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Professor Michal Kosinski is famous for two things: pioneering research that if you believe the hype put Trump in the White House and took Britain out of Europe, and being offered a job and threatened with a lawsuit by Facebook on the very same day.

Now at Stanford, Kosinski previously worked at Cambridge Universitys Psychometrics centre where, in 2013, he published research showing how a persons Facebook likes could predict their sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious views, intelligence, happiness and political beliefs. For example, people who were intelligent liked Thunderstorms and The Colbert Report, and heterosexual men tended to like Wu Tang Clan, Shaq and Being Confused After Waking Up From Naps. The study made it all the more clear you could psychologically profile a person based on their online activity, which lead to the threat and offer from Facebook of which neither came to fruition and Kosinskis notoriety.

It is now widely accepted that political campaigning must involve a social media element (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The theory goes that by profiling a person from their online activity (not just Facebook likes, which went private shortly after Kosinski published his research), campaigners can then target, or manipulate, a person using that information. The more they know, the better the chances they have of swaying your vote, using whats euphemistically referred to as personal communication on social media or an advert tailored to your exact psychology: nudging on steroids.

Kosinski, for the record, doesnt believe the hype. He tells The Independent Barack Obama was the first one to use big data about individual voters to target them in 2008, adding: I don't remember liberals losing sleep at that time. Politicians dont need social media to manipulate people, he says. Take the First World War where politicians convinced millions of people to literally go and die for no good reason.

But that doesnt mean Facebook hasnt changed everything. Lets say, in one day of doorstep canvassing, a campaigner can expect to walk an average of four miles to speak to around 200 people. The point of this effort is often not to change minds or sway the results of an election, but to find out who people are voting for and if they are likely to vote at all. With analysis based on someones Facebook you already have an idea and can move straight on to persuading them.

Thats a strategy Cambridge Analytica, a London-based technology company which calls itself a specialist in using data to change audience behaviour and famously worked with Trumps presidential campaign, acknowledges using to try to influence voters. The companys efforts to sway voters have been described as, alternatively, psychological warfare or shady but a spokesperson for Cambridge Analytica disputes that, telling The Independent: There are some serious misunderstandings and crazy conspiracy theories out there.

The company want to make it clear that the Trump win was not down to some mass brainwashing exercise. Cambridge Analytica used the same kind of political data programme as the Obama 2012 campaign to identify, persuade, and turn out voters. Cambridge Analytica did not have the opportunity to dive deeply into our psychographic offering during the US presidential campaign because we simply did not have the time. Building a presidential data program often takes campaigns well over a year, they said.

The Trump campaign was not the first to target voters using big data (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) (AP)

So did Facebook win it for Trump? People ask me if algorithms won the [US] election and my answer is yes and no. Its like asking if TV ads won the election. Its just a fact of political life now that if you want to be a serious politician you need to use some TV ads, and you need to have some rallies, Kosinski says. But you also need to have some personal communication on social media. All of the sides of the spectrum are using it.

To speak to Kosiniski is to be excited about Facebooks potential to transform our democracy. For one thing, he offers hope for everyone on the verge of emigrating to avoid hearing the phrase strong and stable one more time before 8 June. As he puts it, politicians need to rely on sound bites at the moment they need to connect using TV and radio appearances and as such they need to settle for a lowest common denominator slogan that could appeal to anyone and everyone. So you say Yes we can; Make America great again, Kosinski says. But if you can talk with people one on one, why would you waste time throwing slogans at them?

Not everyone is so enthusiastic. Trump representative Brad Parscale famously boasted to Bloomberg he had spent money targeting Facebook users with dark posts non-public posts whose viewership is controlled making use of a 1996 sound bite to discourage African American Democrats from voting for Clinton in Florida, a state she lost by 112, 911 votes. How can that be good for democracy?

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (Paul J. Richards/AFP/David Goldman/AP)

Theres no question that trying to discourage people from voting is an awful and anti-democratic thing, Kosinski says. The fact that we all talk about it is the best example of how a digital environment helps us to really quickly notice and spread information about these behaviours.

A Cambridge Analytica(CA) spokesperson said: Voter suppression is illegal and we did not do anything of the sort. CAs data science programme and digital marketing was entirely aimed at persuading voters to vote for our client [Trump], increasing turnout among his supporters, and boosting volunteer numbers and donations. CA did not engage in any efforts to discourage voters from casting their ballot.

