The Great Hack.
“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.” ~ Aneurin Bevan
“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.” ~ Aneurin Bevan
I just watched 'The Great Hack' on Netflix.
I watched it twice, just to make sure I was clear on what I thought it was, and editing this months later, I have to adjust my position, I have more information.
Now on 24th June 2020, having read 'Zucked', I am about to start on Christopher Wylie's 'Mindf*ck'.
I will be reappraising my stance as a result and will edit this piece, or write a part two, as a follow up, to show what I am learning as I travel.
The online user-content-creator social media in general is an advertisers landscape : We create content on our timelines, that content tells facebook a lot about our psychologies.
Google+, Youtube, Amazon and Facebook's management and business model, the techniques they use to expand their business, and their willingness to make advertising revenue by selling access to their users psychologies, with intimate specificity through micro-targeting.
The lure to advertisers is founded on intimate psychological data gathering of the users likes, dislikes, key strokes, reactions, engagements, fears, rages etc, which users agree to, even if we do not fully understand what that means. As Bill Hick put it they are working ' the outrage dollar' or the 'fear dollar' ...
It is true Facebook does not sell your data - it is too valuable a resource for them. They hold that data and it is their feedstock for advertisers seeking to reach precise target groups. Facebook also allows the advertisers to work on any targeted group, to observe how effective their adverts are, what ways targets are responding to various versions of the content, and it enables them to use that information in real time to refine the content and enhance the effectiveness of the advertisments.
This is relatively innocent, until a bad actor pays to target deliberately manipulative content at specific groups of vulnerable people, and enhance that for political, ideological or economic gain. And when the bad actor is spending millions of dollars a week, or billions in an election, all classed as 'advertising' then the platform becomes a vector of abuse. The platform does not create the abuse, it allows the abuse to occur.
These Companies have no functional ethical or moral code. They permit all the tactics of narcissistic bullying across their platforms, knowing it causes real harm, under the fig leaf of 'freedom of speech'. That is the problem. A bit like The Vatican.
Bill Hicks was on point in this beautiful routine.
They - the social media giants - are not the origin of such behaviours.
Most official News and Press media and all entertainment and all marketing revel in such tactics to increase sales and profitability. The Bible is as fine an example of this as any document I know of.
Telling people what to think.
I have written much about that subject on this blog over the past decade. What they appear to be doing is knowingly, if not intentionally, enabling and profiteering from these behaviours across their services because a lot of people are vulnerable to manipulation, and there is a dysfuctional vulnerablity dollar out there, for marketers to exploit.
My apologies to Carol Cadwalladr for misunderstanding her perspective. Her work and that of other journalists and, importantly, the whistle blowers like Mr. Wylie and Ms. Kaiser is really critically important work.
-----.What follows is the original piece.
It was not about a hack at all.
Hacking is gaining unauthorised access to a prohibited computer system and injecting novel code into it to play with it, extract information, undermine it etc...
Cambridge Analytica is not a hacking operation.
Though it has been associated with hacking in the Nigerian Elections in 2015, with Cambridge analytica staff organising the hacking the emails of the Nigerian President to bring him down during an election Not that that was mentioned in this 'documentary'.
Not enough time, really. There is a lot in this documentary.
My apologies to Carol Cadwalladr for misunderstanding her perspective. Her work and that of other journalists and, importantly, the whistle blowers like Mr. Wylie and Ms. Kaiser is really critically important work.
-----.What follows is the original piece.
It was not about a hack at all.
Hacking is gaining unauthorised access to a prohibited computer system and injecting novel code into it to play with it, extract information, undermine it etc...
Cambridge Analytica is not a hacking operation.
Though it has been associated with hacking in the Nigerian Elections in 2015, with Cambridge analytica staff organising the hacking the emails of the Nigerian President to bring him down during an election Not that that was mentioned in this 'documentary'.
Not enough time, really. There is a lot in this documentary.
