6 thoughts on “Listen to this if you want to understand the mechanisms Facebook made available to manipulate voters”
Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 marchers in San Diego today. A number of pols present, but none spoke. Of course this was to be a student-led march.
I went to the march in Bishop today. I think close to 500 people showed up. I got there a little late. The crowd visible from the street when I drove past on my way to park was a lot bigger than what was left by the time I parked and walked all the way back to the city park. Good to see that kind of turnout in such a red dot in CA.
I just found it fascinating that you can bring Facebook a list of people (say, a list of registered GOPer voters) and FB will match them with their FB profiles and allow you to steer ads to them, and the ads might well be fake news or real news, FB don't care. Worse yet the ads will appear in a "feed" right next to pictures of your nephew's new baby and you won't be able to tell whether said ad was sent to you by a friend or by Ted Cruz.
And scarier yet is FB's ability to additional people to the target list according to whatever demographic or psychograpic or who knows whatever profile is of interest to you, and you can target those people with the same ads.
And all of this carefully targeted advertising is ridiculously cheap because you have provided FB all the information when you signed up, and when you allowed them access to your contacts, and when you took quizzes to determine which Beatle you are, and when you visited Pornhub or Better Homes and Gardens, and all they have to do is crunch the data and serve them up. Obama's people did this too, and Hillary's probably as well, but I don't think either of them deliberately discouraged voters or knowingly distributed untruths or Russian propaganda.
Anyway, listen to the show, they explain it much better than I can. The first segment is an interview with a guy who poo-poos these arguments. But the rest totally confirms it.
But let’s think about this announcement from January for a moment, in which Zuckerberg claims he is going to make Facebook all about “bringing people closer together.”
“[W]e’re making a major change to how we build Facebook. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.”
Surely the only conceivable answer a sane person can make to a billionaire monopolist who is trying to be involved in or have an opinion about or monetize the “meaningful social interactions” in your personal life is: Kindly get the fuck away from me.
I long suspected those quizzes were used to harvest data, and I warned several friends of my fears. Some said they just didn't care, and it's my data, shut up. Well, as it turns out, it's not only their data, but mine too.
Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 marchers in San Diego today. A number of pols present, but none spoke. Of course this was to be a student-led march.
I went to the march in Bishop today. I think close to 500 people showed up. I got there a little late. The crowd visible from the street when I drove past on my way to park was a lot bigger than what was left by the time I parked and walked all the way back to the city park. Good to see that kind of turnout in such a red dot in CA.
I just found it fascinating that you can bring Facebook a list of people (say, a list of registered GOPer voters) and FB will match them with their FB profiles and allow you to steer ads to them, and the ads might well be fake news or real news, FB don't care. Worse yet the ads will appear in a "feed" right next to pictures of your nephew's new baby and you won't be able to tell whether said ad was sent to you by a friend or by Ted Cruz.
And scarier yet is FB's ability to additional people to the target list according to whatever demographic or psychograpic or who knows whatever profile is of interest to you, and you can target those people with the same ads.
And all of this carefully targeted advertising is ridiculously cheap because you have provided FB all the information when you signed up, and when you allowed them access to your contacts, and when you took quizzes to determine which Beatle you are, and when you visited Pornhub or Better Homes and Gardens, and all they have to do is crunch the data and serve them up. Obama's people did this too, and Hillary's probably as well, but I don't think either of them deliberately discouraged voters or knowingly distributed untruths or Russian propaganda.
Anyway, listen to the show, they explain it much better than I can. The first segment is an interview with a guy who poo-poos these arguments. But the rest totally confirms it.
Oh for fuck's sake!
Ha!
I long suspected those quizzes were used to harvest data, and I warned several friends of my fears. Some said they just didn't care, and it's my data, shut up. Well, as it turns out, it's not only their data, but mine too.