How Ex-Facebook Data Experts Spent $75 Million On Targeted Anti-Trump Ads (fastcompany.com) 78
The night before America's election, Fast Company reported:
On the internet, we're subject to hidden A/B tests all the time, but this one was also part of a political weapon: a multimillion-dollar tool kit built by a team of Facebook vets, data nerds, and computational social scientists determined to defeat Donald Trump. The goal is to use microtargeted ads, follow-up surveys, and an unparalleled data set to win over key electorates in a few critical states: the low-education voters who unexpectedly came out in droves or stayed home last time, the voters who could decide another monumental election. By this spring, the project, code named Barometer, appeared to be paying off. During a two-month period, the data scientists found that showing certain Facebook ads to certain possible Trump voters lowered their approval of the president by 3.6%...
"We've been able to really understand how to communicate with folks who have lower levels of political knowledge, who tend to be ignored by the political process," says James Barnes, a data and ads expert at the all-digital progressive nonprofit Acronym, who helped build Barometer. This is familiar territory: Barnes spent years on Facebook's ads team, and in 2016 was the "embed" who helped the Trump campaign take Facebook by storm. Last year, he left Facebook and resolved to use his battle-tested tactics to take down his former client. "We have found ways to find the right news to put in front of them, and we found ways to understand what works and doesn't," Barnes says. "And if you combine all those things together, you get a really effective approach, and that's what we're doing...."
By the election it promises to have spent $75 million on Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Hulu, Roku, Viacom, Pandora, and anywhere else valuable voters might be found... Barnes had been a Republican all his life, but he did not like Trump; he says he ended up voting for Clinton. The election, and his role in it, left him unsettled, and he left Facebook's political ads team to work with the company's commercial clients... In the wake of Trump's election and its aftermath, Barnes helped Facebook develop some of its election integrity initiatives (one of Facebook's moves was to stop embedding employees like him inside campaigns) and even sat down for lengthy interviews with the Securities and Exchange Commission and with then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Last year, after some soul-searching, some of it in Peru, Barnes registered as a Democrat, left Facebook, and began working on a way to fight Trump... Acronym and a political action committee, Pacronym, were founded in 2017 by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan, in an effort to counter Trump's online spending advantage and what The New Yorker called his Facebook juggernaut...
For Barnes, Acronym's aggressive approach to Facebook, and Barometer's very existence, isn't just personal, but relates to his former employer: Facebook hasn't only failed to effectively police misinformation and disinformation, but helped accelerate it... But while Barnes is using some of the weapons that helped Trump, he's at pains to emphasize that, unlike the other side, Acronym's artillery is simply "the facts."
The PAC's donors include Laurene Powell Jobs, Steven Spielberg, venture capitalists Reid Hoffman and Michael Moritz, and (according to the Wall Street Journal) Facebook's former product officer, Chris Cox (who is also an informal adviser.)
But in addition, the group "can access an unprecedented pool of state voter files and personal information: everything from your purchasing patterns to your social media posts to your church, layered with AI-built scores that predict your traits..."
"We've been able to really understand how to communicate with folks who have lower levels of political knowledge, who tend to be ignored by the political process," says James Barnes, a data and ads expert at the all-digital progressive nonprofit Acronym, who helped build Barometer. This is familiar territory: Barnes spent years on Facebook's ads team, and in 2016 was the "embed" who helped the Trump campaign take Facebook by storm. Last year, he left Facebook and resolved to use his battle-tested tactics to take down his former client. "We have found ways to find the right news to put in front of them, and we found ways to understand what works and doesn't," Barnes says. "And if you combine all those things together, you get a really effective approach, and that's what we're doing...."
By the election it promises to have spent $75 million on Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Hulu, Roku, Viacom, Pandora, and anywhere else valuable voters might be found... Barnes had been a Republican all his life, but he did not like Trump; he says he ended up voting for Clinton. The election, and his role in it, left him unsettled, and he left Facebook's political ads team to work with the company's commercial clients... In the wake of Trump's election and its aftermath, Barnes helped Facebook develop some of its election integrity initiatives (one of Facebook's moves was to stop embedding employees like him inside campaigns) and even sat down for lengthy interviews with the Securities and Exchange Commission and with then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Last year, after some soul-searching, some of it in Peru, Barnes registered as a Democrat, left Facebook, and began working on a way to fight Trump... Acronym and a political action committee, Pacronym, were founded in 2017 by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan, in an effort to counter Trump's online spending advantage and what The New Yorker called his Facebook juggernaut...
