Thread by @AlecStapp

Netflix recently released a documentary about the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal called "The Great Hack"

In a saner universe, the film would be regarded as the work of conspiracy theorists.

Here are 7 big things The Great Hack gets wrong...
truthonthemarket.com/2019/08/27/7-t…

1. Great Hack: "once everybody has their own reality, it’s relatively easy to manipulate them."

Wrong.

Research shows "the best estimate of the effects of campaign contact and advertising on Americans’ candidates choices in general elections is zero."

stanford.edu/~dbroock/publi…

2. Or was CA's micro-targeting strategy so effective that it would get above-average effects?

Nope.

Voters “rarely prefer targeted pandering to general messages” and “seem to prefer being solicited based on broad principles and collective beliefs.”

jstor.org/stable/10.1017…

3. Okay, but maybe CA's use of "psychographics" made their targeted messages super effective?

Still no.

"The ‘Big 5’ personality traits … only predict about 5 percent of the variation in individuals’ political orientations."

washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…

4. And if Cambridge Analytica’s “weapons-grade communications techniques” were so powerful, then Ted Cruz would be president.

Except, the Cruz campaign stopped using the data from CA before the Nevada GOP caucuses because it was garbage data.

5. The Trump campaign also phased out Cambridge Analytica data in favor of RNC data during the general election.

Also, none of CA's work for the Trump campaign involved "psychographics." Minor detail!

6. There is no evidence that Facebook data was used in the Brexit referendum.

A UK government investigation of Cambridge Analytica’s licensed data derived from Facebook “found no evidence that UK citizens were among them,” according to the BBC.

bbc.com/news/technolog…

7. The Great Hack wasn’t a “hack” at all.

CA bought the Facebook data from a university researcher who had acquired it — with permission — from Facebook app users.

This is not what normal people call a "hack." It's just semantics, but it says a lot about the doc's framing.

8. For further reading, I highly recommend this review of the film from @TheEconomist economist.com/prospero/2019/…

If anything, they are harsher than I am...

@TheEconomist 9. Also, go read @antoniogm on why digital marketers were always skeptical of Cambridge Analytica's extreme claims about "psychographics" wired.com/story/the-nois…