The hysteria over Cambridge Analytica isn't something that's happening in good faith. To quote Dougherty,
"Where were these worries four years ago for the much larger and arguably more manipulative effort by the Obama campaign?
Instead of using a personality quiz, the Obama campaign merely got a portion of its core supporters to use their Facebook profiles to log into a campaign site. Then they used well-tested techniques of gaining consent from that user to harvest all their friends’ data. Sasha Issenberg gushed about how the Obama campaign used the same permissions structure of Facebook to extract the data of scores of millions of Facebook users who were unaware of what was happening to them. Combining Facebook data with other sources such as voter-registration rolls, Issenberg wrote, generated “a new political currency that predicted the behavior of individual humans. The campaign didn’t just know who you were; it knew exactly how it could turn you into the type of person it wanted you to be.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/cambridge-analytica-social-media-...
21
Good ol' National Review . . . . not. Another round of "what-about-ism."
12
One major difference being that the Obama campaign reached out to the voters it identified rather than feeding them salacious propaganda.
16
Once again, the Republicans trotter out the old false equivalence argument. The Dems did not spread false propaganda i.e the pope endorse Trump, pizza parlor sex didn'ring
14
This is why the mere existence of multi-billionaires is a menace to a democratic society!
8
Obama used the same tactics. I see the author left that out. Can't imagine why?? Yes I can. Typical yellow journalism.
5
The major point is that the data obtained by CA from Facebook was obtained without permission, e.g., was stolen. Obama's was not. Got it??
8
Ah, but the pretend.xt that the Obamanauts used was as deceptive as "you can keep your doctor if you like him"
Both approaches are equally despicable and shame on Zuckerberg and his empire for allowing it and getting paid for it by Cambridge Analytical and again by the advertisers who bought space and placement.
Talk about double dipping !!! Zuckerberg and Co. make the robber barons look generous.
5
Rick Babcock, Obama obtained its info freely and voluntarily. Also in 2008 and even 2012 the apps were still being developed that allowed CA to engage in the psychographic analysis?
6
There seems to be a whiff of anti-semitism here, blaming Jews (Zuckerberg and Sandberg) for Hillary’s loss.
1
My friends on Facebook always chide me for never using this technology. They claim I am anti social which may be so, but not because I refuse to use that medium. Facebook users are constantly encouraged to reveal more and more information and now we know why. What a scam. Perhaps I'll write you a letter, a perfect gift to a friend.
26
Are we giving too much credence to the technology? Trump's basic appeal was/is as a demagogue. Identifying the people to whom that appealed was not really necessary. It worked. If we need more specificity - a basket of deplorables works.
3
Citizens United has enabled the Mercers, the Kochs, the Ricketts, the Adelsons and many others. By virtue of their wealth they feel entitled to buy our democracy any way they can. They enabled the rise of the demagogue trump - an unfit, incompetent con man. Campaign contributions are the key to the destruction and restoration of our democracy - Citizens United MUST be overturned and campaign reforms instituted. Take the big money out of the process and the 'Cambridge Analyticas' of the world will shrivel. Facebook is an entirely different problem, however, and until they are forced to account for their behavior they will continue to flaunt the law and abuse subscribers at will.
36
I thought the Bengazi investigation an fake W.M.D. were bigger manipulation even, done in plain sight
9
The state of denial has become our 51st state as Trump voters will never acknowledge that they have been manipulated by others. You may think that you are supremely independent, but like so many of Trump's lies you believe in this ultimate lie without question. Trump supporters you are in the pocket of the Trump manipulation machine. Get over it and wake up. You can not blame this on Hillary Clinton.
19
What role did the San Antonio-based consulting firm play in this? Who are they and how did they support Trumps campaign?
6
The question of how Cambridge Analytics got the Facebook data hasn’t been fully answered. My suspicion is that the simply bought it. Facebook, like most other big companies saw an opportunity to make even more money and did so at our expense.
But the bigger question is how do we have democratic elections in an age of super psychological manipulation? Politicians have appealed to voters with emotional appeals for ages, but never before has that method been enhanced by the subconscious manipulation developed by the advertising world.
While this trend has accelerated to alarming levels we have a media that is basically controlled by six major corporations. They, like Facebook have the agenda of making money, controlling their market and getting favors from the very governments that they are supposed to be reporting on.
We the people have been abandoned by the Forth Estate that our founders thought would be the people’s voice. Now we simply have various corporate voices shaping how we see the world and the candidates that seek to run OUR government.
The only way out is radical surgery on the media establishment. Our banks became too big to jail and now our main sources of information have abandoned their role in what little is left of our democracy.
6
They utilized a professor to claim they needed the data for academic purposes. They obtained it fraudulently.
12
What you didn't make any mention of was that Cambridge Analytic was also doing business with Lukoil (the Turkey division). Since Lukoil is the de facto Russian state oil company you now have a link to the Russians to deployed the social media weaponry for Trump and against Clinton.
19
The one consistent theme of my Republican friends is that the ends justify the means...they all subscribe to a Machiavellian approach to getting what they want, and that's why Trump is their champion.
20
The Mercers and Kochs have mercilessly attacked our core principals.
Allied with V Putin they’ve analyzed and amplified our fault lines and vulnerabilities to tilt the plating field to the oligarch class worldwide.
Trump is a wannabe to that class.
The Russian jujitsu here is quite something to behold.
11
In 2012, The Guardian reported that President Obama’s reelection team was “building a vast digital data operation that for the first time combines a unified database on millions of Americans with the power of Facebook to target individual voters to a degree never achieved before.
RTISEMENT
What, exactly, would Obama be doing? According to The Guardian, Obama’s new database would be gathered by asking individual volunteers to log into Obama’s reelection site using their Facebook credentials. “Consciously or otherwise,” The Guardian states, “the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page — home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends — directly into the central Obama database.
Amazing...
3
Let's also talk about the Obama campaign in 2007, avoiding use of the same system used by every other candidate to eliminate foreign and illegal donations. Let's talk about how via Journolist, the media conspired to get McCain nominated in spite of two primary losses because they wanted to see a political reenactment of Dennis the Menace vs. Mr. Wilson. They even made up the story about Romney's dog crate on the roof because they found nothing else. The media has absolutely no business pointing fingers when they bought the entire "shovel ready" "If you like your doctor you can keep him" fiasco of the Obama administration.
3
The media did the same to Trump, promoting him in the primaries so he would become the nominee, thinking he was the weakest opponent in the Republican field.
7
It is scarring, unethical at least and the GOP fails to notice...again, again and again!
6
50 million Facebook users sounds like a big set of data. And the data itself must seem incoherently scattered when thought of as bits and bytes. But in the world of computing and data this size and complexity is really nothing. If one can extract it cleanly (kagan...app..facebook) and it is documented enough (indexes, fields, files) then reconstructing it and running it through another program is really pretty straight forward. Also, the entire data set could easily fit on a small external hard drive, probably even a thumb drive. Think they destroyed the data when asked? Maybe the one data set, but not the other umpty-ump copies.
So my question is did the Russians also get this data? Considering the clients that Nix courted, is this the next show to drop?
8
why would Vlad need the data? he has guys stuffing poll boxes, babushkas fainting every time he appears shirtless (he should pick up Paul Ryan as a wing man) and 100% control over Russian media, his opponents in jail or dead.
Trump should be behind bars after this - collusion, colluding, election law violations, and simply being a traitor/idiot/tosser
11
Band is playing the great Lee Morgan's Ceora in the background. Mr. Nix and his his buddies should have spent more time listening to the band. It might have brought some kind of higher ground and spiritual truth as a redirection from their sniggling chicanery.
2
They are all grifters. lying cheating and scamming
it is who they are and what they do.
10
Cambridge Analytica's dirty tricks are part of a long Republican't tradition of cheating starting with Lee Atwater and his protege Karl Rove. The Republican't party realized that they can't win fair and square based on their ideas alone. From gerrymandered districts favoring them, to voter suppression, to caging lists that throw legitimate voters off the rolls the Republican't party needs to cheat in order to win. Their goal is to seek a permanent Republican't majority with their rich funders being the ultimate beneficiaries of the laws and policies that are enacted.
Thanks to the work of reporters we have learned of their latest dirty trick. They have no shame.
Ever since Trump got elected there has been one disgraceful scandal after another. Yet the Republican'ts have surrounded the wagons to save The Donald. How low can they go? I doubt we've seen the bottom yet.
15
Deleted by FB account years ago. I, like most, did not read the fine print when I created my FB account. Presumably, buried in the standard agreement is a clause allowing FB to sell its users' info, with an opt-out available. All nice and legal.
4
Hey! if you need FB to access other stuff, let your dog do it. We did.
4
The Trump campaign and the Obama campaign both use the exact same data mining methods. Obama is hailed as the smartest human ever, Trump is smeared as a criminal. The level of hate and delusion on the left truly is a mental illness
2
Can I give the next left wing writer a bit of advice, When you have a great idea for a story, google and see if someone on the left has committed that same act? If they have then move away from the story and think of something else! You look absolutely idiotic when in five minutes someone asks why was it okay when Obama did it! and you try to sit there and say well it was different when my guy did it!
3
And how many people have done what you accuse “Left wing writers” of doing? Dirty tricks and illegal tactics go far back in American political history, as do finger pointing about what the other side is doing. I’m waiting to see what Mueller’s investigation tells us - if Twitterboy doesn’t fire him and try to shut it down before the results of that investigation are made public.
2
Carol Davidsen, the former Obama director of integration and media analytics stated that, during the 2012 campaign, Facebook allowed the Obama team to “suck out the whole social graph”; Facebook “was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.” She added, “They came to [the] office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”
Not sure exactly how this is legal. If the largest social network in the world is choosing who it will do business based on politics, we have a problem. That cannot be allowed to happen legally.
3
Yeah. Was legal because O used it to message, openly, people who were supporting him. Not legal when Cambridge Anal. used it to coordinate Trump candidate campaign with Pacs and create fake memes. Actually, just the coordination, use of Russian/NRA/Pac $ may have put Donald into a legal bind. xo
9
Mr. Trump's "idiots" helped him win the election by pandering to the lowest common denominator among voters: anger. By pretending to feel the anger of displaced workers in dying industries, he led them to believe he would save their jobs and reinstate those industries. It won't happen for the simple reason that more jobs are being replaced by robots than by people working abroad.
That said, I can't stand Trump and his administration, a bunch of greedy, lying, disgusting people whose main values are to line their own pockets.
6
This is nothing short of proof of collusion and conspiracy.
It's not the only proof either, just the latest.
When will Congress act and exorcise our government of this compromised and disgraceful president?
8
So, NYT, in 2013 you thought President Obama was a genius for using all the private data Zuckerberg gave him to win re-election. But Trump is a scoundrel for one-upping all the social media darlings and doing the same thing. Hmmm.
4
The endless pursuit to explain why Trump won and Hillary lost. First it was the Russians. But that turned out to be wrong. Now it's a company that harvested millions of Facebook users data. You do know the Obama campaign the same thing, right? It was in your newspaper.
If you want to know why Trump won, ask Hillary. According to her, men told their wives who to vote for and that's why Trump won.
3
The hypocrisy train rolls on. This is the exact same data Obama used in 2012. At the time the NYT hailed the Obama campaign as genius. Now the Trump campaign is labeled as manipulators for doing the same. Actually Trump used far less data and also only used it for the primary and not the general.
4
Cambridge Analytica did a lot of what Obama did in 2012 using Facebook to trick people into sharing their data. Of course, they didn't get to use the IRS or FBI or NSA or CIA against their political opponents.
3
The Republican party can't win national elections unless they cheat.
Transcribed from the third Presidential Debate, October 20, 2016
Chris Wallace: "You've been warning at rallies recently that this election is rigged and that Hillary Clinton is in the process of trying to steal it from you. Your running mate Governor Pence pledged on Sunday that he and you, his words, will absolutely accept the result of this election. Today your daughter Ivanka said the same thing. I want to ask you here on the stage tonight, do you make the same commitment that you'll absolutely accept the result of the election."
Donald Trump: "I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now, I'll look at it at the time. What I've seen, what I’ve seen, is so bad. First of all, the media is so dishonest and so corrupt and the pile on is so amazing. "The New York Times" actually wrote an article about it, but they don't even care. It is so dishonest, and they have poisoned the minds of the voters. But unfortunately for them, I think the voters are seeing through it. I think they’re going to see through it, we’ll find out on November 8th, but I think they’re going to see through it."
Projection, thy name is Trump.
6
What I cannot understand is why anyone is surprised. Politics has been horribly dirty for decades. I remember hearing in 1995 a senior republican politician outline how we were going to destroy the reputation and career of a new opponent. They did with lies and purchased hatchet attacks by fake detractors.
This is politics in America. The super activist Supreme Court of Justice Roberts has super charged it withCitizen United. And new technology just advances what the politicians can do.
And they all pretend to be goody two shoes Christians. Hahahahahahaha
3
So this is the latest excuse?
16 months after the election and they're still grasping for straws.
Hillary was the worst candidate the Democrats could come up with.
That's your reason.
3
Kushner's contribution in all this may very well have been the sharing of information with the Putin political propaganda campaign being run synchronously and in support of the first Russian-endorsed 'American' president, Trump. Trump Jr. and Kushner lied constantly to the public, on his security clearance application, and to the FBI about Russian money ties, contacts, emails, calls and meetings. Today Trump just called to congratulate Putin, the murderous dictator attacking America, to say congrats on HIS fixed election. The threads from Putin to Trump are unraveling and Trump has no idea what to do.
FB sells personal data to its advertisers and it is estimated that 50 million people had their personal data used by Cambridge Analytica without their permission. FB has 1.2 billion users globally.
Our social media needs to either be regulated by the FCC or get out of the political ads business despite the billions of dollars of annual revenue. You are putting people and America at risk and you were used by Putin as another branch of its cyber warfare being conducted against American democracy.
Social media is no longer fun but a conduit to hackers seeking to bring America down, and a breach in our cyber defenses because it is unregulated and algorithm driven with few humans at the control. Americans are subjected to fake news, lies, political propaganda, hate bots and trolls and all this started out innocently as a social network connecting friends and families.
4
Two or three days ago, no had ever heard of Cambridge Analytica, but suddenly everyone commenting here knows that they are evil incarnate.
2
Someone should mention to Michelle that Trump didn't use them for the general campaign. RNC data was more accurate.
Someone should also mention to her that Obama did pretty much the same thing.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/508836/how-obama-used-big-data-to-ral...
2
Unless Facebook breached some law or its contract with users in releasing the information, or Cambridge A breached some law in acquiring the information, what exactly is the issue? No, I don't like it either but this is just the same as Advertising agencies and pollsters in previous campaigns have been doing for ever, just in a far more sophisticated way. Perhaps you should look at other Cambridge clients - what's the bet that some major advertising agencies or their clients are using CAs services?
2
Everything these slandered as a "tricksters" did was legal, and the fake "hack"of 'friends' data access was knowingly provided by Facebook with the intention of gaining benefit and profit. Goldberg needs to blame the mercenary tendencies of her fellow traveler, former liberal darling Facebook's Zuckerburg for collecting people's personal data and selling it to the highest bidder! And of course we all know that if Clinton had not been so contemptuous, entitled and sure she would win simply because she is a woman, and had done precisely the same thing and won the election - neither Goldberg or the NY Times or the rest of the 1% controlled media would be wailing about this use of readily available data now.
6
Reports have stated that Kellyanne Conway was paid vast sums in 2016 by the Trump campaign after Ted Cruz, her former boss, lost the Iowa primary to Trump. She signed on with Trump in August 2016, and it would be most interesting to know what, if any, connections exist between her "micro-targeting" efforts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Cambridge Analytica and/or stolen FB user data. How did her firm gather or acquire the consumer data that she used in her efforts to support Trump? What has happened to that data, where is it stored, and with whom else has it been shared or given?
9
Cambridge Analytica got the data on 50 Million users illegally from a professor at Cambridge University in the UK that had permission for academic research only.
He is also a Russian born professor and doing work in Russia at a university in St. Petersburg.
Interesting that with this Russian professor, we get one more Russian connection. They just seem to keep appearing.
I am old enough to remember a time in the distant past when Republicans were anti-Russian and Pro-FBI.
That was two years ago and seems so quaint these days.
By the way for all of those not aware, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, and Robert Mueller are all Republicans.
17
The GOP is very diverse, unlike the Progressive Democrats. Remember, the early things Trump wanted passed in the Senate that ere killed by liberal Republicans.
James Comey, McCabe, and even Rosenstein all appear to have invited arrest for lying to a federal judge or illegally releasing national security secrets. Prison beckons, guys.
Wow! Are you sorely misinformed.
1
Wait, why is this dirty trick's for Trump when CA didn't even use Facebook data for his Campaign, but it was brilliant and lauded as genius when it was done in 2012 for the Obama Campaign? Double standard much?
9
Because Cambridge Analytica was founded in 2013.
2
Obama used Cambridge Analytica ?
When was it founded?
2
I believe we now have the smoking gun.
2
Yes....that leads back to the Obama 2012 campaign doing the same thing. But you won't read that here.
3
But I don't see Mr. Obama being indicted for this one. His spying on Americans during the 2016 campaign, however, is a cinch conviction if any lawyer gets to go before a grand jury about it.
2
2016 goes in the books as America’s filthiest election, a real pig-sty among mud puddles, including 1824, 1876, and 1972. A sociopathic bully, sex and hush money, fraternizing with dictators and enemies, racist pandering, and now this with Facebook central to misinforming the American public and being the main enabler of phony stories and ads in exchange for money. Saving the Republic from this toxic mix should be a slam dunk for a bit more than half of Congress.
8
You forgot to mention things like selling our uranium to the Russians and a pay-for-play scheme hidden behind a money laundering 'charitable' foundation.
2
The last two sentences say it all.
And of course: owned by the Mercer family.
10
Lie, cheat, steal--all is fair in love, war, and politics. Winning is all that matters, baby! Winning!
1
is Nix the new Dr. No?
they may be world class sneaks, cheats, and liars, but the chances they're also digital gurus able to parse out and utilize info from data sets they've gained control of is a step too far. I mean, lying about such an ability, ok, but then - Steve Bannon?
I go more with the beautiful Ukranian prostitutes. they're doable. and in character.
2
It's hard to fathom how anyone could write and publish an article as full of blatant hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty as this one in 2018, and even harder to believe anyone who knows how to use a computer could accept it.
Just a few short years ago, the Obama campaign was lauded for exactly the kind of intrusive information gathering this article pretends to be shocking. Google and Facebook, which have been open supporters and of, and directly involved with, the Democratic Party and its campaigns, base their entire business model around this activity. And the Democrats and the far left jumped in early with both feet to make extensive use of bots to spam propaganda over social media.
Now we're all supposed to be "shocked!" about this? The belief of the Democrats and the left that the people are dumb enough to be lied to and manipulated this brazenly is not new. But their loss in 2016 (which happened in large part because more and more people increasingly see clearly that the media are liars in the tank for the Democrats) seems to have unhinged them, and divorced them from reality once and for all. Next thing you know, Democrats will be arguing that the sky was red until yesterday, the Republicans deliberately released massive amounts of pollution to make it blue, and must be punished for it!
Seriously. The left's belief that it can just lie and flip flop from one day to the next, right in front of everybody, and get away with it is astounding.
6
Used by the Obama campaign(s) a few short years ago?
2008 or 2012 ?
Cambridge Analytica was founded in 2013
3
Traitors, the whole lot of them, but don't expect our elected officials to take any action.
2
What’s disgusting is that Facebook’s top people are PROFITING from Evil. Not just having “sold” their users’ birthrights (so to speak), but also because the party they helped put in the White House (and Congress) has paid them back via huge tax cuts, both corporate and personal.
So they’re robbing people coming and going.
I never joined Facebook. Because their annoying repeated invitations made me sure I wanted nothing to do with it.
But they participated in Treason. (Treason being the Defrauding of the US.) And they’re profiting from Treason. Disgusting!
Drop your Facebook account!
5
Wait, are you talking about Trump or Obama who was praised for the same thing in 2012?
1
I love the way that Michelle blows up the supposed "mystique" and "genius " around the orange one's campaign. I was good old reliable cheating, something the orange one has been practiced at for decades.
4
Never forget where the name comes from.
Why aren't the Congress and FEC going after Cambridge Analytica and EVERYONE involved in this? The 2016 election was a total sham and should be voided.
3
Why? Because they would have to go after Obama and his 2012 campaign staff for the same thing and we both know after Hillary skating on security issues that going after Obama isn't going to happen.
2
The "secret of Trump's success", pure and simple, is audacious criminality. How utterly ironic, the mob chants of "Lock her up", even led by the felon and former Cambridge advisor Flynn, at Trump's campaign rallies. These despicables will be locked up!
8
The left leaners in this country along with the left leaning press have simply got to quit clutching their collective pearls so tightly, take a breath and re-engage with reality. I fully support and endorse this use of Facebook data since the Obama 2012 campaign pioneered the process with what later turned into full Facebook (supporters) knowledge. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. And if my link to the The Hill's story is deleted below, search for "The Hill whats genius for Obama is scandal when it comes to trump".
http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-for-obama-is-s...
2
So to some up a long-winded article...
Obama does it... good. Trump does it... bad.
Got it.
5
Cheating is the story of Trump's life, both in private and in business. What more needs to be said? It's evident in his presidency also. You get what you pay for.
3
Facebook sat silent and complicit. Mueller is watching.
Will he trace it back to the Obama 2012 campaign? Look it up.
1
Why is it that in America we have to opt in for personal data protection? It takes forever to find the right "page" to complete the process. We should automatically be opted in for data protection when we join sites. It is time we as consumers have more rights then the businesses that misuse our personal information
4
I always assume that if I put it on Facebook it's not private, even though I have customized my audience to those who are my FB friends. Since others who are friends of friends may go onto my friends' FB pages and view what I have posted, it's not hard to see how a group of 30 individuals turns into an almost infinitely larger number of people who can access information that I intended for just my FB friends.
2
Even the name "Cambridge" Analytica is a deception. Made to sound like it has some connection to the University of Cambridge which it does not. It is really part of Trump University.
10
Name "Cambridge " chosen by Bannon .
Russian prof .at Cambridge University posted psych.app on FaceBook
1
Trump is smart enough to know that cheating is the only way he can win. Roy Cohen taught him that and it's the one lesson he ever bothered to learn in his life. Look for more of the same until he's prosecuted and sent to federal housing more appropriate to his "talents".
9
This misinformation and manipulation campaign has not ended.
Look at Fox "News" and you see an organized and insidious manipulation of the public continuing every day. Who is paying for all that well-oiled Fox "News" disinformation to maintain support for the Trump administration and obscure the facts about the breathtaking amount of corruption, abuse, and grifting?
11
Obama did this first and did this on a much larger scale !!!!
"This misinformation and manipulation campaign has not ended.
Look at "CBS, ABC, NBC, MSBNC, CNN, Huff Posy, NY Times, Wash Post. LA Times......" and you see an organized and insidious manipulation of the public continuing every day. Who is paying for all that well-oiled disinformation to maintain support for the Liberal Big Government and obscure the facts about the breathtaking amount of corruption, abuse, and grifting ($100MM to the Clinton Foundation)!!!!!????
1
Wow. An amazing story – and owned by the Mercer family. It really sounds like some evil movie that never got made.
5
Imagine Nixon, Richard, not Cynthia, in possession of the digital weapons of Cambridge Analytica in 1973. One can almost imagine the conversations (recorded) between him and fellow war criminal Kissinger about how, where, and why to employ them against which of his numerous enemies. It's hard to believe we have a president at least as loathsome as the original dirty trickster. Of course Nixon forgot more politics and policy than Trump could ever learn, even if he wanted to. After Trump is gone, we'll all heave a sigh of relief and move on, having concluded that our democracy dodged another bullet. If only.
4
there will always be a sequel.
1
This just in. Nix has been nixxed over at Cambridge Analytica. Wiley is trying to figure out his own strategy.
Privacy rights must move from strictly private rights to group privacy rights.
The personal privacy of facebooks users were abused but not invaded in a way that led to their individual harm.
Their groups and types however were abused to tip an election.
Considering the small margin of victory in that election, it would be ludicrous to assume that the election wasn’t fouled by the Cambridge/Russian effort.
Americans, imagine the improvement in self respect when we dislodge ourselves from the orange headed peckerwood that illegitimately occupies our highest office.
REVOTE!
6
It may be somewhat fair to criticize Facebook for its delay in reacting to this data breach. Still, I don't believe that they should post a list of those who may have been affected. What would be helpful is to post a list of the apps/quizzes/questionnaires used by Cambridge Analytica so that users would be able to identify whether or not they might have been exposed to the data breach. A published list of names would be a further invasion of the privacy of its users.
1
News flash! Anything you see on Facebook that asks you to answer questions or respond to a survey IS ALWAYS DOING THE SAME DEED!
1
So, let's see. Not only did the Russians help Trump get elected by posing as Americans and getting involved in the campaign, but so did this Cambridge Analytica by hacking into people's Facebook accounts? And Donald keeps yelling, no screaming, that it's all a witch hunt? No wonder he is so worried that his presidency will be considered illegitimate. The guy cheated his way into the white house and now he wants everyone to think he got there because why, he's like a smart guy?
5
Quit projecting. Trump isn't the one who thinks he's illegitimate.
This is a ridiculous tempest in a teapot. Campaigns have been using survey, polling, and census data for decades. Marketing firms classify you based on postal code combined with other data. OCEAN has been around for a long time and is widely used. This all seems to be anonymized data, anyway.
The Obama campaign was congratulated for doing the same sort of thing by combining FB and other data.
A huge amount of what you do leaves a data trail. So what? When you post information, it becomes public. Duh!
All this "uproar" is part of the NYT/WaPO orchestrated campaign against Trump, which is basically a conspiracy to depose a president and overturn an election. Mueller has nothing that will stand up in court; if he had, it would have already been leaked to the NYT. There is no there there.
4
Yeah, just keep telling yourself that, friend!
2
This is the new world that we are in; the internet, personal computers, social media, etc. have unleashed brilliant but immoral minds to figure out how to use integrated data for partisan purposes. It's reckless conduct fueled by the big money infused into the electoral system. Our democracy is at stake because our free and fair elections may never again be the same.
5
Second thought: Why are there still Facebook logon links here on the NYT site? I quit using Facebook years ago after I realized their real intent and have been disturbed by how many of our reputable organizations (like the NYT) continue to promote a relationship with Facebook. Perhaps the links like Facebook's should be prefaced with a warning...being taken down entirely would be my preference. Take Them Down!
11
There's gold in them thar bytes and bits and when old print media is bleeding money, they sign on for whatever will help them. Having the same agenda doesn't hurt anything either.
1
I am not sure what is wrong with targeted messages. Every advertiser in every medium tries to target their message. That is why you see ads for beer and trucks on NFL games.
3
For all those comparing the Obama campaign using Facebook data with Cambridge Analytica:
The Obama campaign told the Facebook users who they were and got their permission.
