Dear Readers,
I haven't posted for years and years, but what I read in a German article this morning deserves a wider audience. I have translated the excerpts from the German, but the original article can be found here:
www.dasmagazin.ch/…
it starts like this:
“On November 9th, around 8.30 am, Michal Kosinski awakens in Zurich at the Hotel Sunnehus. The 34-year-old researcher has given a lecture at ETH's risk center, a conference on the dangers of Big Data and the so-called digital revolution. Kosinski keeps these lectures constantly, all over the world. He is a leading expert on psychometrics, a data driven branch of psychology. When he turns on the TV this morning, he sees that the bomb has burst: Donald J. Trump has been elected against the statements of all leading statisticians”
...
“Anyone who has not lived on the moon for the last five years knows the term "big data". Big Data also means that everything we do, whether on the net or outside, leaves digital traces. Any purchase with the card, any Google request, any move with the cell phone in the pocket, each “like” is saved. Especially everyone likes. For a long time, it was not quite clear what these data should be good for - except that our blood pressure motivators are advertised in our Facebook feed because we have been grading "blood pressure lower" for each post. It was also unclear whether Big Data is a great danger or a big gain for mankind. Since 9th November we know the answer. Because behind Trumps's online election campaign and also behind the Brexit campaign is one and the same big data company: Cambridge Analytica with its CEO Alexander Nix. Anyone who wants to understand the outcome of the election - and what Europe could be doing in the coming months - must start a remarkable incident at the British University in Cambridge in 2014. To Kosinskis Department of Psychometrics.”
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“Kosinski and his team refine the models unceasingly. In 2012, Kosinski proves that it is possible to predict from an average of 68 Facebook-Likes a skin color (95% accuracy) whether a person is homosexual (88% probability) whether they are a Democrat or Republican (85%). But it goes even further: Intelligence, religious affiliation, alcohol, cigarette and drug consumption can be calculated. Even if the parents of a person have remained together until their 21st year of age, the data are shown.”
...
“How good a model is is shown by how well it can predict how a test person will answer certain questions. Kosinski continues as if in an intoxication: Soon his model can estimate a person better than an average work colleague by means of ten Facebook-Likes. 70 Likes are enough to surpass the friendliness of a friend, 150 of the parents, with 300 Likes, the machine can predict the behavior of a person more clearly than their partner. And with even more Likes can even surpass what people believe of themselves to know. On the day when Kosinski publishes these findings, he receives two calls. A lawsuit complaint and a job offer. Both from Facebook”
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The company was instrumental in the rise of candidate Cruz —
“And Cambridge Analytica does precisely what Kosinski had warned: "We have psychograms from all adult US citizens - 220 million people," Nix opens the screenshot, "our control centers look like. Let me show you what we're doing. "A digital cockpit appears. Left-hand diagrams, on the right a map of Iowa, where Cruz had collected a surprisingly large number of votes in the pre-election campaign. Thereupon hundreds of thousands of small dots, red and blue. Nix borders the criteria: Republicans - the blue dots disappear; "Not yet convinced" -points disappear again; "Male" and so on. At the end, a single name appears, including age, address, interests, political inclination. How does Cambridge Analytica now handle such a person with political messages?”
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How to discourage the opposition and keep Clinton voters away from the Polls
“Trumps conspicuous contradictions, his often criticized attitude, and the resulting immense amount of different messages suddenly turn out to be his great advantage: each voter sees only the message they want. "Trump acts like a perfectly opportunistic algorithm, which only depends on audience reactions," notes the mathematician Cathy O'Neil in August. On the day of the third presidential debate between Trump and Clinton, Trumps Team sent 175,000 different variations of its arguments, mainly via Facebook. The messages differ only in microscopic details, in order to suit the recipients psychologically optimally: different titles, colors, subtitles, with photo or with video. The fineness of the adaptation goes down to small groups, explains Nix in conversation with «Das Magazin». "We can reach villages or blocks of houses in a targeted manner. Even individuals. "In Miami's Little Haiti district, Cambridge Analytica provided residents with news of the Clinton Foundation's failure after the earthquake in Haiti - to stop them from choosing Clinton. This is one of the goals: potential Clinton voters - this include dubious leftists, African Americans, young women - from the inner city, "oppress their choice," as a Trump associate tells. In so-called darkposts, which are purchased Facebook advertisements in the Timeline, which only users with appropriate profile can see, for example, African Americans are playing videos in which Hillary Clinton calls black men as predators.”
...
“The company divides the US population into 32 personality types, concentrating only on 17 states. And as Kosinski had found that men, that like MAC Cosmetics, are very likely gay, Cambridge Analytica found out that a preference for US-made cars is the best sign of possible Trump voters. Among other things, Trump now is shown which messages are moving the people and where exactly best. The decision to focus on Michigan and Wisconsin over the last few weeks is based on data analysis. The candidate becomes a model of the implementation of a model.”
Yes, this is most frightening article I have read so far this year. I dont know if it will be published in English, but google translate works fine.