[pb]Targeted: My Inside Story of Cambridge Analytica, by Brittany Kaiser, 4.5 stars

[NancyJ]

Sorry this is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter. Please read a little.

This book really opened my eyes about how much data is out there on each of us, and how it is being used, for political and commercial purposes. If you've ever taken a fun quiz* online (and who hasn't), chances are high that your scores were eventually combined with other information to create a profile of you that includes more than 500 data points of information attached to your ip address, email, name, etc. These profiles include insights about your personality, concerns, and attitudes (and may include things that your friends and family don’t know about you). Kaiser says that Data about people is more valuable now than oil and gas. This is growing into a huge industry. Data is bought and/or sold by almost every organization we interact with, including the big credit rating agencies. Even Candy Crush has collected and sold data about you and your friends.

*Most of us have taken fun quizzes online. Many simple tests can measure common personality character traits, such as the Big 5, aka OCEAN - Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism). Many quizzes have extra questions, but even a basic quiz can tell a lot about you. (e.g. What is your Hogwarts House? Which Little Women character are you?) The books you read also tell a lot about you. This is just a small part of the psycho-graphic information is available on US voters.

Brittany Kaiser worked for The SCL group and Cambridge Analytica, which are the organizations that received a treasure trove of information from Facebook about users and their friends. The book covers a lot of different topics, involving international politics, big money, big data, Brexit, and fear-based advertising. Brittany was a democrat working in England, until her company sent her to work with Kelly Conway on campaigns for Ted Cruz and then Donald Trump. She once worked for Obama! She spends a lot of time in the book attempting to understand or justify this inconsistency. (Apparently money helped her deal with the cognitive dissonance she felt.)

Kaiser describes how our personal information, including psychographic data (personality traits, interests, and fears), is sold and used to manipulate the ad messages we see (or don't see). The software knows which messages, links, subject headings, and media each personality type is more likely to pay attention to. It will put those messages in their path as often as possible. These methods were used in 2016 to identify people who might be susceptible to far right ideas, fears, and policies, and to influence their votes in the US presidential elections, and in the Brexit votes in the UK. Many of the messages played on fears and concerns regarding different types of immigration related threats, and health care issues, but it covered many other pertinent issues. Facebook, Google, and Twitter all had people embedded from CA, or similar teams working on Republican campaigns. Thanks to the helpful techies at these companies, when you searched for certain terms, you were more likely to be led to information that was negative about Hillary. The Hillary campaign did not use these methods.

Some examples of targeted messages:

People with some profiles were led to fun activities like an app that allowed someone to create a picture of themselves with Hillary behind bars. Others were shown examples of violence allegedly committed by immigrants. Carers received message geared towards protecting family, health care, e-tc. Fear based messages were targeted at those who already tend to be anxious, depressed or neurotic. Overall, negative and fear-based messages turned out to be more effective in changing opinions than positive messages. How did the Pendulum swing so far away from Obama's "Go High" determination to avoid negative campaigning?

Negative ad/messages were also effective in voter suppression. Black voters were more likely to receive messages that claimed Hillary was racist. There was also a piece that combined a Michelle Obama quote about her family, with something that made it seem like the comment was a harsh criticism against Hillary (which it wasn't). This didn't cause black voters to vote for Trump, but it decreased their interest in helping Hillary. It caused many to decide to stay at home on election day. So the result was still positive for Trump.

The teams were able to measure which messages, videos, wording, etc. had the greatest effect on voter's attitudes towards a candidate. For instance, they found that the Access Hollywood tape had a positive impact on the attitudes of many men (and even some women). They liked Trump more because of it. [This was the so-called "pussy tape" where Trump talked about grabbing women. If you're famous, they let you do anything.] This is so disappointing.

I’m sorry if I’m rambling and repeating myself, but here are more details for the legal and politically minded. Warning. Political opinions ahead.

SCL and Cambridge Analytica are the people who used Facebook data to gather information about you AND your friends. You gave permission by agreeing to the T&C, but your friends did not. (This eventually became illegal but Facebook put little effort into stopping it.) The company claimed that they destroyed the data, but Brittany and other whistleblowers said that was a lie. The data was already combined and shared with various groups affiliated with SCL, and with the powerful people who quietly funded these projects. The people associated with SCL and CA have a great deal of experience helping candidates all over the world, and Kaiser discovered that bribery, incited violence, threats, and other forms of corruption were regularly handled by subcontracted groups. [There have been allegations of all of the above used by Trump.]

SCL/CA worked on political campaigns all over the world. They also worked with large corporations, special interest groups, and other projects of interest to their billionaire investors and partners. In the US and UK they worked for conservative and far right political interests. In the US their work was largely financed by billionaires Bob and Rebekka Mercer, who sought to find a candidate who could shake things up in Washington, and reduce the corruption in the system. (They succeeded on point 1, but failed miserably on point 2.) They originally supported Ted Cruz who was working with Kelly Ann Conway, but decided to help Trump when it was clear that Cruz wouldn't beat Hillary.

Trump didn't really understand how all of this worked (he says he doesn’t care about data). Steve Bannon was encouraging it, and Kelly Ann Conway had used CA to help Ted Cruz get far in the primaries, despite the fact that he was almost universally disliked. I think the Mercers paid for a lot of it. Trump wasn’t concerned about the ethics, but he wanted them to be careful to obscure the funding source as much as possible. Trump liked to say that he was financing the campaign himself, and he wasn’t beholden to anyone. But he had a lot of rich people pulling strings for him. (They all got big tax cuts with Trump's first major bill, and we don’t know what else they got in exchange for their help.)

Feel free to disagree with my personal opinions:

A candidate like Trump needs to find a fear or problem that he can promise to fix. (Music Man fans will remember - We've got trouble in River City.) Last time it was Mexicans and the wall. Based on this book, it seems likely that political consultants hired agitators to create more trouble at recent demonstrations. This helps create a sense of fear about crime and chaos. They had to change the conversation from BLM to make it about Law and Order instead. Here was a problem that gave him a chance to look strong. He could attack with the National Guard, and blame the cities (or someone else) if it didn’t work. We've also seen examples of outright bribery. I doubt Trump would have sent out stimulation checks to everyone if it wasn't election year. He's also promising to continue to reduce payroll deductions next year IF he's elected. He doesn't worry about the long term effect on the whole social security system. People who are working are already saving at record high rates. They don't need this small help, but unemployed people need more. It doesn't make sense for him to do that, except that it could be effective as a bribe.

[Holly R W]

Wonderful review, Nancy! As I wrote previously, I have been following news stories about Facebook, Cambridge Analytical and personal data surveillance. So much is being harvested about our personal lives without our knowledge, it is frightening. Our world has changed radically. Now, we're facing the November election with all of this going on. Cambridge Analytical helped Trump win the last time.

[NancyJ]

Holly R W wrote: "Wonderful review, Nancy! As I wrote previously, I have been following news stories about Facebook, Cambridge Analytical and personal data surveillance. So much is being harvested about our personal..."

Thanks Holly, I spent more time writing this review than reading yesterday. I went a little overboard, but part of it is a memory-dump for my own future reference.

I imagine that many other companies have learned how to do what Cambridge and The Russians did, using social networking. Supposedly, Facebook isn't allowing political advertising just before the election, but I don't think that will stop most of the people doing the dirty stuff.

In the meantime, Trump is using old established dirty techniques = Bribery (ssi deductions, stimulus checks, promises of more money if relected), threats (of violence, fixers used to silence individuals) , disruptions and voter suppression (post office), violence (in key cities). And of course lies - more than 10000 documented lies.