They did get data from the friends of those users but that was permitted by the Facebook privacy policy at the time that users agreed to whether they knew it or not. That privacy policy has since changed.
Cambridge Analytica got the data on 50 Million users illegally from a professor at Cambridge University in the UK that had permission only for academic research.
The professor also crossed the newer privacy policy by getting friends data.
He is also a Russian born professor and doing work in Russia.
It is illegal for a foreign person or country to interfere in US elections.
Cambridge Analytica may have shared their illegal data with the Trump campaign. That would also be illegal.
Cambridge Analytica or the Trump campaign may have shared data and or techniques with the Russians. If so, that is conspiracy to the crime committed by Russia.
Interesting that with this Russia professor, we get one more Russian connection. They just seem to keep appearing.
14
Negative. Facebook figured out what they were doing and because they were "on their side", were fine with letting it slide.
1
kwc57, negative, the Obama campaign had a Facebook app for that...that required opting in...
The difference being Obama’s campaign built their own models based on data they collected.2008 campaign collected and analyzed voter information data. In the 2012 re-election campaign Obama supporters willingly downloaded a Facebook data collecting app.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-data-...
1
Yet another hyperventilating hissy fit from the losers. And a hypocritical one at that, since Obama used exactly the same tool:
"In 2011, Carol Davidsen, director of data integration and media analytics for Obama for America, built a database of every American voter using the same Facebook developer tool used by Cambridge, known as the social graph API. Any time people used Facebook's log-in button to sign on to the campaign's website, the Obama data scientists were able to access their profile as well as their friends' information. That allowed them to chart the closeness of people's relationships and make estimates about which people would be most likely to influence other people in their network to vote."
2
The problem with being the in-house bias builder is you end up getting the oldest information. This ends up making you look ridiculously out of touch.
There was no theft or data breach by this Cambridge company. Tech people were invited to download social networking data but even the biggest users never got more than maybe a sixth of the accounts in he U.S.
Meanwhile, Google practically had an office at the White House as Mr. Obama oversaw an effort like this - at no cost to the Democratic Party - of enough data to apparently track the entire country's attitudes and choices.
So whatever you are being trained to think about the CA people and Trump, multiply that by six to see how deeply the Democratic Party was involved in this data, at least by 2015.
1
I don't seem to recall reading any complaints from The Times or Ms Goldberg when Eric Schmidt—big-time Democrat CEO of Google and Data-Mining King of our Personal Information that made him a multi-billionaire—practically lived in the WH, advising Obama how to use every high-tech-to-lowlife technique in the Google arsenal to manipulate and defraud We The People.
Cambridge Analytica didn’t do anything illegal and Facebook was not hacked. It was used. This is just the digital equivalent of grassroots politics.
What Cambridge Analytica did do wrong was to be owned by a couple of conservatives.
10
The difference is that the Obama campaign told the Facebook users who they were and the Facebook users agreed to give the campaign their data.
The Obama campaign was able to get some of their friends data at the time but that was permitted by the Facebook privacy policy that users agree to whether they know it or not.
That privacy policy has since been changed.
Actually, Cambridge may have done several illegal acts.
Cambridge Analytica got their data on 50 Million Facebook accounts illegally through a professor doing research. The professor may have gotten much of the data via friend accounts which has been against the Facebook privacy act.
Cambridge Analytica may have shared that illegal data with the Trump campaign.
The professor is at Cambridge University in the UK but is of Russian origin and also doing work in Russia.
Either Cambridge Analytica or the professor may have also helped the Russians with techniques and data.
Cambridge Analytica talked with Wikileaks about Clinton e-mails and may have helped the Trump campaign with that as well. Those e-mails came from the Russians.
So there are several ways a foreign country could have worked to influence our elections and that is illegal. And it is conspiracy if an American works with the foreign country.
MASA - Make America Smart Again
9
"Conservatives"??
Right wing Libertarian Mercers, trying to mold the world in their own image ?
Come on, man !
Yeah, and Obama in 2012 created a Facebook app that a million people downloaded that collected friend data from presumably tens of millions without their knowledge or consent. And he was hailed for being tech-savvy and connecting with young voters.
What hypocritical nonsense, Ms. Goldberg.
9
There is a proverb among con men and swindlers that you can't cheat an honest man. A large portion of the electorate wanted to be deceived.
A nation gets the government it deserves and the United /states as we knew it no longer exists.
6
I am willing to believe the psychographic profiling and use of this information for propaganda works best on the types of voters Trump appeals to.
So that, gerrymandering, the electoral college etc. were a perfect storm against the rest of us.
It's indeed DEPLORABLE.
8
It worked when the Obama 2012 campaign mined the same data from Facebook and was praised for their ingenuity. Since so many of Obama's voters voted for Trump like me, you might be correct. I'd suggest you read the article in The Hill for a bit of self edification on how much the Trump campaign learned from the Obama campaign.
1
Nothing new. Something both RNC-DNC Politburos have been up to at least since Nixon. Why the outrage--it began here with the CIA in Italy in 1948. Welcome home, I say.
2
I'm watching the Channel 4 presentation waiting for some shoe to drop or a smoking gun to appear ... does not happen. Yes the businessmen do, as they wrangling to earn a no doubt lucrative contract drags on, come up with more risky methods. The significant thing I hear them mention is using two nations for dirty work; Ukraine & Israel. Coincidentally those two nations are currently sacred cows for neocons and neolibs, very interesting, that!
I would note right here, and it can't be emphasized enough, what happened in our own 2016 election: The DNC torpedoed the preferred candidate of Americans, so that it could install Hillary Clinton, who I do acknowledge had her own strong support. But, if you speak to actual Trump voters, something that Trump deranged liberals seem to view as below them, you discover that perhaps 33% of Trump voters "would have voted for Sanders." That would have been a landslide of historic proportions. Instead the DNC took a precarious shot at a far thinner, and hence far less democratic path. This GOP election manipulation pales in comparison to the vile, purposeful, fumble of the election ball by the the DNC. Democrats, invoke Pogo.
8
I find it very hard to believe the 33% number. Some for sure, but 33% seems very high.
I live among Trump supporters and they all think Sanders is a "terrible Socialist" and none would have voted for Sanders.
They also still believe the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered which why Hillary had such high negatives and was such a "bad candidate."
6
CK -
Much of what you say may be arguably true. I agree basically that the dem party blew it. But that is in NO way comparable to the misdeeds now being charged, if only because the latter clearly have involved a non-friendly foreign government interfering in an American election. This is NOT about "why Hilary lost." This is about an attack on democracy!
I call massive false equivalency.
5
Data mining isn't quite the missing piece here.
What was previously missing was how the product of data mining presented a marketing and "amplification" roadmap to the people who stole and leaked the Clinton campaign's emails.
Cambridge Analytica armed Russian hackers with insights into divides in the American electorate that the Russians would otherwise not have clearly understood. It also providing a strategy for how to, what was that quote -- "watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again . . ."
6
Winning is everything in the American culture. Though a Patriot fan, I've watched New England cheat their ways to Superbowl victories. Trump is as much a product of our obsession with winning as he is anything else. It's not his cheat team, associates, or new revelations that appall me anymore ... it's the Republican Congress, who sit idly by while DJT tears down the core principles of American Greatness and Decency. They are the enablers of moral turpitude and grand larceny.
4
And yet the Times editorial board suggest not engaging these cheaters because it furthers the ends of Trump and company to divide the population, making us all more susceptible to believe even ridiculous and implausible conspiracy theories.
This story is ridiculous and implausible, but it's true. It should be exposed.
1
Kushner, Mercer, Bannon and Parscale's are a diabolical quartet, corrupt Trump's, the Republicans who would vote for Methuselah have proven to be recipe for disaster for our democracy. The global stain, dismantling of every Federal agency, filling Congress and State houses with ignorant purchased politicians feels like the demise our country. recovering from the pillage appears impossible
4
And now we know that 'Devious Donald' was using these methods even as he bellowed at his campaign stops, "we can't let crooked Hillary take her crooked schemes to Washington." The man's dishonesty is breathtaking !!! But even more breathtaking is the moral obtuseness of the Republican Party and their base. They cheers for him no matter how how morally disgusting his behavior or the behavior of his party. Even as he brought Bill Clinton's accusers to a debate to tarnish Hillary with Bill's sexual transgressions he was busy paying hush money to Stormy Daniels. Even as he was holding forth about Hillary's e-mails, he and his group were having meetings and e-mail exchanges with the Russians. He did not accept "hefty fees" from Goldman Sachs he was laundering money for Putin's cronies -- at least one of whom paid him almost twice the going price for a moldy mansion. And if he did not supervise the collusion with Russia or raise campaign cash from the Emirates, it sure looks like he was running a rogue campaign operation and is, therefore, a lousy manager. And please note that "crooked Hillary" did not use these under-handed methods !! I hope the Democrats are paying close attention to all this. Do unto them what they did unto us: Never EVER let the people forget that this is the party that gave us Donald Trump even as they thumped their chests about being so moral and "pro-life."
10
Why no mention of the tweets a couple days ago from Carol Davidsen, Obama campaign director of media analytics in 2012? She basically said Obama did all the things Trump did with Facebook user data (and more), but Facebook let them do it, AND EVEN HELPED THEM AND ENCOURAGED IT because FACEBOOK WAS ON THEIR SIDE! It happened before Facebook put restrictions on user data access for outside app developers. Facebook realized they were doing something untoward, and put a stop to it. Of course, this was AFTER it benefited Obama in 2012.
4
Facebook helped the Trump campaign the same way, supplying technical resources in the campaign offices. That is standard for Facebook.
The difference is the Obama campaign got the data illegally.
A professor at Cambridge University in the UK got permission from Facebook for using an app to collect Facebook data similar to the Obama campaign. The agreement was for his own academic research.
The professor crossed the newer privacy policy by getting friends data. The 270,000 users that used the app and gave permission resulted in Facebook profiles of 50 Million Facebook users.
Cambridge Analytica got the data on 50 Million users illegally from this professor that had permission for academic research only.
He is also a Russian born professor and doing work in Russia at a university in St. Petersburg.
It is illegal for a foreign person or country to interfere in US elections.
Cambridge Analytica may have shared their illegal data with the Trump campaign. That would also be illegal.
Cambridge Analytica or the Trump campaign may have shared data and or techniques with the Russians. Russians wouldn’t know our politics and that would have been extremely helpful to the Russians to influence Facebook users. If so, that is conspiracy to the crime committed by Russia.
Interesting that with this Russian professor, we get one more Russian connection. They just seem to keep appearing.
I remember the distant past when Republicans were anti-Russian and Pro-FBI, about two years ago.
1
"the secret of Trump’s success is cheating"
While the secret of those benefiting from bailouts, corporate welfare and legalized tax avoidance supported equally by both wings of our political duopoly over the past 50 years is ... What?
4
Do you remember during the DUBYA presidency, people were protesting outside his ranch in Crawford, TX about the simple-to-protest Iraq War. My sister did several times, driving up from San Antonio. So often we heard that "We took the war to them." My how things change. I know there are protests outside TRUMP TOWER on 5th Avenue. I've seen them. So I am curious.
Are people protesting outside the homes of the people who are being implicated in all of this? People like Bannon, the Mercers, Flynn, Manafort, Hicks, Kushners in Kalorama and NYC, Vanessa Trump! Miller, Julia Hahn, FOX NEWS, the duplicitous Congresspeople like Ryan, McConnell both in DC and their home offices along with their minions toiling away in the bowls of the Capitol, how about the gifters in the Cabinet, DeVos, oh Eric Prince, etc. Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Nix, Thiel, all of Silicon Valley. They are all grifters.
And Charles Blow referred to sTRUMPY as "the UN-American President. I'm sorry, these people, all of them, are true AmeriKans, criminals really.
The pundits keep talking about civil disobedience erupting if Mueller is fired, or Trump is impeached. There should be civil disobedience every day.
Why not? These people need to be exposed as the grifters that they are. And by no means am I a supporter of "THE DEEP STATE." Amerika is in trouble.
6
How soon we forget the Obama team mined Google in 2012 and it was not even considered as a bad thing now all of a sudden people think democracy is threatened. The only thing that is wrong is people who blindly read and believe everything on social media and the press , social media has found they have a willing and vulnerable audience that is susceptible to being duped.
2
Trump's election is illegitimate. the whole campaign was corrupt from start to finish.
6
What is the chance that:
1) Cambridge Analytica shared their illegally gotten data with the Trump campaign.
2) Cambridge Analytica shared their illegally gotten data with the Russians.
And, if so, it would seem maybe a little "collusion" took place? Time will tell.
Time will also tell why Trump is so afraid of showing us his tax returns and if there is any money laundering in Trump's past real estate businesses.
4
Like Hollywood, I never will, nor have I ever, understood the fawning adulation over so-called "genius." ... for profit and power. Boggling.
True to its old motto, "Move fast and break things," Facebook broke things. Important things.
3
The more we learn about Trump the more we are left exhausted and disgusted by Trump. But for those of us looking for Democrats to take control of the House and Senate keep two points in mind: First, for a Democrat to replace a sitting Republican will require a vigorous turn out by the Democrats. This will require concentrated effort to register as many voters as possible and push for them to show up on election day. Second, do not expect voters to switch their party allegiance because Trump is disaster. Remember, Trump's greedy, dishonest, and nasty personality was on full display through the entire election campaign and those who did not want to connect the dots then them will be just as unlikely to do so come election day in 2018.
3
One thing that I'm not seeing in the current NYT reporting on the emerging story of Facebook's rolling over personal data for the use by conservative front organizations, for the purposes of possible political dirty tricks, is the role that Rupert Murdock and his News Corp may have played in strong arming Zuckerberg and his Facebook principles to play ball with these snakes.
I note in a insightful article by Nick Thompson and Fred Volgelstein in March's issue of Wired Magazine that there is a strong suspicion that Zuckerberg was rolled by Murdock in 2016 at billionaire Herb Allen's annual Sun Valley conference and sorie for the 1%, the glitterati and the well connected; with Murdock threatening to sic its political and media attack dogs on Facebook, with accusations and calls for Congressional investigations of Facebook's "Antitrust practices". And with Murdock suggesting he would be pushing for lifting F/B's protection from liability as a neutral internet platform.
So could Zuckerberg have already been spooked enough of Congressional scrutiny (based on previous threats by conservative politicians to investigate F/B's supposed anti-Trump reporting, during the initial months of the Presidential campaign) to then initiate outreaches to ultra-conservative players and their purveyors of political Dark Arts, after having been threatened by Murdock?
3
Like most everything else The Donald has ever done, the 2016 election was a scam. We are only beginning to find out how much of a scam it was.
4
We know Trump doesn't like to read, but apparently he had people studying the KGB playbook.
5
I hope the UK takes this one and runs with it. Something tells me we won't get very far with it here in the U.S.
7
Trump's basic competitive advantage in business and politics has been that he never underestimates the stupidity of his customers (aka voters) and partners and takes less than everything he can get away with.
2
Trying to regulate online data today is like trying to lasso the moon or harness the sun. Simply impossible.
24
Actually, no . . . you can start with establishing a clear legal line that data generated by activity on the internet belongs to the user, not the digital platform users interact with. That one principle would lay the basis for every other technological change that we need.
4
Oh yeah? Perp walk a few CEOs and you'll see online data regulation like never before. These people know that their company's fines don't amount to a day's profits so they blatantly sell our privacy. None of them face jail for it. Why not?
4
Only one conclusion: This further de-legitimizes the tRump 'presidency.' It is a total fraud, based on racism, lies and dirty tricks.
One thing Republicans have NO concept of: "Winning fair and square." They will manufacture a "win" at any cost, fairness and squareness be damned.
They really are traitors to America and their silence on Russia's interference with our election proves it. A bunch of power drunk sociopaths!
5
Facebook is for fools. Never used it, never will. Yes, I'm smug. I warned everyone I know about getting sucked in, years ago. Just saying.
1
But hasn't the Republican party become the party that cheats? Isn't that what the unabashed effort to disenfranchise Democratic voters has shown us? Isn't the failure to advise and consent on a Supreme Court nomination also a way to screw with the rules in order to win at any cost? The countless crimes Republicans in Congress are allowing this administration to get away with are an example of mind-boggling hypocrisy at its most blatant. When are we going to stop focussing so squarely on Trump and place our attention on his true lackeys: the entire Republican establishment. I, for one, am tired of those who lionize John McCain for his deathbed bravery when his own desire for reelection kept him tight-lipped throughout the 2016 campaign. His Sarah Palin choice was a precursor to Trump. The only Republicans willing to criticize the president are either retiring or dying. The party has become the country's worst problem. The Cambridge Analytica crimes are nothing new--Republicans have been cheaters for as long as I can remember. And although their primary victims seem, on the surface, to be Democrats, people of color, other minorities, their longest suffering targets are the members of their own base--the swindled masses who voted for Trump.
9
If you possess an identity consisting of a melange of
psycho/sexual emotions and feelings coupled with an ethical
perspective embedded in your cognitive base, then it would be
foolhardy to give any credence at all to social media.
F.
1
While the Mercers were focused on winning the White House and amassing political power opposition voters were busy squabbling among themselves. (The Democratic Party was also corrupt and top heavy, neglecting voters it either viewed as either "safe" or "deplorable.") In future elections we can only avoid the proxy rule by the Kochs, Mercers, Adelsons, etc. by voting with an equal sense of purpose and focus on the larger picture. You can't create and enforce policy without political power!!! Suck it up, people and vote like it matters! Leave the online petitions to losers! Just vote or be ruled, even if you preferred a different primary winner.
We see what depths Trump's enablers will go to win power. Do we as a country have the will act as individuals and do something about it? FB isn't going to
act for us! Remove 3rd party apps from your FB settings now! Strengthen your privacy settings. Register and get friends to register! Don't fall for identity politics. Find common ground and engage differing views with patience and persistence. To hell with Red and Blue states! Division is what oligarchs at home and abroad use to make us weak. Don't fall for it. And cut Trump's/Mercer's power by voting out their Congressional enablers this year!
6
We have seen this in the past: Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and the Swift-Boat-Veterans-for-Truth were tools used by different Republican candidates to bring down opponents.
It seems that if you need to lie, cheat and steal to win an election maybe your ideas - and you as a candidate - suck.
I want an honest discussion of ideas and we elect the person with the best ideas. This is an idea that most Republicans appear to oppose. Does anyone really not understand their opposition?
2
The Mercers, owners of Cambridge Analytica, need to be part of this investigation of a wide ranging conspiracy to place a grossly unqualified, traitorous, despotic liar in the White House. They & Putin are the powers behind the curtain, controlling this pitiful, disgusting loser who, with their help engaged in manipulation of American democracy.
3
Republicans still not moving to hold hearings on these crooked vile and undemocratic people.
4
This is little different from the tech approach that won two elections for Obama. When you won, you crowed; now that you lost you whine, column after column.
2
No, No. The point is that CA doesn't do what it claims, and is instead a front for a dirty tricks operation.
@No: "This is little different from the tech approach that won two elections for Obama. When you won, you crowed; now that you lost you whine, column after column." You are making a false equivalence here that is ludicrous and clearly not true. Obama's campaign did use a lot of data on voters, but none of their campaign activities were illegal or unethical. Cambridge Analytica STOLE personal and private data from 50 MILLION people's Facebook profiles, WITHOUT their knowledge. You might argue that these Facebook user's "assumed the risk" by putting their personal information out in the public domain, but they still did not give Cambridge Analytica permission to use their data, regardless. Furthermore, the undercover video of Alexander Nix, their CEO, shows him bragging or claiming that the company basically lies, by using and spreading false propaganda against political opponents, this boils down to a corporate strategy of cheating to win elections. Again, Obama did nothing like this, so your comparison is not accurate.
3
I wouldn't have expected any less from trump and Bannon. Trump defrauded college students, workers and contractors. He is a publicly admitted misogynistic pig. He has been married three times and still cavorts with mistresses. He supports dictators. He flaunts the rule of law. I am only surprised that he and Bannon did not use the "trump" brand instead of calling it Analytica.
4
The Mercers are in this up to their necks. Their desire for white supremacy and power is frightening and overwhelming.
6
Press Release. Congress. Ho-Hum zzzzzzzzzz
1
Russia, the Red Queen, and Cambridge Analytica: let's hope Mueller is getting the whole story.
1
With each day? Shame on the many Americans who did not see the cheating the hour this cheap Caesar rode down the escalator. Almost THREE YEARS AGO. The most memorable of his first words were about Mexican rapists and getting the worst of their people. In a carefully scripted, rehearsed and packaged official debut--after of course testing variations on the calculated material and smug delivery for years--Trump signaled he was very willing to fling excrement at scapegoats. In addition to spewing his own ample prejudices, he would be the sock puppet for whatever others paid him to say. Original thoughts? Not very many. In his own words? Rather doubtful. With the approval and exhortation of family, allies and a whole new gaggle of shadow players? Line 'em up! He was cheating whenever he babbled, continued his perverse game, then discovered, possibly to his utter surprise, that he was WINNING. Far more than ripping off NYC on a tax deal for a hotel, or the students of his so-called university, or stiffing brown nosers for inflated club fees, or pretending to be a hard-nosed demigod of the fittest apprentice TV honcho. (Essentially his current job.) Trump was cheating Big Time on the Big Stage to get the Big Win, never fully revealed or thwarted, and so he continued to cheat. The more he cheated, and was aided and abetted in that by a now-growing squad of the indictable and jailable, the more he won. Go figure. Con Man in Chief.
6
NYT headlines:
2018, Trump - "High-Tech Dirty Tricksters"
2013, Obama - "Digital Masterminds"
Once again, it's not what, it's who.
1
No wonder China blocks Facebook, Google and whatever...
Turns out Zuckerberg was an idiotic genius... but he's rich, so...
2
It all goes back to trump. Anyone or anything that gets near the orbit of the most corrupt, racist creature to ever set foot in the white house, gets swallowed up in a black hole of corruption and malevolence. But, meanwhile, back at the ranch Mueller keeps grinding away. Tick tock, tick tock.
2
Michelle, you rock. Keep hammering away at that keyboard.
3
Subliminal messaging: going out to vote for the candidate of your choice is so....yesterday.
The Trump election Onion continues to be peeled and each layer details another layer of eye watering chicanery, cheating and crookedness.
The trump brand image in fact a sump pump in the basement of fouled water.
High crimes and misdemeanors from the Mueller takedown enough to send Javanka and trump on their way to orange jumpsuits at a Black Site?
Americans of all stripes are waking up to the laughing hyena in the White House. They are calling him the spotted skunk that he is and clamour for the stench to be expunged from office.
Amen
6
Wow! The entrappers got entrapped. Poetic justice.
2
To the MAGA folks, you were had. Your bios were studied, and you ate up the ensuing propaganda like kibble. And now you spew it for them.
6
These dirty tricksters don't care about integrity or fairness. I think ultimately, they will tamper with votes and vote counts. We have a real battle between honest elections and dirty tricksters
2
We just lost thousands of dollars in savings investments because Facebook is just as stupid as many of its customers. Nice work Zuckerberg and company.
1
What must fascinate — and horrify — is all is the constant news that literally the worst people in the world were attracted to Trump. His campaign orbit and his presidency reveals a collection of grifters, incompetents, Russian spies and oligarchs, and nutjobs.
“Only the best people”, right Donnie?
4
I guess Trump & Associates found 62M+ useful idiots. That's quite an accomplishment in and of itself. And, the useful idiots in the Democratic party selected the only person who couldn't defeat Trump. Their useful idiots are better than our useful idiots.
"Lock them up!" - the Mercers
5
One big gaggle of thugs, criminals, lowlifes, the whole mess of them, including a treasonous Congress and President!
3
My goodness Michele, your comparison gives Thugs a bad name.
1
GOOD ARTICLE.
1
Dishonest, cunning, greedy, deplorable, selfish, bullying, hateful, destructive, lying, treasonous, anti-American President and his Republican support....
3
What a joke. Trump’s an idiot. No...he’s an evil genius.
Make up your mind. This Facebook analytics is nonsense. Team Obama bragged they used Facebook to in in ‘12. Did the author whine back then that Obama stole the election?
1
If you think the Republican Party will act on this information in the form of impeachment, your smoking the Magic Dragon. I think this is going to be a long drawn out fall from grace. Our president has disgraced our founding fathers dreams of a fair election. Our president has its own swamp filled with deception and disgracing the office for which it stands. Everything that comes out of this man's mouth is based on fear spoken in lie's of many colors. There will be still people in America who like some of his colors. I like black and white.
The only social media I use is the comments section of the New York Times.
1
I wonder how fashionable Nix, Bannon, Mercer, and Jared, will look in orange jail jumpsuits?
2
Cheating.That's how they roll.
Linda Selvia
2
I think you have the identity of the "lackeys" backward. The Mercers and Bannon looked for a nitwit they could use to front for this approach to promoting the right wing's agenda and here we have him. The Donald.
5
“With each day … it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse.”
Mueller needs to come through for us soon, with something so damning that Republicans cannot ignore it, with something so heinous that they will be forced to turn on Trump and oust him. Short of that, a GOP-controlled Congress will likely sweep the results of the investigation under the rug. In November, if Democrats fail to take control of the Senate and win, at best, a narrow majority in the House, it will be more of the same through 2020. Republicans do not want Trump removed if they can help it; they do not want turmoil. And the longer Trump stays in power, the worse it will be, for the United States and the world.
When you have contracted cancer, you want it out of your body. There is nothing good about keeping it around. If Trump is still president in 2020, there is a good chance he could be reelected. That very well might be more than America’s already strained immune system can bear.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed for Mueller, and for voters doing the right thing in the upcoming elections. With potential lifelong dictators now in power in China and Russia, the last thing we need is a wannabe despot of a president. The United States has long been the global beacon and bulwark of democracy and freedom. Let’s not let the world down now, when people need us most.
6
These are the same tricks employed by the revered Obama to take two elections.
2
When caught in a credibility squeeze, you can alway rely on playing the "Obama did the same thing" card. Don't let the absence of evidence slow you down.
2
You misunderstand the difference between running a social media campaign and illegally using user data to help plant fake stories and make them go viral. It’s legal to withdraw money from your bank account. It’s illegal to rob a bank. Is that really so difficult to understand?
1
“...the secret to Trump’s success is cheating.”
Ask Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan—Donald Trump’s chief defenders—if ethics matters. Ask the 63-millions who sent this thief to Washington if they care. Oh; missing Obama yet?
4
Trump collaborated with Russia, Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica to steal an American election. He should be impeached ans,sentenced to hard time.
2
Cheating, lying, insulting, browbeating........a complete void of morals and ethics in every aspect of his life.
3
Everyday the insults KEEP COMING to the rule of law and my intelligence from this organized crime syndicate that now runs the USA.
2
Will Robert Mercer, Rebekah Mercer, and Steve Bannon be arrested, convicted, and made to serve their whole miserable life in prison? That is the question I pose to the American justice system which blithely sends a poor, ill-educated, life-long oppressed minority person to prison for robbing $20 from a liquor store.