In journalist Tim Shipmans authoritative account of the Brexit referendum, All Out War, Leave.EUs director of communication Andy Wigmore discusses how their campaign embraced people who had never voted before. Those people are now involved in the political process, and Kosinski says thats a very good thing for democracy regardless of how you feel about the referendum result. Mainstream politicians in the past tended to ignore whole groups of people because they didnt have time or money to talk to people. Social media gave politicians the ability to talk to everyone individually.

The next generation of politicians on both sides of the spectrum will now start talking to those who were excluded or ignored in the past. We will have more informed voters which is great for democracy.

Other experts arent so sure. Vesselin Popov, business development director at the Camdridge Universitys Psychometrics Centre where Kosinski used to work, says the issue is people often dont know if they are being targeted. If its done really well you wont realise its happening, he tells The Independent. Theres not one place that you can hide from it, its an assault. Its not all online; different people can be sent to your door based on your personality. They could send leaflets to your area with emotionally charged messages or even fake messages. Its not confined to Facebook.

There is currently no obligation for campaigns, or third parties, to report the content of digital ads (the Conservatives recently refused to disclose theirs to The Independent). While we can all see a poster campaign, or know that Theresa Mays slogan is strong and stable, online targeting can go unnoticed; whether its with voter suppression, or fake news, or a clever banner designed by an ad agency.

A Trump poster in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq (Peter Holley/Washington Post)

But is it psychological warfare? You might call it that, Popov reasons.

The solution, Popov says shortly before the Information Commissioners Office announces the very same is an inquiry sooner rather than later. The inquiry is looking at how political parties target Britons through social media and those political parties have been warned that in using peoples data to target them, they could be breaking the law. When we speak again, Popov says its a start but its not enough. Only the government can call an inquiry into the use of these methods more widely (i.e. outside of specific breach of electoral law) and therefore we may need to continue efforts outside of these channels to see progress in the daily practices around personal data.

This is new, murky ground, with obvious pitfalls and obvious benefits. If you believe Kosinski, the fact that modern campaigns will increasingly be individually targeted to voters can only be a good thing. Personalised political communication is great for everyone involved and for democracy as well. To be able to talk to you about things that are relevant to you, that youre interested in, that match your dreams or address your fears, is making you the citizen more engaged in politics. And its great for democracy if more people engage in politics.

He acknowledges that the role of journalism is to warn of the pitfalls of technology, but hes keen to point out how good the same technology could be and that goes beyond elections. Marketing tools are being used to sell you washing powder, he says. If you could use the same tools to convince people to smoke less, exercise more and pay their taxes its just great for society.

Link:
Facebook: good for democracy or a way to wage psychological warfare on voters? - The Independent

By Gershom Gorenberg By Gershom Gorenberg June 4 at 8:02 PM

It all happened so unexpectedly 50 years ago: the crisis between Egypt and Israel, the war that began on June 5, 1967, and expanded from one front to three, the silence of the guns after just six days, and the cease-fire lines that marked Israels conquests of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Sinai and the Gaza Strip.

Suddenly, Israel was occupying land beyond its sovereign territory and ruling over the people who lived there. An official euphemism was born that summer the newly conquered land would be called administered territory. In the autumn, official maps stopped showing the pre-war lines. The new maps were also a euphemism, in pictorial form. The reality of occupation remained.

Much has changed, including the amount of occupied territory. But 50 years later we by which I mean we Israelis still have an occupation.

Or rather, the occupation has us. It has a hold on us. It is the addiction that Israel cannot shake. Much has been written on how the occupation affects the Palestinians living under Israeli rule, how it constrains their freedom of movement, their political rights and their dreams. To that, Id like to add whats less obvious: The occupation is what keeps Israel from being what it could be. It drags us down.

The occupation conceivably could have been less oppressive and might have lasted less time but for something else that happened in 1967: Israel began settling its citizens in occupied territory.

Back then Israeli strategists believed settlements would add to Israeli security. It was an anachronistic concept based on how kibbutzim had stood against relatively weak invading Arab armies in 1948. The 1973 Yom Kippur War should have buried this idea. The Israeli army had to evacuate Golan settlers in the midst of fighting Syrias powerful armored divisions.

By today its clear that the settlements have turned into an ever-larger military burden. Israeli army units deployed in the West Bank have to protect them. Soldiers, some highly trained for essential tasks, are rotated out of other units for guard duty at settlements, including outposts with a handful of families. Because of secrecy, no one know quite how much this military boondoggle costs.

Actually, no one knows exactly how much the settlement project as a whole costs. The incentives and subsidies that encourage Israelis to move to settlements are scattered throughout the budget. As just one example, a report issued last week by the Adva Center, a Tel Aviv social policy institute, detailed how over the years settlements have enjoyed more generous funding from the national government for municipal budgets than other Israeli communities.

