Data Miners Liken Obama Voters To Caesars Gamblers 166
theodp writes "As Steve Wozniak publicly laments how government used new technologies he introduced in unintended ways to monitor people, the NY Times reports how the digital masterminds behind the Obama Presidential campaign are cashing in by bringing the secret, technologically advanced formulas used for reaching voters to commercial advertisers. 'The plan is to bring the same Big Data expertise that guided the most expensive presidential campaign in history to companies and nonprofits,' explains Civis Analytics, which is backed by Google Chairman and Obama advisor Eric Schmidt. Also boasting senior members of Obama's campaign team is Analytics Media Group (A.M.G.), which pitched that 'keeping gamblers loyal to Caesars was not all that different from keeping onetime Obama voters from straying to Mitt Romney.' The extent to which the Obama campaign used the newest tech tools to look into people's lives was largely shrouded, the Times reports, but included data mining efforts that triggered Facebook's internal safeguard alarms. ... 'We asked to see [voter's Facebook] photos but really we were looking for who were tagged in photos with you, which was a really great way to dredge up old college friends — and ex-girlfriends.' The Times also explains how the Obama campaign was able to out-optimize the Romney campaign on TV buys by obtaining set-top box TV show viewing information from cable companies for voters on the Obama campaign's 'persuadable voters' list. "
This wouldn't be a problem (Score:0, Insightful)
If humans weren't so predictable.
Each one of you could be modeled as a computer program.
LOL @ people that think they have freewill.
Compulsive gamblers (Score:0, Insightful)
Yeah, the country's out billions but hell, put it all on red for another spin.
Re:Well, yeah. (Score:1, Insightful)
While its easy to laugh at people inside the bubble, be aware they have no easy way out as their political landscape has become a house a mirrors, set up by google.
Yes, it does (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason people are scared of big data is because the more and more we study it, the more and more it is proven that most people are very, very predictable. It's gotten to the point that companies optimize the color placement of objects in the background of their advertising to appeal to people they are targetting.
The thing that amazes me however is how some companies can still get things so outstandingly wrong/backwards in this day and age. Take the recent Microsoft Xbox One fiasco. I find it hard to believe that a company like Microsoft would not have known this reaction was coming. Any trivial study of online sentiment data would have shown this in advance.
This is the creepiest thing I've head all week (Score:4, Insightful)
pro-bono work done by media and technology experts that other canidates would have to pay for. This by-passes all donation contributions. In an ideal system you wouldn't need campaign finance reform, because people would make informed decisions, and no amount of money spent could change that. Thats not true. Money can buy votes. We all know this, but HOW is rarely discussed, because the people taking the money are the same people reporting the donations.
They buy you, by buying the "favorite celebrities" they already sold you previously. They overhype their strengths, and they downplay the really creepy and criminal things they do. They then go out of their way to let you know what bad guys the people who don't like celebrities are, and how you'll be social outcast if you give up on your favorite celebrities.
In the new digital age, there is also facebook. Once they know everything about you, it makes it easier to push your buttons. What if they find some dark sexual secret? Find out your weaknesses, exploit them. Since they already know who your friends are, they can tell them, or let them know subtly.
They can manipulate the girl you always had a crush on into sleeping with you, or dating you, because now they know. They can do all kinds of things to her as well.(mabey she spies on you?).
Since they know all your personal informaiton they can pretend to be an old long lost friend and use their credibility to bombard you with propaganda.
Speaking of propaganda, they can easily bypass your intellectual guards by finding out what pushes your buttongs and tailoring propaganda specificly to you.
All this is done pro-bono. This is what we know their capabilities are because they BRAG about them. Now it gets better, what if they want information about the opposition? What if they want to target organizers, donors, and leading voices opposing canidate XZY? What if they used the information to conduct smears of the opposition?
What if they targeted and harrassed campaign organizers and leaders. with information like this they'd be able to do with almost without being known about.
They aren't going to tell you that. Its not beyond their capabilities. Your a fool to think they never considered it.
Re:That's not why Obama won (Score:2, Insightful)
They had the "candidate" (read: meaningless distraction puppet) who was better at LYING.
Post-election, they are EXACTLY the same, since they are "electoral property" owned by the exact same abusive feudalistic companies.
INB4 gullible believers in the system (= the opposite but just as crazy extreme to conspiracy theorists) being in denial.
Fantastic Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes people just don't realize the full implications of their own analogies...
Ceasar's Palace exists for one reason and one reason only - to extract as much of money out of their customers^h^h^h^h^h^h suckers as possible. They (and all of the other modern casino/resorts) pioneered "Big Data" techniques to figure out just how much they could squeeze out of every person that comes into contact with them. They've got official policies on paper to deny it. but they are happy to manipulate and exploit addiction [telegraph.co.uk] to get all of the money.
Re:That's not why Obama won (Score:1, Insightful)
Mitt Romney made one gaffe after another during the primary season, all showing how out of touch he was[...]
I'm pretty sure that all politicians make this kind of "gaffe": they tailor their message to the audience they are speaking to, and tell that audience what the audience wants to hear.
The actual difference in this last election was infiltration and filming of Romney's messages to nominally conservative groups so that theoretically select group messages were surreptitiously recorded, and then those recordings were made public at strategic points during the campaign.
This was a technologically enhanced smear tactic, and it worked. If the Republicans had thought of it, and used it too, then it would have worked against Obama as well.
Re:Yes, it does (Score:4, Insightful)
Big data is not about using 1 thing as a predictor. It is about using the analysis of 10,000,000 different things about groups of people analyzed as an aggregate as a predictor. And it is right a lot more often than it is not, when applied properly.
