brothers and sisters: in the digital age, using data to win elections is the new thing. data is "the new oil".

[basquebromance]

Cambridge amassed an arsenal of data on Americans that is unprecedented in scope, the largest ever assembled. the monster databases held five thousand individual data points on every single individual in the US over 18...240 million folks!

but merely having the data is not the key. knowing what to do with it is. you have to put people into categories, sorting people using the most sophisticated method in behavorial psychology, which gives it the capability of turning what was otherwise just mountain of information about americans into a GOLDMINE!

Cambridge hired the most brilliant data scientists in the world, people who can laser on individuals wherever they are found. Cambridge isolated individuals and caused them to think, vote, and act differently that how they had before. it spent its client's money on communications that really worked, with measurable results.

in fact, its easy to sway voters to make irreversible decisions not against their will but against their usual judgement, and to change their habitual behavior.

your data is the gas that keeps their ad machines running!

the Clinton campaign was gobsmacked...to put it mildly.

 

[basquebromance]

people are looking for ways to use real-time to prevent genocides such as Rwanda 94, where action could have been taken had data been available. "Preventive" data monitoring of everything from the price of bread to the increased use of racial slurs can give peacekeeping organizations the time they need to intervene before a conflict escalates. data can prevent human rights violations, war crimes, and even war itself

Cambridge A employed in-house psychologists who, instead of pollsters, design surveys and use the results to segment people. they use "psychographics" to understand people's complex personalities and devise ways to trigger their behavior. then, through "data modeling", the data folks create algorithms that predict people's behavior when the recieve messages carefully crafted precisely for them

CA is based on the same idealistic notion of "connectivity" and "engagement" that fueled Facebook. the company's raison d'etre was to boost engagement in uncharted territory, and they built something, just like Facebook, that the world didn't know yet that they can't do without it

they literally have their finger on the button that has the potential to control the world

 

[basquebromance]

"CA is the newest most cutting-edge data company in America. we specialize in what we call the science of behavorial change communication. what means is that we've taken behavorial and experimental psychology and combined them with world class data analytics" - Alexander Nix

 

[basquebromance]

if a user searched for "Trump", "Iraq War", the top result would be an article saying that Hillary voted for that war, and that Trump opposed it, with a link to a super PAC website with the banner: "Crooked Hillary voted for the Iraq war. bad judgement!" the click through rate was incredibly high"

 

[basquebromance]

it is easy for the data folks to build a picture of you that is incredibly precise and endlessly useful. companies can tailor their products to align with your daily activities. remember the ad about education that plays on the radio as you're dropping your kids off at school. its no coincidence, my friends. its all orchestrated, folks

how can you resist? you do everything on social media because its convenient. the cost of that convenience is big: you give your assets away for free while companies and political campaigns profit from it

 

[LuckyDuck]

Yawn.