5
I have news for all of them, including Mr. Zuckerberg who knew what was going on and lied about it. 50 million users isn't fake news. By now we should assume the 50 million users' data is everywhere including especially the Kremlin. The whole bunch of them--Mr. Trump and also the Facebook people who covered everything up--the whole bunch of them are immoral, unethical and indecent. Idiots, as you say. Look how Zuckerberg and the Trump team give us lie after lie, each new lie following in the footsteps of an uncovered untruth. Idiots who would not win except by cheating, chicanery or some other fundamentally dishonest maneuver. Like claiming the purpose of your company was community building. When what you were really doing was harvesting data without consent and handing it over to bad actors who used it to undermine our democracy.
3
'“He [Jared Kushner] wasn’t tech-savvy at all,” Elizabeth Spiers, the paper’s former editor in chief, told me.'
Tell me, someone, please: Is Kushner savvy about ANYthing?
p.
2
He is savvy about way overpaying for commercial real estate - 666 5th ave. to be precise (which I can see right now from my window at work, btw). He put only $50 million down on the $1.8 billion dollar transaction (i.e. a 3% down payment), and has a $1.2 billion mortgage payment due in less than a year, in 2/2019. So it's understandable how he would be willing to throw any ethics out the window, or even break laws if necessary to make sure he can make that payment or negotiate a way for someone else to lend him a hand with it. And he's been trying like the dickens!
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/kushner-may-soon-be-working-at-t...
Oh, and that reminds me! Breaking the law to harass people who are unfortunate enough to be living in one of his family's thousands of residential rental properties. He's savvy at that too.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/18/politics/kushner-nyc-property-flipping/in...
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-beleaguered-tenants-of-kushnerville
I doubt that Cambridge Analytica waged a 'psychographic' cyber campaign. In any other universe it would be known as working with the Russians to troll social media.
Robert Mercer is a demented computer genius. He is fully capable of developing all sorts of cyber programs to rig social media, voter rolls and even vote counts.
And it appears he hired a crack team at CA. What needs to be found out is what else CA did beyond their Facebook bots and trolls.
It looks like they were willing to do quite a bit. Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon know what they asked CA to do. Mueller needs to get these guys to talk.
2
You just cannot fathom how Ms. C could possibly have lost a supposed slam dunk to President Trump who is flawed in your eyes. It MUST have been something colluded or evil or unfair or ......
So those who pointed their finger at the "deep state" ARE the deep state. Bannon and his ilk are dark monied and ego-driven. All they claim to criticize and expose is nothing more than a projection of their own internal chaos.
5
"The men that American people admire the most extravagantly are the most daring liars. The men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth" --- HL Mencken.
3
Just more evidence that don trump is out to hijack our democracy. How much more nasty, unethical behavior has to be uncovered before Republicans in congress grow some spines and take action to protect our country? Who knows. Best to just be rid of them altogether.
1
The Mercers nefarious shadow appear everywhere money overweighs probity, it lines profiles of the treasonous charlatans and crooks who have wormed it to the Oval Office. It might be about time to have them sit with Special Counsel Mueller. And possibly lock them up.
2
Most took Trump's boasting about being able to get away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue as hyperbole. But it appears that, for at least one third of Americans, it could be closer to anodyne.
Every day brings at least one new outrage, but 40% of us still support him. In West Virginia it is 61%. Will these new Cambridge Analytica revelations hurt him? Will anything?
He is going to get rid of Mueller by hook, or by crook, and the Republican Party is going to let him get away with it. It is imperative that Democrats take the House back, but the process of impeachment will suck too much oxygen from the new House zeitgeist. Unrelenting comittee hearings will be a better tactic to expose the corruption of his entire administration, and his political campaigns. The public may be less indulgent to his lackeys and entourage. There will never be 67 votes in the Senate to convict him.
And Nancy Pelosi, my Congresswoman, should be in charge. We shouldn't let the unrelenting Republican demonization of this indefatigable public servant succeed. They hate her bcause she does her job so well. And because she is a woman. Don't let them get away with it. This is turning out to be the year of the woman, and the best one of all should be celebrated, and acclaimed.
3
Why does any intelligent person have a Facebook account?
2
This goes beyond Right, Left or Democrats and Republicans; it is time to forget our differences and fight for The soul of America! Extortion, entrapment, blackmail, bribary, targeting fake news, and high tech. brain washing are not new to Black-Opps; simply put, Racketeering is illegal (RICO)! Lock um Up!
2
Melania will say, "This is just more boys-talk -- locker room talk."
Cambridge Analytical tactics akin to kompromat - sounds familiar. Oh yeah Russian KBG technique. So many dots and everyday so many more connections.
4
Very very disturbing and most frightening. How can this be happening and not one republican is willing to say enough already?
This Nix fellow is one creepy dude. All the smarmy lies and we so cool vibes from Nix. Oh joy look at Nix play spy.
Is a man like Nix human? What are his dirty little secrets?
1
Employing sex workers (i.e. prostitutes) to entrap, frame and subsequently blackmail.
Hmmm. Where have I heard that before?
Oh yes. Prince Jared's father was convicted, among other things, of setting up his brother-in-law with a hooker in a motel room - and on hidden camera.
Not hard to see where our own crown prince got his playbook.
NOT my president
5
I would not be surprised at all to find that the Cambridge Analytica data was used to inform the Russian troll farms and bots. Shocking wasn’t it how well these trolls knew which buttons to push? If so, I’m wondering who paid for that.
1
Cheating is the Republican brand!
5
Politicians cheating? I'm shocked, shocked. Next you will telling me that DNC colluded with the Clinton Campaign to defeat Bernie Sanders or that Obama's IRS target Tea Party grass roots organizing efforts in the run up to the 2012 election.
Yet in this noted Paper of Record, we Berniecrats where told that politics is a down and dirty game. That rules are pushed and bent. Quit trying for perfect and accept mediocre evil.
Until all political parties wish to come clean. These tears are crocodilian.
HRC and her Money Launder for Victory and Pervert the Record with David Brock are on par for smear and dirty tricks political propaganda.
Check that mirror Dems.
1
Check your own mirror. Bernie Bros played right into Trump's hands. The Russians used this data not on Trumpers but also on young people to get them to vote for anyone but Clinton. All they had to do was split the vote enough to give Trump a majority. Nice going. Trump is going to hurt young people the most.
1
Another tale of depravity flowing from that fountain of debauchery Trump.
Nothing is too vile or low that it is beneath our vomitous President. Nothing.
3
One of the most telling signs of our current slide into autocracy and un-democratic manipulation is seen in the republican party's crusade to keep American's they don't like from voting: Suppression, gerrymandering, smear campaigns, theft, blackmail, and lies. Funny how they don't seem to have any problems with Russians voting in abstentia.
The republican party is not going to get back to a belief in democracy until We the People force it on them. We must overwhelm the polls this November. There must be so great a turnout that they are sent back to the dustbin of history never again to reappear in their current form.
F(alse)ox news must also be put on notice and the most egregious of them tried for sedition, if not treason.
It is time for the members of the 4th Estate to remember that in a fascist state they are usually out of work, and in prison. Or dead.
We all have a job to do to save our Nation.
Vote like your life and the lives of your children depend on it. Because they do.
2
A shame upon America and every American............brought upon Americans by Americans and their so-called leaders.....all for political purposes. Money and power and ego led by a big mouth with no knowledge of history. Land of the free? Land of justice? Land of truth? Ha!!!! Now in shambles, never to be regained........and this is just the beginning.
2
Yep, the deep state and the FBI sure had their act together in framing Trump. Just incredible how they enlisted CA, FB, Bannon, the Mercers, Manafort, Flynn, Kushner, Sessions, Putin, Julian Assange, etc. in their vast conspiracy.
2
Trump's tricksters are being exposed, as we speak, and for good reason, your job as an honest journalist, to keep us informed...and stop being credulous about charlatans and demagogues in our midst. Too bad that republicans in power are buying all these conspiracy theories...as long as they favor them staying in power...to abuse it. Corrupted all...while incompetent in doing their job to benefit society. We are living a grave crisis concocted by our despotic 'ugly American' in-chief and his enablers.
2
Ah, transparency. What light shines through yonder window? It's the fourth estate--those ink-stained wretches who persist in making stories because they need to be told. Wouldst though go and pay for a paper today? Support your society and celebrate the power of Journalism.
The life you save may be your own.
1
When recent revelations about Cambridge Analytica are linked to the ongoing flood of news about Putin's disinformation campaign I am reminded of Michelle Obama's quote which now needs updating: "They go low, we go lower."
There is no way all of this slime could not have had an effect on the election results. These people are tearing our country apart.
1
Anyone with half a brain would realize that the Liar in Chief did not win the election fairly. We have proof of meetings with Russians to gather dirt on HRC and now we have proof of this company of disinformation being hired by the Trump campaign. Yes he won by cheating--something the Liar in Chief has done all his life. Lock him up! The orange jumpsuit should go well with the hair.
2
Jared, soon to be felon, following in Charlie Kushner's footsteps.
2
Election campaigns in America are just as sleazy as any other country including Russia. This is why other countries heads of state laugh in America's face when criticized by an American president for immorality. We Americans are the worst and the best when it comes to political campaign manipulations.
I ran for the Board of Supervisors in Marin County California in 1992 as much for the eye opening experience as the slim chance of winning. My opponent was a 20 year entrenched encumbant. What I learned was that running for office in America is a lesson in depravity where only naive suckers demonstrate integrity.
Just a cursory glance at Facebook reveals that it is the consummate example of America's aggressive capitalism clothed in a costume of youthful wide eyed gullibility!
1
"With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse."
The above excerpt, which closes this column, brilliantly sums up the secret to Trump's success throughout his career. It also, sadly, describes the Republican party in its present incarnation.
In other words. one team and it's quarterback have abandoned the rules of the game in varying degrees and invented their own. They see themselves as evening out the playing field when in fact they appear hell bent on tilting it in their favor by means of obstruction, convoluted legislative tricks, demonizing, voter suppression and in Trump's case, bullying, compulsive lying, deceptive sloganeering, dirty tricks and now, data mining with perks.
Together, this is the real wall the president and his enablers have built; the real question is when it finally comes down what will be left of our democracy?
2
NYT Opinion Section, November 19th, 2016
Read,: 'Cambridge Analytica and the Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz'
by McKenzie Funk.
Now, we could see this coming for some time, we just didn't know how is was being managed. Maskirovka indeed.
2
Wasn’t Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner the dude who headed up their voter analytics? Didn’t the NYT run a story on how Trump’s campaign team had their own statistics and computer modeling, showing a very different electoral outcome, than the pollsters? Come on now. Obviously Trump was in on this scam.
2
How does democracy survive? Here are some places to start...
1. Drop Facebook.... NOW!
2. Do your job as CITIZENS.... in other words, search for truth.... I'd suggest dropping FOX and going with NYT, WAPO, PBS, The New Yorker... for starters
3. Appreciate Democracy.... the alternatives are much, much worse.
4. Be cynical.... recognize a lie.... for instance, ignore nearly everything the NRA says....
5. THINK !....
best of luck, my friends....
3
What no time to investigate this shaddy corrupt company. Come on why no interest by the house or the senate.. If this were Democrats the Republicans would be all over it.. Dems are completely spineless! Robert Mercer the wealthy GOP donor is laughing at you... Mercer is the owner of this US business..Why not go after him??
2
It's time to unfriend Facebook and unelect Trump.
3
I haven't visited Facebook once in the last three weeks and I don't miss it one bit.
Has anyone else noticed that virtually everyone in the Donald Trump sphere of action is scuzzy, sleazy, criminal, amoral, and sociopathic?
2
Trumps Tech Thugs. Who would have guessed ???
2
This quote very aptly sums up the current so-called President and his idiotic administration:
“On the one hand, they act like idiots. On the other, they won, which makes it seem as if they must possess some sort of occult genius. With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse.”
Last time I saw his face while his lips were moving, a few ays ago, Mr. Trump was fishing for compliments from his adoring crowd of worshippers, comparing himself to Conor Lamb:
“I think I’m better looking than him.” (Scattered applause). (Trump, now more enthusiastically and with increasing volume): “I really do! I think I’m much more handsome than he is.” (Sustained applause and hoots, as a look of satisfaction envelops Mr. Trump’s amply fleshy, moribund, flaccid, orange countenance).
Not at all idiotic.
2
I'm sorry, I missed the part where you provided evidence that Trump had any knowledge of the crimes alleged against Cambridge Analytica. But hey, let's go full bore with guilt by association. We know how close Obama was to Harvey Weinstein. He accepted Weinstein financial support and even got his daughter an internship with Weinstein. Is it not disgusting that Obama associated so closely with sexual predation. Ridiculous? Maybe, but that is the logic of your McCarthyism.
1
The smoking gun here is the link between Bannon, the Mercers and Nix who requested Hillary Clinton’s e-mails from Julian Assange. This is an attempt to use stolen property to benefit the Trump presidential campaign.
2
Honestly, at this point I can’t wait to read about how Manafort used Cambridge to install that pro-Putin puppet prime minister in Ukraine. You know all these dots are connected...
2
Trump and the Republicans are essentially all cheaters. Voter fraud, gerrymandering, stolen data, .... Trump has always fancied himself a mob boss of sorts, so this is no surprise, sadly. When will the people say they've had enough? The stench is unbearable.
2
We've never been in a situation like this before, where the government was controlled from the top by treasonous criminals intent on thievery, harm to average and vulnerable citizens and as much environmental damage as it can inflict. This is like being occupied by a corrupt foreign dictatorship. This is the situation against which good people throughout history have often chosen revolution. Imagine how much worse off America would be right now if Il Duce and his gang of thieves were competent!
3
Robert Costa of the Washington Post said that Trump has a 'difficult' time grasping the concept that the Judicial Dept. is not his personal fiefdom. He thinks they should 'protect' him. The president of the United States can't grasp that those working in the Judicial Dept are not his 'personal' lawyers. Really? Is it possible he is that stupid about America's institutions? He thinks they are all 'his'.
And what does he need protection for if he is not guilty? That man is the guiltiest man on the planet. Why can't we get rid of him and his illegitimate presidency. We're in the hands of a Thug.
I need protection from Trump. Where is my Roy Cohn? Ha! I wonder if Trump wanders the White House talking to the ghost of Roy Cohn, "Protect me from America!".
2
Ms. Goldberg's conclusion is:
"On the one hand, they act like idiots. On the other, they won, which makes it seem as if they must possess some sort of occult genius. With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse."
I would argue, Trump won because too many Americans act like idiots, believing Fox News and talk radio.
MASA - Make America Smart Again
3
Great opportunity here for a new social media platform to compete with Facebook. I'm certain that many, many people would pay a few bucks a year for the expected Facebook experience without the ads, secrecy and manipulation. Of course the owners of the site would not become gazillionaires, but they could make respectable money the old fashion way.
4
We don't need the insidious tools of Cambridge Surveillalytica or the cutesy come-ons of Facebook to produce "psychographic" profiles of the busy bees at work for CA and FB: it is patently obvious that they are greedy, depraved, profoundly undemocratic, despicable creeps. And they are proud of it.
2
How funny: Alexander NIX. "Nomen est omen". How good that we had the Romans.
And what is Facebook doing in Cambridge Analytica’s office before the investigation starts?
1
Marketing research, per se, has been around for a very long time. Business owners have always been on a quest to understand their customers and their future customers for the sake of their business's longevity and prosperity. If Cambridge Analytica had been created to make research results even more accurate through high-tech audience targeting, there would be no story — no "there" there.
Instead, CA used the collected data to target voters with ads loaded with lies and distortions to promote Donald Trump's campaign. With the assistance of white nationalist Steve Bannon, and his morally bankrupt financier, billionaire Richard Mercer, Cambridge Analytica became an intergral tool of deception and voter fraud, to blindside our Constitution, and to help the extremist right-wing gasbags on radio and TV media, to carry messages of hate, and endless lies to a conservative voter base whose minds have been absorbant as a paper towel. Fact-checking became the enemy of these dark forces. As a result, those same media voices told their fans to ignore fact-checking sources and to consider all other media the "enemy of the people." Little wonder Trump's rabid supporters are unswayed by rock-solid evidence of his lying, bullying, fraudulent business practics and, his self-confessed sexual predation.
These are the dark forces of TeamTrump that shaped the outlaw Cambridge Analytica and its mission to subvert our democracy, the rule of law, and any sense of decency.
4
Mich is always good for a laugh.
Like her last sentence. I'd wager that Bernie would agree that being better than his opponent was not enough since his opponent was willing to be so much worse. Of course, Bernie shouldn't have expected the Clinton National Committee to treat him fairly and honestly. He isn't even a Democrat.
I appreciate your wit and spirituality , and comment is well written, as is MS. GOLBERG'S article, but efforts comfirms for me that like some other Times newspaper columnists she lives in a bubble, the words of Beth Spaeth. Can she demonstrate that even 1 vote was changed in the general election because of the "manigances" of Cambridge Analytica. My kith and kin could not even tell where Cambridge, town and university is, except they know that it is in Old Blighty. What's the point? MG strikes me a "nostalgique,"hankering for HRC when she was running for the presidency a second time, and embittered by Trump's upset victory. Who would credibly deny that were it not for the machinations of the Clinton Machine, read Jake Sullivan, Robbie Mook inter alios,and Bernie had won the nomination, he would have beaten Trump going away. After the elitism of Obama, folks were in the mood for a populist hero. Thus both Sanders and Trump share that in common, they both had a strong appeal for the folk.Cannot blame HRC by the way for her talks in India, as so many from both parties do. Her speeches in the sub continent have the effect, in my view of a catharsis. You've dreamed for a lifetime of becoming president, and then you become your own worst enemy with the "basket of deplorables" speech. If only she had been able to take those words back!"The past is a predator" wrote Margaret Feitlowitz, words that have a universal significance. But MG is a good writer.
How long does this go on? Enough already. What’s not to understand?
3
Has any news media actually referred to the methods of the Clinton campaign as "dirty"? She colluded with CNN, the DNC and a foreign spy to wreck Bernie and Trump yet she is presented as pure as the new-fallen snow by every non-Fox "journalist".
2
Democrats don’t get investigated. Only republicans.
1
You obviously only watch FOX propaganda if you think think the other networks treat Hillary as "pure".
2
Another case of the left crying foul, knowing full well they do the same thing.
1
Just another con job by Sneaky Don and his band of Merry Men.
Combine this sort of disinformation with the Fox News propaganda machine and you can better understand how the low brow crowd was swayed to believe in Don The Con.
3
Cambridge Analytica is clearly a criminal enterprise. Unfortunately the public sector criminal justice system is totally overwhelmed by such activities, all of which started with a major capital investment by an arch-conservative American oligarch who wants to reinstate autocracy by rich white people.
3
I appreciate that you don't mince words talking about these crooks.
4
Why isn't Channel 4's report on American television?
2
Let’s cut to the chase. Facebook, Twitter, et al are a cancer on our democracy. Their CEOs should be indicted under RICO statutes for wire fraud. Until we hold them accountable we are all subject to their exploitation. Delete all of your accounts and starve the beast.
2
This is a squalid, cynical effort to turn voters into silly putty by targeting them merely as personalities to manipulate based on their worst fears. It's evil. Nix Alexander Nix.
3
Cheating indeed. Just ask any one of Trump's ex-wives. Why one third of American follows a loudmouth, profane New Yorker in the first place blows my mind. And I was born in Manhattan.
1
By appealing to the worst demons of our nature Trump beat Hillary the old-fashioned way. No amount of high-tech dirty trick Hillary campaign envy excuses and explanations matter.
But Donald Trump's most devilish effective 'dirty trickster' was and still is Vladimir Putin. While Putin masterfully puts his targets in hospitals, prisons, mental institutions, urns and coffins, his greatest coup was placing his grateful fearful puppet dummy stooge in the Oval Office of the White House.
Yet both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both blame/credit James Comey for Trump's election.
1
I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul! Oops, guess not.
1
I still maintain that the biggest issue surround Rump's win was the 33% of American voters who simply refused to go to the polls on Election Day. Why didn't the undercover investigation try to discern how the data Cambridge Analytica (and others) obtained was used to discourage people from voting.
2
As a native New Yorker, Donald Trumps dirty tactics comes as no surprise. It is how he conducted his business in the City. He did anything he could to get on Page Six, and the more outrageous he was the more he liked it.
It is how he is conducting his presidency. The only surprise to Trump is that he did in fact, win. He was planning on losing all along, and parlaying that loss into a new conspiracy theory ("The election is rigged, folks.")
Bankruptcies, cheating craftsmen out of their contractual payments, blatant lying. He got away with all of that because he was relatively small potatoes in New York.
He is due for a comeuppance, that is for sure. Whether Robert Mueller can deliver that is the question. Don't hold your breath waiting for Republicans in the House and Senate to hold him in check.
6
What has struck me the most in the last few days, while reading about Alexander Nix, genius that he may be, is his total lack of any moral compass whatsoever.
3
It's why Trump and Cambridge Analytica were such a good fit with the GOP. Cheating and rigging is in their DNA.
We really need to ask - how is it sociopaths seem to be doing so well in our society these days?
3
Michelle is such a clean, logical, direct to the point writer. Keep it up.
May I suggest another article to simply explain the intended psychology behind Cambridge Analytica's approach?
2
As usual I think we are asking the wrong questions. Donald Trump has proven himself to be inept fool. He surrounds himself with the same type of people.
So who has orchestrated this? Who is behind him being elected? And why?
That is the real issue.
2
Well hopefully the UK will do the right thing and shut down Cambridge Analytica and prosecute those who ran it -- since the US won't.
1
Trump’s tricks his political opponents into smugly moralizing, unware they are every bit as ethically nihilistic. They end up arguing a shady data firm is the height of corruption, while ignoring Hillary’s British operative sourcing Russian intelligence. Michelle’s right about psychological warfare though, but wrong on who’s brainwashed.
1
Hahahahaha!. Hillary's British operative! You guys are hilarious!
2
Putin & co. have learned that the US is for sale. And cheap, too
2
The lack of education and getting information from reality tv has resulted in uninformed or willfully ignorant dupes electing coma conman with a criminal past to our highest office.
Anyone familiar with the current occupant’s business history would have known his cheating others, not paying workers, lying and defaulting on loans, are only a part of his greed, corruption and incompetence.
Winning at all costs is the only value he is loyal to.
America has reaped what it has sown. No surprise here.
1
Eye opening revelation but really not surprising since trump and his syndicate have a long history of cheating, intimidation and corruption. Add to that the unscrupulousness of the Kushners, slumlords who were on the brink of financial disaster, and you have the picture of everything that has enabled their political scheming.The Mercers and Bannon found the perfect stooge in trump to fulfill their vision of an America of their agenda.
Hopefully this latest discovery is on Meuller's desk and will assist in further disclosures.So when recently trump called out "where is my Roy Cohn?", he was lingering in the background the whole time.
3
Dirty tricksters ?
Is this a humor article ?
What's different about this stuff, and the way the DNC or RNC conduct their smear campaigns ?
Or politicians in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, or LIttle Rock ?
Nothing.
The real issue is simply this:
The lefties feel betrayed because one of their own sold data to a client who then employed it against the lefties.
This is the same outfit did work for the Obama team, but you have to read the Daily Caller site for the facts because the N Y Times is hiding them from their readers.
Maybe it's time for people to put their smart phones down and just have conversations with each other.....
4
"With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating."
Michelle, this statement applies to the entire Republican Party. Donald Trump is merely the most recent and highly destructive symptom of the disease.
Given the GOP's agenda that gives to the 1% by taking away government support, services, and protections from the rest of us, I think Republicans figured out a long time ago that the only way the party can win our pesky little elections is by cheating, mud slinging, and massive amounts of lying to voters. And I must admit, they are very good at it.
In school, we used to say "cheaters never win." Well guess what? In today's America, the deck has been carefully structured and stacked to assure big business, big money, and anti-democratic practices rule the day--thanks to the Electoral College; Citizens United and our secretive campaign finance system; then add in gerrymandering, voter ID, and reams of fake news and propaganda.
Voila! A terrible person such as Donald Trump loses the popular election in 2016 by 3 million votes, but wins the presidency because of the way the Electoral College is structured and functions.
Here's the thing. The Republicans have been cheating and lying for so long that about 40% of Americans have been carefully conditioned by right-wing media to no longer know when wrong is wrong (no matter which party does it) or to care. It's hooray for the red team, and kill the blue team!
How do we change that dynamic?
2
It's the Russian model. Lie and cheat. everyone else is. (as explained to me by a Russian who was criticizing me for being too honest)
3
I used to work with someone for many years who was born in Russia, and brought here by his parents when he about 2.
One of the first things he told me was, 'I'm Russian, but I hate Russians. They always have an angle, and you can't believe anything that comes out of their mouth.'
1
I guess we'll see if...
#1 Lawmakers follow up and investigate Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
#2 Lawmakers and U.S. citizens hold Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and potentially Trump (and members of his campaign/administration) accountable should evidence show they knowingly, illegally and/or immorally manipulated people's personal data
I doubt the GOP will go there. Yet another reason to vote in a new generation of lawmakers who place public service over personal gain
2
Studied the voters. Pandered to their worst instincts. This isn’t exactly new, you know. The new advertising technology might be running a little ahead of the public’s common sense, but the will to self-deceive is deep and enduring.
Sure, Trump and his co-conspirators are ethically bankrupt cheaters. That describes everyone seeking power in Washington DC. But fraudulently obtaining (stealing) personal data from millions and paying foreigners to work on the campaign are illegal and must be prosecuted.
In the end Trump von Munchausen will be brought down by a thousand cuts, one cut for every minor illegality that has been uncovered, only if the Democrats regain control of Congress, and one cut for every 5 lies and false tales he has recounted.
1
Fraud and deception are this president's tools. His high-tech supporters enabled him to navigate every cesspool imaginable to achieve his own ends. No wonder the president accuses the mainstream media of fake news. He knows fake news when he sees it.
1
When I watch a show like "Homeland" I think, nah, that's unrealistic. Then I pick up the NYT and read about Cambridge Analytics and think the show's writers were too pedestrian in their plots.
5
Sorry to inform you but all is fair in love, war, and to a very large degree...politics. What Michelle calls "cheating", others would call opposition research.
Yes, politicians use disinformation and dirty tricks. Has the writer ever heard of Lee Atwater?
Left unmentioned is that collecting data on its myopic users is the very business model that defines farcebook. The slimy Trump campaign is not the first to exploit the exploiters. Just the first to get caught.
For decades the Western Democracies have been harshly critical of Pravda in Russia and People's Daily in China for their influencing the public opinion and controlling mindset of its people. Now we have billionaires like Mercers, and Murdoch and the wilful blind eye by tech giants like Facebook and Google and Twitter twisting the minds of people in the West. Wondering what system does greater harm to its people? Can we preach to the rest of the world from our high horse anymore?