For Barnes, Acronym's aggressive approach to Facebook, and Barometer's very existence, isn't just personal, but relates to his former employer: Facebook hasn't only failed to effectively police misinformation and disinformation, but helped accelerate it... But while Barnes is using some of the weapons that helped Trump, he's at pains to emphasize that, unlike the other side, Acronym's artillery is simply "the facts."
The PAC's donors include Laurene Powell Jobs, Steven Spielberg, venture capitalists Reid Hoffman and Michael Moritz, and (according to the Wall Street Journal) Facebook's former product officer, Chris Cox (who is also an informal adviser.)
But in addition, the group "can access an unprecedented pool of state voter files and personal information: everything from your purchasing patterns to your social media posts to your church, layered with AI-built scores that predict your traits..."
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Dozens of other video hosting sites out there. DailyMotion, LiveLeak, take your pick.
My youtube-dl installs worked fine and (Score:2)
there are plenty of ways to save videos.
For anyone geeky enough to use youtube-dl in the first place it's not an issue.
Facebook is a boomer platform so most users are tech-helpless and wouldn't save content anyway, much less know what a command line is or how to use it.
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For anyone geeky enough to use youtube-dl in the first place it's not an issue.
Some people use it through a GUI, and may or may not even be aware that they're using it at all.
Other people are painfully aware because they had to struggle to find useful options to -f ;)
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Re:Facts? Yeah, bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
You got low-education voters to vote against the most pro-worker presidential candidate in the race other than Bernie Sanders.
If the con artist is so pro-worker, why doesn't he hire Americans [fortune.com] at his failing golf clubs? Why doesn't he hire Americans at his fake winery [foxnews.com]? Why was he using illegals [cnn.com] at his failing golfs? Why hasn't he moved the production of his name brand clothes to this country rather than continuing to have them made in China [go.com]?
Those low-education voters are just that, low-educated. As a result, they are easily swayed by the bullshit coming from his mouth such as he's a successful businessman when he's bankrupted 16 businesses, hasn't turned a profit at any of his failing golf clubs in Ireland [apnews.com] or Scotland [independent.co.uk], and instead of showing the world how much money his businesses make to show what a "great" businessman he is, goes out of his way to hide any financial information.
Brainphishing is more powerful than broad ads (Score:1)
You're feeding an obvious troll. Anyone who is still defending Trump is mentally defective or paid to fake it. Or has been brainwashed or brainphished, which is my main point...
I have had a number of interactions with Trump supporters over the years. My initial focus was to find positive reasons they were supporting Trump. They never had any. I have become convinced that they don't have any reasoned arguments driven by facts that they can use as reasons to explain why they support Trump.
Instead, what they h
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You're feeding an obvious troll.
Yeah, I know. I just like shoving facts in their face and listening to their heads explode as they try to come up with more excuses why this criminal is so great.
Re: Your facts are irrelevant (Score:2)
If you are going to accuse people of fallacies, it would help if you described them accurately.
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That's not how post-facto rationalizations work. They are trying to cover for their own cognitive dissonance. More dissonance = more cover. In the best case.
Actually, I still think the "most humane" case is that they are paid to fake it. The ones who have been brainphished are mostly to be pitied--which still accomplishes nothing.
Most plausible solutions? The best solution approach would call for teaching people to think more critically, but by the time they reach junior high school it's probably already to
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The best solution approach would call for teaching people to think more critically, but by the time they reach junior high school it's probably already too late.
You must have a very poor opinion of young people's ability to learn after junior high. What's your basis for such a dubious statement? Got any sources that back it up?
In addition to the regular classes in logic/philosophy/etc., specific classes in critical thinking have been taught in colleges (and junior colleges) for quite a while, and it is generally agreed student's critical thinking skills improve substantially over a normal college experience. What make you believe otherwise?
Public masturbation of 3493987 (Score:2)
Z^-1
Re: Brainphishing is more powerful than broad ads (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who is still defending Trump is mentally defective or paid to fake it. Or has been brainwashed or brainphished, which is my main point...
Half the country voted for Trump. He made gains with basically every demographic out there. The only demographic he lost ground with was white males. Blacks, women, LGBT, and especially Hispanics voted for him in record numbers. His share of minority voters was higher than any other GOP candidate since 1960. This despite the fact that many of his supporters admit that he is an arrogant asshole.
