It goes without saying that people have been attempting to gain power or influence the outcomes of elections by just about any means necessary, morality and ethics be damned, since as far back as humans can remember. So it comes as no surprise that modern data analytics would be used in this never ending will to power. However, what is surprising is when the masters of stealth are ensnared by their own secretive methods, which appears to be the case with Cambridge Analytica. Hubris or overweening pride before the fall, one suspects.Or just unvarnished greed.
"It's no good fighting a political campaign on the facts, because actually it's all about the emotion"
These guys are in big big trouble. The political system in the UK is nowhere near as corrupt as here and they won't get away with it. Nobody will be defending them except maybe white supremacists.
I think it can be argued that they are a national security threat to the UK because of how they've meddled in other countries affairs.
And there is also the question of their connection to white supremacist Steve Bannon .........
Interesting. Cambridge Analytics is getting paid for their expertise in Mexico. I hope what they are doing there and the way they utilize the gleaned data is agreeable to the drug cartels because the cartels, obviously, have their own ways on influencing people.
"Cambridge is partnering with Pig.gi, a phone app in Mexico and Colombia that gives 200,000 active users free service in exchange for watching ads, reading stories and taking surveys. The analytics firm is hoping to use data mined from Pig.gi to help a candidate in Mexico’s July 2018 presidential election, and several political parties have already expressed interest, according to both companies."
Maybe it's good news, or not, but there are some who think that Cambridge's data methods do not work as advertised. In other words their predictive value is suspect. One of the big wheels caught on the now infamous video said he was just humoring his clients with what he said. It did not seem jocular to me.
