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Top Trump Donor and Big Data Billionaire Helped Tip Election, Now Works to Reshape Media

posted by on Tuesday April 11 2017, @11:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the did-runaway-and-OO-switch-bodies? dept.

MrPlow writes:

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.

Source: http://projectcensored.org/top-trump-donor-big-data-billionaire-helped-tip-election-now-works-reshape-media/

Previously on SoylentNews: Do Advertisers Know You Better Than You Know Yourself?

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  • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:21AM (2 children)

    by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:21AM (#492578)

    Tried searching for:
    "Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority." in the plain-text [archive.org] and was not able to find an occurrence.

    " because its intention is to make children as alike as possible." does not show up either.

    Neither does "School is meant to determine each student's proper social role.

    Here is what seciton 151 (starting page 367) actually says:

    151. Three fundamental aims of secondary education.
    Three important groups of activities require the participa-
    tion of the Individual and establish three fundamental aims
    for secondary education, as for all education, in America.
    Those three groups of activities are distinguished accord-
    ingly as they involve primarily: (1) participation in the
    duties of citizenship and in the not-directly economic rela-
    tions of cooperative group life; (2) participation in the pro-
    duction and distribution of economic utilities; (3) the life
    of the individual as a relatively free and independent per-
    sonality. Thus the three fundamental aims of secondary
    education are:

    (1) The preparation of the individual as a prospective
    citizen and cooperating member of society the
    Social-Civic Aim;

    (2) The preparation of the individual as a prospective
    worker and producer the Economic- Vocational
    Aim;

    (3) The preparation of the individual for those activities
    which, while primarily involving individual action,
    the utilization of leisure, and the development of
    personality, are of great importance to society
    the Individualistic- A vocational Aim.

    It must be recognized that these three aims are not mu-
    tually exclusive, but rather that they are in a high degree
    interrelated and interdependent. Taken together they con-
    stitute the Social Aim of secondary education in the broad-
    est sense of the term. Every individual as a social unit is
    at the same time a citizen, a worker, and a relatively inde-
    pendent personality. The three phases of his life cannot be
    divorced, and in the secondary school preparation for no one
    of those phases of life should be neglected.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:53AM (1 child)

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:53AM (#492588) Journal

    I think Gatto has written his text with only partial inspiration from Inglis's book. Gattos points seem valid regardless. There are other people with conclusions along the same lines.

    • (Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:59AM

      by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:59AM (#492591)

      By the third null result, it was clear I was quoting a (possibly biased) summary :)