Dismissing Trump voters as somehow ignorant or brainwashed is not a good strategy. If the GOP is able to find someone with the same policy positions but slightly less of an asshole, they will easily win in 2024.
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Dismissing Trump voters as somehow ignorant or brainwashed is not a good strategy.
There are only two kinds of Trump voters. Wealthy ones who know what they're buying, and poor ones who are ignorant and/or brainwashed. Period, the end. Why? Because Trump hasn't been good for anyone who isn't wealthy. His influence on trade has been largely notional — Covid-19's has been massively negative, and he's been a complete failure at combating that. He pretends to crack down on H1Bs while continuing to employ H2Bs. He's not bringing back coal, nobody can do that. He hasn't built the wall, an
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Well... I'm actually in some sympathy with Wycliffe on this topic, though everything you [drinkypoo] said is accurate enough. I would like to believe that the afflicted can be helped, possibly even cured.
However I have two problems when it comes to following through. The first one is the anonymity thing. How can I tell that I'm dealing with a real person? Maybe it's just a paid troll wasting my time?
The second is that the brainphishers have the advantage of me. How can I possibly match their immense mountai
Re: Brainphishing is more powerful than broad ads (Score:2)
It is not worth it to spend a lot of effort trying to convince people you don't know that they are wrong. They have no reason to listen to you. The people you should spend effort on are those people you know, that respect your opinion, and seem like they might change their minds. To anyone else the best thing you can do is be an example of what you are talking about, because most people make decisions about information based almost entirely (sometimes without the "almost") on where it came from.
When I am at
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Hmm.... As I map it into MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) terms, the clash is with my own reputation as rather low on the "tolerant" dimension. In particular, once I've decided someone is a fool, I have no desire to waste time with that person. Suffering fools gladly is not my forte.
But on the other side, I also feel like I'd be wasting my time reading comments from someone who is too high or too low on the dimension of "flexibility". If they are too flexible, then any apparent agreement or
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You're missing the point. Trump doesn't have to accomplish anything to get most of his votes and when he jokes about being able to shoot someone on 5th avenue, again, he's mostly right. People by in large are not voting for Trump because they like him. They are voting for Trump because he stands in opposition to everything they dislike. They dislike the coastal elites, washington DC, national heathcare, more than 2 genders, abortion, gun control, big tech, regulations, taxes, etc, etc, etc.
Many if not m
I am not defending Trump, but ... (Score:2)
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Spending 6 years claiming Obama is a Muslim from Kenya is a different thing. It's lying.
If you don't like big money's influence... (Score:5, Interesting)
...then back the overturning of Citizens United, and support publicly-funded elections.
What's that conservatives? You like Koch money too much for that and you'd rather complain selectively based on who's spending the money? Carry on then...
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Koch brothers weren't conservatives, they were libertarians. They (only one is left now) were really actually globalists first and foremost. This is why they were perfectly willing to give to Democrats as well as Republicans. People presumed the were Republicans just because they donated to Republicans more often,
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You understand that in the same vein, George Soros won't be able to fund his what, dozen or more organizations in the US?
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Absolutely, the ball is in your court :-)
"computational social .." “Facebook" (Score:3)
I don't think I've ever heard a more creepy combination of "social" with other words ...
It's like what Daleks would call trying to understand social behavior ... while completely missing and reversing the entire point, and proudly so.
Like reptiles with a vore fetish describing kissing as "digestion-avoiding devouring".
Re:"computational social .." “Facebook" (Score:4, Interesting)
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Money always makes things legal. Cha-ching!
Now report on all the other non financial (Score:2)
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All of the fact checks, censorship done shortly before election. All of the platform delistings on Youtube, Instagram, Twitter. It got even worse at the end. And you motherfuckers still supported Biden. /. is likely part of the bought up and dried pile of shit anti gov social sites that are dead now. It's all dead. Now we have to do the resisting. Which I guess is fine and valid. It was resist Trump resist Trump when it really was Big Media/Data trying to resist Trump and just using all of it's useful idiots to do it while censoring the fuck out of everyone that didnt go along mindlessly. You even got rid of anonymous here on /. this year of all years. Blockchain can't replace all of these shitholes fast enough. Can't wait for this post to be -2 in minutes.
