Lawrence Edelman

I'm just now watching the documentary The Great Hack. It finally explains for me how I, and many others, so wrongly misjudged both the Brexit and the Trump vote. For the Trump campaign, using over 5,000 data points for each of over 100 million Americans, the company Cambridge Analytica identified weak minds, as well as people who were of voting age but never voted. They called those people "The Persuadables" . Then, using social behaviorists, they developed thousands of unique Facebook ads specifically targeted to each behavioural type of those Persuadables. Thus, the ads, praying on peoples behavioral weaknesses, were able to "sway their mind" so they would Dislike certain political candidates, and Like others. They targeted/concentrated on small groups of people, about 20,000/group in state districts where it would be possible to flip the electoral college vote of an entire state from Hillary to Trump. AND they spent over $1,000,000 per day on Facebook doing this. OMG, that is SO disgusting, it's like taking advantage of someone who can be easily hypnotized, and getting them to do something under hypnosis that they would not ordinarily do. If a hypnotist did this to you without your knowledge it would be against the law, but of a data analyst and behavioral scientist did it to you, shouldn't that be against the law?????? IT SURE IS A BRAVE NEW WORLD OUT THERE.