"I made Bannon's psychological warfare tool": Whistleblower on Cam. Analytica - Polidicks

‘I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’

This article is really well done, and since it has been put out the Massachusetts attorney general is launching an investigation into FB and Cam. Analytica.

I would honestly have trouble believing this if it weren't so well cited. It's incredible, shocking, horrifying, and more. From beginning to end, it explains in detail how Russia came to acquire the data and tools needed to launch its massive cyberwarfare campaign against the United States election process, and who was standing at the center of it all? Steve Bannon. Robert Mercer. Critical figures behind Trump's rise to power.

Welp, that just completely confirms what I was just theorizing over here. The sheer amount of information warfare that took place during the election, and is STILL taking place is unbelievable. I wish the majority of the human population wasn't as braindead and easy to manipulate as it was. Maybe then we wouldn't be in the disastrous mess that we are now.

This article deserves a goddamn Pulitzer Prize.

Honestly I can't blame them. None of our social learning mechanisms have come close to prepared us for the Internet.

I mean there's the whole 'common sense' thing... though it seems at least half of the human population didn't evolve with that particular trait, unfortunately.

I don't think I agree with that. Most people, especially in the older population, have absolutely no idea about the power of mass analytical data. To them, filling out a Facebook survey is absolutely no different than filling out a magazine personality test. The difference is that one of them makes them the prime target of psyop warfare.

It's kind of a good feeling to read this article and finally understand what the fuck is happening. The last few months have been, deliberately, very confusing and uncertain. The faster we can definitively say how these attacks were carried out, the sooner we can figure out a solution.

I don't mean just the collection of data like this and giving up, I'm more referring to being easily influenced by mass media in very obvious ways. There's a real problem with lack of critical thinking in a lot of people in our country, and not looking at every piece of the bigger puzzle, only looking at the singular piece you want to look at. and rejecting the idea of other pieces fitting together at all.

People are still people, we're influenced by emotions, catchy headlines, tribalism and biases we're not fully in control of. Some people grow up without the resources (or even the time, depending on how much they need to help out the family) to learn. Some have access to it, but don't get encouraged by their friends, family, and cultural context (e.g. living in a culture that puts sports over books, or work over study). Sorry if it sounds like I'm trying to be a dick, but if you want to insulate yourself from manipulation, you can't pretend you're above it. You're influenced by those things too. You need to know what they are if you want to fight it, and it's certainly not as simple as having "common sense".

Oh I completely agree with you. However, ignorance is not an excuse for incorrect conceptions to be considered as valid. I completely understand people not having time, or desire, to research vast amounts of knowledge necessary to fully understand some concepts in our world, however there is a LOT of people that still want to have their opinions respected and treated as factual, even with a complete lack of knowledge of the subject they're referrencing. I'm not trying to blame half of all people for not knowing better... but as far as education goes, we should really start educating people more on critical thinking and realizing that there are hidden agendas behind nearly everything in social media, and to be wary of the content we absorb.

This is the second time in like, a year or less now that I've written an entire fucking essay to post on Facebook to try my damndest to make sure my friends, family and their friends are fully aware of what the actual fuck is going on and why they need to be more careful on social media. The last time I did this was when Theresa May insisted we didn't need encryption and I saw people agreeing with her. So; the following article is an incredibly long read. But it's also an incredibly important one. https://www.theguardian.com/…/data-war-whistleblower-christ… The last few days have been "interesting" in the world of computing and data analysis stuff as one of the more notorious data-analytics groups, Cambridge Analytica, have been caught out for a stupid number of ethical violations and worse. This group are the masterminds behind the Brexit social media campaign, and numerous US Republican electoral campaigns. They specialise in data analysis of personality traits and political leanings on social networks, and manipulation of public thought via social networks. Not a pretty combination. The whistleblower in this article was a key player in the company who appears to sincerely regret his actions (good for him), but the things he revealed are all very concerning. Think back to the Brexit referendum, or the Trump election. Did you see any particularly "emotion provoking" images about how the "foreigns" were going to "rape our women" or similar "ruhh birtin furst" stuff? Well there's an incredibly high probability those were designed and distributed thanks to these guys. Targeting the Facebook feeds of people they thought would be susceptible to manipulation like that. I'm sure I saw some targeted media at some point due to this. Everyone is a target after all. This was largely performed with data harvested from a number of Facebook pages and apps operated in co-operation with this group. Polls, "like and share" posts, etc. all create data these guys can use for information warfare. I know it sounds like a lunatic conspiracy theory, and until today it basically was. But this is one downside of social media we tend to not think about. 𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲, 𝗱𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸, 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼, 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲. Not everything on here has good intentions, and it can all be used to create psychological profiles to target you politically and economically. Actions such as this are partly the reason the political landscape today is such a wasteland. Lets try and nip this in the bud, for our own sake.

