Cambridge Analytica

I'm not telling you.

Durham Analytica is just as good.

stonemuse said:

GDPR

The right to be forgotten - yeah right, that's going to work well online!!

Someone opened that door and the whole of human kind fell through it... Who would of thought blasting your every move over the internet would leave you exposed to some nefarious action? Good luck closing that door chumps!

Interesting to see what the reactions of the U.S law agencies will be. Extraditions maybe? Interfering with their election, surely they won’t take that lying down

Chivvying from junior-ranking mods

Oops, wrong thread

Definitely worth it's own thread Callum, thank you.

I want to echo what @PragueAddick said better than I will, this was around a year of investigative journalism by The Guardian/Observer (and the New York Times as well). Regardless of what you think of their Editorial Boards or Op-Ed sections, it is so important that if you can you pay for journalism. It helps funds things like this.

MrOneLung said:

Can someone give a brief synopsis of what they have done please?

Is it just like a bit of PR but done in a dodgy way?

see @vff's post above.

I've never really been into social media - I've got a facebook page (but probably only post on there a couple of times a year) and not into twitter. Just can't see why you'd want to share the minutiae details of your life & why anyone would want to know about them. It seems like CA have picked up on the ways all these things are linked & can get people to divulge stuff that is very interesting to political parties, large corporations, governments etc. Well folks, you all wanted your "friends" to "like" you....

Is analytica similar to chickentica?

Prepare for a long line of these. Data and access to data has been far more valuable than the vast majority of us realise and that data has been sold and exploited for a much longer time than we would believe. Ask yourself a couple of questions - why are most email services provided free-of-charge? They give you the software, the email addresses and they host your data - all of that costs money but they never ask you for a bean. Similarly social media sites. They have hundreds of thousands of square feet of highly sophisticated and expensive computer equipment in temperature controlled, secure environments storing all your 'trivial' data and they don't charge you a cent? Yes, advertising brings in revenues but the real money is in manipulating that data, profiling you and using that intelligence to manage your environment and influence your behaviours, primarily in how you spend your money. In my view and from some experience, they often cross the line in terms of analysing that data in a way they shouldn't, selling it in a way they aren't entitled to and often accessing it via computers before you do, which is illegal.

MrOneLung said:

Can someone give a brief synopsis of what they have done please?

Is it just like a bit of PR but done in a dodgy way?

Good video explainer here from the guys who have been working on this for two years.

As I see it there are several strands to their wrongdoing. Important to start from the standpoint that there is nothing wrong with using social media to target messages more accurately than mass media advertising can do. That is fundamentally what Facebook and Google offer as businesses. However

- CA have gained access to data people who have not given their permission. They may have your detials because you are simply a friend on Facebook of someone who supports Trump, or Jacob Rees- Mogg. Or worse you simply played a game on a Facebook App with such a person.

- CA boasted that having got this massive cache they sent suitable targets messages which were manifestly fake news.

- Where they don't have enough fake news, they create some, using entrapment. Sending Ukrainian girls around to the house of the targetted politician works very well accoring to Nix, on camera. Yes, I should think it does...

- they are likely to have driven a coach and horse through the electoral budget rules in the US, and for sure in the UK (since these rules are overwhelmed by the new developments in social media)

- although it is not in the current story, the Guardian will be back to Dominic Cummings (Leave EU head honcho) with some more questions about his involvement with CA. Bet the house on that.

PS, I welcome corrections or additions to above, I am still struggling to take it all in.

Ownership of CA includes Robert Mercer, a hedge fund CEO, who funded CA's work on Farage's strand of the Brexit/Leave campaign and was a major contributor to first Cruz and then Trump's presidential campaigns. He's also a major funder of Breitbart, obviously synonymous with Steve Bannon...also a co-founder of Cambridge Analytica.

Nix is a small cog in this, but has other outlets for his shady dealings as a director, along with members of the Mercer family in Emerdata Limited, recently set up. Regardless of whether their power is real or bravado, I suspect these businesses will fall away, but the players will continue their practices in the shadows.