(03-25-2018 04:25 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(03-25-2018 02:33 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-25-2018 12:26 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(03-25-2018 12:00 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-25-2018 10:39 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  The only difference is that Trump campaign used one set, and the Obama campaign used another, in exactly the same ways.

Why do you keep bringing up the Trump campaign? The Trump campaign hired by CA, but the methodology that CA used was not disclosed to them. I am not criticizing the Trump campaign, I’ve explicitly been talking about CA, and because it was brought up, the Obama campaign. Unless something changes, the Trump campaign is at no fault here, and I don’t believe I have suggested otherwise...

Because I think the main objection to CA by most of the left (not you) is that the Trump campaign used them and won. This isn’t a big deal because of you and me. It’s a big deal because the MSM has made it a big deal. Anything they can do to say Trump,won unfairly...

I’m sure some push back is due just to the affiliation, but to use that fact to wontonly ignore the very real ethical issues CA has brought to light is short sighted. Privacy, data security, the role of advertising in electoral issues, etc are all very real and connected to how CA operated. And those topics don’t even touch on the admissions by CA about what they have done in other countries, including Kenya. Had they not been caught with their hand in a cookie jar of data that they broke the rules to get, this would have flown under the radar like Obama’s collection of non-consenting data. But it’s good to have this in the open and driving dialogue for change. Reading about the numerous legal forms of advertisements that CA (and presumably others) took advantage of is a bit scary, especially when you start seeing how many ads are being disguised as content.

Why are you worried about legal forms of advertisements? And ads are continuously disguised as content. Ask the 40 fing people that call my 'throw-away' number every day offering to give me 'information' on solar, credit cards, etc. Or hell, ask me when I give a putative client 'information' to help him out hoping that the nooks and crannies that are in that information will lead him to ask me to flesh it out more.

I guess this is the 1st Amendment absolutist in me talking. And that is why I took you to task on the 'advertisement'/propaganda issue that said was a driving difference in the matter. *Any* political ad can be classified as propaganda. They are skilled as **** as putting the sound bit you want to hear and glossing over the real issue.

For example, the guy that came to my door last weekend who was canvassing for Beto (Robert, I mean). The **** he spouted out was mom, apple pie, and peace everywhere type stuff. Literally he said that Robert's main campaign plank was that Robert is 'against PACS' (first, who doesnt dislike them, and second, glad you are against them how are you going to 'do away with them' given the 1st Amendment). So Robert's canvass was an ad, and propaganda. 99.9 per cent of of political statements in fact share this strange duality.

(As an aside he turned white when I showed him my text to my latest friend of Robert to whom I said if I got another text or phone call from a 'friend', that I would write Ted's campaign a check if they did it again. I expanded that to if I had to answer the door to another Robert canvasser I would write that check as well. But told him that if he felt lucky that my wife will probably support Robert, and that the threat only applied if I answered the door. I was quite honest with him and told him there is NFW I would vote for Robert, but I had considered it until his asinine comments on AR-15s. I guess I have turned into the single issue voter I typically dont like....)

I'm a bit worried about legal forms of advertisement because of the shapes they're taking. This whole CA issue has caused me to do a decent amount of reading, and I was rather unaware of how advertising has evolved in the digital era, especially on social media. It's a bit alarming how easy it is for advertisers to now sneak an ad into the digital space when it isn't clear that the consumer is looking at an advertisement. For example, there are native advertisements on some news websites that disguise themselves as news stories, which is a bit scary because that's a pretty deceptive practice. In advertising, who is producing the content matters, because people value the content differently, based on who it is coming from. And the less someone can make an ad look like an ad, the better.

That is why the task you think you took me to, matters to me. I do think there is a worlds of difference between an obvious political ad that discloses who funded it (so people know that the ad is a political ad) and either native content or propaganda that spreads on social media (here is a good example I saw today or what I would describe as propaganda, in the style of the type of material CA said it created: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/emma-g...itution/).