Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Rightwing computer scientist and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer was the top donor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. He contributed $13.5 million and laid the groundwork for what is now called the Trump Revolution. Mercer also funded Cambridge Analytica (CA), a small data analytics company that specializes in "election management strategies." CA boasts on its website that it has psychological profiles, based on 5,000 separate pieces of data, on 220 million American voters. CA scoops up masses of data from peoples' Facebook profiles and uses artificial intelligence to influence their thinking and manipulate public opinion. They used these skills to exploit America's populist insurgency and tip the election toward Trump.
[...] We enter and participate in this digital world every day, on our laptops and our smartphones. We are living in a new era of propaganda, one we can't see, with the collection and use of our data played back in ways to covertly manipulate us. All this is enabled by technological platforms originally built to bring us together. Welcome to the age of platform capitalism—the new battleground for the future.
Previously on SoylentNews: Do Advertisers Know You Better Than You Know Yourself?
(Score: 4, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:12PM
Well, I'm convinced. An unnamed person on a website indirectly alluded to some third-hand drunken gossip from someone who alleges to have seen a blip on a radar screen. Obviously the only logical conclusion is that Bill and Hilary Clinton are massive drug dealers. I can't conceive of any higher standard of proof, and I look forward to seeing them both brought to trial and conclusively convicted on the strength of this irrefutable evidence.