook.

'I am accepting my share of the responsibility'

Wylie said that it's "intimidating" to speak out, but believes it was the right thing to do..."

I wonder if Wylie was Russian, if he would have been a little more intimidated. Has anyone heard yet when the Grand Jury will be convened and when the indictments will be handed down for a foreign agent meddling in our elections? Is Mueller aware of the U.K. ‘s nefarious activities? Could Trump be impeached for colluding with the British? Could you imagine CNN heads exploding had the company been called Morozov Analytical? Fear the Evil Russians.

[razz]

Recently, I read the results of a poll about Republicans vs Trump. It seems that the 'base' identify' themselves as Trump supporters in substantially higher number than identify themselves as Republican. Perhaps the data-mining contacts contributed to this.

Would it be possible for the Republican leadership to have a 'tiger by the tail'? Is it possible that they are helpless to control Trump who knows that the base will support him even if the Republicans will not?

I truly believed and stated on this site that the checks and balances of political power in the US would manage whatever leader is selected by whatever party. Am I wrong on this?