The Cambridge Analytica / SCL gate swings freely these days, and this Mother Jones piece has as good a rundown of the story so far, without getting waylaid by all the hyperbole and flackery of the principals.
Remember that despite the millions’ private data abused, there were smaller voting groups which were all that were needed to swing the 2016 US election, because of the swing states and the electoral college.
The perfect storm of 2016 was more than a combination of data clouds it was “an event in which a rare combination of circumstances drastically aggravates the event.” where POTUS was accidental and shocked that he won.
It had a number of interested parties, in a number of US and non-US locations, who used a customized combination of a variety of templates or data models whose objective was to elect Agent Orange including but not limited to:
- the winning data models from 2008/2012,
- current information in depth at the time using the prevailing algorithms,
- pilfered (hacked) big data currently in the spotlight,
- the correlates of US state voter data at the district level, and
- then there’s the exchange of targeting information from studying the social media to be used not only to develop a candidate’s speaking schedule, but the instructions to the far-flung troll-farms.
- the GOTV and ad buys/marketing plans for print and electronic media
- And then there’s those hacked emails, among other unhacked materials, and the drama of the campaign itself.
Almost two months before the Iowa caucus, the Guardian reported that Cambridge and the Cruz campaign were using unauthorized Facebook data—an early indication of what Chris Wylie would later reveal in full.
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As Nix courted the Trump campaign, he came up with an idea to boost the GOP nominee-in-waiting—one that was more in line with the political dirty tricks he and his colleagues would later discuss with Channel 4’s undercover reporter. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange had recently told a British TV station that he had come into possession of internal emails belonging to senior Clinton campaign officials—the result of a cyberattack later revealed to be the work of Russian hackers. Nix reached out to Assange via his speaking agency, seeking a meeting. Nix reportedly hoped to get access to the emails and help Assange share them with the public—that is, he wanted to weaponize the information. According to both Nix and Assange, the WikiLeaks founder passed on his offer.
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What exactly Cambridge Analytica did for Trump remains murky, though in the days after the election, Nix’s firm blasted out one press release after another touting the “integral” and “pivotal” role it played in Trump’s shocking upset. Nix later told Channel 4’s undercover reporter that Cambridge deserved much of the credit for Trump’s win. “We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting. We ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign, and our data informed all the strategy,” he said. Another Cambridge executive suggested the firm had delivered Trump victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—states crucial to his ultimate win. “When you think about the fact that Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million votes but won the Electoral College vote, that’s down to the data and the research.”
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During an interview with 60 Minutes last fall, Parscale dismissed the company’s psychographic methods: “I just don’t think it works.” Trump’s secret strategy, he said, wasn’t secret at all: The campaign went all-in on Facebook, making full use of the platform’s advertising tools. “Donald Trump won,” Parscale said, “but I think Facebook was the method.”
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In reality, Cambridge Analytica’s reputation for spotty work had circulated widely among Democratic and Republican operatives, who were also put off by Nix’s grandstanding and self-promotion.
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Yet, critics wondered, just how many times had their trust been breached? Cambridge Analytica was hardly alone in hoovering up user data. And how exactly were Cambridge Analytica’s psychographic techniques different from Facebook’s core business model—tapping into the vast amounts of data it collects on its users to guide hypertargeted advertising, be it for shoe companies or political campaigns or dubious fake news sites.
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By most accounts, Cambridge Analytica’s main feat of political persuasion was convincing a group of Republican donors, candidates, and organizations to hand over millions of dollars. (A company called Emerdata that lists Nix as a director recently added Rebekah Mercer and another Mercer daughter to its board, suggesting that Nix hasn’t fallen out with all his GOP patrons.)