The narrative presented in 'The Great Hack' was carefully designed to avoid the simple truth that all mainstream news that carries advertising, are also being utilised as political grooming devices and that many are actively aware of that and unwilling to do anything reasonable about it.
The Sun, Telegraph and the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Independent and the Mirror, they all carry propaganda posing as news.
The Sun, Telegraph and the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Independent and the Mirror, they all carry propaganda posing as news.
The narrative in The Hack was also to seek to blame Facebook, and the Tech companies, rather than talk about political grooming, seriously.
In essence a deflection
Another way to say it this : no one talked intelligently about political grooming.
As a cultural and politically institutionalised dynamic of abuse carried out in the public domain, a form of bullying, that is the mainstay of advertising, marketing, religious indoctrination and propaganda.
Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-semite, racist, terrorist supporting politician; he is exactly the opposite.
The press bullying of him, and his strength of character, are an object lesson in how to deal with public bullies.
Here's my take on the 'documentary'...
Ms. Kaiser is no ordinary whistle blower...
Ms Kaiser worked for the Obama Election campaign, a proven grooming operation - I said so at the time, even without understanding the way online micro targeting was being weaponised by groups such as Cambridge Analytica, because I was paying attention to the funding drives on facebook, and to the mainstream print and broadcast campaigns. And because it's been the basic dynamic of neoliberal 'democracy' for a long time and I understood that no rational citizen would ever vote for policies that cause harm to his or her own community, voters are not that irrational.
Ms. Kaiser was involved in the 2015 Nigerian Election campaign, where she introduced a team of Israeli specialists to the Cambridge Analytica team, who had hacked the incumbent Nigerian President's emails...
Cambridge Analytica ran campaigns for right wing candidates in a number of third world countries, to earn a few bob and to prove the efficacy of the model, before going on to the really big bucks. 68 countiries, and probably more. Hundreds of elections.
Trumps Election 2016 campaign spent just under one hundred million US dollars on their facebook messaging.
Ms. Kaiser worked on Trump's campaign at the very core of it's Facebook operations, fully aware of what she was doing. She was at the very center of this. She knew they were targeting peoples biases, fears, insecurities and prejudice in order to exploit those for political gain.
The term for this activity is grooming.
It is taboo to say this out loud. "shhhhhhhshshs!"
In essence a deflection
Another way to say it this : no one talked intelligently about political grooming.
As a cultural and politically institutionalised dynamic of abuse carried out in the public domain, a form of bullying, that is the mainstay of advertising, marketing, religious indoctrination and propaganda.
Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-semite, racist, terrorist supporting politician; he is exactly the opposite.
The press bullying of him, and his strength of character, are an object lesson in how to deal with public bullies.
Here's my take on the 'documentary'...
Ms. Kaiser is no ordinary whistle blower...
Ms Kaiser worked for the Obama Election campaign, a proven grooming operation - I said so at the time, even without understanding the way online micro targeting was being weaponised by groups such as Cambridge Analytica, because I was paying attention to the funding drives on facebook, and to the mainstream print and broadcast campaigns. And because it's been the basic dynamic of neoliberal 'democracy' for a long time and I understood that no rational citizen would ever vote for policies that cause harm to his or her own community, voters are not that irrational.
Ms. Kaiser was involved in the 2015 Nigerian Election campaign, where she introduced a team of Israeli specialists to the Cambridge Analytica team, who had hacked the incumbent Nigerian President's emails...
Cambridge Analytica ran campaigns for right wing candidates in a number of third world countries, to earn a few bob and to prove the efficacy of the model, before going on to the really big bucks. 68 countiries, and probably more. Hundreds of elections.
Trumps Election 2016 campaign spent just under one hundred million US dollars on their facebook messaging.
Ms. Kaiser worked on Trump's campaign at the very core of it's Facebook operations, fully aware of what she was doing. She was at the very center of this. She knew they were targeting peoples biases, fears, insecurities and prejudice in order to exploit those for political gain.
The term for this activity is grooming.
It is taboo to say this out loud. "shhhhhhhshshs!"