Re:Well, yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
People who vote for either of the two main parties are incredibly idiotic, so this isn't much of a surprise.
I agree, and I want to add that among those voters, the worst (in my opinion) are those who're able to abandon their own principles [washingtonexaminer.com] on a critical non-partisan issue based upon whether there's a Demoblican or a Republocrat in office. I can't wrap my head around it, but I find it appalling — they've got zero fucking integrity* and have no business in a voting booth.
* Just like the D/R candidates.
For those interested, here are the full results from Pew Research's domestic surveillance poll, showing additional demographic breakdowns. [people-press.org]
Re:That's not why Obama won (Score:5, Insightful)
Some politicians believe today they can speak privately to groups of supporters and those words will not be recorded and released to the world, or their secrets revealed by well-connected insiders. In the past this was true; either there was no cheap easy method to record their words and deeds (phone cameras, fifty-buck video recorders etc.) or the gatekeeper press would simply not report what they knew (FDR in a wheelchair, JFK's medical problems, Reagan's Alzheimers etc.) The world has changed and successful politicians are aware of this. If you don't want what you say made public then don't say it to anyone.
Governor Romney deluded himself that his supposedly private fundraising speech would never be revealed to the rest of the world. That's part of the reason he lost the election. His own campaign's efforts in data collection and analysis and Get Out The Vote was as big and as complex as President Obama's but it was incompetently implemented (first live-fire test of a complex multilevel data delivery system involving thousands of operators on the day of the election? Really?) The only good thing that came out of that expensive fiasco was that several of his friends and colleagues made a lot of money out of it.
Re:We don't have good choices (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, he said "Yes we can". I don't remember anyone saying anything about actually doing something.
You gotta read those promises carefully.
Re:That's not why Obama won (Score:2, Insightful)
Governor Romney deluded himself that his supposedly private fundraising speech would never be revealed to the rest of the world.
Also, an overwhelming percentage of Big Media (meaning not just 'media bosses' but the rank-and-file reporters, etc.) were out and out Obama supporters. So any gaffe that Romney committed was instantly in play and out there. Whereas there are huge holes in the public's understanding of Obama and his private life and past yet today. There are even polished and well-recognized slur-names to refer to those who point this fact out.
Voters carry much of the blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, it does (Score:4, Insightful)
brunes69 opined:
Take the recent Microsoft Xbox One fiasco. I find it hard to believe that a company like Microsoft would not have known this reaction was coming. Any trivial study of online sentiment data would have shown this in advance.
If you find that hard to believe, then you know very little about Microsoft's management.
Did you not notice the Vista fiasco of a few years back (not to mention the Windows 8 disaster, now playing at a computer store near you)?
Things were better (believe it or not) when billg was in charge. At least back then, the geeks actually had some voice in product decisions. Ever since that nincompoop Ballmer took over, it's been MBAs, all the way down.
MBAs don't listen to ANYONE - except other MBAs. Even then, they only pay attention if those MBAs outrank them. MBAs are specifically conditioned to focus exclusively on improving margins, cutting costs, and pumping up the stock price. Quality is not an issue that even registers with them. Customers are wallets with legs. Customer input is to be solicited only when unavoidable, and only on non-business-related issues: How do you feel about THIS commercial? Do you like the purple-on-green packaging, or the green-on-purple packaging better? Do you prefer the logo HERE, or over there?
Ballmer is a fool, who has surrounded himself with fools - all of whom have MBAs. But I repeat myself.
All of which is to say that the XBox One policies that caused such immense, and immediate backlash were ENTIRELY believable products of the Microsoft management environment. "MBAs are people who know the price of everything - and the value of NOTHING," (with apologies to Oscar Wilde).
Re:Well, yeah. (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a difference between a Cadillac and a Chevy, but many of the parts are still interchangeable and they both have the same motive of making money for the same people. Thanks for attempting to cover up motives with technicalities.
Re:Well, yeah. (Score:1, Insightful)
Sigh, you use the label "paranoid nutjob" so you can dismiss what he is saying without actually thinking about it. The International Left has a Jedi Mind-Trick for weak willed people. Look up 'Cultural Marxism' on YouTube. Learn about the history of Cultural Marxism, and how your response is *exactly* how you've been conditioned to behave.
pecosdave's position is correct if you are believer in the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights (I am, despite not being a US citizen). The Obama campaign has been in overdrive and he points out how this was so, in his experience. Furthermore, it appears you are an Obama supporter. Have you noticed what the man you elected has been doing? He has been attempting to push laws to neuter aspects of the Constitution, and using Executive Orders to rule by dictate. Now, he is not the only politician to have done this (Clinton, GW Bush etc nearly as bad).
Either you agree with the Constitution (Libertarian) or you don't (Democrat or 'RINO' Republican - where your 'political tribe' feels it can dismantle the Constitution as an 'anachronism'). pecosdave does. I do. Perhaps you ought to consider your position on the issue before you start throwing around the 'nutjob' label. Have you ever considered that perhaps the reason you don't understand pecosdave's position is that he is possession of a substantial number of more facts than you are - which is why react the way you do (and the reason you know less than pecosdave is that the Cultural Marxists running the mainstream media are holding a lot of information back to protect their man, Obama, no matter how egregarious the actions of his regime become). Think about it, please.
http://www.breitbart.com/ [breitbart.com]
Breitbart is not unbaised, for sure - but you will find many facts there that are *actively suppressed* by mainstream media (New York Times, LA Times, BBC, Washington Post, Huffington Post, the US TV networks etc). Get clued up, dude.