Wow!

They are "Full service political mercenaries who operate all the way up to entrapment and fabrication of evidence".

Catching the CEO on camera - admitting that they offer bribes in contravention of the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, when it's public knowledge that they worked for "Team Trump", Bannon was vice president of CA, the Mercers fund CA as well as Breitbart.  Mercenaries might be thought to work for anybody who pays them.  Their alliances suggest however that they must be politically motivated to push a deeply conservative "alt right" agenda.

This expose will hopefully take them down, but what's more important perhaps is to stop some other similar organisation from popping up to take their place.

If you voted in a particular way based on "what you believed in", using a variety of fairly ordinary sources to gather information / educate yourself on "important issues" on which to base that decision, then were told (as this expose does) that you were probably targeted for subtle propaganda messages used to influence your decision, that by design you wouldn't recognise as propaganda messages - then would you believe this story?

My guess is no.  For a start you'd be confident in your ability to discern fact from fiction - that's just human nature.  I suspect that if you voted for the "side that won", you'd be leaning toward belief that even if there was some kind of conspiracy, then it was by those merely suggesting that your beliefs could be influenced by propaganda, even if you accept what's been exposed.

This despite probably true claims (ie by CA) that through psychometric analysis of individual data gleaned from harvesting social media - from which they know more about your true personality than you know yourself, then micro-target you with subtle propaganda to gradually influence your opinion.

If you were a politician (law-maker) democratically elected to that position when you - or third-parties sympathetic to your cause - used the services of Cambridge Analytica, then how motivated would you be to investigate thoroughly to expose exactly what's been going on?  My guess is not very motivated at all.

For those reasons, I doubt whether this story - "once a conspiracy theory - now proof of conspiracy" - is going to gain the political will and thus traction needed.

I anticipate that the response will include messages like "politicians lie - they all do it - nothing new - move on".

How fragile is democracy. Seriously, seriously worrying. 

I found this online

On Friday, ahead of investigative reports detailing the scheme, Facebook said it had banned the company and its parent organization from the platform after it was revealed that a professor, using a seemingly innocuous app to draw in users, passed the resulting data to Cambridge Analytica, in violation of Facebook’s policies. In its announcement, Facebook said it had received reports that, contrary to claims from Cambridge Analytica, the data had not been destroyed.

Imagine what the Russians are doing.

Pumpedd:

 

I found this online

 

On Friday, ahead of investigative reports detailing the scheme, Facebook said it had banned the company and its parent organization from the platform after it was revealed that a professor, using a seemingly innocuous app to draw in users, passed the resulting data to Cambridge Analytica, in violation of Facebook’s policies. In its announcement, Facebook said it had received reports that, contrary to claims from Cambridge Analytica, the data had not been destroyed.

 

Imagine what the Russians are doing.

 

I must be pretty naïve but I find this extremely disturbing. It reads like some dystopian near-future novels I have read. Has western democracy been hijacked by nefarious forces? I don't want to get too far into conspiracy theories but this sure does feel like the real thing. The only 'good' news is that it is apparently being exposed and hopefully dealt with. Still, scary stuff.

My favourite quote of the month, maybe of the decade:

“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history.”

John O. Brennan, former C.I.A. director, to 'president' Trump.

Rikkitic:

 

Pumpedd:

 

I found this online

 

On Friday, ahead of investigative reports detailing the scheme, Facebook said it had banned the company and its parent organization from the platform after it was revealed that a professor, using a seemingly innocuous app to draw in users, passed the resulting data to Cambridge Analytica, in violation of Facebook’s policies. In its announcement, Facebook said it had received reports that, contrary to claims from Cambridge Analytica, the data had not been destroyed.

 

Imagine what the Russians are doing.

 

 

I must be pretty naïve but I find this extremely disturbing. It reads like some dystopian near-future novels I have read. Has western democracy been hijacked by nefarious forces? I don't want to get too far into conspiracy theories but this sure does feel like the real thing. The only 'good' news is that it is apparently being exposed and hopefully dealt with. Still, scary stuff.

