Re:The Advertising Industry Has a Problem: People Hate Ads
by bertil on Monday October 28, 2019 @07:28AM
(#21375964)
Not ‘hyper-targeted’. Cambridge Analytica never did that. The (non-technical) salespeople kept saying they were to impress (non-technical) campaign managers but there wasn’t anything like that.
The “Do so” is a far better example of what they really did: develop a talent for race-based dog-whistle type messaging that _anyone_ could see but where one group would respond differently. The main differentiator that Cambridge Analytica would introduce was Social media vs. traditional press to split messaging by age-group. They tried to improve it using magazine subscription and car brand (from credit reports) but it wasn’t much better than using party registration datasets.
The 'psyops' was related to Cambridge Analytica using hyper-targeted messages to affect the outcome of elections; see the "Do So" campaign designed to decrease Black voter turnout in Trinidad and Tobogo [1].
As I said, I don't mind finding out about cool things to buy. I definitely don't want to be sucked into misunderstanding and hating people, or being fooled into acting against my own interests.
[1] https://advox.globalvoices.org/2019/08/06/netflixs-the-great...