10.03.2017

Now we get down to it

Russians took a page from corporate America by using Facebook tool to ID and influence voters - The Washington Post

https://goo.gl/5aZnLM

Yep, the same advertising technology that sells you Wells Fargo bank and Equifax, not to mention the R's and the D's, is what allowed those sneaky Russians to weaponize (in the overwrought lingo of MSNBC commentators) the information battlespace (ditto) that is Facebook to attack (ditto the ditto) our recent presidential election.

"These are the same methods and sophisticated tools that the pharmaceutical companies were using, that big oil companies were using," said Philip N. Howard of Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project. "This was regular ad technology that regular advertisers use."

Facebook, of course, assures the Congress it can keep those pesky Reds from using the advertising tool they call "Custom Audiences" to make mischief in the future. 

But wait…

Custom Audiences also allowed a business to know when consumers had viewed a particular pair of shoes on a website so that they could be repeatedly shown an ad for those shoes on Facebook and elsewhere online. As consumers spent more time on social media, the tool became a driver of Facebook's ad business — and of the company's sevenfold increase in value since its initial public offering in 2012.

Italics mine. 

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