1
How ironic. Trump, who rails against "fake news" purveyors such as the Times, Washington Post, and CNN, benefits from a fake data agent. Trump won the electoral college in large part by preying on the fears of people, and apparently CA was a co-conspirator. If justice were to triumph, Trump, who has spent a lifetime of cheating and disregarding the law, should be removed as an illegitimate president and Hillary should be installed.
1
Whether it's possible to live without being influenced by information is beyond my comprehension. It's just not credible to live in a bubble unless of course one makes a product to influence behaviour...say... being a media company. People have bias' and whether you like it or not other people cater to that fact....just look around the public sphere. You insult your readers by implicitly suggesting that they are mere empty vessels ready to act according to some evil mastermind. Get over yourself.
I haven’t been able to understand how Steve Bannon, like Mike Pence, has been able to skate under the radar so far. Maybe that will change now.
1
Trump's team acting like Thugs?? Seems they took their cue from the top.
1
'It’s no good fighting an election on the facts because actually it's all about emotion.' ~ Mark Turnbull, the managing director of Cambridge Analytica Political Global (7:46 – 7:48 goo.gl/vUwN9z)
Trump knows this better than most. His low IQ supporters are not interested in the facts. Many of them can barely read or write, let alone study a detailed report. So-called 'common sense' matters more than the published data. Prejudice trumps reason. Religious indoctrination sweeps aside science.
Unfortunately, all too often we see this contempt for empiricism across the American electorate. How many NYT readers ever use Google Scholar, PubMed or Cochrane Reviews? How many of the most opionated even bother to glance at the abstract of a scholarly article let alone read entire the entire paper?
When we choose to be as ignorant as Trump and his supporters, when we refuse to learn about law, equity and economics, when we turn up our noses at physics and chemistry, we become part of the mob, easily manipulated by the demagogue.
2
Traitors and criminals have always been with us, however, today they have an extremely dangerous weapon at their disposal. The understanding of their victims' vulnerabilities created by the analytical abilities of the computer is the weapon du jour. Like the lethal dimension computers have given to Gerrymandering, any capturing of data can be honed to deadly precision.
Yes computers can be today's snake-oil.
1
I’m shocked, the Cult 45 people were involved in nefarious dealings. How can that be? I’m sure it must be “the deep state” again or perhaps David Dennison or John Barron.
1
Nicely done.
1
Grow up. Politics is hardball and this is the high tech version. Your team got outworked and beaten in another category. Stop crying and up your game.
1
Interesting that Trump and Bannon, the leading "AMERICA FIRSTERS" were using a foreign company to corrupt the American voting public. That gives one a pretty good over all picture of their perspective and ethics.
1
The fact that someone like Trump is President of the United States, having defeated a strong slate of Republican candidates in the primaries and a "shoe in" winner Hillary Clinton in the general election, may not be proof that Cambridge Analytia's sleazy dirty tricks (learned from East German Stasi) work, but it sure makes me suspicious.
1
"I'm shocked — SHOCKED — to learn that gambling has been going on!"
So what is your point Ms. Goldberg? That Cambridge analytics stoops to the level of sleaze of fusion GPS, but does not reach it?
1
False equivalence. But nice try prof.
1
At least Trump and his lackeys have not been bombing Libya.
MZ is the Teflon tech wonder boy of America. He will remain unscathed by any of this. His company has enabled the US government in ways we will never know.
FB is a nefarious operation.
1
The right and alt-right can't ever float George Soros conspiracy theories anymore!
2
He cheated his wives.
He cheated his contractors.
He cheated his prospective students.
He cheated his state casino regulators.
He cheated his investors.
He cheated his political party.
He cheated his country.
He cheated us.
Why are we now surprised?
4
In 2008 then-candidate Obama harnessed Facebook, even going so far as hiring its co-founder, Chris Hughes. Obama mined all that great user data to great effect, and Facebook didn't mind because they liked him.
Now that Trump has done the same, you are mad about it?
1
What a mountain the Times has built out of a molehill. There is no proof whatsoever that any of this was even used. And if it was, so what. How is political advertising a crime? The same kind of psycho demographic analysis is used every day to shape ad campaigns for consumers products. The only reason this is news is because the Times is able to connected Trump’s name to it. This is ridiculous, Trump is now colluding with Facebook?
1
Let me get this straight the president demands the death penalty for drug pushers but says an investigation of his campaign for possible collusion with a hostile foreign power is unfair? Talk about the ultimate snowflake there you have it.
1
Facebook must be investigated for possible treason. What did its managers know, and when did they know it?
1
Actually, this suggests some interesting possible overlaps. Let's spell it out:
First, Trump is 99% theatre, and the rest no real action.
Second, interesting, his incompetent Dirty Trickster Bureau" was/is located in San Antonio, TX.
Third: the latest package bomb in the current Austin terrorism exploded in a FedEx facility.... near San Antonio. It was on the way to Austin.
The bomber(s) have so far targeted blacks, Hispanics and rich whites (Travis Country, an upscale white neighborhood). Does that profile sound familiar???
Perhaps, given Trump's penchant for spectacle as distraction, while Mueller and the rest of us close in on his -- and corporate America's -- whole dirty, cheating apparatus (which includes data theft by Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple, btw... cf. GDPR in the EU, which we should have here, too)..... he is sponsoring the kind of white extremist terrorism that is the most prevalent kind in the US?
Perhaps we put the Austin bombings at his feet? It's not inconceivable. He and the GOP have already gone far beyond the bound's of Nixon's and Reagan's worst crimes, and I'm sure have even more planned. The terrorism of Austin being only one of them.
1
Nix engineered Brexit as well as the criminal Trump Campaign. The evil right-wing bankrollers, the Mercers, are also involved. Is their no end to this stinking conspiracy? The American public has been bought, bamboozled and cheated. Trump will protect this whole mess
3
"Cambridge Analytica’s corruption helps provide the missing piece in this story. If the Trump campaign had a social media advantage, one reason is that it hired a company that mined vast amounts of illicitly obtained data."
Mined the data, sold or gave it to Russian troll farms that used it to target foolish Americans that were (are) vulnerable to the Trump message of racist bigotry.
Donald Trump, a lying cheat who conned vulnerable Americans is now our president with the help of the high tech thugs at Cambridge Analytica.
1
Psychologists have warned for years about the end of freedom based upon the science of 'influence' --i.e. psychological manipulation. That science has been industrialized and mass produced by Cambridge Analytica, aided by Facebook's invasive business model coupled with its negligence in protecting customer data.
The CA whistleblower described the process of leading users further and further down rabbit holes by clicking on stories designed to appeal to them, each one with a further expansion of 'designer garbage' written to appeal to a particular cohort of users. The users are fooled into believing that they've discovered this information themselves and are thus much more likely to believe it. But, as computer programmers know, 'garbage in, garbage out.
None of us is immune from such manipulation--we need to be honest about that. And we need to take steps to assure that it's not allowed to continue and to educate people as to how influence works and how to avoid it.
Unfortunately, 'influence' is the primary tool of Madison Avenue, so there are strong financial incentives to preserve the power of influence.
3
As much as I dislike what Cambridge Analytical has done, I suspect that the vitriol dripping from Ms. Goldberg's remarks have much to do with the green-eyed monster of envy.
"Why didn't we think of that" is the message that comes across.
The other point that is so obvious is that if people wish to put their lives on public view, don't be surprised is someone or some organization both looks at them and takes advantage.
1
We need to learn more about the criminal aspects of the disinformation campaigns used in the 2016 election. It seems that most commentators do not mention vote hacking but we are told how easy it would be to accomplish. Can we really assume that this form of deception was NOT used!
4
Years ago my husband and I made the decision that we would not participate in Facebook. That decision was reaffirmed when we traveled hundreds of miles to visit a sibling and his wife. As we sat in their living room with the two of them, the wife spent the entire evening with her laptop, checking out her friends on Facebook and ignoring the people who had gone to the trouble and expense of an actual visit. She is so addicted that she spends several hours a day on Facebook.
Another example of the sadness of Facebook is when a desperate person posts their thinly veiled intentions of committing suicide and it goes unheeded by their hundreds of "friends." This actually happened to a distant relative. I could go on, but the bottom line is that Facebook seems to fill a need for human connection but it actually does far more harm than good. So my advice would be to disengage from Facebook and get a real life.
6
Cambridge Analytica boasted it could use entrapment successfully. This is true mostly because their victims are so easily entrapped. How many of our politicians would turn down "an offer too good to be true?" Suppose that Cambridge Analytica posed as an NRA rep and offered congressman X a handsome contribution in return for support, which was then warmly received. This appears to be a "dirty trick" only because of the fake identity. If the rep had really been from the NRA, it would be routine lobbying. If the offer had been land instead of campaign funds, that would have been dirty no matter what. Yes, CA acted unethically or worse, but its bragging shows that very little is needed to persuade a public figure to accept its offer.
2
And I thought “House of Cards” was fiction
85
Here's the NY Times story about the Obama campaign in 2012 doing pretty much the same thing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-m...
They used slightly different techniques, but the ability to mine Facebook friends and control news feeds among potential supporters is highly useful.
4
The difference is that the Obama team got their data legally.
Users knew they were being asked by the Obama campaign and had to give permission for the Obama teams to look at their Facebook accounts.
On the other hand, the Obama team, too, then looked at their friends.
I believe it was okay at the time and that Facebook changed their privacy policy after that.
5
Right, Jonathan.
Save the part re prostitutes and bribes. Not to mention Obama landsliding w/ more votes for POTUS than anybody in U.S.history (something on which Trump couldn't even eclipse the mark for women).
2
Point taken, but what was Obama's message to get more people to vote for him? Was it memes portraying hyperbole, or outright lies to sow racial division? Was it spreading untrue allegations against his opponent (pizza-gate, anyone?), that had nothing to do with actual policy stances?
I think not. The result being that both of his victories, in both the popular vote and electoral college, where among the most lopsided of the last 30 years.
1
Cambridge Analytica deserves the scrutiny they're getting here, but Facebook is a bigger part of this problem. When pieces like this point out figures like 50 million users having their data harvested, it backs up preposterous claims and exaggerates Cambridge Analytica's effectiveness. They probably didn't need 50 million – or even 5 million, at that. Thanks to Facebook's algorithmic feeds, a very small sample of American is adequate to benchmark what does and doesn't get views. Combined with the paid/curated posts that flood this platform every minute, how much "high tech" trickery is really needed to amplify your message. If you're in the business of deceiving of voters with misleading but tantalizing social media posts, Facebook's ad platform takes care of the tech for you.
5
We keep uncovering deception and manipulation on behalf of Trump. I think it's increasingly clear that the election was rigged in favor of Donald. The electoral vote difference came down to less than 100,000 votes. Now we've got 50 million accounts being mined and primed for manipulation, and notice -- there's always a Russian behind every wave of disinformation, including w Cambridge Analytica.
8
I've used FB to keep up with the activities of far-flung family and friends. I was very aware that my FB account was being hacked during the 2016 election: messages disappearing as I typed them, racing screens etc. I complained but got no response. I feel that I must close my account as a matter of moral principle even sacrificing my family interests.
11
The article says "It’s long been hard to judge how well psychographic profiling actually works." But Facebook has a staff of social psychologists who have been researching mass manipulation for years, with control groups and double blind experiments. It would be surprising if they haven't specifically researched Cambridge Analytica's psychographic profiling, or spoken with CA staff who have.
6
Facebook? Ever hear of Madison Avenue? The CIA? Human nature? Mass manipulation took off as soon as Adam and Eve hooked up in the Garden of Eden.
Facebook? Ever hear of Madison Avenue? Or, the CIA? Or, human nature? Mass manipulation started when Adam and Eve hooked up in the Garden of Eden.
One has to wonder:
Does Trump consult Cambridge Analytica before he jumps feet first into his acts of distraction designed to shift the eyes of the public from his latest abhorrent behavior and/or his misguided acts of verbal drivel and falsehood.
At least we now know how the electorate is targeted and how the ignorant and the lazy and the single issue voter is misled and bent to the benefit of Trump and his henchmen and his greedy supporters.
Trump's base will destroy our democracy because given their failings they actually prefer a dictator who will make them feel wanted and will do their thinking for them.
Slavery never disappears. It just takes on a new appearance.
24
Is this really any surprise? Most people in New York have known for at least two decades that the secret to trump's 'success', besides being born on third base and convincing the world he hit a stand-up triple, is his propensity to lie, cheat and steal, then hide behind his phalanx of lawyers until his victims give up.
He's been breaking laws and conning people his entire life and been given pass after pass, so in a way you can't blame him for doing what he's done all along and thinking the results will be the same.
31
Oh, I blame him all right. In every way.
2
It will be interesting to see if Muller discovers whether Jarrod Kushner, through the third party cutout, Cambridge Analytica, provided the Russina troll farms the ill gotten Facebook accounts, so they in turn, could micro target anti-Clinton propaganda to WI, MI, and PA. That would be proof of collusion with the Russians, a foreign power, in our elections.
I read that just prior to the big campaign push, Kushner went to Silicon Valley, and was bragging about how he received a crash course on micro targeting on social media. He was in charge of Trump's campaign on social media.
15
Watergate was so 1972, and so unnecessary for Nixon's victory. In 2016 every vote counted, and every dirty trick helped--no wonder Trump feels illegitimate. But who needs burglars when hundreds of millions leave their doors open?
I had doubts about security and privacy of Facebook from the beginning and refused to succumb to its many charms. (This was mostly dumb luck; I happened to be doing confidential work during its ascendancy and didn't want to take the risk.) Now we see what happens when people don't read the fine print. It gives me no pleasure to say, "I told you so."
130
I too refused to join Facebook for the same reasons. But "let the citizens beware" is no way to run a healthy democracy. Europe has it right with their General Data Protection Regulation. We should do the same.
13
We should do the same with health care also.
2
Brilliant column.
Let's face it, Trump is an anarchist bound to destroy all of our institutions. More, for all of the Hillary-haters out there -- how does it feel to know now that you were completely had?
25
Well, since trump's job approval rating has stubbornly hung around the 35-40% range for most of the last year, it would seem that the vast majority of the 'hillary haters' out there haven't figured out yet that their and their childrens' future - not to mention the viability of our democratic system - are being sold out, so that among other things, the current potus can at long last realize his dream of building what will undoubtedly be an architecturally heinous looking hotel in the capital of the former Soviet empire.
Eric Schmidt once said that Google's policy was to go right up to, but not to cross, what he called the creepy line.
As far as Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are concerned, crossing the creepy line is good business.
130
Call it what you will we have an extremely serious problem. Not only does he cheat and lie he demands the same of those around him and if they "disobey"...well then, "you are fired". How amusing that now the wife is going out to condemn bullying. Before she hits the road she ought to deal with the bully she lives with.
16
The Republicans have been using various means to try to create an unlevel electoral playing field in their favor for a very long time. Trump just does it better, and they are shocked, shocked at his tactics.
Oh, and just quit Facebook. Pure greed and evil.
11
“The Genius of Cheating” sounds like an apt successor to “The Art of the Deal”.
11
The methods change but the results are the same. In the 1948 Texas senate race that launched LBJ's national political career, Coke Stevenson was denied the victory by the corrupt practices (ballot box stuffing: ergo "Landslide Lyndon" in South TX counties. (Cf Robert Caro's brilliant bio of LBJ--Path to Power, first in the series). Link here that explicates from an earlier NYT piece: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/11/us/how-johnson-won-election-he-d-lost...
No real mention of the Mercer family and their stakehold in Cambridge Analytica. They have such a huge hand in conservative politics, that Trump kowtows to them for donations to his campaign. Why are these uberwealthy people, working so hard to sabotage the American way of life to suit their needs? Why are they held in such high regard by the evangelical Christian willfully ignorant base, and why have we given them so much power over our lives?
The true revolt should be rejection of our entire campaign finance apparatus. Perhaps then we will begin to rid ourselves of the hot mess we call our electon system.
18
In the South, there was a saying that "it's easier to pick a yankee than a bale of cotton."
Now, I think the table has turned because it's easier to sell snake oil to bumpkins.
11
So the billion dollar question is --- did the results of CA psychographic analysis go to the Russian troll farms so they then could create the content that would be most effective in getting Trump elected?
187
And are they still using it to control the Trupm followers?
1
Bingo!
5
Exactly . . . my fondest hope is that Mueller can provide solid evidence of that connection.
2
Is not the motto of the US, whatever it takes! Winning is everything! No one remembers who came Second!
karma.
7
Our children and grand children will never know what a great country we used to enjoy was like...
11
They stole data. That’s bad. But if their machine in fact doesn’t work, why credit them with sinister genius? Sinister intent, yes. But a waste of money.
Given the fearless leader is involved are we surprised.No but I am outraged. I believe this is something Mueller will find interesting.
3
"On the one hand, they act like idiots. On the other, they won..."
On the surface that seems incongruous and paradoxical, but it's not, really.
They only seem like idiots to people like us who still believe that "knowing things" is a prerequisite to running the country. Trump correctly assessed that that paradigm was no longer operative.
We look at Trump and see ignorance and unfitness. They look at Trump and see bold, fearless leadership. We look to find objective metrics in candidates to evaluate their plausibility, they go completely by "feel".
The irony in all that is Trump most likely would still have won without any or even all of the shenanigans, both of the primitive and/or "high tech" kind.
And finally, let's address the invisible elephant in the room. There have been others in the oval office just as unfit for the job. That guy, what was his name that preceded President Obama?
He had no business being there, either. And if we're keeping score honestly, his administration was catastrophic in ways that were unprecedented and still trying to dig out from.
But give Trump some time, he's got a good chance to catch up.
7
How in the world do you know that Mr. Trump would have won anyway? The publicly available evidence, which continues to grow more compelling every day, says precisely the opposite. For example, as Ms. Goldberg notes here, the Trump campaign stole from Facebook the comprehensive data for 50 million Americans.
JayK wrote:
"... The irony in all that is Trump most likely would still have won without any or even all of the shenanigans, both of the primitive and/or "high tech" kind. ...
"How in the world do you know that Mr. Trump would have won anyway?"
The people that voted for Trump don't need any help being more ignorant than they already are. They had already safely breached the ignorance threshold required to vote for a Donald Trump.
He won because Comey's outlandish "reopening" of the Clinton Email investigation gave the Hillary haters the justification and final nudge over the finish line to throw caution to the wind and vote for Trump.
Mercer owns it and Bannon was a Vice President. That sums it up. All the crooked, corrupt actions derailed after that fact are of no surprise. And trumps involvement, that’s a given.
10
Can we at last forget about "Russia"now?
It looks like the meddling comes from american "capital."
Does the FBI and the CIA and the NSA etc know nothing about this secret
"Psychological warfare on the American people"?
1
"You meddling kids won't get away with it."
Millennials ain't on the bandwagon. Like always when they grow fat and lazy, 20 bucks a week raise is reason enough to vote Republican.
Remember the 60's? Yeah it was kind of a big deal. Whatever happened to those anti-corporate hippies? Right. CEO and voting Republican. People only care when they are young.
4
(sigh) So it was the Russians, then it was deplorables, then it was Russia, then it was not winning the popular vote, then it was Russia again, and now it is people using information that the users AGREED TO GIVE TO FACEBOOK AND GAVE PERMISSION FOR FACEBOOK TO USE AS THEY PLEASE. When I write a comment on the NYT brand, I understand that the NYT will use it for its readers and advertisers. And I can read others thoughts. That does not sway my vote. It informs my vote, but the media does not control me. The media is a fraction of the input that goes into decisions. If you shake the hand of Facebook, expect germs to be transferred.
2
Opinions are the core currency in this new psychological warfare but revealed facts are indeed mind blowing: a military grade psy ops was turned on most of US citizens using data obtained illegally from Facebook through a British Russian scientist (Kogan). And this started in 2014 way before’ Trump was even declared candidate. This looks like a modern John Le Carré spy novel !
3
Thanks Ms. Goldberg for calling the Republicans exactly what they are in simple terms: cheaters. It has been my best explanation of the GOP for decades.
Kids learn at a very young age what cheating is and that it is unacceptable.
For Republicans, this is their entire mantra: if you want something, you must cheat to get it. This is because they have nothing of value to offer the American people, unlike the Democrats.
Republicans = cheaters. Simple.
6
It is amazing to hear people marvel at how humans, especially Americans, have progressed. If anything we are far less capable than our ancient predecessors. We can’t hunt or gather our food let alone grow it; we need some Uber driver to go get it for us. As far as thinking, we are as gullible and clueless as the ancient Romans portrayed by Shakespeare in “Julius Caesar”. After Brutus convinces the unwashed mob, using logic, that they should accept Caesar’s murder, Anthony, using fake news convinces the mob to go and kill Brutus. He revels in the crowd’s foolishness, using cheap theatrics to trick them. And he didn’t even have Facebook. Uninformed, lazy minds will always fall for cheap tricks. Remember, a sucker is still born every day.
1
Marc Antony does not use fake news; he tells them the truth using verbal irony, praetorship, and concrete evidence. He also has excellent motivation in loving Caesar and desiring revenge for his assassination. Not so Donal Tru,p who lies to Justin Trudeau because he can’t be bothered to know the truth. It might take time away from his Twitter rants or citizen paid golf games.
According to CBS, this is a whole lot of hocum. The Trump campaign did hire Cambridge Analytica during the primaries, not for dirty tricks but for information gathering. It feared that the RNC would withhhold its information and it retained Cambridge Analytica as an alternative source. When the RNC came aboard they dropped Cambridge Analytica — they were long gone by the general election. All the talk of dirty tricks related to a hypothetical election in a banana republic. There is no evidence that it used dirty tricks for the Trump campaign. I find Ms. Goldbberg’s account suspect. Nobody was entrapped by Ukrainian sex workers during the election. CBS’s account seems sober. Ms. Goldberg’s seems off the wall.
1
For the record, no stories that I have seen, including Ms. Goldberg's column, claim that Ukrainian hookers were employed on behalf of the trump campaign - at least for the purpose of 'dirty tricks'.
The hidden video simply attempts to highlight the extent to which the **actual people who run** Cambridge Analytica are willing to go for their customers.
I also find it a 'funny' coincidence that the whole idea of entrapping someone with a hooker to get financial or legal leverage over them is exactly what Jared Kushner's father did that ended up with him going to prison. Also the fact that the federal prosecutor in that case was none other than Chris Christie.
1
The more we learn about the way Trump won this office, the more nauseated I feel. Just sick to my stomach to learn the way we've been taken.
Usually a politician does well in his or her home territory, and then when he or she goes national, the home state's love for him or her vouches for them. In this case, the people who really knew Donald Trump -- New Yorkers -- knew that he's a bigoted liar with no business being anywhere near the White House. And the rest of the country didn't care about the opinions of people who knew him. After all, they'd seen him on TV. He looked rich and acted like a businessman. What more did they need to know?
6
As we are seeing the Trump Organization's propaganda campaign was brilliant. Unfortunately for us it made the Nixon-era dirty tricks look like kinderspiele...children's games or child-play. And if you don't think there are multiple links between this effort and the propaganda masters of the universe then just wait as we continue to pull the threads of this disgraceful period in American politics.
3
Yes, cheating, lying, denying, accusing, manipulating, threatening, punishing, pushing, and above all, pretending and promising the best America we have ever seen. When will it all so deservedly crash?
5
Thank you Michelle Goldberg. I have been banging on about Cambridge Analytica forever -- often in the Comments section of this paper -- and it's wonderful to see that organization exposed. I will never forget the look on Trump's face when the results were announced: he was completely taken by surprise. Now that we know what tinkering was going on behind the scenes, how about checking out our easily hacked electronic voting machines...anyone??
And can we now stop blaming Hillary for running a poor campaign too?
6
Let’s try this again...
It appears Jared has learned much about dirty dealing from his daddy, Charlie. Charlie spent two years in the clink for tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions. He has demonstrated his unscrupulous nature. Jared may not be tech savvy but he has the money to hire those who are. He’s currently under scrutiny for his business dealings in the buying, renovating, and selling of rent-controlled NYC rent-controlled apartments. Folks in those are apartments are being forced out. And then there are there’s Qatar...
4
The worse part about Pappy Kushner is that the witness he tampered with was his own brother-in-law whom he thought was talking to the feds about him. He arranged a prostitute to meet with him and had the liaison photographed. Sounds kind of like what Cambridge Analytica had in its bag of tricks using Ukrainian women as the bait. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
1
They really are a despicable pack of rats. Apologies to actual rats. How long will it take before the Trumps and Kushners turn on each other. I’ve got to wonder if don jr.’s wife filed for divorce to protect her children from the coming storm.
You guys are absolutely UNBELIEVABLE! As if the Democrats haven't done the same or worse?!
American electoral politics is a bloodsport... it is about time everyone wakes up to that fact.
There are further revelations that will pale in comparison to this one...
1
You got down to brass tacks, Ms Goldberg, "..they’re willing to be so much worse."
So. If elected officials are unprepared and unwilling to fulfill their oversight duties, they ARE ACCOMPLICES in my book.
Chapter 1: Devin Gerald Nunes has expiration date of 6 November 2018. Vote!
Chapter 2: Kevin Owen McCarthy has expiration date of 6 November 2018. Vote!
Chapter 3: Richard Mauze Burr claims that he will not run in 2022 for fourth term. Our Students and Their Families will continue pressure on him to change and act independently of the $7M from NRA.
It looks impossible, but Democrats must win every US Senate contest on 6 November 2018. Vote! On 3 Jan 2019, Richard Mauze Burr MUST BE REPLACED as Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.
4
There is yet another dot to connect here. The ever slippery Brad Parscale was hired by Kushner to work with Cambridge Analytica and direct the digital campaign for Trump. Why was Parscale just days ago named the Campaign Manager for Trump's 2020 Presidential campaign? This guy knows the depths to which they cheated and used underhanded, illegal and immoral methods in their online campaign efforts. The Mafia family currently occupying the White House wanted to ensure that Parscale was made a permanent member of their mob to give him more to lose when he begins getting pressured, probably even subpoenaed to give testimony or, better yet, criminal charges are brought against him. At minimum, this guy has to know that Cambridge was using primarily non-American citizens to wage their campaign efforts on behalf of Trump and that is a crime.
4
Please don't normalize theft of confidential information as "cheating." Donald Trump may cheat on his wife, but what he did with the aid of the Mercers and Cambridge Analytica and the incredibly lax oversight of Facebook is stealing personal data to use illegally in a political campaign. What we are seeing is the stench of a rotten onion being peeled away layer by layer revealing lying (even to the Canadian Prime Minister), cheating, bribes (as with Stormy Daniels and other women with nondisclosure agreements), theft, obstruction, collusion and at the very dark core a potential treasonous mafia Don working with Russia (which, by the way, through its Kremlin-affiliated Lukoil company also had access to the same data) to "cheat" his way into the White House.
5
This is great research & reporting. Verrrryyy Interesting ....... Michelle you are the best.
