Skip to main content

Can you change my mind?

 

This is a documentary on how a small company had found out how it could "Hack" the democratic process of the Western world using data. The idea was to identify the voters on the border fence who had not made up their minds, then bombard them with specifically targeted advertisements that had already been mean tested and proven to change the minds of the test sample to produce the required result.  


Ms Britteny Kaiser

At the beginning of the film, a woman whom we later know to be Miss Brittany Kaiser was at what looked like a Parliamentary Inquiry, answering questions. They were asking about her morals after working as an intern for Obama, Amnesty International, various Human Rights Organisations, Ministry of Agriculture and later for Cambridge Analytical, which were responsible for Brexit and Trump's victory later, it seems. She indicated while working for the Obama campaign and the Human Rights Organisations, they paid her very little money and at times nothing at all. Her parents were going through financial difficulty and felt she could help them despite sending her to school and spending on her education. Then she had a change her heart "moved to the dark side" and started working for Far-Right Organisations and Cambridge Analytical.


Professor David Carroll, a lecturer in digital media and apps development, was concerned that all the information on Social Media was being mined into a trillion-dollar-a-year industry. As human beings, we are now the commodity, and because we enjoyed it so much and had so much access, nobody read the terms and conditions or the fine print. So all our activity on the web, our location, the sites we visit, our likes, the time we spend, etc., is collected in real-time and attached to our online psychological profile and can be bought and sold. These can be used with the right tools to predict us to a high degree of certainty.   


Project Alamo (Trump's Election Campaign) spent about one million dollars a day on Facebook ads only. This was run by Cambridge Analytical, which knew what state to target. Alexander Nix, the former CEO of Cambridge Analytical, claimed to have 5,000 data points on every American voter. They were able to classify these individuals into personalities and predict their actions or desires, or worse, what would influence how to vote. But before that, Alexander was a former director of Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL), which modified behaviour and worked for the ministry of defence in Afghanistan. They modified people's behaviour using leaflets, television programs, research, etc. The defence ministry classified the work as a weapon, and it was a crime to use it in some countries. It is a story of how it was used in Trinidad and Tobago. There were two parties on the Islands. One majority African heritage and the other majority Indian heritage. Their research shows that the youths contributed to the majority of the vote. Hence, they started a "Do So" program as the slogan. This movement was supposed to reject the current political parties and ensure people would not precipitate in the elections. It was successful, and many youths refused to vote in the elections. The majority-black youths did not vote, but the Indian heritage Youths did what their parents told them to do - vote, and the Prime Minister of Indian heritage, Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar, won in 2010.



The Obama team used the internet very successfully, which opened the door for the Republicans to try their hands on it. Ted Cruz was a nobody in the Republican primaries, but by the use of Cambridge, Analytical became a powerful contender in Iowa. They could use the information mined for the Cruz team and hand it over to the Trump team. Steve Barron is a Vice President of Cambridge Analytical, and he follows the Breitbart doctrine, according to Christoper Wiley, who is a former employee and whistleblower. Mr Wiley said Cambridge Analytica is not a software company but a full-service propaganda machine. Breitbart doctrine Mr Wiley continued is "that if you want to fundamentally change society, you first have to break it", and Steve Barron was using it to start his culture war.


Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytical


Miss Kaiser explained further that using data analysis, they could identify the people who were undecided voters. They did not waste time on the core Republican or Democrat votes, but these undecided voters were known as "persuadables ". With analysis, they identified that they could win the election by changing the minds of these persuadables in specific precincts in particular swing states. They identified 70,000 persuadables, and these were identified in specific precincts across Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida. They bombarded them with personal targeted blogs, websites, ads, videos, etc., that had unique content to trigger these individuals. They ensured that they would see the world the way they wanted it. And this will be invisible to the rest of us, but it was based on emotions of Fear and Hatred. In short, 70,000 people in 3 states decided the President of the US in the 2016 election.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The seedling of doubt - Merchants of Doubt

Doubt is the product What this book says, and the film elucidates is there is a selective specific group of "scientists" who have a particular playbook to discredit, confuse and "muddy the waters" against scientific research for their sponsors. What these group of people or interest groups have learned from the days of dealing with the tobacco industry, is that they need not concern themselves with trying to prove anything or to disprove the scientists. All they need is to seed doubt and confusion in the market of public opinion, their main motto is "Doubt is our product". As, when people are confused and the policies are difficult to interpret because they are complicated, ambiguous, inconclusive, etc then there will be great difficulty in organizing widespread opposition to it. They deliberately frustrate governments into inaction, blocking them by using their lobbyist and "experts" and hence stop all ways of finding effective solutions...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Red Pill

In the film " The Matrix ", there is a scene where a young computer hacker Neo ( Keanu Reeves ) is with the leader of the resistance called Morpheus ( Laurence Fishburne ). The hero, Neo was made to face the reality of his situation, that he has been living in an artificial virtual construct designed by the machines to keep his mind occupied, while his body is used to generate energy and that he is a slave being used by the machines.  And if he wanted to see the "real world" and be "free", he would have to swallow a red pill, the red pill in a manner of speaking will open his eyes or the scales will drop off from his eyes, liberate his mind, take his own destiny in his own hands and he will be in the real world. Or take the blue pill and remain in blissful ignorance, dream land, controlled by machines and remain as a slave as it were, as a biological battery. He was given the choice between the red pill and a blue pill Morpheus : "This is your ...
1 comment
Read more

The Machines are here

  I do not want to be seen as a prophet of doom. Nor do I see myself as a modern-day Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah or Daniel who constantly warned Israel about their behaviour, their worshipping of other false gods, and trying to be like other surrounding tribes until they were conquered by Assyria, Babylon, or Rome. But the issue of AI is evident to me, and I must see it in the face, as I am working in that area. I use it regularly to do my work, and it makes my job more effective and easier. A simple example, I had a meeting with my boss recently, and we talked about technical and other topics. An AI was taking minutes of our more than one-hour-long meeting. In the minutes, the key points we discussed were neatly laid out, including the main points and actions to be taken. The non-work-related stuff was summarised as "discussed weekend plans and shared updates about families, while also discussing the similar nature of political parties and their tendency not to fulfil their promises...
Post a Comment
Read more