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We have had a number of discussions on SN, regarding the influence the tech industry exercises in politics. This story offers a little insight into that influence. No matter your opinion in this 2020 election, you should give this story some real thought.

It's a moderately long read, but I encourage one and all to click on the link, and read it through.

And - disclaimer: I found this story because the Green site published it first.

This data expert helped Trump win. Now he’s built a machine to take him down
Former Facebook employee James Barnes is part of a team that’s tapping big data to nudge critical voters to the polls—amid intense efforts to keep them home.

Starting in August 2019, you may have seen an ad in your Facebook news feed asking you to take a news quiz. If you didn’t know who controlled the Senate, for instance—about 30% of people didn’t—you would be classified as most persuadable, and you would become part of one of the largest and most sophisticated experiments of its kind.

On the internet, we’re subject to hidden A/B tests all the time, but this one was also part of a political weapon: a multimillion-dollar tool kit built by a team of Facebook vets, data nerds, and computational social scientists determined to defeat Donald Trump. The goal is to use microtargeted ads, follow-up surveys, and an unparalleled data set to win over key electorates in a few critical states: the low-education voters who unexpectedly came out in droves or stayed home last time, the voters who could decide another monumental election.

By this spring, the project, code named Barometer, appeared to be paying off. During a two-month period, the data scientists found that showing certain Facebook ads to certain possible Trump voters lowered their approval of the president by 3.6%. For the frantic final laps, they’ve set their sights on motivating another key group of swing-state voters—young Democratic-leaning voters, mostly women and people of color—who could push Joe Biden to victory.

“We’ve been able to really understand how to communicate with folks who have lower levels of political knowledge, who tend to be ignored by the political process,” says James Barnes, a data and ads expert at the all-digital progressive nonprofit Acronym, who helped build Barometer. This is familiar territory: Barnes spent years on Facebook’s ads team, and in 2016 was the “embed” who helped the Trump campaign take Facebook by storm. Last year, he left Facebook and resolved to use his battle-tested tactics to take down his former client.

“We have found ways to find the right news to put in front of them, and we found ways to understand what works and doesn’t,” Barnes says. “And if you combine all those things together, you get a really effective approach, and that’s what we’re doing.”

I think it is important to note what has been revealed here, as well as noting what is not claimed.

The research identified low-information potential voters, then experimented with changing the opinions of those low-information voters. What is not claimed, is that factual data was presented to these low-information voters. The only claim being made here is, they can identify potential low-information voters, then manipulate their opinions.

A multitude of outside anti-Trump groups such as Acronym have spent millions more to fill in the gaps. Earlier this year, Priorities USA and Color of Change launched a $24 million digital advertising campaign aimed at exciting Black voters in swing states. American Bridge and Unite the Country, two of the other largest progressive PACs, have tapped Mike Bloomberg’s political ad tech startup, Hawkfish to wage their own data-rich digital onslaughts through Election Day. Acronym was first out of the gate, and is thought to be the Democrats’ most advanced digital advertising project. By the election it promises to have spent $75 million on Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Hulu, Roku, Viacom, Pandora, and anywhere else valuable voters might be found.

For a year that money went toward targeting low-information voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and North Carolina, but by the end of the summer, the Barometer team saw its persuasion powers diminishing; they guessed that they couldn’t budge the president’s approval rating any lower. So Acronym redirected that cash to motivate another critical audience of low-information voters: new or unlikely Democratic-leaning people thought to be unexcited about Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris. Barometer’s scientists have identified 1.8 million such voters in six states—mostly women of color younger than 35 across Acronym’s original five target states, plus Georgia.

With more than $1 million per week in Facebook ads during the homestretch, “we’re trying to boost their enthusiasm,” says Kyle Tharp, Acronym’s VP of communications.

Despite upbeat polls and record early turnout numbers, Acronym’s battle was never going to be easy. These voters are thought to be some of the least-excited, and while Acronym has identified them as the easiest to persuade, they are also highly susceptible to the sort of BS that can keep voters home. Research has shown that low-information voters are not only less likely to vote but more likely to believe falsehoods; sometimes they’re called “misinformation voters.” And deterring voters with falsehoods and fear may be easier than motivating them with facts and hope. A false claim about voting, for instance, is much easier to spread on Twitter—or by anonymous text message—than it is to correct.

Again, we see specific demographics targeted, and swayed, with targeted advertising, meant to sway that specific demographic. And, we see that it works.

OK - a whole bunch of people voted for Biden, and the lower information people are going to cheer for this campaign.

The question is - how will you feel if/when you find yourself on the wrong side of a similar campaign?

Forget about the 2020 election for a few moments. I have a long track record of being opposed to the very concept of targeted advertising. I positively HATE the idea that any corporation can track you, or me, with fine detail. It sucks that your data or mine is available, and for sale to the highest bidder. And, here, we have a corporation openly admitting that they can, they have, manipulated voters into casting their vote for the corporation's chosen candidate.

Whether you be an R, a D, Independent, third party, or whatever - you should get involved with the investigations into the tech industries. Contact your senator and congress person, and demand that social media and hi-tech corporations be brought to heel.

The US needs something comparable to the EU GDPR, and we need it soon. We need to seriously restrict the harvesting of data, and we need to seriously restrict how that data is used.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90570689/acronym-james-barnes-facebook-2020-campaign-advertising

Please, read the full article. It should be a sobering read, if it doesn't outright scare you.