3
After reading this article I’d say Jared is in a lot of trouble with his father in law.
1
'Dirty Tricks" Trump's base can understand. Let's just hope they feel tricked.
2
While I value my NY Times subscription, on Sunday I read the accounts of GSR and Cambridge Analytica on a rival's website: The Guardian.
The Guardian's coverage was quite extensive, including interviews over the past year with a whistle blower, Christopher Wylie, a then 24 year old who created the analytics to create the psychographs which produced, effectively, personalized propaganda (my words, not his).
There's a really good video of an interview with him on their site. His narrative on what Facebook did (and did not do) is quite compelling.
What troubled me the most about these revelations was how psychologists, who should know better, violated our discipline's Code of Ethics on human subjects research. When you collect data on persons, the organization doing the collecting has an obligation under this Code of Ethics to protect the confidentiality of the participants in a "study." Facebook granted permission to academics to collect data who then sold that data for a profit. There was absolutely no protection of the person's whose data was collected. BTW a person cannot give permission to mine the data of another person in our ethical code. One of those psychologists is also a professor at St. Petersberg University and has a grant from the Russian Government to do this type of work!!!
I will be deactivating my Facebook account.
7
The tactics of this firm were a perfect fit for the sleaze machine that is Team Trump.
5
The cynicism here, and the involvement of the Mercers, Bannon, et al, is a threat we need to address. Most obvious is to overturn Citizens United and put much tighter controls on lobbyists.
5
Turns out Facebook is not terribly different from Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and Big Pharma: all “polluters” resisting government regulation.
5
Very hard not to miss to death our respectable and honorable ex-president, even if he was disappointing in some areas. Those times are long, long gone. Incredible how much damage this one dishonest and malicious man, his posse and shameless Republican congress have been able to wreak in one year, on our institutions, on our psyche and on the general culture of our country.
4
It has been rumored for a while that Cambridge Analytica is the reason the Russians were able to target their campaign for Trump so precisely. I'm waiting for the day the link between Russia and Cambridge Analytica comes to light - and it may very well be Jared Kushner. Michelle Goldberg is right: "With each day...it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse." Cheating is his MO - in everything he's ever done.
7
Robert Mercer, the Koch’s, the NRA are all involved in the takeover of our country with the goal of dismantling our agencies, regulations and our safety net
They are not even trying to hide it anymore. When you vote republican you vote for against yourself- every time
5
Looks like another bloated “Deep State” player coming to the surface of the swamp, keep flipping over rocks there’s plenty to find.
2
Too many problems to solve and we have the wrong leadership to save us. Meanwhile, the nuclear annihilation clock is moving closer to midnight. Pay attention people!
3
All right, and all correct. Trump is a fiend, but his lackeys and supporters are ineffective blowhards. Neither Cambridge Analytica, with its "beautiful Ukrainian women," nor the 80 Russians trolling Facebook in St. Petersburg, were actually able to turn the election. Not that that excuses Nix, Bannon, Trump, and so on.
Sadly, the Democratic Party put forth, through its own corrupt process, a weak and negatively viewed candidate who thought she could ride in on her own firm sense of entitlement, with the primary process gerrymandered by Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The Democrats had better start appealing to working people, even white men who are working class, if they want to win in 2020. Elizabeth Warren has what it takes, although the Dem establishment doesn't really like her because she's too "populist," i.e., she doesn't belong to Goldman Sachs, like certain Clintons we could name.
Keep blaming Trump, instead of paying attention to our own candidates, and we risk losing (again). Some will say, impossible! But they said the same in November 2016.
3
Hillary Clinton is an incredibly intelligent, talented, and hard-working person. The fact that she won the popular vote decisively despite gerrymandering, voter suppression, an emails-fixated media, sexism, and Republican dirty tricks should tell everyone all they need to know about her strength as a candidate.
You sound like someone who has been duped by propaganda and ineffective media coverage of real issues. Democrats have been addressing the concerns of working people; that could be why Hillary Clinton won the working class vote decisively.
But, if people like you keep throwing our Democratic presidential nominees under the bus, you should expect that your efforts and Republican propaganda efforts will combine to discourage Democratic voters. Just like it did in 2016. Maybe you should be the one looking for a new strategy.
2
Tech is evil in the wrong hands. Zuckerberg and the leaders at Facebook are definitely the wrong hands.
3
Jared Kushner is a political counterpart to thugs like Al Capone. Forbes, the same magazine that Stormy Daniel's said she spanked Donald Trump with should be ashamed for crediting Jared as a genius when he seems destined to be remembered as a member of a version of "The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight" (apologies to Jimmy Breslin). Dirty tricks landed some of Nixon's henchmen in prison during Watergate. Those escapades seem trivial in comparison to the mounting wrongful and deceptive actions of Team Trump
3
People it is very clear and simple. Protect your identity and self interests as you would your physical being. Stop putting all of yours, family's, friends' information on facebook. snapchat, instagram, twitter, etc. Share your information the old fashion way, snail mail, email, a text between someone you know (I know but it is a tougher bit of info to get than FB, etc. This is your private self. Do not respond to FB ads (what Disney Character are you, what color are you. Dream it up yourself and proclaim I am Pluto in Red).
You wall yourself behind antivirals and other digital protections and blithely put everything on line for the world to see via sharing.
Your cell phones have been a public display of your life. Your side of the conversation and sometimes the other side is loud enough for us to hear that your significant other is sleeping with your best friend, your children are social jerks, etc. I have watched this creep to full blown hey let me tell you about my life for 20 years. Stop it we do not need it.
3
Watergate, that "third-rate burglary," seems almost quaint by comparison.
4
Another point that deserves mention, that many overlook, is that it was a Russian researcher who first sought the data originally from Facebook, claiming it was for his personal research. Later, he passed it on to Cambridge Analytica. Then Lukoil, a Russian oil concern, sought a tool from Cambridge Analytica to manipulate American voters. Why would a Russian oil company want to manipulate American voters is an open question. But people should remember that Russian companies are directly linked through their oligarchs to Putin. Just other data points in the long trail in the links between Trump and Putin concerning the 2016 election.
4
This must be what SCOTUS envisioned with their Citizens United ruling. We've almost created more civil rights for corporations now than actual human citizens thinking it would be consistent with democratic ideals. It couldn't be further from the truth.
Facebook, Analytica and their ilk have absolutely no interest whatsoever in democracy, US interests, or the collective well being of..well...anyone but themselves and the almighty dollar. How we can legally say that these companies have a legal right to pour unlimited money into manipulating politics is sickening and a mockery of what was once our country.
6
There you go! Great article! Kushner wasn't and isn't the digital genius that he took credit for being; no wonder he never speaks! We would all know with five minutes of questioning that he is an empty vessel.
This Trump administration of blustering, bullying, self-serving and morally empty characters needs to be brought quickly to an end. If I were Mueller this would be a great week for another round of indictments. Indictments tend to list and preserve for the public record the facts and it is important that these facts don't not get buried by Trump's dismembering of the Mueller investigation.
I really wonder what Mueller is doing to preserve what his investigation has learned so far? I mean what are they thinking when they are looking over Trump's financial records and realizing what type a businessman he really was? Many Americans fear that Trump's campaigns shenanigans (and possible crimes) will be swept under the rug. I am talking about that very large rug that blankets the Republican Party. So far Ryan and McConnell seem okay with holding up one of its edges to facilitate the sweeping.
5
Cheating has been the republican playbook for years. Think Bush V Gore Supreme Court mandated victory for Bush, for example. Gerrymandering etc. Thank you Michelle for telling in like it is in words that people understand. For instance, the word Cheating. No politically correct beating around the bush. Trump and his crew fit comfortably in the republican world. He’s cheated everyone down the line his entire public time. Ask trump University students how they feel. Answer would most likely be cheated
3
It needs to be emphasized that foreign nationals worked for Cambridge Analytica on several US election campaigns, including Trump's. This was done with Bannon's and Nix's knowledge, who hid their status. These is a crime under US law.
1
Obama did essentially the same thing all the way through the campaign and the Left hailed him as a genius. Trump stopped data mining after he won the nomination but now somehow he is a threat to democracy. Hipocrisy on parade!
2
After reading all of this, it seems to me that Donald trump and the other Republican politicians are just tools used by the Mercer family to advance their agenda . The FBI and Mr Mueller should look into the Mercer family's attempts to hijack democracy in U.S.A.
2
"With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating."
Anyone who has read about Trump's business history would know that he always cheats, scams, bends the rules and takes every underhanded advantage that he can arrange. Non-disclosure agreements have been as standard in his operations as breathing. He uses them to try to hide the crimes that are beng committed.
Now he thinks he can continue all of his personal practices that he has usd in hs one owner companies when running the US Government. He seems to think that he was given OWNERSHIP of the US Government by becoming POTUS.
His standard practices did not work well in the Trump Organization. They most assuredly do not translate well to running an organization in which he is the principal public seervant, rather than the owner.
320 Million of us Americans own the US Government. The majority of us do not approve of how he is running it. The first step is changing the "Board of Directors" otherwise known as the Legislative Branch. The Republicans are simply enabling Trump, and not overseeing much of anything.
Vote a straight Democratic ticket on November 6, 2018 and elect a Legislative Branch that will perform its Constitutional requirement, overseeing the Executive Branch.
7
I remember right after the Trump victory Trump surrogate Ms Conway going on CNN and being asked about the Trump victory. She bragged how her data showed the Trump victory in the rust belt before it happened. This makes me wonder if CA was pulling data days before the election from facebook. The Bannon/Mercer/CA/Facebook connection must be fully investigated by Mueller.
1
Trump keeps resisting the Mueller investigation because, he claims, it seeks to undermine the legitimacy of his presidency. Yet as the months since the election have worn more wearyingly and more worryingly on, we keep learning more and more ways in which his campaign sought to unlevel the playing field of the election. How legitimate can any politician be who wins with questionable--if not downright dirty--tricks such as these?
1
When the ideas are bankrupt, the only recourse left is the big swindle. Trump may not have had any gov't experience, but he sure is an expert in how to live high off the hog and make everyone else pay.
4
As a marketing executive, I'm always cautious about accepting anything that's "free". Ten years ago, when I really thought about Facebook's business model, I realized that we are the product and marketers pay for access to us and our information. I closed my social media accounts immediately.
6
This is appalling and will likely lead to more investigations. However, I find it disingenuous to avoid discussing Fusion GPS and their work for the Dems. Seems both parties believe in using whatever tactics are available when it comes to power. Whatever happened to the candidate who ran on their own record, selling themselves over attacking their opponents? Perhaps we never had a time when that rang true, just thought we had it because we didn't live in the 'information age.' Nixon's knowledge of the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover up seems pretty minimal today. Very sad.
1
Except, Fusion GPS picked up that research from Republicans, who were trying to prevent Trump from winning in the GOP primaries. It's amazing how often that little detail gets omitted.
2
Let's be honest, Trump's entire career has been lived in a swamp, the deeper and muddier the better. What bothers me most about his Presidency is not his policies---which are merely warmed over Bush/Reagan ideas---but his purposeful strategy to degrade the Oval Office---an office held by Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR---into a Soprano like backroom operation filled with unsavory characters and strippers to boot. A large task ahead for our next President is restoring dignity and respect to the Oval Office.
8
George Orwell, very naturally for his time, used the State as the environment that enabled Big Brother
Had he been writing today, there's no doubt that he would have used the corporate sector for his model.
And that's much more dangerous. We at least have the power to rein in the State (while we can). With capitalism run wild, we have no equivalent power.
3
Chief executive Alexander Nix ...entrapping his clients opponents by sending very beautiful Ukranian sex workers
Ukraine is now known to have a greater number of trafficking victims than any other Eastern European nation after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. According to the International Organization for Migration over 500,000 Ukrainian women have been exploited with trafficking to the West since its independence in 1991 up to 1998. The most popular destinations for the victims include Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Hungary, United Arab Emirates, Syria etc. According to many reports the Ukrainian sex-workers are the largest group of foreign women in Turkey involved into prostitution and the second largest group of foreign women involved into prostitution outside the US military bases in Republic of Korea.
Research by the State Institute for Family and Youth Issues indicates that, for many women, sex work has become the only adequate source of income: more than 50% of them support their children and parents[13] Of trafficking victims, 80% were unemployed prior to leaving Ukraine.[8] Traffickers use this economic vulnerability to recruit women into prostitution]
... The traffickers say they will work as dancers or in stores.[8] Once they arrive in their destination country, they are frequently trapped by pimps taking away their visas, or by owing the pimps money to be paid off with prostituti wiki
3
Fake president - fake news.
1
If you read the excellent book about the Hillary campaign -- "Shattered" -- they too relied on "analytics" and computer modeling.
The reality is it didn't take some nefarious genius to beat a candidate who called half of the voters "deplorables in a basket".
5
Ah, a primo example of whataboutism. Yes, political campaigns have used demographic and psychographic profiling for decades. The difference is that they never had access to many millions of voter's personal profiles to play with. And why is it that you guys continue to pretend that Hillary got almost three million more votes?
2
Here again is the actual quote where she said you could half of Trump's voters, not all voters, into a basket of deplorables:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” she said to applause and laughter. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
It could be argued exactly how many of Trump's voters fit in the basket of racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobics, and misogynists but as evidenced at his own rallies and his willingness to exploit them and to draw them in it can't be argued that these were in full display among his voters. Including the racists and fascists who came out and supported him as their candidate. there are people like that. It is undeniable that "There are people like that and he has lifted them up.”
4
We should be concerned about all of these activities, some of which might be criminal.
However, I also think it's important for citizens to have the education so that they are not so easily manipulated in the first place. What does this say about the educational level of the average voter that these deceptions and psychological tricks could be so effective?
Couldn't giving citizens the tools to understand propaganda with its misinformation and psychological manipulation be an effective inoculation to this threat to our republic?
Didn't even our "founding fathers" talk and write about the importance of an informed citizenry in our republic?
A society where a certain percentage considers Fox "News" informative is especially vulnerable to this type of manipulation. And we'll probably continue to see it in other forms.
16
Where is the condemnation of Facebook, Michelle? Specifically, why should Mark Zuckerberg get a pass when he and his ethically-challenged company are the root enablers in this sordid tale? After all, I'm sure they got a nice chunk of change for access to Facebook users at the very least. My guess is the current furor over Cambridge Analytica will lead to the dawning realization that it is merely one of dozens of parasitic mega data compilers/crunchers that have invaded our privacy and manipulated all sorts of consumer and voter behaviors.
284
What about NSA monitoring of all citizens?.
Oh yes Fox "News" is markedly a propaganda machine with little interest in truthful, fact-based reporting.
3
Zuckerberg was suckered, too. But he doesn't get a pass -- he knew how all this software worked, and was not sufficiently vigilant.
2
With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse.
And lying. Trump and his cohorts don't even care if some know they're lying. They know many will take him at his word.
When Trump repeatedly says he did not collude with Russia what exactly does he mean? Does he mean with the Russian government? Putin? the oligarchs? Perhaps Trump has a special meaning when he refers to Russia. Does colluding with Russian oligarchs, Putin cronies, or Russian wanna-be's count as colluding with Russia? I think if he took a polygraph test and was asked whether he colluded with Russia the test would show he didn't lie even as he simultaneously took money from the oligarchs.
3
Throughout the Trump campaign, from the primary races — and their shameful and debasing debates — to the final race for the White House, I watched in horror as none of Trump's momentum made any sense whatsoever.
For a man chronicled for decades as a business fraud, tax fraud, sexual predator, consummate liar and narcissist, his rise to the highest post in our democracy was nothing short of madness. And, yet, he stole our Constitution and dragged it into the swamp of his own making. He has destroyed relationships with our most important allies while genuflecting to murderous thugs and autocrats.
So, here I am, at the tender age of 73, wondering if I will live long enough to see our country rise from the primordial ooze of Republican power-mongering where plots against our working class have been conducted in secret meetings led by the most corrupt elements of political power our nation has ever seen.
In this era of Trump, we are witnessing an administration eager to unravel every government agency we need to keep the Ship of State afloat and prosperous for all.
The latest video of Trump bragging about lying to the Prime MInister of Canada, should be enough to end this madness before the United States of America becomes just another third-world country begging for help.
The slim-ridden likes of Karl Rove and Lee Atwater have been eclipsed by Steve Bannon, Ann Coulter, Richard Mercer, Richard Spencer, Cambridge Analytica and, of course, the entire Trump entourage.
17
The supposed expose by Channel 4 was investigated by undercover reporters engaging in dirty tricks to collect compromising information against Cambridge Analytica. I guess the reporters had no sense of irony. This whole account is about illicit spy work revealed by journalist spies. An undercover investigation of an undercover operation is a little too much undercover for me. It’s a great whodunnit that comes to you by means of all kinds of ersatz spies with too much imagination.
1
The difference being, of course, that the 'journalist spies' are attempting to expose these at best morally questionable business practices, while their supposed 'victims' use those practices in secret to spread disinformation, and undermine democratic institutions. Oh, and to makes lots of money.
1
"Cambridge Analytica, the shadowy data firm that helped elect Donald Trump, specializes in "psychographic" profiling, which it sells as a sophisticated way to digitally manipulate huge numbers of people on behalf of its clients." It's just a new way to exploit social media to distribute classic Russian Totalitarian Disinformation. The use and goal of such disinformation, also known as "active measures" in the KGB/FSB jargon of Vladimir Putin, is to weaken America. It certainly succeeded. It found a perfect vehicle for transmission in Trump, who, because of his temperament, immorality, insolvency, and pervasive criminality, has been in bed with Russia, Russian gangsters, and Russian financiers, for decades. Disinformation was a constant of Russian Soviet policy. In the 1960s the KGB created/funded the Liberty Book Club which published books maintaining that JFK's assassination was a CIA conspiracy. The KGB then forged a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald in an attempt to connect the manufactured plot to the CIA. In the 1970s Russia forged dueling pamphlets rife with Racism and anti-Semitism designed to start a war between the Black Panthers and the Jewish Defense League. The KGB was far more successful in propagating the lie that the CIA invented HIV in a biological-weapons lab (it definitely did not). It's a story that many still believe. However, all of this pales compared to the scope of Cambridge Analytica's, Trump's, and Putin's current lies which hundreds of millions believe.
7
They didn't get any Fakebook data from me. Ask me how I know.
3
For the sake of our future as a global community, I implore everyone reading this comment to watch the Channel 4 broadcast which is linked in Michelle's valuable column.
5
This is a comment from today's article on Trump reshuffling his legal team - I thought it was so important it should be repeated:
Having been a NYC commercial real estate lawyer for 36 years, I can confirm that Donald Trump has always been notorious in the industry for capriciously and impulsively hiring and firing a motley pantheon of aggressive, rapacious, truculent and near-sociopathic NYC lawyers and law firms. This pattern continues as before, the only difference being that he now controls the USA's nuclear weapons arsenal.
8
People generally surround themselves with people who are like them. Pretty much describes data mining on face book too.
1
Cambridge Analytica's Motto: Data-Driven Behavior Change.
'nuff said.
I wonder what Trump supporters must think. Don't they feel like they've been psychologically manipulated, used as tools, as means to allow the 1% to maintain their power?
5
Trump did not win the election. H. did, by close to three million U.S. votes, not counting throngs of supporters in India.
Trump became the president by a fluke in the Electoral College that should have been amended the day after the Gore / Bush Supreme Coat debacle.
Congress could have passed an Amendment to the Constitution which the states would have ratified: In the event one candidate won the popular vote, while the other candidate prevailed in the Electoral College, the election winner would be determined by House of Representatives vote via "secret" ballot.
Cambridge Analytica is overrated. The people who slop in the Analytica slop mostly did not complete high school. They are not sophisticated enough to absorb Cambridge Analytica's distortions.
The Analytica group thrives on their distortions of reality. That is what the fascsit does: confuses reality. With that definition, Trump, with his steady distortion of reality every day in his tweets, is fascist.
Trump's removal from our presidency via Impeachment, including Pence, for lying may become the single issue in the coming mid-term elections.
4
Everything about Trump simply becomes more stunningly slimy. That he has an adoring base of millions makes it even worse.
Clearly, we need to tighten up our laws concerning elections. Clearly, we have allowed our democratic republic to be jeopardized by the worst sorts of people. Clearly, we haven't been paying sufficient attention.
5
Trump didn't do anything different from what Obama did. The real crime is that he won. That's what people can't forgive him for.
1
Obama never worked with the Russians.
When you look at the kinds of inferences they could draw from people's data-- paranoid? angry? never went to college? pessimistic?-- you can see how they found the people who would be the most vulnerable to disinformation, and then targeted them. They targeted their own voters and perpetrated a fraud on them. And many still have not awakened to this.
6
Are you telling me that politicians are now advertising on social media! Who would have thought?
35
It's not that they are advertising, it's that they are manipulating people...anonymously and without those people knowing it. That's a whole different ballgame than an ad with the candidates face or name or voice on it. These social media platforms are not...yet...held to the same ethical standards as radio, television or cable.
6
No, that's not the conclusion of this article. Rhetorical questions are really easy.
1
So Trump won not only with the help of Russian hackers and trolls, but also the help of a high-tech brainwashing firm using 50 million stolen Facebook profiles. The 2016 election should be declared null and void and we should have a new election on a level playing field. That said I find it somewhat ironic that people who post the most personal details of their lives on Facebook and other social media, down to their vacation plans and what they had for dinner, expect their privacy to be protected. If you want privacy, keep your life private and off the internet for everyone to see.
8
Trump won through a combination of Russian hacking and illegal personal data manipulation by Bannon, Mercer and Cambridge Analytica. This finely targeted propaganda machine stirred up enough misogyny, racism and anti-Hillary hysteria to win him the electoral college seats necessary to become president against the wishes of a majority of Americans. America lost a cyber war in 2016, the result of which was the election of Donald Trump. You can't measure his behaviour by the usual standards. It’s a paradigm shift! The destruction, discord and instability that Trump embodies are precisely what the Russians and their allied traitors wanted and have achieved beyond their wildest expectations. They knew better than us what he is about. Is this not perfectly clear by now? They will continue to back Trump and the GOP by any means. They know useful fools when they see them: Manafort, Flynn, Page, Kushner and the Trumps were ripe for the plucking, a dream team. And the GOP has a veritable larder-full like Nunes, primed for sleaze by the Mercers, the Kochs, the NRA and worse, the guys who backed this alliance with Putin to the hilt to build their little Ayn Randian Utopia. Defeat is very hard thing to admit, but that is exactly what Trump represents; every day that goes by without facing the fact that America lost when Trump won makes matters worse, because it is still going on. Our pride is blinding us. This is no time for parades; the biggest cover-up in American history is underway.
5
This can be seen as the natural end result of three precepts that are becoming staples in America. First, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. Second, it isn't what you did, it's what you were caught doing. Third, it isn't your word, it's who you give it to. Robert Dahl defined politics as the authoritative allocation of values. I see no values at all.
5
So, where do we go from here? Even if Trump is over, the danger remains.
Will citizens act with deliberate speed to tame the beast, or are we a nation of sheep? It's time to vote and begin to show what we can do when we are finally wakened.
3
The core curriculum of the CIA, when it began in 1948, was based on a book by Paul Linebarger: Psychological Warfare.
Unavailable for decades, it’s now free online.
The published memoir of a CIA station chief said students had to swear never to reveal what he was about to teach for if it entered the American political system it could destroy our system as we knew it.
Watergate Plumbers started that.
Nixon then wrote The Real War which drew on Sun-Tzu.
He asked How can we defend ourselves in a war whose features we can’t recognize?
So, he called for the release of intelligence classics.
Slowly, we became more astute.
The real war is between those who imagine the world to suit their policies
and those who must adapt their policies to suit the realities of the world.
Ancient Egyptians had a policy (Hotep) that worked: Food & Peace.
China, Russia, Germany, Japan, S Korea, India seem to be achieving that while we’re preoccupied by divisive issues of birth control, abortion, drugs, gun control, banking, concentrated wealth & declining cities.
We’ve been successful in some areas but need more than rhetoric while pursuing meaningful social goals. Clean water, safe cities, good education, honest & responsive government.
Also, the ability to be heard and a willingness to listen (caucus).
HST gave us the ability to assess threats. LBJ tried to give us a Great Society, JEC gave us clean water and peace.
Reagan gave us confrontation as did both Bushes.
WJC restored prosperity.
And Trump?
1
Good stuff - until your divisive conclusion.
I'm not certain if it's naivety, false modesty, or just shucking responsibility when Cambridge Analytica says they're not sure if their methods worked.
It was brilliant, even if despicably so. Fake news was foreign to us at the time, so that even if we discounted a conspiracy theory as ridiculous, there was still a feeling that some part of it had to be true. The effect was that Hillary looked dirty by association.
But it also helped Trump's attacks on the media. Other than Fox, no major news outlet or publication was reporting any of these stories, because they were fake, while they covered Trump's devolving antics daily. It made them look highly biased, making Trump supporters believe they were being manipulated. They were, just not by the MSM.
And it worked. I sat here in northern Michigan, listening to my educated co-workers declare Trump the lesser of two evils. They may not have believed Hillary was the head of a child sex ring based in a pizza parlor, but it got to where they didn't know what to think. It didn't hurt that they were conservative to begin with or were upset about Bernie's loss, but in a normal election, they wouldn't have voted for someone like Trump. Unfortunately now they believed democracy depended on it.
When you take into account that less than 100,000 votes won the three swing states, as tens of thousands voted for third party candidates, you have to know these tactics worked. Cambridge Analytica stole the election.
3
It was a little over 20 years ago that J.K.Rowling's first Harry Potter book appeared and our first look at, the villain of the dark side, Voldemort appeared. Our president was only in his early 50's and no one, not even Rowling
herself, could have realized a "real life" version of Voldemort. Yet reflecting on the two villains, one magical, and one real might be a way of melding the two together thus creating a much clearer understanding of what is happening in the real world.
Here is one casting of the new "Harry Potter Series:" Robert Mueller as Harry Potter, the president as Voldemort, Elizabeth Warren as Hermione, but who would "play" Dumbledore....Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, neither one could fill the role - not "magical" enough. Suggestion: Ask Rowling to make the Haary Potter sequel and give us all a real "break" from the current world we are living through. Now that would be "real magic."
1
"The secret of Trump’s success is cheating." Nothing truer has ever been said of Donnie or his family. There's a simple reason Trump gets along with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick: a win is a win is a win regardless for how much underhanded cheating goes on; the records show a win.
How can we right this ship? The US Constitution is ready to sink within the swamp of criminal deception.
2
Yes, the secret of Trump's success is cheating. His businesses lost money and went bankrupt and he emerged triumphant. He stiffed the little guy, threatened lawsuits, broke the law. Kushner's family real estate business appears to be based on the same model. It's a big, ugly picture that includes Cambridge Analytica, the Mercer family, Russian hacking, news bots, Wikileaks, and Facebook's utter surrender.
