The Cambridge Analytica Panic Is The Silliest Conspiracy Of The Entire Russia ScareAnd that's saying a lot. The Federalist, Mar 20, 2018, David Harsanyi
The theory goes something like this: Facebook obtained information on users who took a personality quiz with their online friends. Another outlet, Cambridge Analytica, harvested that information to brainwash a bunch of rubes, and then yada, yada, yada … Russia! Senators are now demanding executives come forth and answer questions. Investigations must be open. Democracy is under threat.
Former Cambridge Analytica contractor and now-professional whistleblower Christopher Wylie told CNN that while at the company he helped build a “psychological warfare weapon†to “exploit mental vulnerabilities that our algorithms showed that [Facebook users] had.†So, in other words, he worked in the advertising business.
Those who have covered politics for more than a single Trump-cycle should know better than to use this kind of unnerving rhetoric for what amounts to average microtargeting, which has been used by hundreds, if not thousands, of firms. Yet, now, when it serves to bolster convoluted theories about an election being overthrown, terms like “psychographics†and “breach†are being thrown around to make it sound like someone hacked into voting rolls after boring into the deepest recesses of our souls.
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And so what if voters were being “targeted?†Part of living in a free society means being bombarded by messages we don’t like. The entire Facebook/Russiabot scare is predicated on the notion that people don’t have free will. It’s only once we start micromanaging the information Americans consume that we begin undermining choices. Of course people shouldn’t get their news from Facebook. And a reliable Fourth Estate which reports without bias to help Americans navigate through this messy contemporary digital life would be helpful. But the Cambridge Analytica story is just another example of how it fails
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http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/20/the-cambridge-analytica-panic-is-the-silliest-russia-scare-conspiracy/