 

  

 

We know democracy has been  hijacked. This is just one western company doing it. Imagine what the State of Russia are capable of. Western legislation must catch up with technology or Democracy as we know it will be damaged forever. I have stated before that I do not understand how an idiot like Trump got to the Whitehouse....I believe social media played a huge part.

It's not so much in my opinion that it's a "Western company" doing it - although at least these thoroughly evil people (at CA) are now within reach and should be able to be brought to justice - no doubt with a hell of a fight.  "The problem" is that they're sponsored by a few billionaires, people like the Mercers, in order to further their own agenda - which is absolutely about creating or restoring a natural "social order" hierarchy with "people like them" at the top, but of course anybody who feels a bit the same way - that they have "god given superiority" over others are quite happy to excuse that behaviour - or join in.

Zuckerberg deserves to feel a lot of pain over what's just happened.  Don't be fooled by his boyish looks and faux claims of innocence. He's still running a $500 billion company that he started as a "hot or not" web service - that being a pretty good indication that he's a psychopathic individual who couldn't care less about others - or actually worse - he's happy to deliberately harm people if there's something in it for him.  Because that's what he does.

I have no doubt that Social media(and not just facebook) need to be regulated quite severely in order to preserve Democracy and also our childrens sanity for the future.

There is perhaps a larger question....whats do the people actually want?...we have seen Brexit and we watch Putins so called democratic Russia...but perhaps has democracy as we have known it concluded, or at least need to be changed.

Initially I thought that with the power of information via the internet people couldnt have the wool pulled any more. But we are seeing the opposite where social media data is being used against the people and they seem to enjoy it.

We are also seeing daily atrocities being carried out in Syria and Burma due to the internet/social media, but nobody is being held to account yet the proof is widely available. 

Slightly on topic we have seen reports of Prince Charles and his hugely extravagant needs very recently, and I have decided he is not actually fit to be the NZ head of state. 

As a very fat and lazy chimp once said that "just when he had all lifes answers..they changed all the questions".

People applaud Trump and Putin while they are sticking it up their bums. I'm not sure we deserve democracy any longer. I find all of this profoundly depressing. I don't know if our government is any good or not, but at least it isn't like that. Once again, I am extremely grateful to be privileged to live in New Zealand. We may well end up as the last bastion of democracy.

Fred99:

 

This expose will hopefully take them down, but what's more important perhaps is to stop some other similar organisation from popping up to take their place.

 

If there is a niche someone will fill it.

Rikkitic:

 

People applaud Trump and Putin while they are sticking it up their bums. I'm not sure we deserve democracy any longer. I find all of this profoundly depressing. I don't know if our government is any good or not, but at least it isn't like that. Once again, I am extremely grateful to be privileged to live in New Zealand. We may well end up as the last bastion of democracy.

 

 

 

 

 

Democracy is a myth, a will o the wisp "ignis fatuus" there but not there, foolish in its action. Empty in its substance.

And BTW if you vote based on what you see on social media, you're a puppet (and an idiot).

Social media is not a trustworthy source of information on any even slightly politicised, nuanced or complex matter.  Factual content is of limited quality and often wrong or inconsistent.

Social media doesn't even expose you to a range of views, just those closest to your own. It's good for entertainment and updates on simple things (sometimes) but that's about all. 

You can't trust the media either.  Immediately after a politician is interviewed on either breakfast show, their position is being misrepresented and selectively quoted in the next news section.  A cynic might thing the headlines are written before the interviews.

If I want to know what a party stands for, I look at their direct publications and at live (unedited) comments.  And I generally go on values not the specifics of policy, because policy always shifts once someone actually gets into power.

MikeAqua:

 

You can't trust the media either.  Immediately after a politician is interviewed on either breakfast show, their position is being misrepresented and selectively quoted in the next news section.  A cynic might thing the headlines are written before the interviews.

 

One of the messages very heavily pushed by CA is "You can't trust the media either".  Just mentioning that - in case you weren't aware how you formed that opinion, because the second sentence above doesn't actually justify the first.