Senior executives from the firm at the heart of Facebook’s data breach boasted of playing a key role in bringing Donald Trump to power and said they used “unattributable and untrackable” advertising to support their clients in elections, according to an undercover expose.
In secretly recorded conversations, Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, Alexander Nix, claimed he had met Trump “many times”, while another senior member of staff said the firm was behind the “defeat crooked Hillary” advertising campaign.
“We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape,” said the executive. “And so this stuff infiltrates the online community, but with no branding, so it’s unattributable, untrackable.”
Continue reading: Cambridge Analytica execs boast of role in getting Trump elected
And because of this SHIT our country is on the brink of collapse.
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Yep.
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The power of the human mind to dominate and control nonhuman nature is also our greatest weakness. I have no doubt now that the AI machines we create will some day learn to manipulate us to serve them.
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Ros, your fear is understandable. As a computer programmer/consultant for nearly three decades who wrote experimental AI software, I can tell you from considerable expertise that self-awareness and moral judgements are far beyond the capabilities of digital computer technology. Perhaps someday in the future, humankind will develop quantum computers or other technology which might realize your fear. Until then, however, we need to worry about our human nature which drives some to dominate and control others.
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Same idjits bragged about influencing our elections
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Wow, they’ve wiped their dirty little fingers all over the world! What assholes!
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Complete assholes. They should be exiled somewhere with crocodiles
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That’s fitting.
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The depraved working with the depraved. There certainly was nothing honest or fair in that election.
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Indeed, and it was ugly from the very start – in the primaries.
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Oh, those primaries. As an outsider, I think they must be exhausting for everyone involved.
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Exhausting and painfully embarrassing.
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I’m glad we don’t select our candidates that way – which is not to say our way is better.
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Then I’ll say it… your way is better.
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Up here, if you are a member of a political party you can get others in your party riding association to nominate you. At some point, the riding association meets to select the candidate by vote who will go on the election ballot for that party in that riding. Party leadership selections are real races that last weeks. Each party can decide for itself how the candidate selection process works. This process is simpler and less costly, but I’m not sure we end up with better candidates.
We have an Ontario provincial election in June. Our Ontario Progressive Conservative Party just elected a new leader, Doug Ford, who is the brother of Toronto’s infamous druggie ex-mayor Rob Ford. Yesterday, Doug stated that Donald Trump is a great president. Now I’m worried because Ford’s party has a substantial lead in the polls ahead of the governing Liberal Party under Premier Kathleen Wynne – she was sworn in on February 11, 2013, and became Ontario’s first female premier and Canada’s first openly gay premier. So, we may have a Trump fan as Premier in June…
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Not good. Rob Ford’s daily antics were international news. The Progressive Conservative Party sounds like an oxymoron to me. Doesn’t the terms “progressive” and “conservative” have the same antithetical meanings as in the U.S.?
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Yes – I’m deeply worried about Ford – aka “Doug the thug”. I had a field day in Civics classes about the name of the PC Party. Oxymoron, indeed. Bunch of morons.
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