The Data that turned the world upside down

On November 9., Ashburner Nix CEO of Cambridge Analytica, then little-known British company based in London sent out a press release: “We are thrilled that our revolutionary approach to data-driven communication has played such an integral part in President-elect Trump’s extraordinary win,” His company wasn’t just integral to Trump’s online campaign, but also to Brexit. Anyone who has not spent the last five years living on another planet will be familiar with the term Big Data. Big Data means that everything we do, both on and offline, leaves digital traces. Every purchase we make with our cards, every search we type into Google, every movement we make when our mobile phone is in our pocket, every “like” is stored. Especially every “like.” For a long time, it was not entirely clear what use this data could have—except, perhaps, that we might find ads for high blood pressure remedies just after we’ve Googled “reduce blood pressure.”. Now you need to know Psychometric analysis. At Cambridge, they, “were able to form a model to predict the personality of every single adult in the United States of America”. Trump’s canvassers were provided with an app with which they could identify the political views and personality types of the inhabitants of a house. It was the same app provider used by Brexit campaigners. Trump’s people only rang at the doors of houses that the app rated as receptive to his messages. The canvassers came prepared with guidelines for conversations tailored to the personality type of the resident…. WOW

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