[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-o...
As for the parent, people love to cry about whataboutism, but it is useful to see how people respond when something is done by their favored politician versus an opponent.
Claiming that Obama's campaigns were the true microtargeters, and that if we are angry at the actions of generic people, we must then be angry at Obama, because he did these very things. That is the Whataboutism, or tu quoque fallacy.
In lieu of anything to back that claim up, I'll just stick with Hutchins Razor, and reply "Nuh Uh."
Well, it must not be that bad if it doesn't bother you when "your side" does it.
What if... and try to stick with me here, because this is a pretty radical thought here in 2018... what if both sides are doing a despicable thing, and rather than argue with each other about "whataboutism" we should resist both of them?
(In this particular case, I don't think that the campaigns did the exact same things... I think they've been doing all they can possibly get away with for a very long time. So it gets worse every campaign not necessarily because anybody is worse than ever before, but because especially in this century, every four years "all they can possibly get away with" has been growing like gangbusters.)
So you can blame the countless people employing this tactic maliciously, including the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, for any disproportionate skepticism I apply to its use.
Obama's campaigns were pretty well known to be engaged in extensive microtargeting. Here:
https://www.mediavillage.com/article/how-data-and-micro-targ...
You'd have us believe Cambridge Analytica was some vendor the Trump Campaign used sparingly, had very loose connections with, and saw limited success with.
Yet Cambridge Analytica is a Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon outfit. Steve Bannon, the campaign manager, and senior adviser to the president. Or at least it was during the time period in question. Steve Bannon was THE integral player who essentially managed the creation of the tool.
Here's a video of Brad Parscale gushing about the software tool they were able to use to glean insights that lead them to spend heavily in the states that mattered, but we're not in the conventional wisdom.
https://youtu.be/_fFbVwuU8bM
While your at it, here's the story from the software developer turned whistle blower himself:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...