Ms. Kaiser mentioned the use of weaponised communications tactics, which are apparently 'restricted' by the Department of Defence. I would say that every Instiotutional Religion deploys the exact same behaviour. Indoctrination of the faithful. Such practice is normative in violent hierarchies. Spreading stories, maintaining a narrative, optics, favours and punishment.
I would take issue with Carole Cadwalladr's effort to load all the blame to Facebook and the Tech companies. They are liable and culpable, I agree, yet not singularly so. That has to be called out - the general practice of targeting known cognitive biases (vulnerability) ought itself be declared a criminal offence, as it is an abusive thing to do to another person.
Alexander Nix
Included in the 'documentary' was two brief sections covering Alexander Nix, the CEO of CA.
His boasting at a dinner meeting about CA's abilities, and his recalcitrant appearance before the House of Commons Committee Hearings on Fake News, where he got off very lightly.
Cambridge Analytica was shut down due to bankruptcy, - such a difficult decision to make (not), and so much money already banked, lives ruined and it is likely that the bulk of their files are now missing, destroyed or lost, etc - there's a hole in the evidence set.
Well, well, well.
If you wish to check the nature of the Observer and The Guardian take a peek at Medialens a UK based news media analysis website which has, since 2001, confronted the propaganda that gets passed off as 'news reporting' - in effect misleading readerships in line with existing established political hegemony via the readerships triggering their cognitive biases, or as I would call it, the grooming of ordinary folk via opinion posing as evidence (WMD) in the UK media.
Chomksy called that process of propaganda the manufacturing of consent.
www.medialens.org is well worth a look.
The Great Hack
I found The Great Hack riveting - and yet I felt it was somehow dishonest. That said, everyone might want to to watch it, and note how we, in our own unique case, are being mislead - turn the exercise into a learning by experience.
It also tried to pass off Russian influence on UK voting as a major influential factor, which is inaccurate - all competing powers brief against their perceived opponents, through various media outlets. That is standard practice, and no great secret or conspiracy. It rarely has any meaningful effect upon the target populations elections.
It also tried to pass off Russian influence on UK voting as a major influential factor, which is inaccurate - all competing powers brief against their perceived opponents, through various media outlets. That is standard practice, and no great secret or conspiracy. It rarely has any meaningful effect upon the target populations elections.
The major effective malign influences are always homegrown. The home government has more to fear from a people who realise they are being bullied than any other external state or agency.
In this previous posting, I outlined in the most precise and concise terms, the true nature of political grooming gangs.
Let's have a laugh!
Boris Johnson's £10 million grooming operation will go nowhere near his hair or his crumpled suits...
Boris Johnson's £10 million grooming operation will go nowhere near his hair or his crumpled suits...
and
"You've been Groomed!"
New Reality Show Pitch.
'Enjoy the thrills and spills of indoctrinators, indoctrination and the indoctrinated as our intrepid reporter takes you on a journey of discovery, breakdown and release."
pitched to ITV, BBC, CNN etc...
all rejected it as 'improbable'.
subtext - are you trying to kill us off.
( yes, of course, you are grooming gangsters!)
No, i did not pitch this, this is all make believe fake news...
--Here's a track I created to articulate the realities of political and ideological grooming.
https://soundcloud.com/coreluminous/we-know-how-to-groom-you
subtext - are you trying to kill us off.
( yes, of course, you are grooming gangsters!)
No, i did not pitch this, this is all make believe fake news...
--Here's a track I created to articulate the realities of political and ideological grooming.
https://soundcloud.com/coreluminous/we-know-how-to-groom-you
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
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Who benefits if we demonise the 'racists' whilst power tramples over EVERYONE?
Diane Abbot, and the Editors of The Guardiuan and other Newspapers, (and their readerships) would do well to read Paolo Friere's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed' and actually take some of it in. Though they'd very quickly find themselves unemployed if they did so and acted on what Friere wrote, which is truth and beauty, REAL power.... the power to become fully human.
I am appalled at the craven nature of this discourse.