But let's be frank: the electoral success of the Republican Party is dependent on undemocratic norms or outright cheating. The only presidents who have lost the popular vote and won the electoral vote have been Republicans. Voter ID laws have been designed to keep groups that are reliably Democratic from voting. This is done so openly that it's shocking. Tens of thousands of Democrats were not able to vote in the 2016 election because of voter ID laws. And then, of course, there's gerrymandering. It's a bipartisan problem but practiced mostly by Republicans.
Republican ideas are unpopular. Their economic policies have repeatedly been proven wrong. The only way for them to win is to cheat. This is why they refused to vote on Merrick Garland's nomination, stealing a Supreme Court seat from the Democrats. IT's not that the Democrats aren't cheaters. It's that we're in the minor leagues compared to conservatives.
What is the answer for Democrats? Take the high road and keep losing elections? Take the low road and lose ourselves?
2
This is very true. We now know unequivocally that Trump and his administration as well as his GOP enabler’s will do absolutely anything to win and that will include cheating, voter suppression, and voter intimidation. We have to expect that this will occur in November because there is no way that the Republican Party will cede power on their own in a fair election.
The corrupt Republican party is buttressed by an ignorant electorate that is motivated almost exclusively by the outrage we can’t help to feel every time Trump does something outrageous. This part of his base is lost and not worthy of redemption.
However, there is another part of his base that I call the principled Republican and we need to find a way to break them away from voting Republican in November. They are just is apalled as we are at what is going on and we need them either to sit out 2018 or vote along side the rest of us to put a check on this president.
We can do this if we are strategic about it and recognize that these principled Republicans are not Democrats and they’re not progresses. There are Republicans that are fed up with their own party and will vote for us for only this election.
2
These targeted ads might not have worked on their own but the combination of the Facebook ads combined with Fox News clearly worked for numerous people I knew personally. They are still clueless at how they were manipulated. I would have never guessed some of them would be so vulnerable to bad information. If you suggested they check out if these things they were believing were true they insisted you could not trust fact checked information because of its bias. They were embracing absurd news stories while insisting all real data was dangerous and wrong. It is why Trump still has a nearly 40 percent. The minute they consider how terrible he is their Facebook and Fox feeds are there to distract them and tell them of course they were right and it is those godless liberals who are trying to trick them.
1
It occurred to me this morning that the camel's back was broken with a straw, not a hundred-weight. We expect something monumental to be a breaking point, when it's rather just an accumulation of small things. This story isn't insignificant, but it points to something structural in the corruption, something fundamental and toxic and endemic. It broke my back. Sadly, the backs of the Americans are made of stronger stuff, and you have an endless appetite for this dysfunction. You should be on the streets. Months ago.
I certainly agree that the Trump campaign allied itself with some pretty shady characters, who spread some pretty vile disinformation. The sad fact is, though, that tens of millions of Americans were predisposed to believe the lies that were spread during the campaign, and vote for an extinction-level threat to American democracy. Yes, let's find out all the dirty tricks that were played and identify all the bad actors who played them, but at the end of the day, the problem isn't them, it's us. If we're going to save our country, we need to take responsibility for what we've done to betray it.
1
"Entrapment," "sex workers," "secretly filming," all sound very "deep state" to me. Are we certain that Cambridge Analytica" wasn't deployed against candidate Donald Trump? Fortunately, our president would never engage in any risky behavior like that, would he? He has always been a devoted husband, of upstanding moral character and hires only the best people. Right?
Information technology today is highly interactive. So when we look at how we interact with the likes of Cambridge Analytica we need to look at what Cambridge Analytica is doing and we need to look at how we react or respond to what they’re doing.
Responding is generally better than reacting.
I think my life improved a little the day I realized that when I entered a sweepstakes I probably got my name, address, and phone number on a sellable list of “prospects” or “leads.” As someone who took the time and trouble to give up my name, phone number, and address on nothing more than the promise of getting something for nothing, I came to understand I was probably considered more likely to have low sales resistance, and perhaps to be more easily conned if it came to that, by certain practitioners of the art, craft, and science of sales.
The story here is that Trump hired high-priced pimps and blackmailers to help him win. His base, being ideologues, will say, "So what? What about crooked Hillary, and Benghazi?". At this point it's useless to keep trying to smear Trump because, for his fans, nothing sticks, while the vast majority of the rest of us have known for a long time that when it comes to Donald Trump, there is no bottom of the barrel.
The only thing that will save us now, the only thing that will stick, are criminal convictions starting at the bottom and going all the way up to the top.
And, impeachment alone is no longer a viable punishment, as it will not be a sufficient deterrent to those in the future. We should have learned that lesson with Nixon. Trump must be impeached, convicted of whatever myriad crimes he has committed and then incarcerated. And, if his crimes warrant it, he should have all of his holdings seized as well. Only then will we have sent a clear message to future generations that our society simply will not tolerance the kind of wholesale moral bankruptcy that has come to define Trump, his Administration, and those that abet him.
People like Trump and his enablers do not care about moral outrage. Going to prison for life, however, is another matter entirely...
3
Just more evidence that the fake news that is destroying our democracy comes mainly from the Republican Party's propaganda machine. This has been going on for decades, although in a more low tech way. Republican dirty tricksters like Roger Stone, Lee Atwater and Karl Rove have been very effective at weakening opponents with their smears. Powerful right wing lawyers like Joe DiGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, who are fine with spreading lies to help the right gain power, have been peddling their conspiracy theories on Fox News, etc. for decades.
Despite all the furor over fake news on social media, Fox News, Breitbart and other right wing media and propagandists have done far more damage to our democracy than the Russians have. The mainstream media needs to stop playing faux balance and call out these deeply destructive actors. Putin is just piling on to the damage they have done, using the same techniques.
3
Everyone needs to understand that all this criminality is happening because there is no fear of reprisals. These people don't pay the piper and they know they will skate if caught. Trump should have been in jail years ago for stiffing workers and running sham businesses. We just need the political and judicial will to prosecute. There are plenty of laws on the books which could lock these players up for years, but they are not enforced. The joy Trump must be having as he relishes in the confidence of having beaten our broken judicial system time and again.
3
The Mercers, multi billionaire cretins that they are, intentionally unleashed a would be Duterte, in the form of Donald J Trump, upon their own homeland. Could it be that taxing the wealthiest so that they actually experience, as ordinary taxpayers do, what true monetary sacrifice actual civic responsibility entails would keep them from playing such crooked games with their excess money and their vulnerable country.
The sad fact of this sordid affair is that it demonstrates how easily rubes can be manipulated by fear.
1
Another lesson: don't use Facebook.
1
The Obama team did exactly the same thing and Facebook said it was "ok because we are on the same side". They even bragged about it. That is how they beat Mitt Romney when we all thought he would win.
I don't know what Ms. Goldberg is so upset about. The Washington Post confirms the Obama campaign scraped Facebook for information years ago, presumably to conduct the same "psychological warfare" the Trump campaign conducted.
This goes beyond just prostitution by Ukrainians but in the larger sense, prostitution of the entire political system and hijacking of our democracy, These tactics are well known by outfits like the KGB and it seems like we are going in that sordid path. Are there no legal consequences for these acts?
1
Cambridge Analytica, psychographic profiling, political exploitation of an individual’s fears, the willful and systematic dissemination of disinformation through technology, alternative facts, and the elevation to positions of power and influence of amoral ideologues like the Kochs, the Mercers, and their “handmaidens” like Alexander Nix.
It seems George Orwell was only off by 30 years.
1
Thank you, Michelle Goldberg. It is time that not just a few of the media pundits stop the hand wringing, how-to-interpret-the-Trump-presidency news, and say flatly we are dealing with thug politics, aided and abetted by those politicians who remain silent, who mouth feeble protestations or, worse, who explain and justify this appalling Administration. A Cabinet whose own self interested agenda pales in comparison to the daily self interest and ego on display and occupying the Oval Office? Crudity, vindictiveness, mendacity, ineptitude, arrogance, heaps of it? Ivanka to the rescue where North Korea is concerned? Tepid response until recently where Russia is concerned? The cherished notion of by the people, of the people, for the people disabused? And now the hateful shenanigans of Cambridge Analytica, Bannon a former V-P? What more will the citizenry need before it says Enough? The highest office in the land has been sullied beyond recognition.
2
I closed my FB account months ago after reading about all the trolls and bots using it to spread lies. Now this. I hope millions more people ditch their social media accounts. I don't miss mine at all and have been enjoying connecting with friends and family, increasingly, in other ways. Plus, not picking up my phone every whipstitch. It's like being freed of a sneaky, evil corporate (and foreign adversary) machine that was trying to control my life.
309
Great idea - I have ditched Facebook, too, and it's a great relief not to waste time on that trivial platform.
4
Ditto. After nine years, I closed my Facebook account last month. I had already closed my Twitter account over a year ago. It's a great feeling--being free of "social" media. Try it!
2
I found that is was almost impossible to close my Facebook account! And I betting it would take on seconds for me to reactivate!
2
I can just hear Donnie Jr saying "if it's what you say, I love it". It is clear that both the Trumps and the oligarchs behind their campaign after the disastrous Republican convention would do anything to win. Increasingly, it looks as though the firm they hired certainly fed some analysis to the Russian troll factories to target and heighten divisions in the electorate. Or the troll factories could have also fed ad content to Cambridge Analytica for proper placement in front of the right eyes. By throwing CA to the wolves and giving up the bad guy in the collusion, the Trumps and Mercers have plausible deniability. They think they are safe ... when are we Americans going to say "enough!"? Enough with misleading and distorting media stories, enough with buying elections, enough with "any means", enough ...
Brennan tweet is an accurate description of Donald Trump. I hope for our own sake that America will triumph over the demagogue in the White House. I do not share his optimism as the demagogue could not have been elected without significant degradation of democratic traditions and without strong support in many States. His supporters were not manipulated. He gave them what they wanted.
1
I’m shocked. Trump and family using illicitly obtained data? No. Impossible. Not dustbin Don and clan.
Like it or not, personal targetted, cold calculated and callous individual manipulation is the new marketing and advertising paradigm. Its not a big leap for CA to begin coldly and calculatedly corrupting the corruptible to manipulate them. How is it that no media has demanded a reaction from Robert or Rebekah Mercer on what they have wrought upon this world by their financing of Cambridge Analytica?
It now seems that the actual collusion may not have been with Russia, but with the Mercers in Southern California. The Russians and Facebook played supporting roles.
It is clear from this revelation that Trump is simply an angry pimple on the nose of the head of the technological beast that spawned the monstrosity of his election win. The president himself has no techno savvy apart from the ability to rage on Twitter, albeit, in the process, expanding the English language with such adjectives as “covfefe.” Or was that a noun? Might have been a verb. What is clear is that Trump is a product, a reality TV prop, of Machiavellian minds that conspired to get him elected in kind of an appalling prank played on democracy. Those who promote or defend him simply perpetuate the hilarity.
At what point does Trump’s legitimacy to be president become undone?
He knows that his election was nefariously engineered, hence his obsession with his victory over Clinton. He is terrified of being delegitimised more than he is of being indicted, his ego burning more brightly than common sense or ethics. He can deride his inevitable downfall as the product of a paranoid conspiracy, but he’ll never reconcile his own personal worthlessness.
The Republican mantra is winning at all cost. There is no concern for people, morality or decency. It's a big contest in which there is no such thing as cheating. It is defined as being smart. Trump has exemplified that in everything he has said and done.
1
What more does it take to confirm that it is the full intention of the Republican Party and its leaders to destroy this democracy. It should be our resolve to line our prisons with Republicans.
Trump with all his talk of a "deep state" has created his own by manipulating citizens through the media with the help of Russia, Cambridge Analytica and the Mercer family. Oh let's not forget the influence of the Koch brothers too. There is a psychological term called protection when one see in others what are truly their own flaws. Trump clearly has created his own deep state to deceive the American people during his Presidency. He no doubt perfected his techniques over the years building empire.
Thanks Michelle for the reporting and the perspective. The Facebook data mining by Cambridge Anaytica brings needed light into the dust storm kicked up by the twitter madness this past weekend by none other. And thanks to Britain's Channel 4 News. Father Mercer and his daughter, along with Bannon, should consider finding a new country to call home very soon.
This isn't good, but when you voluntarily surrender your privacy to the internet, you really are asking to be turned over.
1
Aside from the sage advice of “follow the money”, I have thought for some time that “follow the data” should be a new investigative motto for our digital age and that the collusion (or more accurately, conspiracy) with Russia would be discovered at the point where data was exchanged. How did these Russian bots know which demographics to microtarget so effectively? It has seemed to me that they received deep and detailed voter data somewhere. Could it be that Cambridge Analytica, at the behest of the Trump campaign, shared RNC and other data with them so they could effectively target voters? It seems likely to me.
When this all broke out in the summer before the election, the news reported that Facebook had made a profile of traits for every user including race and political views. I had no idea and went to check mine immediately. It said I was an African American. I am not. It said I was very liberal, true but that label does not really describe that I am a thinking person who sorts through the DNC garbage also. One thing it does say and accurately, that I am the enemy of those who used this data this way.
We must demand that Facebook DELETE these profiles.
Like the Equifax hacking---> no legal penalty will be imposed on the culpable.
Devin Nunes. Paul Ryan. Mitch McConnell.
I can only imagine what they have on them.
In particular with Nunes, I thought from the beginning that his self-destructive actions had a whiff of desperation of mania. Now I can imagine the root cause....
1
There is a type of amoral person for whom “cheating” is a meaningless term. Donald Trump, obviously, is such a person, but so are dozens of people who have taken Trump under their wings or whom he has chosen to surround him.
The list is long and includes people of varying skills, resources and motives.
Cambridge Analytica appears to be a collection of amoral people with technical skills. The people behind the company from the Mercer family to Steve Bannon seem to be of a like mind – cheating is merely a means to an end.
Jared Kushner, though not as bright as the people he hangs around with, is a dedicated cheater. Even buffoons like Devin Nunes and his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives realize that they cannot win at anything without cheating.
Those of us who are disgusted with Donald Trump and his friends – including the ultimate cheater, Vladimir Putin – have to remember that the cheating is not our most important problem.
What really matters are the autocratic impulses of the Trump people. Donald Trump wants to be a dictator. The cheating has only been a means to accomplishing that end.
I despise Trump and cannot wait for Nov 6th but what is becoming more and more clear is that he is the empty vessel used by others to achieve their goals. He appears to be president but it is the republicans, federalists and their donors who are firmly in control.
Maybe Mueller should be flipping Trump to get the donors like Koch/Mercer/Sinclair and the enablers like McConnell/Ryan
1
I wish American writers would stop omitting Cambridge Analytica’s HUGE part in the Brexit campaign, bringing down the UK and hoping to bring down the EU. Please read everything Carole Cadwalladr has written in The Guardian - she has been telling this story for the past year while Americans ignored it! She tied it all together (including Bannon) months ago while no one hear was reading or paying attention. Cadwalladr deserves all the prizes she can get.
1
Bannon and Flynn’s role at Cambridge Analytica must be closely examined. Far from the apocryphal Irish music hall act their names suggest, this dynamic duo refuse to melt into obscurity. Bannon’s recurring Svengalian presence is a direct and prominent link between CA and DJT, the chances are that the latter knew all about the methods of the former, either applauding or not caring as long as they worked.
There is a giant conspiracy here, the scale of which is metastasising every day, Robert Mueller’s task becoming surreal likely even to him.
What they did was run a highly successful advertisement campaign. The data from Facebook was given away by the users themselves (who are happy to give away their Facebook data just to play a silly game), and then used for micro-targeting of susceptible voters. If they were selling soda no one would have thought this was a "dirty trick".
To find the enemy look in the mirror.
1
I have 40 years experience in polling, and I believe I know how Trump did it. The Facebook messages Trump used were targeted. That’s the whole point of knowing a person’s psychographic profile. How was it done? Alexandr Kogan produced a “predictive” tool - he got 170,000 people with known Facebook profiles to complete a psychographic questionnaire. In the questionnaire would have been attitudes to immigration, gun control, racism etc. So now Cambridge Analytica can target 50 million Facebook users with targeted messages based on their Facebook profiles which they KNEW were associated with certain psychographic profiles based on the predictive tool. I’m just guessing but I believe Kelly Anne did surveys in key states to measure the same psychographics and also voting intention. So then they could correlate the two. Then Trump had the 3 pieces : Facebook profiles, psychographic profiles and voting intentions as predicted from Kelly Anne’s polling. Bingo. That’s how they targeted the messages.
226
The final piece of this equation that few people have mentioned is that THOSE targeted folks then magnified the message thousand fold by "sharing" it through facebook, the same medium that culled them in the first place. The profiling and targeting is most powerful when the targets themselves can create new targets with one click. And the worst instincts in human beings- racism and xenophobia-- are highlighted as positive attributes and "go viral." It is boggles the mind how effectively this worked.
5
Plus, by pushing messages containing "shocking revelations" tailored to massage specific individuals' fears (immigrants, minorities, etc.) they could get a viral stream going, because the witless idiots receiving the messages would post it on their timeline for all their 'friends' to see, who would then add to their timelines, etc.
The evil genius in all this is that you can implement this with only a few hundreds of thousands of dollars --not even the cost of a modest TV ad campaign in a mid-size market.
We need two actions: (a) time for major restrictions for social media platforms providing any type of access (including to their own marketing departments) to users' data; and (b) a clear cut declaration that data associated with online activities belongs to the user, not the on-line company providing the platform. The European Union has already implemented regulations in this vein, and --surprise-- the world has not ended. If that means Facebook ends up having to charge a monthly usage fee, then so be it.
4
I have experience too and frankly you know better-you know that based on the wording of the survey and the handpicked demographic chosen to poll you can make a survey or poll say anything you want. If anything the failure of Democrats to do straight polling misled their own party into believing Hillary was The One. I was no Trump fan and I still find his demeanor disturbing. But then again I find the brusque behavior of New Yorkers coming to my state to be just as jarring. Maybe you just don't like that Trump is holding up a mirror to your own behavior. Just saying.
Trump believes in winning at all costs. Like all sociopaths
he has contempt for the rules of democracy and its norms. It is therefore inevitable that he and his supporters and Republican hacks would use social media and disinformation to smear their opponent and unfairly influence the election. They have only demagogic slogans no well thought of policies to offer the voters. And yes this fits in with the moral emptiness
of the Republican Party that supported him as well and used their power in Congress to smear, obstruct, and violate normal practices such as carefully vetting tax and healthcare in open and bipartisan hearings and voting on Supreme Court nominees promptly. Trump's corruption mirrors the moral emptiness and longstanding practices of the Republican Party that still supports him.
Just contemptible how little they care about America and the democratic ideals!
1
It is gravely disappointing that Ms. Goldberg can write a piece like this without mentioning the Mercers and their critical role in Cambridge. Analytics. She is
doing the equivalent of explaining how a solar panel works without mentioning the sun.
The Mercers are the oxygen that allows CA to exist. Their complete role in this sordid affair is yet to be uncovered. But what is clear is that they were instrumental in the creation of the firm, and in defining its mission.
Bob Dylan, in lamenting the injustice suffered by a proud black man at the hands of the criminal justice system, sang of the real “criminals in their suits and ties”. The Mercers are way more powerful than the mere “suits and ties” crowd, and way more dangerous.
Yes, let’s prosecute the Alexander Nix’s of this world. But we should really be prosecuting the Mercers of this world as well. Alas, like the 2008 economic raping, the mega players will come out unscathed.
And so it goes...
7
She did mention the Mercers and their henchmen. Here's the relevant paragraph:
"Created in 2013, Cambridge Analytica is an offshoot of the SCL Group, a British company that specialized in disinformation campaigns in the developing world. It’s mostly owned by the Mercer family, billionaire right-wing donors and strong Trump supporters. Before becoming the Trump campaign’s chief executive, Steve Bannon was Cambridge Analytica’s vice president. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who has since pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I., also served as an adviser to the company."
1
"But we should really be prosecuting the Mercers of this world as well..." Please, let's not veer into histrionic prescriptions that just serve to alienate one tribe against another. Instead, let's step back and coolly determine the very best solution of many. Hey, here's one: Campaign Finance Reform. Then the ballyhooed billionaires would have no more effect upon our legislators than anyone else. Then our legislators would come not from the group of self-dealing fraudulent shysters like Trump, but actual human beings who believe in public service. That the Mercers and the Kochs have amassed such influence is but a symptom of our national disease that surely cannot be cured by prosecuting the Mercers.
Read more carefully, Paragraph 5...
It sickens me to see the power of big capital - such as that of the Mercers and the Koch brothers - being dedicated to tilting the economic balance in their favor and that of their cohorts. Do they plan to take it with them when they die or will they build themselves pyramids to squirl their fortunes for a comfortable afterlife. Where is the humanity of it?
571
Perhaps the question we should be asking is how can those of us that only have one vote each make our voices heard over the moneyed din? How can we have the meaningful public discourse to inform and formulate new policy and move the country forward for the benefit of the majority?
We do not have the millions of dollars that enable us to "buy" votes/influence with campaign donations or "extort" them from employees that fear for their jobs.
6
One wonders if the Antitrust laws should apply to the families at the top of the heap. At least monopolies who control a particular market cannot take unfair advantage of others in that market without a government response. Why shouldn't the government protect the much larger mass of citizens who are sidelined in these discussions when NRA money or Koch money or Mercer money control the narrative, control our social media news feeds, fill our social media with bots and paid interlopers carrying their messages? Whatever happened to the fairness doctrine? Why can't we have that at least?
The more one wonders, the more one asks instead why, if they have so much power, they are not regulated, and instead left unfettered to do whatever they want to all of us, our news outlets, our social media, and ultimately our minds and our votes.
4
True. And where are the subpoenas? If the Mercers or the Koch brothers knew what Cambridge Analytica was doing, aren't they abetting a crime? I don't think we've yet reached the bottom of this toxic sewage. Why was the Miss Universe pageant held in Russia? Nothing these people do is for the benefit of anyone except themselves. They view the US and Europe, because they are open democracies, as "for the taking" because they think we're too stupid or too naive to believe anyone could actually spend their lives in such vile, contemptible ways. Somebody needs to start looking at Congressional ties to Ukraine and Russia as well.
And I've got news for them. We're a lot smarter than they are.
2
2015. "Our Brand is Crisis" starring Sandra Bullock, based on a documentary by the same name shows how smear campaigns, rumour manipulation and blatant lies win elections. Nothing new but now becoming a science even to the science detractors, fundamentalists including our own evangelicals.
Everything is related, everyone is involved. Is there anything and anyone related to Trump that is not corrupt and evil?
2
Whew. That's quite a lot of think about. And keep in mind how much Trump said that the election was "rigged." Well, he should know....
3
Boycott facebook and demand communication through other venues from friends and business associates.
Digital responsibility might set in.
3
Corruption follows the money. When you have a country/world with such concentrations of wealth, income and property, you will have a concentration of power, as well. We seem to try and walk away from this poison on our communities. We cannot.
The madness of money is well-documented. Our own Republican Congress and President have focused on one thing, and done it well: cut taxes for the richest Americans. Mission Accomplished! The rich are richer. Now, if you say the average American is worse off and that democracy and equality are worse off, then you'd be right. But, you wouldn't be listened to. The media's more interested in profits and shareholders than mere truth about the fall of moral civilization.
Democrats have been lazy in fighting for the poor, the workers, the average Americans. Our bad. We must stand, really stand, for something, and for me it's a more perfect Union with community and taking care of each other and building a land of harmony, equality and compassion. Not greed.
Republicans like to say they're more 'moral', 'Christian', 'value-voters' than Democrats. Well, look around us: wrong, wrong, wrong. Republicans are Trump. They support him still. He is them.
Slowly, we realize how sleazy and corrupt he is. We must not forget or take our eyes off. Forget all his hyper shenanigans; he knows how to get you attention off an important thing and onto an unimportant one. Or, to move you away from the curtain (behind which lies the moneychangers).
Stand. Up.
3
So Trump got lucky...Bannon, Cambridge Analytical....some Hi-Tech voting data.
Its not going to happen again...that is next election both sides will be armed. Trump will self destruct soon enough not having any skills for the job. Its been a hard lesson, but nobody will want this guy around much longer. A recent poll had Trump in last place of all elected past Presidents, Obama moved up from 12 to 8th, young Bush was mid twenties.
We know why Trump keeps accusing people of conspiratorial dealing behind the scenes: he thinks everybody operates like he does. It is the same with his diatribes about foreigners as sexual predators.
When he attacks profit-seeking drug dealers for manipulating peoples' minds so that they become a danger to themselves and society, he is talking about the lies he and these fellow travelers on the Right use to manipulate people so that they are unable to see what is needed for their own good and encourages their dangerous rage at others and society.
But most of all what this shows is that all of their talk of "individualism" is a sham.
First, it is just a lie about how human beings come to exist and are able to get good lives.
Second they don't think of us as thoughtful individuals to whom they can make political arguments, but as easily manipulated creatures enslaved to appetites and emotions,who can be lied to,incited to fear of others and then pacified with flattery of racist and sexist superiority so that we give up our minds and lives to their control.
The articulation of this view was made 40 years ago during the Reagan years by George Gilder.. The wealthy seek to control the nonwealthy men, who they think are basically ravenous gang members, by giving them sex partners (see ISIS tactics) and families to support. And also by giving them people they can blame,such as women, black people and foreigners, for their economic condition rather than the economic system itself
2
Nixon did not face impeachment and conviction because he won the 1972 election due to dirty tricks. Even the dirty tricks themselves were not the reasons for the impeachment. The articles of impeachment were based on Nixon having committed obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress in trying to cover up those dirty tricks.
There are two major differences between Trump in 2018 and Nixon in 1972-74:
1. The Congress of 1972-74 was a robust organization of talented and outspoken members unafraid of fulfilling its Constitutional role as a check on excess and abuses of the executive branch. Today's Congress is dominated by incompetent hypocrites (aka "Republicans") and cowards (aka "Democrats").
2. 1972-74 was decades prior to the systemic dumbing-down of the mainstream news media, public education, and the electorate by the scam and scourge of digitized and engineered-for-addiction-and-extremism "social" media.
5
I can clearly hear Bobby Mueller's footsteps getting closer. This will not end well for Trump or the Republican party.
2
Facebook claims that they told Cambridge Analytica to delete the data that was harvested (stolen) from unsuspecting Facebook users. Really.....Valuable data like this is rarely "deleted" when it can be reused or sold to the highest bidder(s). If it really was deleted it can surely be recreated by the program that was used to get it in the first place.
Facebook needs to be held accountable. With over-site from the US government (if that still exists), Facebook needs to analyze the Analytica data (work product) and compare it with their Facebook users (customers) who were sent SPAM from our Kremlin friends. Pretty obvious...right?
3
One must appreciate the irony of the he-doesn't-know-what-he-doesn't-know president and his deer in the headlights son-in-law benefiting (if it did indeed work) from something as sophisticated as what Nix & Co purported to offer. Ignorance truly is bliss.
