Cambridge Analytica

oldmeg it shows that you don’t follow the political threads - not a criticism in fact admiration. We’ve been countering on about CA for at least a year or two.

And yes it is really worrying that our democracy can be so perverted

Nor countering

chuntering

This hasn’t altogether surprised me, but the depth and insidious way the information has been gathered and used for political means / propaganda will now make me look at social media with a very long and cynical eye.
Hopefully data regulations will be strengthened, altho’ I’ve no doubt some very bright spark will find a way around it all, given enough resources!

Like the way the two big giants, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, try and dump the blame on the academic who wrote the software - after it had been commissioned from him and he had queried its legality.

Classic case of passing the buck and trying to blame the caretaker for the nuclear bomb explosion.

True WW I don’t follow the political threads, just dip in and out occasionally.

I am already pretty cynical about what I believe, so make up my own mind on political issues, by looking at the facts and what I can see with my own eyes (eg the NHS).

I’m really pleased that thinking voters like ffin above will in future be very wary of information being fed to them as ‘truths’.

But Monica that’s exactly what I mean. No one surely will believe that now. That is such an obvious tactic.

What bothers me is that the Commissioner who needs access to their data is finding it a long complicated process which is giving them time to dump data and hide what has been going on.

And of course the fact that the public is so ready to believe ‘facts’ they are fed.

I don't know if I'm allowed to do this but to save me having to comment all over again we did discuss some of this stuff on this thread. From page 35 on

www.gransnet.com/forums/news_and_politics/1245066-The-Poverty-of-Brexit?pg=35&order=

I have seen on twitter this morning:
1) Cambridge Analytica is a 'shell company' and has no employees

threadreaderapp.com/thread/976190892833951745.html

2) The reason that the Information Commissioner ishaving difficulty in getting a warrant is that SCL, a CA company, has a contractwith the MOD and is coveredby the Official Secrets Act. I have no idea how valid this is. IMO CA is being protected. By the government?

maizie I bet that is what it is.

We were also talking about the funding of the leave campaign before the referendum took place and mentioned both Mercer, Bannon and “dark money”

Leave supporters on here ridiculed us. Oh well, just as they ridiculed what we have said about the future the uk faces.

The plot thickens.

I’ve pinched this from another place as well as adding some from my bit of knowledge - feeling a bit lazy sat in the sun.

So summary of what we already know.

Cambridge Analytica - hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer owns 90% He is a friend of Farage and Bannon vice chairman during the referendum- a white supremicist and known Nazi sympathiser. Trumps biggest donor. Also owns IP in Canada -AggregateIQ.
Vote leave paid £3.9 million to AggregateIQ to target voters during the referendum campaign.

Veterans for Britain were “given” £100000 by vote leave. Spent it with Aggregate IQ.
Be-leave given £625000 by vote leave and £50000 from an unknown donor. Spent it with AggregateIQ.
DUP spent £32700 with Aggregate IQ
Thomas Berwick (son of Kensington Tory MP). Vote leave technological officer, previously worked for CA and Aggregate.
ASI science - links to CA paid £114000 by vote leave
Christopher Whylie - links to Aggregate

I expect other posters can add some more information.

This stinks worse than the drama queens fish.

PMQs - May said that the government had no links to CA or SCL. She may live to regret that remark. Hasn’t the MOD any links?

It is going to be interesting to see what the US authorities are making of this. I reckon if it blows up big in the US our lot would find it difficult to sweep under the carpet

This stinks worse than the drama queens fish

This is the sort of language (and the pictures) that are the bread and butter work for companies who deal in 'political manipulation'.
Here's an article from 8 years ago that will explain, if you didn't realise it.
www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-brewer/the-psychology-of-manipul_b_775420.html

CA is just one of many companies who do this. It is an established business area. I would think twice before knowingly sharing this sort of stuff if you also object to it.

Sorry, wrong information earlier; SCL is apparently the parent company of CA:

twitter.com/mac123_m/status/976499511970484224

Oh dear I will be more careful in future *primrose

I see there has been a complaint about —the drama queen—
polluting the Thames. Not sure which is worse the smell or the pollution. I think I’ll go with pollution

It's all a bit too paranoid conspiracy theoryish for me. Am pinching salt.

You don’t have a television do you baggsor take the Guardian?

There is absolutely no doubt that in the 2015 GE the Tories spent a fortune on data mining and voter targeting to attack and undermine the LibDems, especially in the South West of England. Whether the work was done by Cambridge Analytical or some similar practitioner in the dark arts, it does make a mockery of our so-called democracy.

The Brexit result could not have been achieved without this skullduggery. Now that this scandal is being exposed, that fraudulent referendum should be declared null and void.

I have access to the Guardian and BBC News, ww, same as everyone else.

But I also look at more level-headed stuff (which is not to say that the Guardian and the BBC are never level-headed).

I think it is the height of patronising bullshit to think voters are so easily swayed.

And anyway, Obama used similar tactics. Nobody seemed to mind then. Thought it was really clever in fact.

If data protection laws have been broken then go get 'em but apart from that... shrug.

baggs some people blame the weather on the Tories.

Varian says ‘The Brexit result could not have been achieved without this skullduggery* ......oh yes it could! ?

PS. just spotted a Twitter account called Cambridge Paralytica. Chuckle.

patronising bullshit
Love it

Exactly baggs well said, all this constant Chinese whispers
And conspiracy theories, if CA have broken laws then they will pay the price, but this stuff ( analysing personal data) in order to either get people to buy stuff, vote a certain way and influence them has been going on for ages.