Thread by @cwarzel

this is quite obviously a scandal for facebook. no question. but the one thing that i feel this never quite addresses is whether that segmenting + ads is effective. it's my main beef with Cambridge Analytica stuff. That connection has never felt like its been well proven to me

now that shouldn't take away from the scandal of the campaign actively TRYING to do it. that's the scandal. FB helped facilitate it. also scandalous. But I just have no idea if it moves the dial.

i spent a lot of time this summer looking into political advertising weeds & when the reporter in this segment is rattling off what the campaign knew about the voters...a lot of that is just like standard voter file info. it doesn't necessarily mean they had those ppl pegged

i appreciated that the piece talked about Clinton's baggage with black voters and lack of WI campaigning. (again it's a scandal to target to deter them) but...i also don't believe that these ads are mind control! and i think the burden of proof is higher than this meets tbh

there’s also something infantilizing about suggesting these voters would just straight up be persuaded by these ads. ads are not the same as pages or a community where ideologies can change latch on and harden. anyhow...feel like people are more complicated than this allows for

what this does prove though is how much it sucks that the broken, invasive, corrupt and very fraudulent online ad industry has ported itself over onto our politics