The Truth About The Trump Data Team That People Are Freaking Out About

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: February 17, 2017 at 9:02:14 AM EST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Truth About The Trump Data Team That People Are Freaking Out About
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> The Truth About The Trump Data Team That People Are Freaking Out About
> Cambridge Analytica says its “behavioral communications” techniques helped land Trump in the White House. Don’t 
> believe it, say former campaign staffers, employees, and other GOP digital strategists. “You get a lot of snake oil 
> like this in data work,” one said.
> By Kendall Taggart
> Feb 16 2017
> <https://www.buzzfeed.com/kendalltaggart/the-truth-about-the-trump-data-team-that-people-are-freaking>
>
> Last December, a Swiss publication called Das Magazin credited an obscure consulting firm that advised Donald Trump’s 
> campaign with having “turned the world upside down” on Election Day. The article was an underground sensation in 
> German, in a bootlegged English translation, and then on Vice, raising concerns that the company, Cambridge 
> Analytica, used sophisticated psychological tools to manipulate unwitting American voters.
>
> Readers shared the article more than 350,000 times, according to analytics service BuzzSumo. With it, conspiracy 
> theories gave the firm almost unlimited power to control our lives with what one critic called a “weaponized AI 
> propaganda machine.” And Cambridge Analytica itself has hardly shrunk from the controversy: Alexander Nix, the CEO, 
> boasted that it had “profiled the personality of every adult in the United States of America — 220 million people.”
>
> But interviews with 13 former employees, campaign staffers, and executives at other Republican consulting firms who 
> have seen Cambridge Analytica’s work suggest that its psychological approach was not actually used by the Trump 
> campaign and, furthermore, the company has never provided evidence that it even works. Rather than a sinister 
> breakthrough in political technology, the Cambridge Analytica story appears to be part of the traditional contest 
> among consultants on a winning political campaign to get their share of credit — and win future clients.
>
> Every person who spoke to BuzzFeed News insisted on anonymity, with many citing a reluctance to cross the company’s 
> powerful leaders, who insiders say include co-owner Rebekah Mercer, one of Trump’s major donors, and board member 
> Steve Bannon, his chief strategist.
>
> Yet when Nix claimed that on a single day during the campaign, the firm tested more than 175,000 different Facebook 
> ad variations based on personality types, Gary Coby, who ran digital advertising for the Trump campaign, took to 
> Twitter to call it a “100% Lie” and “total rubbish.” Gerrit Lansing, who worked with the campaign and is now the 
> White House chief digital officer, also dismissed Nix’s claim as “a lie.” Both declined to comment further, as did 
> Mercer and Bannon.
>
> Cambridge Analytica insists it played an “instrumental” role in the campaign and made “an important contribution to 
> the team effort,” according to a statement emailed by Joshua Kail, a public relations representative. But despite 
> articles still featured on its website touting the role psychographic techniques played in Trump’s campaign, the 
> statement added, “We have always stated on the record that Cambridge Analytica did not have the opportunity to dive 
> deeply into our psychographic offering because we simply did not have the time.”
>
> That psychographic approach starts, Nix has said, with classifying people according to five traits — openness, 
> conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. In September, the company said it planned to 
> pinpoint 20 million persuadable voters in battleground states and target them with messages carefully tailored to 
> those traits.
>
> Several people who worked directly with Cambridge Analytica told BuzzFeed News that despite its sales pitch and 
> public statements, it never provided any proof that the technique was effective or that the company had the ability 
> to execute it on a large scale. “Anytime we ever wanted to test anything as far as psychographic was concerned, they 
> would get very hesitant,” said one former campaign staffer. “At no point did they provide us any documentation that 
> it would work.”
>
> During a tense exchange at a post-election conference for Republican data firms, an audience member asked Matt 
> Oczkowski, head of Cambridge Analytica’s product team, if his firm had used any psychographic profiles at all during 
> the Trump campaign. According to two people in attendance, Oczkowski said that the company had not.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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