Re:US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
by dane-pgp on Friday September 18, 2020 @05:32PM
(#24522090)
> Trump does the same thing and suddenly itβs armageddon and the Russians are coming.
I think the complaints about Trump's 2016 campaign are that:
1. There's an important difference between Americans spending money to influence an American election and Russians (secretly) spending money to influence an American election. (Alternatively/additionally, Russia hacked computers and used that illegally obtained data to influence the American election).
2. When targeting ads, there's a difference between using data that voters willingly give your campaign and data that was disingenuously collected about people (e.g. Cambridge Analytica's infamous "5,000 data points on every American"[0]).
The extent to which either of these things happened is subject to debate, as is the extent to which either of them changed the outcome of the election.
I think the complaints about Trump's 2016 campaign are that:
1. There's an important difference between Americans spending money to influence an American election and Russians (secretly) spending money to influence an American election. (Alternatively/additionally, Russia hacked computers and used that illegally obtained data to influence the American election).
2. When targeting ads, there's a difference between using data that voters willingly give your campaign and data that was disingenuously collected about people (e.g. Cambridge Analytica's infamous "5,000 data points on every American"[0]).
The extent to which either of these things happened is subject to debate, as is the extent to which either of them changed the outcome of the election.
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-rea...