I so wish that the end of the Trump era also signals an end to the unsubstantiated claims posts.
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Yeah, it would be nice to have people stop going on about the imaginary vast right-wing conspiracy, fictional Russian collusion, and Jeffrey Epstein killing himself.
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..and whataboutism.
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"Whataboutism" is the complaint of the self-conscious hypocrite. It does not even pretend to be an argument. It is merely a whine: "How dare you point out that my side does the thing I complained about your side doing!"
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Great, have a beer! I have.
75 million (Score:2)
I am sure they got it from Russia lol
The cure us worse than the disease (Score:1)
I'm opposed to Trump, cause he isn't a decent human being. But this is opening the gateways to mass crowd control. ...
George Orwell 1984
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This is a easy one.I don't know how much decent Biden is, but at least he is more decent than Trump.
Reasoning: Trump exploit differences between people with certified lies. At least Biden gives the impression to unite people. I don't give him the credit to be better, but at least there is the hope he is.
The suspicion also exist that Donald has only interest in his own ego as does not not need advice from experts. He simply doesn't need no advice from anybody else as a self proclaimed stable genius and multi
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If Biden wanted to unite people, he would have called for unity four years ago when Trump was elected. Instead, he supported the "resistance" which was all about tearing people apart and division. He only speaks about unity when he wants conservatives to rally behind him. So long as Democrats only believe "unity" means going along with them and "compromise" only means agreeing 100% with them, there can be no such thing. Biden let it out when he proclaimed the leftist thugs would only stop rioting if he
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You backed the wrong guy. We've been asking for decades for a washington outsider. One that can't be bought and fix corruption. That's Trump. You didn't think the criminals would stand back and not do what they do best - LIE, did you? The Trump russian collusion conspiracy theory was just that - a lie. Hillary did that. Mueller found nothing. The criminals told you to think the way you do and you're obeying them.
You need to say "Baaa, Baaa" from now on.
Trump did exactly the same thing (Score:2)
The way his campaign worked in 2016 was exactly like this. That's why all his polling was correct when the MSM was using the outdated tech of phone calls, while Trumps crew was collecting hundreds of data points on every voter.
You can easily predict who will vote (and who you can persuade not to vote) if you have enough data on them.
They never reached me (Score:1)
Nothing new under the sun (Score:2)
Thank God (Score:1)
It wasnt the Orange man who abused social media this time.
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You don't think the Republicans used the same methods?
Show of hands ... (Score:2)
Who here thinks political ads have any goddam effect on any presidential elections?
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Record turnout says something.
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Yes, it says something, but it doesn't say the cause and effect is ads=>turnout.
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It may have been a factor, though who knows without a study and it seems very hard to study. I voted in an election a few weeks back and it had a record low turnout as about the only controversy was the (very popular due to how they have been handling the pandemic) government calling the election during a pandemic whereas the American election was full of controversy and I'd imagine the ads pushed each sides controversy.
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Well, for a start the people spending $75m on them.
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True.
The effect is expenditure with no return on investment.
this is exactly what Trump did in 2016 (Score:3)
the Cambridge Analytica story seems to be misunderstood. They did exactly the same thing in 2016. They collected massive amounts of data on every voter and using AI and a/b testing they were able to microtarget voters in swing states.
They did the same thing in Brexit - in fact a lot of the same people were involved, such as Steve Bannon - who will if you remember used to be a WoW gold farmer.
This is the new normal for elections - mass manipulation based on big data.
For all I know I was microtargeted by the people I voted for. I like to think I made an independent decision but I will never really know - maybe they found out I binged watched every episode of Star Trek and new that I would bother to vote if I saw enough youtube ads about some issue.
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Trump didn't do that, Hillary did in the 2016 campaign. She also colluded with Ukraine and that whole Russian story. The democrats are guilty of all the things they've been accusing Trump of. That's a fact.
Misuse of Facebook Ads (Score:1)
Facebook vets, huh? (Score:1)
I guess that explains how they spent $75M and only produced something that, realistically, didn't actually work.
The Dems lack of understanding of what people actually care about very nearly cost them this election even when running against a President who was staggeringly unpopular. You can't blame all of Trump's support on basement-dwelling racists, religious nutjobs, etc: a large chunk of it clearly has to be "normal" people who the Dems somehow still completely failed to reach.
Come 2024, when the Republi