The story isn’t that they used data obtained through the Facebook API to microtarget ads on Facebook? That’s the story I’ve read at every major media outlet.
> The story isn’t that they used data obtained through the Facebook API to microtarget ads on Facebook?
Yes, that is exactly it. You seem to assume that the only way you can achieve this is by advertising to individual people by Facebook ID's and use this as the basis of your argument that the whole story is fraudulent and instead there is some media conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
Can you see where your logic might be faulty?
There is a lot of information at your fingertips about how they actually used the data, you can go to your favorite search engine right now, type in "how did cambridge analytica use the facebook data" and read the answer. I'd do this first before calling the whole thing bogus and accusing Channel 4 of committing securities fraud.
I’ve looked, and I manage a relatively large Facebook ad budget so I know exactly what is and is not possible to do through it. I’ve also been both advertising and writing software that interacts with both the ad API and the graph API since the beginning of both. What is being claimed in the media simply isn’t possible to do today. I’ve seen the term “audience of one” thrown around so much it makes me sick.
So yes, the story is fraudulent. The (years old) data that Kogan scraped and sold to CA years after the fact could possibly be used in aggregate to formulate campaign strategy (although because of its age even that use wouldn’t have been very effective). It couldn’t be used to target specific individuals or anything resembling that. If you’re saying they were able to target zip codes heavily populated by people in a given political party sure, they could. But that’s not remotely close to what is being described in the articles.
Also, since you and your friends at the Guardian are implying that they used this data in other ways, see here:
As various news sites have clearly and repeatedly reported they used the data to build highly detailed and specific psychological profiles of target voters then created content which would broadly appeal to people that match that profile. Kind of like buyer personas[1], but with rich detailed data on 50,000,000 people and their connections to play with.
None of this implies in any way that they even took out a Facebook advert (in fact they preferred content that looked organic, seeded through various Facebook groups/Twitter accounts), so I'm not sure why your experience with using the Facebook self-serve advertising portal gives much insight here.
In short: they used the dataset to target people, but they did not specifically target people in the dataset.
As I said in my original comment, the data might have been used in aggregate, for things like campaign strategy (“go campaign in Tallahassee!”). But the articles on this subject that have gotten the most attention imply that this data was used, specifically, to target ads on Facebook. Therefore my extensive experience with the platform, that you rudely sought to trivialize in your comment, is directly relevant. Once again, you cannot use the data they had to target people in the way that is being implied in most of these articles.
Finally, to put your comments to rest (hopefully), the data wasn’t used even off of Facebook in the way that you and these articles are claiming. See [1]. Enjoy the rest of your day.
The data was used in aggregate to produce detailed profiles (upwards of 40k of them), as reported by the original whistleblower and every reputable news source who's reported on it, and in far more detail than "go campaign in X".
More like "This specific group of people in X who like guns, willie nelson and dislike bananas would be receptive to a picture of willie nelson squashing a banana with Hillary Clinton's face on it with a caption about 2A". Then, spread this picture organically through facebook groups for people who hate bananas, love willie nelson and guns.
To be clear: the story is not at all "oh no they brought targeted facebook adverts", and it should be evident that perhaps your logic or understanding is faulty rather than a worldwide media conspiracy to short Facebook stock.
and it should be evident that perhaps your logic or understanding is faulty rather than a worldwide media conspiracy to short Facebook stock.
Classic liberal tactic: dismiss people that point out the obvious flaws in your rhetoric by painting them as conspiracy theorists. I don’t think it’s a “worldwide conspiracy to short Facebook stock”. I think that the media outlets distributing these stories, which are spreading false information and implying things that aren’t possible (as my comment points out), hate Trump, are pissed that they were unable to manipulate the election in the way that they wanted, and are doing what they can to ensure he doesn’t win in 2020. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they attempted to get a little cream on top and tried to profit from their false narrative by shorting the stock as well. There’s actually nothing wrong with that, as long as the stories are factual, but it’s illegal (at least under US law) when they are not.
the story is not at all "oh no they brought targeted facebook adverts"
That isn’t all of the story, but that is a part of the narrative that is being told, and that part is factually impossible. Further, even the rest of your claims that they actually used the psychographic profiles are simply not accurate. See: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17138854/cambridge-analyt...