The weapons of the information age are truly terrifying. Forget nukes, at least killing all of humanity would put us out of our misery for good, this opens the door to ideologically enslaving entire nations for generations to come and it's in the hands of the financial elite.

To share what others have said; this explains a lot. It makes me wonder how many online movements ahve been astroturfed by them. I know the article only talks about targeted political advertising but I don't think they would limit themselves to that. To me it would make sense for them to have manufactured online factions designed to shift people from the centre politically to the right. For example they may have used their data to manufacture and manipulate certain left wing demographics, and then used that targeted advertising to zelotise those left wing groups and then publicise them on a wide scale, this would then scare people in the centre to the right.

Unfortunately this kind of stuff is only going to become more common. Perhaps we should start teaching internet opsec in schools, so people can learn to spot and avoid this kind of crap.

Technically they have always been better off in the case of anything involving a lot of people. A disaster? You only have yourself. Political propaganda? You're a free thinker and aren't swayed by that.

Hope this guy talks to Mueller and somewhat redeems himself. Also hope he doesn't get in another russian "accident"

I hope this serves as a wake up call for some people. Big data in the wrong hands is the modern equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction.

I've been telling my friends and families for a very long time to stop answering surveys/"find out what your favourite alcohol is!" quizzes etc. on Facebook. Not only does it make you a prime target for cybercriminals ("Hm, X really likes Jack Daniels, I wonder if that would be their password.") but it makes you a target for organisations like this looking to lure people in to the far-right. Through targeted campaigns using data from "Like & Share if u love England and think foreigners shud speak English or LEAVE!" they can effectively dominate someone's social media with a bombardment of right-wing propaganda. This also begs the question of Facebook/Twitter's culpability in this, as it is their platforms being used to convert people to harmful ideologies My grandad is unfortunately a victim of this. He falls for these dumb Like & Share schemes, and the other day he asked me to fix something on his laptop and his facebook feed was nothing but "Like if you're a PROUD EnglishMAN and would DIE before letting leftist snowflake immigrants take that away from you!" Don't be a victim to this manipulation. Get educated, and educate your friends & family.

I REALLY don't like those quizzes and tell everyone to stay away from them. Do you know how many answers to peoples' secret questions I could get by making one of those???? Also, what you have to understand is that while younger generations know what do do with social media and how to filter through the information, older people most likely don't. Remember the old addage that amounted to "don't trust what you read on the internet"? The older generations didn't get the memo.

And people said i was nuts for not using facebook.

if you arn't convinced yet that we are living in the worst form of cyberpunk here you go

I always wondered how long it would take until Cambridge Analytica came into picture. I did some research on Steve Bannon after he was picked for NSC and beyond finding out how much of a scumbag he was, I saw he was a chairmen on the board of an English data analytics company that was already known for having influenced important democratic elections and referendums such as motherfucking Brexit. No wonder Steve and probably Russia used them to much the same effect in the presidential election...

This article made me want to delete my Facebook account, but the power of Facebook today is immense. If you aren't on there, people forget to invite you to events, I can't sell my used things as easy, and I can't talk about my hobbies as much, as online forums are being taken down, because it's easier just to be on Facebook.

There's always a better alternative to Facebook! Facepunch.

I know what you mean. I run a small business, and most of my leads and clients come through Facebook. I honestly couldn't function in business without it.

Back in 2011 I was pretty much the only kid in class who didn't have a Facebook account. I didn't want to create one because of the obvious privacy issues. Guess I got the last laugh after all? Unfortunately I eventually I got suckered into making one because I would have been a total outcast otherwise. Thankfully, once I got into university, I met people who disliked the website for the same reason I did. Deleted the account years ago, never looked back.

Here's a solution, stop fucking selling our personal information to the highest bidder.

If there's demand for something, someone will find a way to sell it. Right now personal information is in EXTREMELY high demand. Saying "Hey stop that!" isn't a solution.