How Cambridge Analytica manipulated Facebook users

The whistleblower Christopher Wylie explains how the communications company proceeded to establish psychological profiles in order to influence the voters of the American presidential election.

Knowing that you like chocolate and action movies does not, at first glance, help a political party to know how to convince you to vote for them. It would be a mistake to believe that the simple Facebook profile of millions of users made it possible to weigh on the outcome of the American presidential election of 2016. What the Cambridge Analytica scandal teaches us is that it was necessary to cross amounts of other information to achieve relevant psychological profiles. And this is the story that details today at the Guardian Christopher Wylie, the former employee of the communications company behind the revelation of the exploitation of personal data of 57 million Internet users.

32,000 users answered the quiz

First of all, it was necessary to convince Internet users to answer the personality quiz which included 120 questions. Which has not been easy. Hence the idea of ​​paying all participants between $ 2 and $ 5. The problem is that the sample of the population thus obtained was not representative, with too many students, unemployed, and "rich white women" who are bored, according to Christopher Wylie. Conversely, African-American men were particularly difficult to convince: they were paid slightly more accordingly. They are in total 32 000 to have answered.

The questions have classically explored five major tracks, according to the famous model called "ocean" widely used for personality quizzes: openness, professional conscience, extraversion (extroverts or introverts?), Amiability (friendly and talented). of compassion?) and neurosis (what is the degree of emotional stability of the person?).

The data has been crossed with the electoral register

The quiz was not offered on Facebook but on Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform, then Qualtrics. It was only at the very end that Facebook came into play. To obtain a payment code, the reward expected by the user, it was necessary to connect to his Facebook account. And this is where the trap closed because Cambridge Analytica collected all the data from your account on the social network as your precious likes and also your answers to the quiz, in order to cross the two. The app was also able to collect other details like your real name, your location and your contact information, on the back of the sites offering the quiz. "It meant that you could link the answers to a natural person and therefore to the electoral register," explains Christopher Wylie. This allowed to establish psychological models and to establish detailed profiles of profiles in 11 key states of the campaign from the end of August 2014.

In a second step, the application also siphoned the address book of the user and the data of his contacts. And this is how Cambridge Analytica has surpassed the 50 million mark of affected Internet users. A gigantic database on which it only remained to turn the 253 (!) Algorithms developed for this purpose. All the work of influence then consisted in adapting and personalizing the messages sent according to the profiles. This could even be done automatically with mailings based on groups and subgroups formed. Christopher Wylie takes the example of unemployment. A priori, everyone is against and everyone is in favor of a job creation policy. It is necessary to express it differently in order to enter into emotional resonance with the person. "If you talk to someone who is conscientious, you insist on the opportunity to succeed and the responsibility that a job can give him. If it's an "open" person, you tell him it's a chance to grow as a person. If it's a neurotic person, you're insisting on how safe it will be for your family, "says Christopher Wylie.

It remains to be seen whether this has really affected the outcome of the vote. The developer Alexander Kogan, the head of the quiz, is not convinced. But it is interesting, it is true, to minimize the scope of these manipulations.

paypal,facebook,yahoo,mail,google,maps,ebay,amazon,barcelone,realmadrid,netflix,craigslist,AliCarter,Liverpool,AlfieEvans,YankeesVsAngels,RonanFarrow,YeVsThePeople,MesotheliomaLawFirm,Donate,CarToCharity,California,Donate,Car,ForTaxCredit,DonateCarsInMa;Insurance,Loans,Mortgage,Attorney,Credit,Lawyer,Donate,Degree,Hosting,Claimcashfear,softwares,money,football,SPORTNEWS,cars,carrental,cellphone,phonenumber,forex,torrent,voip,net,adsence,tollsspeakers,tipsspeakers,iphonespeakers,phones,iphone4,facebook,youtube,twitter,livematch,newslive,watchmatchforfree,watchlaligaforfree,watchserieAliveonjsc+,softwares,football,SPORTNEWS,cars,carrental,cellphone,phonenumber,forex,torrent,voip,net,adsence,tollsspeakers,tipsspeakers,iphonespeakers,phones,iphone4,facebook,youtube,twitter,livematch,newslive,watch match for free,watch laliga for free,watch serie A live on jsc+,windows 7,windows 8