Cambridge Analytica + Psyops + The Beast

droid

Well-known member
plenty of people talking about the singularity before he did. i enjoy reading his meltdown essay though. got some great lines in it. i wonder if droid likes it. it's science fiction. droid?

Cant remember ever being blown away. Some of the earlier stuff was interesting but generally I like my innovation wrapped up in narrative. Wont go near him now on principle.
 

droid

Well-known member
A few things that I think are different about CA.

  • Privately financed by billionaires hostile to established order.
  • Outright theft of data on a massive scale with no regard for consent.
  • Psychometric analysis of that data at a completely new level.
  • Ostensibly Western private organisation working with an 'enemy' of the west to destabilise the west.
  • Classical psyop tactics being used by a western organisation against western populations, in (ostensibly) peacetime.
  • Large American corporation colluding in all of the above.

Some of these things arent new, some of them are things that had happened to a lesser degree in the past - in context though the confluence of factors = a significant event.
 

droid

Well-known member
Again, regarding the efficacy of CA's tactics. In one of the videos Nix (or maybe Turnbull) talks about how facts are irrelevant in election campaigns, you need to pinpoint concerns and then appeal to the emotional core of constituents on these issues. Brexit and Trump are testament to the efficacy of this approach.

Interestingly, I saw a study recently which claimed the Europeans are less susceptible to this, media literacy being a prime factor - something generally lacking in the UK and the US.
 
Last edited:

version

Well-known member
This whole thing makes me pretty uneasy. It was obvious something like this would eventually happen and people should have been more aware of it, but at the same time a lot of what's been revealed is pretty standard and not particularly shocking in the context of 'Big Data' and political campaigning. I get the impression that the outrage is based more on people's frustration with recent events than the story itself - it's a lot easier to accept that someone like Donald Trump won an election because it was rigged or tampered with than it is to accept that millions of people liked and supported him.

My concern is that Western governments are going to use this wave of outrage (Russia, Cambridge Analytica) to tighten their grip on the internet, they've been chipping away for some time now and just the other week a Tory minister was pitching the idea of restricting access to social media for certain age groups, which sounds reasonable on the face of it, but it's a slippery slope and I'd prefer to live in a society where information isn't so tightly regulated.

As much as I disagree with Brexit and Trump, people did vote for them and I can't help but wonder whether we're seeing the establishment hit back after a loss of control, neither Brexit nor Trump were supposed to happen and now that they have the people and tools responsible are being encircled.
 

luka

Well-known member
i agree with that version. it's the reason im very wary of this fingerwagging about a post-truth world and so on.
i cant help but see an agenda to restrict internet freedom behind it. youd have to be very naive not to.
 

droid

Well-known member
Clearly millions of people did vote him, and Brexit, and loads of other crazy & repulsive things.

However, and you can see this from the marginal victories and/or loss of popular votes (to which the UK and US are both particularly vulnerable due to voting systems), Trump won 63 million votes, Clinton won 66 million and 90 million didnt vote, in this respect I think that targeted psyop acted as a force multiplier, applying pressure at very specific points in order to game the system. You also see it with twitter bots, in their attempts to control agendas by suggesting that there is huge weight of opinion behind certain viewpoints.

The sentiments exist like they always have, and also in more worrying numbers than previously, but there's a chimeric element too it. Its the Gruffalo's mouse making shadow monsters on the snow.
 
Last edited:

luka

Well-known member
I like my innovation wrapped up in narrative.

swapping the word innovation for ideas, more generally, one of the things the ccru stuff does (getting it off d+g?) is to view it all on the same plane. burroughs, spinoza, marx, william gibson, etc. and mine it all for the same pleasures and provocations. it's a good trick and one i've been trying to teach myself. all books become chapters of the same book. the creation of a model of the whole. the map which corresponds to reality on a 1 to 1 scale.

to get back on track obviously in a tight election everything counts, every beat of butterfly wing.
 

droid

Well-known member
The CA stuff is sinister and deeply concerning, but to be fair, if I was to apportion blame for this mess it would be primarily at the media.

In the UK there's a deeply toxic culture of agenda driven tabloid deceit that's been rolling for years, and the US is an utter mess for similar reasons. In the run up to the election there were 10,000 words written about Trump/Russia, despite the clear evidence of ties and there were 60,000 words written about Clinton's emails.
 

luka

Well-known member
The CA stuff is sinister and deeply concerning, but to be fair, if I was to apportion blame for this mess it would be primarily at the media.

In the UK there's a deeply toxic culture of agenda driven tabloid deceit that's been rolling for years, and the US is an utter mess for similar reasons. In the run up to the election there were 10,000 words written about Trump/Russia, despite the clear evidence of ties and there were 60,000 words written about Clinton's emails.

right, exactly. the tabloid culture here is insane and has been for decades. murdoch and dacre and rothmere are archon-psychopaths. CA are mere rookies in comparison. in a sane society it would be pitchforks and flaming torches at their castle gates.
 

luka

Well-known member
ignoring all the traditional, time-proven methods of brainwashing just cos there's a new model in the showroom.
 

droid

Well-known member
Well, its easier that way isnt it? Also, Id say there's no lack of 'old media' glee at being able to target industries that have stolen their audiences and subsumed their dominance.

That said, it may also be prudent to attempt to strangle this one in the cradle as it has the potential to be even more monstrous.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
right, exactly. the tabloid culture here is insane and has been for decades. murdoch and dacre and rothmere are archon-psychopaths. CA are mere rookies in comparison. in a sane society it would be pitchforks and flaming torches at their castle gates.

IT'S THE SUN WOT WON IT
 

luka

Well-known member
Well, its easier that way isnt it? Also, Id say there's no lack of 'old media' glee at being able to target industries that have stolen their audiences and subsumed their dominance.

That said, it may also be prudent to attempt to strangle this one in the cradle as it has the potential to be even more monstrous.

yeah i dont want to wave this stuff away like it doesnt mean anything. it very obviously does. and yes, definitely can see the death struggle between old and new media being fought out in the coverage.
 

vimothy

yurp
I had a look and I don't think CA were doing anything particularly mind-blowing or even unusual, just generic marketing BS dressed up with a bit of trendy machine learning (the dark arts of "psychography"), using one of FB's public APIs. Calling it a "psyop" gives them more credit than they deserve.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Exactly - the 'test run' that CA did in Nigeria was bemusing for just how un-psy-ops it was - a scaremongering ad that suggested that a Buhari win would mean sharia law and people getting their hands hacked off, and clandestine meetings with the Israeli special services (which Priti Patel allegedly does when she's on holiday, so can't see the big deal).

Surely the Russian government is the leader in psy-ops, and not some Old Etonian-fronted ad agency?
 

vimothy

yurp
"aggressive counter-narrative", hmm :slanted:

her argument is basically - mercer is a rich hedge-fund manager, how can he be dumb?

firstly, who says hes dumb, peddling hi-tech bullshit to executives who want to believe is a proven business strategy.

secondly, being a rich hedge-find manage doesnt actually preclude stupidity - I mean, look around

thirdly, even if you could successfully model securities prices, no reason to expect that to translate to models of voter preferences
 
Top