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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I posted this on the other thread and wanted to move it here.

I've run FB ads for the last 5 years and have trained under some of the top in the industry. As part of the curriculum, often we'd look at what Trump did during the 2016 election - which was brilliant from a marketing and persuasion standpoint but highly unethical.

Cambridge Analytica harvest data from nearly 100 million FB users without consent and used that data for Trump's campaign in the 2016 election and build a psychologic and demographic profile for each voter - not just their political beliefs, but other beliefs, interests, even behaviors (like we can tell if someone likes to watch videos, click on links, write comments, etc and design ads catered to those behaviors).

They then used this data to run tens of thousands of ads *per day* to see what messages work with which groups. Often we tweak images, headlines, wording, etc. Even to the point where they'll take 20 different actors, have them give the same message, and see which actor people like best.

This is called micro targeting and A/B testing. They're standard practice in digital marketing, but obviously to get to the point where you are running tens of thousands of ads per day, you need insane amounts of money, which is where campaign financing and donations come in (because the average person can't do this).

And obviously, somebody who has the ability to raise this amount of money will very easily be able to get a large voter base from Facebook because of the way they slowly use propaganda to persuade people.

In marketing terms we call this a funnel, but it works the same. You align with somebody over a belief they already have, then slowly send them more and more content that starts to shape their beliefs in other things. This is why there are such strong pipelines from health, finance, relationships, etc to the far right: You start with a reasonable belief (XYZ diet is healthy, here's how to lose weight and get healthy, etc) then slowly introduce other ideas such as anti-vaxx (if you eat this diet you're so healthy you don't need vaccines!), introduce the concept of Big Pharma is out to get you, and so on.

Zuckerberg had to testify before Congress because of the illegal data harvesting, and FB put things like fact-checking and stricter data access in place to cover his butt. But ads are FB's source of revenue - they made $800 million from political ads in 2020 alone - so obviously they want to continue political ads even though it's highly unethical.

Now that Trump is in office, I suspect Zuck is being offered protection in exchange for other right-wing campaigns to have "free speech". Or at the very least, knows that a conservative-controlled government won't come after him. Which is extremely scary, because a massive amount of the right's campaign strategy is to spread misinformation and create outrage over things that aren't actually problems.

Sadly the average American doesn't stand a chance. Marketing is a trap that is intentionally set for you and there's no real way around it. Add in AI-generated images and it's terrifying; I see AI-generated images on FB daily where thousands of people comment not realizing it's fake.

Very scary time to be in the U.S.[/quote]

Obama did the same in 2012.  Facebook knew about it and looked the other way.  Liberals celebrated the sophistication of the Obama campaign, then complained when Trump did similar things and made Cambridge Analytica to be a villain.[/quote]

Thank you. I feel like I'm the only one who remembers this.[/quote]

They were not the same thing. All of it was a FB problem that friends lists were used too. That was true for all apps on Facebook at the time.

Obama used an app and users consented to have their data collected for campaign purposes.

People who took the Cambridge Analytica quizzes did not know their data would be used to form a psych profile and then sold to political campaigns.  And when FB discovered it, they asked them to delete it and they didn’t do it.

Obama’s campaign used it to target people for campaign materials. Cambridge Analytica built psych profiles and sold the data all without users consent.

It’s dishonest to say these are the same thing. [/quote]

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