MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-01-27 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
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| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] (forw) [skeptic] Alex Jones says Infowars has
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Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben-at-mrbrklyn.com):
> put your mind at rest
> http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/alex-jones-white-house-press-access
Well, as James Redekop stressed, it _was_ just Alex Jones talking, and
bullshit is the man's work product.
It should be also noted that the senior State Department resignations
story by Washington Post guy Josh Rogin was largely nonsense, or at
least exaggerated out of proportion. Dissected here, in, yes, lefty rag
Web site vox.com:
http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/27/14405542/washington-post-state-department-resignations
The _most_ fascinating news story I've read is an analysis piece that
originally appeared December 2016 in Swiss news magazine _Das Magazin_
(Zurich). There's an unauthorized translation to English, here. It's
the most interesting article I've read so far this year:
https://antidotezine.com/2017/01/22/trump-knows-you/
Says there had been a breakthrough in Big Data psychometrics over the
years 2008 to 2012, resulting in the creation of firms Strategic
Communications Laboratories and its subsidiary Cambridge Analytica,
devoted to the use of those techniques to practical politics. (Steve
Bannon is on the Board of Directors.)
This is of course different from, but a logical extension of, the use of
Big Data for spying on people (excuse me, 'targeted marketing')
generally.
Cambridge Analytica claims to have detailed personality profiles on all
220 million adult Americans -- but what's interesting is the _use_ of
those profiles: narrowcasted appeals. The Trump campaign intensively
used this data to narrowcast out _individually_, per-person Facebook and
other contacts aiming to push the documented hot buttons of individual
voters -- out of public view. This is where the constantly changing
public positions of Candidate Orangutan proved not an embarrassment but
rather essential: Targeted private-channel communications cherry-picked
the specific things Trump said that each target voter was deemed to most
want to hear, and carefully left out all the things the man said that
contradicted those.
This allowed Candidate Trump to be all things to all people -- for a
time. Just long enough for a deluded 27.2% of voters to pick him and
Torequemada.
On the day of the third presidential debate between Trump and Clinton,
Trump’s team blasted out 175,000 distinct test variations on his
arguments, mostly via Facebook. The messages varied mostly in their
microscopic details, in order to communicate optimally with their
recipients: different titles, colors, subtitles, with different images
or videos. The granularity of this message tailoring digs all the way
down to tiny target groups, Nix told Das Magazin. “We can target
specific towns or apartment buildings. Even individual people.”
But of course he can no longer pull that trick, and increasingly looks
like the dog that caught the car bumper. (How long before he bails,
goes back to his gilded Manhattan tree-fort, and punts to Torquemada?)
How does it feel to have been suckered by a secretive Big Data firm run
by an anarchist who jokingly calls himself a 'Leninist' (Bannon), i.e.,
who wants to tear down the country just for the lulz? Hmm, Ruben?
(As I've noted offlist, I am very much _not_ trying to lobby you. If I
were trying to change your mind, I'd be flattering you and playing to
your prejudices, rather than confronting you with unpalatable truths and
pointing out that you got conned.)
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