The Mercer's are as much, if not more, of a danger to our democracy as Communism ever was. And they call themselves patriots.
Of what? Allied to whom?
4
Why is it that in all these reports about harnessing the potential of social media, - Facebook in particular - for political manipulation, and we may only be scratching the surface of the phenomenon: Wikileaks, the Russian troll farms, always and inevitably are linked to the sinister forces of the right: Trump, Erdogan, Putin, Assad, the Brexit campaigners?
There is an expression "Putting gold teeth in your horse's mouth" that applies to Zuckerberg and the other autocrats of Facebook, CA: they are rich beyond imagination and yet devoid of any scruples or ethical considerations in their constant efforts to become richer still.
350
It is not just the money. The real bottom line is power.
4
Yeah Jan Wikileaks a sinister force of the right?. Did you say that when they published items showing very, very bad behavior by US forces in that wonderful WMD war in Iraq. Was Obama/Hillary a sinister force of the right when they attacked Libya and restarted the Iraq and Afghan wars. If the people in Denmark think that the US is so golden they might be shocked that our prisons are over filled, our cities unsafe and rotting, corruption in almost every town and very poor health care for the masses.
What's in a name? Nothing. Say the word Cambridge to me and at one time in my life I would have thought of an English university and of the location of Harvard. Say analytica and perhaps my first reaction is that somebody is trying to create an impression of intellectuals at work.
And then the truth is revealed by using the only method left, apparently, going undercover.
We know now what happens to certain undercover agents. Let's hope that does not happen to Channel 4 but hope does not work well against billionaire right wingers.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen US SE
1
Yes, Trump's key to success is cheating and manipulating and lying. He is the definition of con man. Robert Mueller is the opposite. These two people represent a man gleefully taking the country to its slow destruction as a thriving democracy, or to a man who could spur our repair and rehabilitation through facts and truth telling.
1
Christopher Wylie said in a recent interview, about Cambridge Analytica and it's objectives,
“I think it’s worse than bullying,” Wylie says. “Because people don’t necessarily know it’s being done to them. At least bullying respects the agency of people because they know. So it’s worse, because if you do not respect the agency of people, anything that you’re doing after that point is not conducive to a democracy. And fundamentally, information warfare is not conducive to democracy.”
Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon and many more in the Trump orbit attacked our democracy, for political gain.
457
Bannon; the Mercers; Kushner should all rot in jail for their perfidy.
5
They also attacked our democracy for monetary gain. Cambridge Analytica makes money selling dirty political tricks and using stolen personal information.
4
And yet the definition of TREASON evades Republicans who are all so willing to cast aside all fact and reason. Everyone knew Trump would do these things . . . what the world did not know was that Evangelical Republican would do what they did. Decades of Trump made it clear who and what Trump is. At least there was a time when a Republican would stand up for something other than the NRA, as in the Nixon fiasco. Now that Trump is Nixon on steroids, Republicans are silent - worse than silent, they are assisting Trump and thwarting the truth.
4
It is intriguing that Cambridge Analytica's web site lists over 15 political campaigns in which it has assisted, including those of Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, yet the author describes the firm as "Trump's High-Tech Dirty Tricksters" as if Trump owned it.
It is intriguing that all throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, the Times described Trump's advisors and consultants as disorganized amateurs and Clinton's advisors and consultants as sophisticated pollsters and high-tech wizards. Now, with revisionist history, we are told that the Trump campaign hired all the geniuses. What is the truth?
It is intriguing that although there apparently is no tangible evidence that Cambridge Analytica's work for Trump had any effect on the election, everyone is posting as if this was a fact. Why couldn't this firm catapult Cruz or Carson into the Republican nomination if it is this effective?
1
The results, at this point, are less relevant than the disease it uncovers. We have a problem here, obviously.
It's one thing to be able to collect data, it takes a whole other universe of knowledge to be able to do anything with it. Nobody connected to Trump could recognize an organization that would be able do that.
"There’s a lesson here for our understanding of the Trump presidency. Trump and his lackeys have been waging their own sort of psychological warfare on the American majority that abhors them. On the one hand, they act like idiots. On the other, they won, which makes it seem as if they must possess some sort of occult genius. With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse."
Cheating. Isn't that what the monster specializes in? Included should be his son-in-law who doesn't mind cheating rent control tenants of their rights.
We have fallen far in this democracy and thanks to the current occupant of the White House, we have yet to fall farther.
The white nationalism of the Trump philosophy has its roots in the "Blood and Soil" :
"is a slogan expressing the nineteenth-century German idealization of a racially defined national body ("blood") united with a settlement area ("soil"). By it, rural and farm life forms are not only idealized as a counterweight to urban ones, but are also combined with racist and anti-Semitic ideas of a sedentary Germanic-Nordic peasantry as opposed to (specifically Jewish) nomadism. The contemporary German concept Lebensraum, the belief that the German people needed to reclaim historically German areas of Eastern Europe into which they could expand, is tied to it."
2
The Kushner-Nix-Assange-Mueller connection is fascinating. I'd like to learn more about that subject. However, I don't mean to pop anyone's thought bubble but I see a problem. Isn't posing as a potential customer, capturing salacious interview comments, and publishing those comments without the interviewee's consent considered ethically nihilistic?
I appreciate the revelation but News Channel Four has only given ammunition to Trump's supporters. I can already see how the Fox News punditry is going to spin this information and unfortunately their audience will probably buy the argument. In the age of "fake news," the news media needs to being doing things cleaner, not dirtier. This might fly in Britain but the NC4's reporting is probably counter productive in the US. Just saying.
1
Posing as a potential customer shouldn't be a problem for anyone as long as the seller isn't trying to gyp the buyer. Every sales rep has to convert a potential customer into a real sale. That's the job. Promising to break the law in the process is, by definition, illegal.
It's helpful to understand the Mercer family's role in this subversive campaign to get DJT elected.
Robert Mercer (not Jared Kushner--sorry, Forbes) IS a mathematical genius. Coincidentally, my former work colleague and mentor for many years was Robert Mercer's office mate in graduate school and describes him as one of the best mathematicians he's ever known. He's also a pretty good ping-pong player, apparently.
Mercer's Ph.D. is in physics, actually, and anyone who follows Wall Street knows that physics doctorates are among the most-sought-after hires for high-finance companies. He made his billions by developing sophisticated software to execute trades that benefitted him and his hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies.
Mercer's involvement in Renaissance Technologies and Cambridge Analytica is no coincidence. At its heart is Ayn Rand Libertarianism: A person's worth is based solely on how much money he/she has. Robert Mercer once said that nuclear war on US soil, "wouldn't be all that bad" for most Americans. I guess that's easy for someone with no soul to profess, especially when they'll be watching the conflagration from some South Pacific island. That's how much these people care about you and me.
I don't know if Robert Mercer himself wrote any of Cambridge Analytica's computer code, but he certainly has the capability and understands EXACTLY what they were trying to do--probably better than the people running Cambridge, actually.
27
Mercer's hedge fund should be renamed Dark Ages Technologies.
The link between Mercer and Bannon and Trump and all the rest of these cheaters, thieves, liars, con artists, etc. is graft and the drive to dominate/control. But (and like Pee-wee Herman says, "... everybody has a big but...") -- the TRUTH NEEDS WITNESSES.
Witnesses are coming forth, and that is how truth is defended.
The lesson from this election is that there needs to be rules of conduct. It used to be that if politicians wanted to know what voters were thinking they had to conduct polls. Now technology has reached a point where they can track us without gaining our permission. They're also getting much more sophisticated at manipulating voters by targeting our biases. Granted this approach may win elections but it's not healthy for democracy. Deliberately dividing us to win weakens our country and that's how countries fall.
7
"Project Alamo" is impressive too, as another example of Trumps superior use of technology in building out an operation.
It is time for a non-partisan Voter Reports just like we have Consumer Reports.
11
I agree with Allegra: no more big (or any) money in political campaigns. Money is obviously not protected by free speech guarantees.
But before that way-too-sensible dream comes true, everybody should resign from Facebook, so the Mercers can't build their pathetically powerful digital weapons.
17
As a former Marine officer with Top Secret clearance, I am appalled at the total lack of OPSEC (operational security) exhibited by Facebook and I have encouraged all of friends and family to delete their accounts just before I deleted mine.
268
Re: "With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating."
That's why he so often accuses other's of cheating. He is, so they must be.
And if course his business history shows this is nothing new.
But the question here is, if he didn't want to or expect to win, as it has been said, then why did he go to such lengths to win?
12
This scenario reminds me of when Lance Armstrong finally got caught. The most compelling evidence was that he constantly beat riders who had been caught juicing.
Same with Don - he could only imagine winning by out cheating his opponents.
2
Because this is all a paranoid lefty fantasy.
As bad as Facebook is, the real problem is collecting data on tens of millions of people and selling it to advertisers -- not manipulating votes.
Hillary and her crew used analytics too. I personally saw COUNTLESS Facebook ads for Hillary or bashing Trump. I am not convinced any of it, pro or con, changed anybody's vote.
Dismissing something as "lefty" is merely a deflection that works great in conservative talk shows but doesn't mean a lot.
Also trying to deflect or mischaracterize the subject as being about Facebook ads is a disingenuous attempt at changing the topic. Ads weren't mentioned in the piece at all. Whether Cambridge Analytica was effective as Nix takes credit for isn't the real point. It's what they did and how eager Trump was to work with people who stooped to the tactics revealed here.
The reasons I believe Clinton lost is due to low demo turn out, diviision over Sanders, and manipulations why else were so many Repulicans elected to the House and Senate. The pitiful fact is how gullible we all were and how little we care and believe in our vote. There's a little over 25% of register Republicans but they vote in lock step 86%. This is the same as with the NRA a small number of people with a huge mobile vote. Protect your rights get involve and vote you will be amazed at the things we can accomplish.
15
Don't beat yourself up for being gullible, these are sophisticated techniques developed over decades by Russian and German secret police. Read about the East German Stasi in Wikipedia and tell me if it doesn't sound like Cambridge Analytica's techniques, including Trump name calling and character assassination, keeping in mind that both Steve Brannon and General Flynn worked for the company before they joined Trumps campaign. Add to this all the support provided by Putin and Russia and the need for cash (laundered Russian oligarch funds) and you have a well orchestrated treasonous conspiracy, too big for any single person's gullibility.
1
Here we have the ultimate litmus test for an optimistic nature versus a pessimistic one.
You can view the trend of current events in the US as a downward spiral that will end in catastrophe, or you can view it as a rising fever that will break and leave the country drenched in sweat but strong enough to recover and impatient to do so.
I recognize the threat of continuing struggles with die-hard Trumpites and with sundry enemies foreign and domestic. I don't say all will be well when Donald Trump himself has been defeated, but I do think the fever model is the applicable one. Call me an optimist.
http://thefamilyproperty.blogspot.jp/2018/01/the-voyage-to-restoration.html
1
This goes all the way to the top of the Republican Party. When winning at any costs becomes the operating principle of the party. You can be sure Mitch McConnell and Paul Rand knew what was happening and are more then happy with the results. They got their boy in the White House and there is no going back. What got be better.
7
From Dan Balz of The Washington Post, July 28, 2013, "How the Obama campaign won the race for voter data."
"If a person signed on to Dashboard through his or her Facebook account, the campaign could, with permission, gain access to that person’s Facebook friends. The Obama team called this “targeted sharing.” It knew from other research that people who pay less attention to politics are more likely to listen to a message from a friend than from someone in the campaign. The team could supply people with information about their friends based on data it had independently gathered. … Instead of asking someone to send a message to all of his or her Facebook friends, the campaign could present a handpicked list of the three or four or five people it believed would most benefit from personal encouragement."
Trouble is GOP plays to win and its base is essentially homogeneous. Democrats are supine (check out big Dem majority in US Senate letting Rep minority launch hundreds of filibusters in 2009-12), and their base is heterogeneous. Dems will always be a day late and a dollar short.
3
It's the curse of letting people think for themselves. They are much harder to engage and manage.
These revelations are beginning to teach us how vulnerable we all are to manipulation.
Combine that with personalized ads, ads which target each individual, which no one else sees. Voters are not participating in an election, they are participating in 200,000,000 personalized elections. And their deepest fears and desires are levers the campaigns call operate at will.
There are no laws governing this activity. No electoral oversight body can watch interactions between the campaign and the voters.
This is the new reality.
5
Social media corruption of democracy can be resisted on both sides of the Atlantic: 1) In the USA, by a class action against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica by the tens of millions whose data was grabbed and used without their permission; and 2) In the European Union, where the new and powerful General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force in May this year; Facebook is active in the EU and faces fines of €20M or 4% of annual turnover, for doing what they did. Read about GDPR here:
https://www.eugdpr.org
226
And, IF ONLY EVERYONE WOULD SHUT DOWN THEIR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT IMMEDIATELY.
3
But the Trump administration is going the other way instead and deregulates the data gathering...
1
"With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse."
Best summary yet for how history will view them.
21
Yes. whether it's direct voter suppression, gerrymandering districts, disenfranchising voters. or poisoning the informational "bloodstream", Republicans are point shavers. Not only do they take every opportunity to subvert the electoral process to their advantage, they (apparently) have no compunctions in doing so. They are convinced they have they have the higher moral authority and are allowed "Mulligans".
5
"Republicans" include GOP congress. Mitch McConnell has said nothing about the firing of Andrew McCabe--an action so uniquely sadistic as to try preventing him from receiving retirement for his 20+ years of government service. What do Ryan/McConnell/Nunes etc. about Cambridge Analytica? Anything?
Why not? And if not, what should we (both Republican and Democrat voters) do about it?
Research question: is cheating more prevalent in mediocre segments of a competitive society?
In the political campaigns in the era before pervasive social media the ads had to have a disclaimer saying who paid for them.That way the public could evaluate the candidates supporters.Now voters face a torrent of ads,promises, lies and people who misrepresent themselves.Add to that Russian presence on the internet.This Wild West of voter targeting must end.If the internet companies are media outlets they have to be more responsible in handling their "information".
3
Let's not forget that as early as June 2016, Kushner, with Manafort's support, hired Cambridge Analytica (CA)to take over its data operations, and put Brad Parscale in charge of the campaign's digital division. (Parscale has already been named campaign manager for Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.)
The main source of funding for CA's "psychographic" profiling came from the Mercers (Brietbart benefactors), and the company installed Bannon on CA's Board of Directors.
Couple this with the surreptitious recording of Nix promoting "dirty tricks" against political opponents - data-wise and otherwise - and the dots are all connected. Taken altogether this paints a picture of a vast "data swamp" in which the public was hoodwinked into complicity.
To blame all of this on Facebook alone is wrongheaded. The sleaze at the top of CA developed the means to obtain information that may have influenced the election's outcome, especially given the fact that the Electoral College's vote was based on less than 80,000 votes in four States.
The responsibility for this major fiasco must be shared by the Trump campaign managers/donors, the illegal data harvesting and dirty tricks of CA, the obliviousness and greed of Facebook in accepting fake ads and posts, as well as the users of FB who are either ignorant of how their personal information can be subverted without their knowledge.
We must let all of these nefarious entities know that "time's up" for them come the 2018 November elections!
11
"We must let all of these nefarious entities know that "time's up" for them come the 2018 November elections!"
And in the meantime, it would be helpful if the poor schlubs who were the victims of this disinformation campaign were told just how badly they were manipulated by people keen to take even more of the American pie through any means possible--including by controlling a weak, ignorant and greedy fool of a president. Is it too much to hope that they might try not to be fooled again? Or is the Kool-Aid of "crooked Hillary" too strong?
When I was a kid, the Republicans hated "commies" more than anything. It seems immensely ironic that the far right, represented by the Mercers, has now joined the Russians in their underhanded schemes to elect this horror of a president. Funny--the Republicans always hated communism because they thought the leaders would take all the money for themselves and leave everyone else with nothing--seems a lot like today's American 1%. I guess at the far ends of the spectrum, the opposing sides actually do meet. At some point we'll have to compile a list of American plutocrats like there seems to be in Russia. The list of cabinet officials is a place to start.
1
Remind me again what CA did with the information of 50 million users that Facebook doesn't do with the information of over a billion users every single day?
2
Though it is troubling how people can be "massaged" and manipulated by Facebook, in fact both parties did this. The Hillary campaign used analytics too. I read and viewed countless ads for Hillary on Facebook as well and zillions of anti-Trump ads.
All of us have sold out to Facebook in order to use their social media empire. That is bigger and more dangerous than any candidate or campaign.
1
So the Russians waged war on the American democracy to help Trump and Cambridge Analytics waged war on the private information of Americans to help Trump win the presidency. And the base? He won. And they don't care what he did to get there. That much is abundantly clear. They don't care that he cheated, committed treason by letting the Russians help him, nor that private information from Americans was hacked. None of this matters to the base and none of this matters to Republicans in Congress. Well we either put a stop to this or we say "Anything goes" when it comes to politics. Perhaps political assassination would be acceptable to the base? Why not? They have made it abundantly clear they have no moral, ethical, or legal standards they are willing to employ. Well they need to remember the Constitution will have something to say about this. And they will go down in history as the getaway drivers of the the heist of American democracy. And I believe, if I am not mistaken, that is also a crime. What goes around will eventually come around.
7
No surprise. The entire GOP has endorsed cheating for years. Suppress minority voting. Gerrymander districts. Dishonesty likely was part of POTUS's appeal to his party. And with the 2020 Census disorganized and unfunded they will make sure that urban areas are grossly undercounted thereby making sure reapportionment deprives big cities of representation in the House.
10
Trump is just the tip of the iceberg. I know, I know - a cliche: "Tip of the iceberg." But remember, it wasn't the visible tip of the iceberg that sank the Titanic, and if we keep allowing Trump to distract us it won't be the tip of the iceberg that sinks our country, either.
It becomes evident that Trump is just the visible loud-mouthed face of a conglomerate that has been active for years even before he was elected. It didn't even have to be Trump they chose, it theoretically could have been someone else. All the way back to the primaries... How did all those dyed-in-the-wool experienced Republican politicians lose the primaries to TRUMP?
I think we should be expanding our investigations beyond the November 2016 elections.
Facebook, Cambridge Analytics, who else is involved in this mess?
7
The art of "psychographic profiling" has been I think part of marketer's bag of tools since at least the 1980s. If it worked to get people to buy a certain product say your morning cereal, it can work to influence people to vote a particular way. A key difference is that the Facebook data had better (and real) information from the target his/her self then we did in the 1980s.
How Facebook allowed any data to escape their boundaries is beyond me. Most companies with large volumes of personal behavior information sell only carefully homogenized data, not the underlying base data, or at least they should be doing that. The fact that Cambridge Analytica used any trick, legal or not just compounded the error of Facebook allowing data to escape.
13
It seems to defy credulity that a vast media empire like Facebook with all their tech savvy and genius tech experts could have fallen for a half baked "analytics firm" run by the doofus Kushner.
1
Don't blame Facebook, blame dummies who put their business on social media in the first place. Why the help anyone should do this has always confused me. I cannot think of any reason why I would do such a thing. Don't have an account, never plan to have one.
Dirty Tricks aren't new in the Republican party. Doesn't it remind one of the tricksters in the Nixon investigation. So much of the Watergate seems to be present in Mueller's investigation.
Cheating seems to be the way elections are planned by Republicans. Aided by gerrymandering, they plan voter suppression, division by racism in their ads, and politicizing our judiciary.
47
Congratulations and thank you, Michelle, for another brief but quick-hitting focus on this timely dirty-tricksters just being exposed.
Personally, Facebook was such an overwhelmingly attractive protocol that I had quickly built up 50 friends and 2 writing groups for my involvement which could have taken up 20 hours a day quite deeply embedded before I ditched everything except my name which they are still wanting to reactivate.
24
For someone of who it has been said that he didn't expect to win, or maybe even didn't want to win, he went to a lot of effort and got a lot of help to win. He was so convinced of cheating on the other side that he felt that any cheating or under handed tactics on his side where justified.
35
No, he was so convinced the other side was cheating because he was already cheating.
5
Trump himself personally did not expect to win -- neither did his family -- neither did the media, which widely predicted not merely a defeat, but an awful landslide humiliating defeat. One article here in October predicted Trump might commit suicide due to the humiliation of such rejection.
The way Trump spoke & behaved the last weeks of the election sure did not sound like a man who thought his team of clever Facebook analysts had "cheated" and were going to give him a victory. It was Hillary who was bold and arrogant, predicting a huge victory.
I personally think Trump never thought he'd win -- not even the primary -- but was trying to set himself up as a Rush LImbaugh-like pundit, with perhaps a TV show as a political moderator OR as a spokesperson on Fox News. He would have had a lot of fund skewering the Hillary Administration.
But basically the end of this story is that BOTH PARTIES failed to understand or predict the mood of the nation -- because BOTH PARTIES never talk to us, or care about the issues that really matter to us.
Conservative Citizen we heard the narrative: Trump did not expect to win or even care since he was lining up a post election network or TV gig. However as facts come out they undercut that story by showing him desperate to win. Willing to do anything to win. As Trump says, winning is everything.
Thus I don't believe you've addressed the question of why, if he didn't expect he would win, why did he put so much effort into winning, why was his family all too eager to meet with the Russians to get "dirt" on Clinton, why did they engage with Cambridge Analytica's underhanded dealings?
Are you saying such things are simply Trump SOP and people just do what they know?
Seeing Clinton as "arrogant" (in the face of one of the most arrogant men ever) is common among her detractors but if anything she underplayed the polls and predictions of victory lest people stay away and don't vote. I don't remember her every predicting victory. Hoping and wishing yes.Can't even find it using Google search.
Making things up is Trump SOP however. He even recently admitted to it. We we've certainly seen no qualms of making things up in conservative circles where he fits right in these days.
3
I am horrified by the implications of all this for our children and grandchildren. They have grown up with social media and may never fully grasp the potential for the truly evil results that may come from a "social " presence online. As a nation and a democracy we must get control of this situation and protect future generations' chance to live in a democratic society.
64
So, even if all the copies of pirated data from FB get destroyed, what happens to the algorithms that were created from stealing personal data of 50+ million FB users ?
The manipulative algorithm(s) are loose, residing who knows where, and under whose control ? We'll never know.
If FB has indeed known about this for 2 years, as reported, and never told their users, investors, or reported it to the SEC or any other authorities, then their ACTUAL plotting, conniving, concealment, and deception are far far worse than what was just theoretically posited by Cambridge's CEO (bad as that is).
Press on, Senators Klobuchar and Kennedy !
91
But not at the expense of holding the people at Cambridge Analytics accountable! Let us not throw out the baby with the bath water!
Given all this, you'd think the Democratic Party would be out there talking about their plan for the future, promising things like gun control, a better health care system, improvements to education, environmental responsibility.... and you'd think I would be able to name a few presidential candidates.
Enough about Trump and his associates already, let's plan for what happens afterwards.
56
Indeed. There is a great silence.
4
Agreed. Where are the Democratic leaders on this? Or is the NYT out of space to report on that? They should be out and loud and proud and showing the way to the future that most of us want.
1
If only
1
zit is time to regulate FB and all of SM. Each profile should be vetted before the profile can send friend requests or post. FB would be out of business in about a week, but that would be a good thing.
29
Agreed. We can wait until a Democrat wins and let the Republicans handle the regulations.
George Orwell warned us about the possibility of the state using information to control the citizenry. It didn't quite work out that way. It's the new big trans-national "tech" corporations that have vast troves of information on each of us. With all this unsavory news about Facebook, we also have to ask about other information-vacuuming companies like Google, Apple, and the credit rating agencies.
69
Just for the record, Trump and his half-witted cronies are the state now, not exactly what the Business Round Table folks had in mind when they tilted the playing field by buying Congress. The means has become the way and that wonderful green pasture of the American Republic may soon disappear for these very greedy smart guys.
3
For Times readers British Channel 4 is worth looking up.
I remember it was a compromise between those who wanted another commercial channel and those who did not.
From the start it set a radical tone challenging the political correct ideas of both the left , right and center. I'm sure all your readers will find a large number of past programs they hate and a large number they applaud.
14
If society represents a physical body, the doctrine of the end justifying the means represents a contagion that wracks it. It wouldn’t be so bad if the engineers of the end were fit, responsible, individuals, or even maverick visionaries seeing and acting on a requirement for positive change, but they’re not. They are simply criminals willing to usher in a criminal age that devours democracy in vast gulps. Whether or not Cambridge Analytica was effective in its methods is irrelevant. It is the fact that it bore malicious intent towards how a free society should be governed that bears testament. The great intellects that the company employs proves that there is no way to technologically engineer character or morality, the same going for Facebook.
It can only be hoped that, historically, this era will be known, not for its lapses in political goodness, but more for the chastening of the system in which we all live, vote, and abide. If there was ever proof that technology needs to be controlled for the overwhelming good of the people, then this must be it.
64
Let's hope so. But let's face it - the only value that counts any more in America is money and the power it brings. Dangle money and you can get folks to do just about anything. What values are left to counteract this? Not many, apparently.
Stormy Daniels, "golden showers", lies, fraud, brainwashing techniques, shady real estate transactions, corrupt cabinet members ripping off the public - the filth just doesn't end. It is all quite sickening. That is, for half the country. Meanwhile, only those GOP members of congress not up for re-election this year or having already announced they are not running have the courage to even modestly call this out for what it is. This is a national disgrace, one that we may never overcome.
338
Try communicating all this to Trump's base. They are the problem.
5
The party of the Evangelical right.
3
When a scandal breaks that attacks public trust in its institutions, whether tainted food or medicines, we have responded with laws and regulations to prevent more of the same. People being sickened and dying of these products led to the creation of the FDA. When the banks deployed toxic methods to defraud customers, we created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
When considering the sanctity of our vote, we have to look at what happened to the protectors of our medicines, food, and finance. They have been shorn of power and are under attack by the GOP in Congress.
Through gerrymandering and baseless accusations of voter fraud, our right to vote has been weakened. Now we learn more each day of the added toxins of tainted information actively generated and spread by these foul actors.
When we cannot trust the information coming our way our faith in the franchise is broken. Our ability to make wise choices in electing our leaders results in folly.
68
Trump has never thought the rules apply to him, the fact that he is surrounded with both people and companies that operate under the same premise should surprise no one. What would be surprising knowing this is that there was no collusion with the Russians when help was offered.
Trump has more than met his match in Mueller, it is quite obvious that Trump knows that Mueller already has the goods on him, this explains the switch it in tactics from making nice to attacking him. He is between a rock and a hard place if he fires him it certainly makes him look guilty and there will be a flood of leaks from the investigation that will prove it. If he allows the investigation to continue it won't be just the election and Russian collusion he is worried about but financial crimes committed prior that Mueller will uncover.
How Trump handles the Stress of the next 6 months to a year is the scary thing for the majority of us who are just along for the ride in this experiment called democracy.
118
"If he allows the investigation to continue it won't be just the election and Russian collusion he is worried about but financial crimes committed prior that Mueller will uncover."
