March 24 Open Thread: None Dare Call It Brainwashing
A whistleblowing Cambridge Analyitica employee gave The Guardian the 27-page internal document it calls Trump’s blueprint for victory, detailing its use of social media platforms to both disseminate ads and false claims and determine which were most effective in a continuous feedback loop. It’s fascinating reading, and remember this is all not only legal but in use to peddle all sorts of products already — products like laundry soap, guns and political candidates. Both sides will be using this by 2020. By 2024 they’ll be using it to pick candidates.
Trump set a new American record for flip-flopping: A little over 5 hours after tweeting that he was considering a veto of the shutdown-averting $1.3 trillion spending bill, he signed it. “I will never sign another bill like this again,” he said, calling it a “ridiculous situation.”
The comeback for the as-seen-on-TV Toensing-diGenova tag team might be brief. CNN reports that Trump is worried that Toensing represents Mark Corrallo, who has spoken to the Mueller probe about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russians, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team about how the President and his team and former Trump campaign national co-chair Sam Clovis, who NBC News reported also talked to the special counsel.
WaPo has documents showing George Papadopoulos had more contacts with Russians than heretofore known, and his superiors seem to have known about it.
Elon Musk joins #deletefacbook, as pages for both Tesla and SpaceX disappeared from the platform.
“I will never sign another bill like this again…”
Because he will be out of office.
Poll: Are you planning to delete your Facebook account?
– Yes
– Nyet
– Never had one
I’d love to give Facebook the finger, but it’s too useful to me as a musician to stay in touch. Eagerly awaiting an investigation into FB, but not holding my breath. Will Trump fire his current team of obnoxious lawyers? Who cares, the supply is infinite.
I’m working on deleting FB. It is going to take some work.
I plan to keep Facebook for now. It lets me communicate with a lot of friends and family around the country. BUT I know how to use the privacy settings to control who sees my posts. And if these companies have a way to get around the settings, I don’t post anything I would care about if they saw it anyway. I am not influenced by their targeted ads. In fact I am less likely to purchase any product that has annoying ads. I don’t participate in their polls and quizzes. So for now, I will use Facebook because I would lose contact with people I enjoy communicating with if I dropped it.
@Homesteader: Smart choice. But be aware that even modest everyday use of the platform provides them with useful data in compiling psychographic profiles of people like you.
As for the ads, the idea is to tailor products to your interests. If they’re annoying, it’s only because they’re poorly done. Most advertisers don’t have the kind of money a presidential campaign does, so they can’t compile the kind of feedback on as many different ads as the Trump campaign could.
The giant corporations, however, can, will and do employ the same kind of strategies the CA document spells out. And this branch of psychological-data-based advertising is still in its infancy.
I’m sticking with Facebook. I enjoy too much keeping track of my friends who have moved out of the area. I also like some of the discussions in the groups I belong to. As far as the right wing advertising goes, I have pretty good instincts for tripe when I see it. But I am swearing off those psychological profile tests. I never took them seriously anyhow. I just thought they were funny. Now I know they are insidious.
Adding a fourth poll option:
– No, I am hooked on the benefits to myself, even if FB gave us a Trump.