How the Internet is Killing Democracy with Jamie Bartlett

[Music] should we start with Cambridge analytic oh I know that's what you're thinking isn't he yeah let me just ask for a quick show of hands how many people think that Cambridge analytic er swung the election for Donald Trump it's a small number it's maybe a quarter of their audience think that III think that they did and I'm gonna try and convince you why and how and why I think it really does matter but not in the way that a lot of people say I think there has been an awful lot of nonsense spoken about Cambridge analytical lately the idea that they have developed some incredibly powerful psychological warfare tool that has managed magically to manipulate millions of people into voting for something I think his ludicrous I think it's often used at the moment by liberals as a convenient excuse as to why Donald Trump won and thereby avoids them asking much harder questions about why their candidate lost but that doesn't mean to say that came to general it occur what was not incredibly important let me explain why and how I don't think they used psychographic techniques to manipulate people in the US election I think what they did was actually far simpler and most of it perfectly legal came general Italy had built up a very large database using commercially available datasets your spending patterns some of your web browsing stuff things that people can buy and they use pretty standard techniques in advertising to try to work out what it is that people care about what motivates them will sort of things that they're interested in pretty standard stuff for marketing and advertising companies they do it all the time 13 staff members from Cambridge analytic I went to work in the Donald Trump campaign team in project Alamo in Texas and there they worked alongside Facebook employees who were seconded in Google employees who were seconded in and the RNC date analysts the Republican data analysts and essentially what they did or basically all political party now do is they try to build maps of persuadable voters people who they thought could be persuaded to vote Donald Trump and over the course of their analysis they built up several what they called universes groups of people with particular interest like mothers that are worried about child care people that are worried about gun control and so on and then just targeted them relentlessly with messages about those questions those issues those considerations but what they did importantly was they very quickly identified that there were enough persuadable voters in particularly Wisconsin Michigan and Pennsylvania that they thought could be persuaded to vote for Trump everyone at the time thought those three states were out of the reach this was the blue wall of Clinton territory but Cambridge analytical data elements ed no not really we actually think there's probably enough persuadable Donald Trump voters in each of those three states they advised Brad Pascal who ran the Trump campaign team to switch a lot of his ear his money his resource into those three states and they started bombarding people with adverts bear in mind that Donald Trump won those three states by less than one percentage point bear in mind that Facebook's own internal research Wisconsin was I think 11 or maybe there's 20,000 votes only if Clinton had won those three states she would be President bear in mind that Facebook's own internal white paper found that Donald Trump's team made significantly better use of Facebook but especially custom audience is a particular type of advertising technique that you use and I think you can make a pretty good case the Cambridge analytic er made the difference in the Trump campaign but not by using clever sophisticated mind manipulative tools but getting to that enough of the right people at the right time with the right messages just enough to swing it just a small amount one or two percentage points is all that it takes that's what I think happened and I think we're missing the point if we start worrying too much about psychographics and personality based profiling although I do think that is where we are heading by the way I think in the next 10 or 15 years we will see a lot of advances in the way that we are targeted and being profiled unless regulation gets there first but that's the logic of modern advertising is to of course learn more and more about you because then you can be served up better adverts which means you're more likely to click which means you're more likely or Facebook or Google or whoever it's more likely to be able to sell good adverts for you so it's going to improve but I don't think it's what made the difference psychographic personality based profiling in this case but that doesn't mean we should be complacent about it because I think the general drift towards more and more personalized data profiling and personalized micro targeting he's actually a NASA mer in many ways to democracy especially as it continues to evolve and improve because what essentially it does is it means rather than having a big public sphere where we all discuss all the great issues of the day the logic and the tendency is to target people with just very personalized messages to them that flies under the regulator's radar in a way we can't see so there isn't that big public debate that we all sort of care about there's a millions of very small private debates going on how do you hold a politician to account well if they're sending a million personalized messages to a million different people and bear in mind this data collection frenzy has really only just kids got started it's not going to be long before what you eat will be recorded by your smart fridge and your voice tone will be recorded by your personal AI assistant and where you're driving to work will be recorded by your smart car does anyone really think that politicians wouldn't use that data if they thought that it gives them an edge if they thought they could work out that you're more likely to vote for a right-wing candidate when you're hungry because you're angry and angry people I'm all right wing and so let's target them but just before dinner time with an advert about immigration so I think that the the way to think about what's happened with Cambridge journalism what is the very basis of this advertising model and micro-targeting actually doing to how we understand democracy and how it works because think about this I have never known elections that have been so disputed as brexit and Trump where people have just considered to be a legitimate that they think has been and I think this is a really important part of the story [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: RSA

Views: 8,326

Rating: 4.2626729 out of 5

Keywords: Cambridge Analytica, election, Donald trump, liberals, US election, database, advertising, marketing, donald trump campaign, facebook, data analysts, vote donald trump, childcare, gun control, persuadable voters, modern advertising, data profiling, politicians, Brexit, rsa, rsa events, Royal society of arts, Jamie Bartlett rsa

Id: YBpdW9W-GIc

Length: 7min 0sec (420 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 18 2018