Maybe Trump should have thought about these things before deciding to run for the presidency? People like him never think they'll get caught, and he's got a lifelong history of successfully deceiving people to back that up. His brain is in his gut, you know, and that's all he's ever needed. His problem is that it may just be forced out into his pants by the time Mueller is done with him.
Trump won't get away with firing Mueller. But Mueller needs to really get the goods on Trump, otherwise the GOP will cover up the investigation results as much as they can. Republicans are complicit and filthy at this point, perhaps beyond redemption. Mueller is the crucial failsafe, and as such really needs to come through.
5
This is a turning point in the nearly 50 year old tech industry. Tech has become both indispensable and powerful enough to negatively affect everyday life in the wrong hands. It is time to consider regulating it like a utility. The Internet needs regulation through net neutrality, something that Trump’s FCC has abandoned. Social networks need it too because what we are seeing is simply the nefarious use of systems as they were designed to be used. Pulling a building permit to remodel your kitchen is more regulated than trying to influence a million people on a social network. This is wrong.
101
Agreed. Quoting Sharon Waxman from The Wrap: "In the words of Russian spyspeak, Zuckerberg now counts — like our president — as a “useful idiot.” He has contributed, and apparently continues to contribute, to the corruption of our democratic process. The Times reports that Cambridge Analytica still has “most or all” of the data. (On the CA website they claim they have 5,000 data points on 220 million Americans, not just 50 million!!) "Meanwhile, Facebook rakes in billions of dollars in profit each quarter — $7.3 billion in the last quarter of 2017 — while sucking advertising dollars away from digital media companies that do actual journalism, like Vox and Mic and Buzzfeed...The notion that fake news on Facebook influenced the election is “a pretty crazy idea,” Zuckerberg said in November 2016."
Will the U.S. finally follow Europe's lead and crack down on Facebook, Twitter and other social media violators and instate privacy protections?
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/mark-zuckerberg-russia-trump-cambrid...
84
Trump methods don't change.
What's been practiced in his business is practiced in his politics by different means where the only rule still applies: the end justifies the means. Whatever they are.
38
I wonder why it is we don't hear from the folks who have experienced first-hand Trump's "art of the deal". Unless bankruptcy is nothing worse than a slap on the wrist, where is the outcry from business folks who have allegedly suffered from Trump's financial "irregularities"? How is it the Trump Organization allegedly can't get any American bank to provide him loans?
2
Fear of lawyers? Hoping he will still come through?Embarrassment? Most people who are conned don't like to admit it and don't report it. Most companies with losses on a project don't like to advertise it. If for no other reason that they don't want potential customers to think they publicly out embarrassment.
1
CA claims (with slight modification): "Better audience targeting powered by smarter data modeling: up to 5,000 data points per person on over 220 million Americans; more than 100 data variables to target audience groups and shape the behavior of like-minded people. With our comprehensive range of analytics and engagement services, clients can use our behavioral microtargeting to control every aspect of your audience engagement--by building crucial (mis)information flows and manipulating behavioral connections when and where it counts. We are game changers who deliver smart solutions and produce real results. "We're extremely proud of the work we did in collaboration with the Trump campaign, to deliver this election." Choose Cambridge Analytica.
27
(Two parts.)
Equations show equal relationships between different things: they express formulas of equivalencies. If we view wisely, for a series of points that appear unrelated or random, we find common terms. Hidden structures, new strengths.
Trump has brought new political equations: thoughtful calculus show common terms. Hidden structures, new strengths. An example: the stock market crashed; racism and misogyny are raising and the Chief of Staff doubled down on both.
A constant in the new equation is denial. Denial paired with comedy and pretense. Exposed, greed is denied! The response: it was all in fun, a mere charade. Corrupt purpose becomes playing along. Thief is play. Nothing here. So say Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.
Funny how the new warfare of information, run from buildings in Russia and China, from student-manned sites in Eastern Europe, that includes laptop conspiracy theorists who deny real mass shooting as staged by the government and accuse survivors of being actors, is no laughing manner. There is no humor in the death threats they send to student survivors. Who is laughing about their verbatim match with mental health profiles—the alarming evidence their verbal threats are materially imminent?
(Part 2 below.)
20
(Part 2.)
That's the other constant in the new equation. Trump's rhetoric and math show a wide matrix of indifference. It's either funny or outrageous, or nothing to worry about. A staffer accused by two ex-wives who said it fell apart when he beat me like a dog in the yard turned the White House into a sanctuary for domestic abuse, a place of unconditional support. The President who rushes to judgment demands “due process.” He argues for Manila's death squads under the guise of “zero tolerance.” Putting death ahead of due process, a fixation with his fetish with the power to kill. Paying for silence about an affair he denied. Check the box. Corruption rampant? It's all in fun. It's them! We didn't do it, except when we did.
35
I'm reading these comments and taking the situation seriously, but cannot shake the ear worm of "Let's do the time warp again" and rewinding the Rocky Horror Show's cast of twisted characters in my mind. I think the sharp contrast between the disaster that is the Trump presidency and the non-response response from the GOP majority which imperils the western world has finally sent me round the twist.
3
Paying for silence about an affair he denied...and, now, suing the woman. How twisted is this!
I've really had trouble understanding the influence FB, etc. may have had - it does not act that way for me, it is just a platform to keep up with dear friends in other countries. But then I thought about my young niece, HS graduating class of 2017, and her dislike and suspicion of Hilary, even in this very blue neighborhood. Most of her classmates felt the same way, and I suddenly realized that those are the humans who might swing the vote with rumor mongering..Not me, I am an old nut, quite consistently blue for 50 years. But people like the graduating classes..
75
I hope Mr. Mueller has this. This is required reading for everyone who wants to understand what has happened to not just the U.S. but developing countries. Jared Kushner should be brought to task. Is Sarah Huckabee Sanders able to conduct her sessions with reporters based on this methodology? Is this the basis for tRUMP's swagger? Collusion indeed! What a new spin on an old concept.
62
Good article.
How long those people will last is the question I ask myself since day one and I'm surprised they have last that much.
35
Trump's supporters love when he wins by playing dirty. It's what many of them would do if they could.
The real question is if there were actual laws that were broken. We still have a mostly functioning legal system. At least for now.
167
I'll wait for Mueller's report.
1
So simple to solve. No one running for president should be allowed to take one penny from ANYONE. Each person who runs for the Oval Office is given the same amount of money to run his or her campaign. Candidates will then win or lose on their ideas. No more money from special interest groups and self-serving billionaires. ENOUGH already. What gives them the right to 'buy' favors? Let's get morally bankrupt, soul-vacant Trump and his minions out of the White House and declare the next election will be money free. Anyone caught taking money from individuals or group--whether from the Left or the Right, will be immediately disqualified.Can someone please explain to me why we can't do this?
492
Because the Supreme Court essentially said it would be illegal, in its Citizens United decision. Any such law that did what you asked would be tried in court as unconstitutional, citing Citizens United saying money equals free speech.
80
The SCOTUS-5 naifs have declared, via CitizensUnited/Burwell, that money in politics is NOT corrupting. Mightily Orwellian, that.
And their word is the last word - almost. Congress could, if they would, bring us back to a reality-based polity. Do not hold your breath waiting for this to occur.
25
Yes, this is true, and whomever has piles of money (read 1%) has undue amounts of "free speech". Sorry, not democracy as I understand it, however "legal".
9
This has to also be the explanation as to how Scott Walker won the recall in Wisconsin.
128
Not necessarily. There are any number of people, like me, who have no use for Walker. However, he won. He committed no crime. He has the right to finish his term.
I lived in the state then and remember that it was a pretty slick operation. I looked at the homes of working class homes and saw the Walker signs on the lawn and was aghast at their credulity. How could they not know they were voting to screw themselves? But they did. And that's how Scottie-boy won.
1
It sounds like the Mercers and Bannon were hard at work as early as 2013, laying the groundwork to get their candidate of choice elected President, even if they didn't quite know that it would be Trump at the time. I'm guessing it was likely that Cambridge Analytica used the data they had mined to come up with the profile of the sort of candidate they thought would win and Trump fit it to a tee. Other news agencies are reporting that CA was testing out which slogans and catch phrases would resonate with or energizes a certain segment of the American people about a year before Trump even announced his candidacy, phrases like "build the wall" and "fake news". Trump likes to whine about our democracy being in a shambles when the truth is his presidency was paid and bought for by the Mercers and Facebook helped them.
191
Read Jane Mayer's "Dark Money". The Mercer's have been at it for decades.
7
This is only tangentially related to the article, but I would really like to know the actual advise Trump received as a result of the Cambridge Analytics data mining. In my lifetime, Trump is the only Presidential candidate who has so blatantly appealed to people on the basis of identity politics. I know many trump supporters, and they are all (every single one) overtly racist. I suspect that the Trump campaign devised a strategy centered on bigotry because this type of data showed it to be far more determinative of voting decisions than anybody previously thought.
209
Parenthetically, the overt racists can be physically dangerous but it is the larger cadre of covert racists who pose the real threat. Elected bodies of government from the national down to the local levels are riddled with them and it is they who perpetuate the myths of the "other."
4
Kellyanne Conway was a polster before she became a Trumpublican. She identified the racist, anti-immagrant voting block as a potential game changer, and employed that data in her jump to Trump, whom she initially pretended to despise.
2
Worth bearing in mind that most of the workers at Cambridge Analytica--that is, those working on the Trump campaign--were Brits, and therefore forbidden to work on an American political campaign. In other words, they were undocumented.
166
Excellent point. Should be noted that Cambridge Analytica maintained an office in Washington, D.C.
16
.... and there was Russia taking the flak for rigged elections!
iIn Forbes Magazine after the election, Jarod Kushner is on the cover, and in their exclusive interview with him, Jarod brags about making the connection between Facebook and using personal data, message tailoring and emotion manipulation. So basically, what you’re missing, Michelle, in your article is to put Jared Kushner front and center as the Trump manager who used Facebook so that his father-in-law would win. He is directly responsible for the misuse and misappropriation of people’s Facebook information. Read the article to tie it all together.
142
I read that article, too, and knew Jared was bragging about it. Trump bragged about what Jared had done. He is key, right in the middle of all of this.
14
and you believe Kushner?
1
Perhaps the dark forces that seem to dominate the President's thoughts are manifestations of his own mind. The real world is closing in. Mr. Trump has been cutting corners since 1968, when he dodged the draft and let someone else take his place. The last fifty years have been more of the same. Cheating wears on any man's soul. His dark forces may not be real, but his karma is - and he knows all the lies in the world will not change it.
64
I'm sure Trump would say he has 'the best karma' so no worries for him. The man is delusional with not a clear, rational thought about anything. He is like a cartoon character destroying the world one day at a time. He knows, deep inside that cartoon character heart, that he is the best at everything and that is all he needs.
I fear for our future with this cartoon character. He is destroying America one day at a time.
5
That is, of course, if he has a soul.
2
Nice in theory. But you got to have a soul in the first place...
Time for a data privacy law.
Why is it that legislators in Europe do so much better at protecting their CITIZENS privacy? I don't think this Congress or President understands we are citizens and not patsies and consumers.
66
Why? Because our wholly owned politicians get lots of money from the owners of firms do this sort work. The ordinary American is for sale.
3
Ed,
That is going to be a tough one, when even our own Dem. leaders voted for, and again, to reenact the NSA and the Patriot Act. Giving away our freedoms to protect our freedoms. HA! Citizens privacy. Not here.
By the bye, that would be Hillary, Obama, Schumer et al...
(Note, Sen. Sanders voted against to both times!)
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2015/sep/02/11-examples-hil...
2
Why does Europe do it better? Because, (for heaven's sake!), their commie socialist pigs who don't believe in unfettered ammoral capitalism and they don't believe corporations are human beings. But not to worry! Bannon, Putin, Bolton, Haley, Cotton and all their legions are hard at work spreading tribalism throughout the "Old World." What irony it is that ISIS and al-Qaeda are doing the same thing.
1
Looks like ex-Cambridge Analytica VP Steve Bannon might be "invited" for another Mueller interview under subpoenae and oath.
So many trails from Russia and Ukraine all pointed to the same Trump campaign leaders, especially Flynn, Kushner, Manafort and Bannon.
Thank goodness for the press, they run the stories that the intelligence services try to bury. Former NSA contractor Reality Winner remains in jail awaiting trial on charges that she informed the public about the extent of Russian penetration of US state election systems. Wow, what a crime!
And we are learning more about Jared Kushner every day. Apparently honesty is for the little people, powerful guys like Kushner can lie freely on security clearance forms and government disclosures about controlled rents without consequence. That was just yesterday. Today he is discovered at the crossroads of a dirty tricks data campaign. What will tomorrow bring?
Important to remember that Jared was the guy who persuaded Trump to fire Comey. And we still don't know the half of it.
364
Europe has had privacy concerns especially with Facebook and Google for years and are doing something about it, unlike the USA. France, Great Britain and Germany had begun investigating CA long before this story broke.
As usual, the US has done nothing to protect Americans' personal data from ending up in the wrong hands. It's still like the wild, wild west - anything goes - so 2018 looks to be like 2016 with Russia diving in again and Facebook and Twitter helping them decide who wins.
The EU adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which will go into effect in May 2018. It establishes rules on how personal data can be collected, stored and used and gives consumers the right know to exactly what data is being collected, what entity is collecting it and the right to control whether or not they want it to be collected at all.
The EU will have the ability to slap companies with massive fines if they don't comply and is essentially targeting Google's and Facebook's business models - offer free service, mine all consumer data and sell it to the highest bidders. Every time we hit that magic "Like" button, our preferences are recorded and sold, often to nefarious vendors like CA.
Instead of trying to curtail this problem, our Republican Congress sits on its hands and seems to hope we'll have a mess of an election again because it benefits them. Party over country, as usual.
234
Every elected Republican should resign, beginning at the top. Three hundred and fifty million privately-pwned firearms will soon be unleashed and used in a new tribal-aligned Civil War..........how far we have come as a nation. How far we have fallen as a people.
3
What did any congress do to protect us, from them, when Obama was in power? When George W. Bush was President? Or all the way back to when Al Gore "invented" (look it up) the internet, under the Bill Clinton administration?
This has been going on for a long, long, time. History did not begin on November 06, 2016.
It is tempting to think that a lack of ethics makes someone less predictable and thus a more formidable strategic opponent. It is more often the case that the least ethical are the most predictable, constrained by the same myopia that allows them to persist comfortably in an ethics-free zone. Such persons usually behave like a greedy heuristic pursuing a one-dimensional objective, one of the easiest decision-making processes to model (and thus to predict).
The cartoon showing Trump chasing a piece of cheese in a North Korean mouse trap is not a new insight, it is a new setting for an old insight. The election was no different, except that the details are not public - yet. Or is it "nyet"?
23
Until approximately six months ago I'd somehow never heard of the Mercers. Now it appears that whenever someone turns over a rock or a dead animal one of them suddenly crawls out.
662
And it's just a strange coincidence that the Mercers were among the biggest beneficiaries of the Trump "tax cuts." A vast amount of taxpayer money surged upward to their benefit. Gosh, who could have seen that coming?
42
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker has been doing yeowoman's work for a long time now. She shined a bright light on the Mercers' activities quite a while ago.
Once you see how Mercer made his fortune, once you learn of his contempt for people whose net worth is far less than his own, and then you link that to his investment in CA, you have to suppose CA wasn't just a lark for him. He was surely trying to draw a straight line between getting/keeping Republicans in office and getting his own enormous tax cut.
23
On November 2, 2017 the Times reported that Robert Mercer was stepping down as co-chief executive of Renaissance Technologies. The Times' coverage indicated that some investors had expressed "discomfort with Mr. Mercer's political activism." I wondered at the time, and still do, whether there was more to that story than met the eye.
16
Steve Bannon was a vice president. Michael Flynn was an adviser. Ultra wealthy right wing extremist Mercer family is a primary owner. They use sex workers from the Ukraine to entrap and blackmail people. Manafort has strong political and financial ties to the Ukraine. They exploited Facebook and used it as a primary means to distribute their propaganda. They all freely admit that they worked together to get Trump elected. Putin is Trump's idol.
Trump claims that there was no collusion and Russia had nothing to do with the election. The FBI say yes they did and Trump fires two FBI directors in succession.
Are we supposed to believe that all this was just a coincidence and none of it was related? Come on man! Even a crowd of Trump crazed MAGA hats would have to look twice at this.
What we don't have here is the flow of money between all parties. Mueller is scoping that out. Weave all of this with the thread of the money trail and you end up with suit stuffed with Donald Trump.
883
Excellent observations. I only question whether it's true that a crowd of Trump-crazed MAGA hats would flinch. It's becoming more and more obvious that they'd rather believe the FBI, and other agencies, including the CIA, "framed" Trump.
12
There may not be money. It is shared priorities and goals. Each player has an objective like power, or tax breaks or regulations, contracts, agency control, agency dismantlement, etc. This is what plutocrats do
Fox, breitbart and Sinclair may not meet to discuss a shared strategy but they watch each other and take it from there. It is all much more nefarious and evil
10
Even a crowd of Trump crazed MAGA hats would have to look twice at this.
Unfortunately, they wouldn't. They would take their MAGA hats off and use them to cover their eyes. They want Strong Glorious Leader. They think that's Trump.
5
You have to ask, is the value we get from Facebook worth what we give them? We all know that they are becoming the wealthiest people in history off of our private lives, thoughts and emotions while we get no compensation. But is what they provide us worth giving them the buttons to our fears? What do we get in exchange for providing them with the ammunition to destroy our democracy? Is being able to conveniently send gifs of kittens to aunt Em worth the control we give them over our lives?
If the future of the Internet is Facebook and the like, the future is very, very dark.
228
After vowing not to get involved with Facebook, about a month ago I did. And now?
Why can't politically oriented expression be banned?
Keep it simple and social, without exposing the world to your prejudices and giving someone else the data they want about where your head is?
Everyone should get off Facebook. Now. There are other ways to keep up with friends and family and kitty videos. Don't give Facebook the Power of YOU.
9
It's not so easy to get off of Facebook. I tried. You can disable your account easily, but all the data ("likes", crosslinks, etc.) are retained unless you call them. And then there is a long delay.
1
Maybe it's time to amend the 1st Amendment's guarantee of free speech instead to "free, truthful speech" when it relates to elections. Yes, I realize how difficult that might be at times, but I think that it would actually strengthen the purpose of the 1st Amendment: free political discourse that enhances our democracy. If we don't do something to stop all the technical means of distorting and manipulating information until it is flagrantly misleading or patently false, then we won't have much of a democracy left, let alone the free political discourse that our Founding Fathers envisioned - speaking of whom, they could never have imagined anything like the Internet, let alone the breadth of social media. Our Constitution was designed to be a living document and it is time to bring part of it into the 21st century to guarantee its continued health.
46
Guarantee "truthful speech?" Not difficult - impossible.
And who would be the judge of what is and isn't "truthful speech?"
No - the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech is just fine the way it is.
16
"Disinformation....and female sex workers"
Donald's entire life story..... in a nutshell.
Sad.
960
Please note that both ex-President Obama and Maxine Waters previously stated that the Democrats/Obama were given access to private data on millions of Facebook members. This use of big data is not limited to a single political party, and likely not to a single nation.
Instead of hired guns, we're dealing with hired data.
12
Nothing wrong with using public information. Now Facebookers will think twice before they post personal info, ... perhaps.
1
Distraction attempt, Mon Ray?
2
Right, Comrade. You're going to have to find something other than "Obama did it first!!" It's not sticking.
3
Trump's whole campaign theme was centered on supposedly dark forces all around, from which he was supposed to save us. Turns out, his whole campaign was operating with dark forces, and there is no one to save us now from him.
297
Oh, yes there is. Ourselves. We can stop subscribing to Facebook, for one.
We can resist and replace, for another - the November 2018 elections are right around the corner.
Vote.
12
Trump consistently accuses others of doing what he is doing or plans to do.
9
Yup - it's called projection.
4
Surprise, surprise, the liar-in-chief doesn't just emit a hurricane of lies but also loves cheating. He has relied heavily on both lying an cheating in business, why should it be any different when campaigning or governing.
437
It’s my understanding that Cambridge Analytica cut its teeth on the Ted Cruz campaign, and that its psychographic marketing techniques were effective.
That said, there is no excuse for utilizing online (or offline) account data without the account holder’s consent. Cambridge Analytica, SCL, Facebook and the Trump and Cruz campaigns have a great deal to answer for.
Regulation of the use of online data is needed urgently.
273
Meanwhile the Republican lawmaker leading the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), said he does not intend to call back Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix or other company officials to testify before the panel. Perhaps Mr. Conaway would benefit from a call from every American hurt by this privacy breach to help acquaint him with his constitutional duty.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/379239-top-russia-probe-repu...
25
Well one could ask, if their techniques were "so effective", why isn't Ted Cruz sitting in the White House?
2
Joanne: The short answer is that Putin did not have anything on Cruz, so he was discarded for the very sleazy Trump.
4
Is that photo of Alexander Nix, or of Stevie Nicks? Or of David Hyde Pierce (Dr. Niles Crane on “Frasier”)? Or of Jeff Sessions as portrayed by Kate McKinnon on SNL?
5
Anyone who is old enough to remember what Stevie Nicks looked like in her youth would never ask the question you raised.
Unless, of course, your intent is to trivialize an important event that may bring serious questions about the integrity of our 2016 election.
44
If it weren't for the lack of cute dimples, the Nix would be a perfect subject for Melissa McCarthy.
1
Dear Richard.
"Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous." (1.2.202-205).
- Julius Caesar
Could that possibly be not Nix but you Richard - thinking too much.
3
"With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse."
I'll say. I've long suspected the digital operation lay at the heart of whatever schemes Trump exploited for victory. Er, rather, Jared--no, not him, either since he specializes in taking credit but rarely lifting a finger.
No, it was the braggy, arrogant Brad Parscale already promoted to the 2020 campaign--if he manages stays out of jail.
But hey, it's easy to brag when you work with a firm headed by the evil Nix (what a name) whose grab bag of tricks outlined in that British interview seemed never-ending.
It's the most damning piece of video evidence since Romney's ill-fated "47%" comments at that fancy donor dinner.
But in retrospect, would you suspect anything less from Donald Trump? Hire the best and the brightest, and never mind if they steal, cheat, and lie their way into helping you data mine.
A lot of people are going to face are going to t take the fall for this--Zuckerberg and the doey-eyed Sanderberg, for starters.
But for Trump, well, it's just another felony day at the office.
Even super smart Steve Bannon either forgot or ignored pesky US election laws about hiring foreigners or taking their contributions for campaigns.
More than few Trumpers flew too close to the sun on this one.
545
I thought the last sentence in the article was memorable too. And, sadly, so true. Does anyone want to enroll in Trump University?
9
Consider an entity to well versed in attitude evaluation and change, with few scruples, vast computational power and experience in affecting the outcome of elections. Is it a stretch too far to imagine they might have identified key precincts that could catastrophically affect voting results, and engaged in far more than propaganda and ideational manipulation? There are serious questions about a few of those districts and the results they produced. Perhaps this bears closer scrutiny, especially when you consider there aren't any paper "receipts", only a digital trail that may be indecipherable.
2
Hopefully, but we're a long way from an indictment/impeachment for Tweety. If the Dems don't take the HR in this fall's elections, Tweety won't come to justice before he leaves office.
1
Subliminal messaging on steroids. Does it work? Depends on the gullibility of the audience. Look at the Republican base to understand who the Trump campaign targeted, and why.
386
And it doesn't even have to work on everybody, or even a majority. It just has to work on a few carefully targeted areas in gerrymandered districts in swing states. Just enough to get a few electoral votes.
43
If 'advertising', especially subliminal advertising didn't work, they wouldn't do it. They've done it for years, teaching American consumers what they MUST have THIS MINUTE.
It works. Unfortunately. People scroll through their phones (I have no phone but I sure watch others), they see headlines, maybe a lead sentence, that's it, they move on to the next one. The brain takes it in, "Wow. Hillary is running a pedophile ring out of a NJ pizza parlor?! Wow."
It's sickening and it has to stop in our elections. Everybody needs to get off Facebook, an evil entity. Just stop it.
7
Now just ask yourself what if the RNC also gave its data profiles on the electorate to cambridge analytica, and CA also provided its tools to target the Russian election meddling? That's the picture Mueller has been investigating for months.
78
Does "psychographics" work? If it didn't would all the savvy companies that sell stuff and spend billions in advertising, have massive marketing and research groups, measure sales by every ad they buy, continue to spend tens of millions advertising on Facebook or Google?
Facebook and Google know you better than you know yourself, including what buttons to push to elicit a specific response based on data bits they've systematically hoarded over years of tracking user actions. With the advent of digital payments (Apple Pay) and credit cards with smart chips, they know who you are, where you are and what you're buying. Their algorithms can predict with pinpoint accuracy what you buy next and why.
The same algorithms that can determine what you buy, can be easily re-purposed to profile your political values, custom-tailor silo messages, and trigger a specific action such as voting or not voting.
If psychographics didn't work and couldn't be measured, Zuckerberg and the google guys have pulled off a con several magnitudes greater than Trump.
132
You make some very valid points.
To short-circuit the system, however, merely use small-denomination cash. Most likely untraceable.
10
This is the world of the scammers and alternative facts, so sure, they are able to be scammed as well. And it is always with other people's money, so easy come easy go. Remember, in this world, science is denigrated, so why would they be interested in measuring whether it works with they can just go with their gut.
5
Amazing analysis!
In watching the undercover video report by Channel 4 in which CA execs discuss their tactics in depth, I was struck by the statement by a CA exec that they were looking for underlying fears in the electorate, perhaps ones that aren't even realized consciously but that can be triggered with certain statements.
"Our job...is to drop the bucket further down the well than anybody else, to understand what are those really deep-seated underlying fears, concerns."
A perfect fit to the Trump campaign.
694
To improve on its Trump Campaign strategy, Cambridge Analytica teamed up with Leave.EU, the UK's largest group advocating for Brexit to help them better understand and communicate with UK voters. CA claims, "We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU's social media campaign by ensuring the RIGHT messages are getting to the RIGHT voters online, and the campaign's Facebook page is growing in support to the tune of about 3,000 people per day." CA goes on to boast "whether you are trying to reach out to a voter, change hearts and minds about Britain's EU membership, or move product, the more you know about your target audience, the better you will be able to engage, persuade, and motivate them to act." Cambridge Analytica, the best craven manipulators money can buy.
https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/big-data-better-donald-trump/1383025
43
Please note that both ex-President Obama and Maxine Waters previously stated that the Dems/Obama were given access to private data on millions of Facebook members. This use of big data is not limited to a single party, and likely not to a single nation.
Instead of hired guns, we're dealing with hired data.
4
when CA pulled the bucket out of the deep, deep well in the 2016 election, this is what they came up with: racism. trump and the republicans used it, and it worked. and they are going to use it again this year. stay tuned.
8