1) The 538 slice confounds contemporary political alienation with politician popularity, including alienation provoked by social media memes. Romney won 59% of whites, Trump 58%. During periods of extreme partisanship, history occurs at the margins. Clinton’s drop among African-Americans (around 7–9%), Latinos (5%), and her inability to mobilize the emergent Millennial boom were key. These were targets of Trump-allied social media campaigns.
2) Russian involvement isn’t a “conspiracy theory”, unless you’re a Trumpist. Do I have to roll out the various intelligence reports? The link between CA and Russia isn’t imaginary. It’s been reported by news media that you may mock, but they’re staffed by many competent journalists. I don’t want to get into a credentialing debate.
3) There’s nothing illegal, or necessarily wrong, about certain political ads on social media. There’s something very illegal, and inherently immoral, about a country with enemy intent, Russia, surreptitiously pushing false, negative, and camouflaged ads in their own self-interest. If an American official aided this effort, knowing it’s intent, it could qualify as treason.
4) Russia could have done what CA did. Then they’d be caught, like CA was. Nations need plausible deniability, even if their actions are obvious. CA played a very useful role, as intermediary. Much better than a “front” organisation, which leave tracks, break laws, and often fool no one. As for Russian manipulation, I don’t think Facebook got that, because ultimately they were naive. But that’s the past. Let’s get up to speed, now, OK?
5) Speaking of FB’s pre-2015 policies, the company embraced hacker culture. Cool. Trouble is, they are an essential social institution. Would you take an airline which embraced test pilot culture, or a hospital that purchased organs on the black market? To those of us who value democracy, FB’s perspective was just as dangerous.
6) And now for the real story. I, like you, hesitate to attribute much to CA’s psycho-babble. But there are distinctions in the U.S. population that map to geography, which it doesn’t take machine learning to see. (Pushing memes into electorally key networks does require modelling. More on this after.) Many messages are known to work among certain geographic and ethnic groups, that don’t need psychological theory to invent. John McCain’s 2000 primary lead in South Carolina evaporated after a push pull told Republicans he had a black child out of wedlock. The Bush campaign claimed it wasn’t connected (sound familiar?) But some things work.
7) FB offers dark ad posting. These ads disappear after viewing, and are very difficult to trace. The type of ad that undermined McCain could have been spread this way. A few have been noted, and many escaped under the radar. Parscale, Trump’s digital ad tzar, mentioned intention to use an ad of Clinton’s “super-predator” comments, made into demonic animation that would have violated even Fox News norms.
8) Such disappearing ads work if they’re targeted. Now here’s where CA, Russia, and the Trump campaign intersect. Pushing memes into electorally key networks requires modelling. Only fools believe they have the intuition to know who, how many, at what rate, etc. to do this.
9) CA probably lacked this capacity. But the Russians don’t. One of their competitive advantages is that Russian culture isn’t anti-intellectual. A math wiz can stumble into a GRU-related office with a model, and won’t be laughed at. Try that with the Clinton campaign (I did.) As soon as they didn’t understand (it was an Ising model), “huh?” led to eye-rolling. It may be the Trump campaign, more desperate, was different. But I think it’s most likely that for a country known for its embrace of Machiavellian intellectualism, it was modus operendi.