But the total outlay is well hidden. Its like the money that a heavy drinker spends on his liquor without ever adding it up, because that would mean facing his problem. All we know is that without this outlay, Israel would have more money to reduce a child poverty rate thats among the worst in the developed world, to add academic jobs that would prevent brain drain, to add hours to the school day and reduce class sizes. As a country, were doing less with our potential than we could without our addiction.

The worst damage that the occupation does, though, may be to Israels democracy. Across a border not marked on maps, our government rules over millions of people who cannot vote. With this mortal aberration accepted as normal, it was easier to pass an election law in 2014 that aimed (unsuccessfully) at keeping parties backed by Israels Arab citizens out of parliament.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies regularly try to muzzle Breaking the Silence, an organization of veterans that publishes soldiers testimony about service in the occupied territories. They may as well say out loud that they prefer the occupation to Israels tradition of free, fierce political debate.

Back to 1967: One day that summer, French philosopher and journalist Raymond Aron interviewed Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. I found a transcript, or part of one, in Eshkols office files. Eshkol said that if Israel couldnt reach a peace agreement on its conditions with Jordan, Well stay where we are. Aron asked if he didnt fear a popular uprising. No, Eshkol replied, This isnt Algeria.

Eshkols answer showed he knew his interviewer. A decade before, Aron had scandalized his conservative political colleagues with his essay, The Algerian Tragedy. Hed argued that for Frances own sake, it had to give up its colony. Holding Algeria by force violated liberal values, he wrote, whereas, The loss of Algeria is not the end of France.

In sundry ways, the West Bank isnt Algeria. Still, Eshkol was mistaken, and Arons point holds true for Israel and the occupation. The loss of the occupied territories wont be the end of Israel. Holding on to them might be.

Originally posted here:
How occupation has damaged Israel's democracy - Washington Post

Foreign Policy (blog)

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Cambodian Democracy Makes Its Last Gasps - Foreign Policy (blog)

Noam Chomsky. (Illustration by Susan Coyne)

For 50 years, Noam Chomsky, has been Americas Socrates, our public pest with questions that sting. He speaks not to the city square of Athens but a vast global village in pain and now, it seems, in danger.

The world in trouble today still beats a path to Noam Chomskys door, if only because hes been forthright for so long about a whirlwind coming. Not that the world quite knows what do with Noam Chomskys warnings of disaster in the making. Remember the famous faltering of the patrician TV host William F. Buckley Jr., meeting Chomskys icy anger about the war in Vietnam, in 1969.

Its a strange thing about Noam Chomsky: The New York Times calls him arguably the most important public thinker alive, though the paper seldom quotes him, or argues with him, and giant pop-media stars on network television almost never do. And yet the man is universally famous and revered in his 89th year: Hes the scientist who taught us to think of human language as something embedded in our biology, not a social acquisition; hes the humanist who railed against the Vietnam War and other projections of American power, on moral grounds first, ahead of practical considerations. He remains a rock star on college campuses, here and abroad, and hes become a sort of North Star for the post-Occupy generation that today refuses to feel the Bern-out.

He remains, unfortunately, a figure alien in the places where policy gets made. But on his home ground at MIT, he is a notably accessible old professor who answers his e-mail and receives visitors like us with a twinkle.

Last week, we visited Chomsky with an open-ended mission in mind: We were looking for a nonstandard account of our recent history from a man known for telling the truth. Wed written him that we wanted to hear not what he thinks but how. Hed written back that hard work and an open mind have a lot to do with it, also, in his words, a Socratic-style willingness to ask whether conventional doctrines are justified.

Christopher Lydon: All we want you to do is to explain where in the world we are at a time

Noam Chomsky: Thats easy.

CL: [Laughs]When so many people were on the edge of something, something historic. Is there a Chomsky summary?

CL: Yeah.

NC: Well, a brief summary I think is if you take a look at recent history since the Second World War, something really remarkable has happened. First, human intelligence created two huge sledgehammers capable of terminating our existenceor at least organized existenceboth from the Second World War. One of them is familiar. In fact, both are by now familiar. The Second World War ended with the use of nuclear weapons. It was immediately obvious on August 6, 1945, a day that I remember very well. It was obvious that soon technology would develop to the point where it would lead to terminal disaster. Scientists certainly understood this.

In 1947 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists inaugurated its famous Doomsday Clock. You know, how close the minute hand was to midnight? And it started seven minutes to midnight. By 1953 it had moved to two minutes to midnight. That was the year when the United States and Soviet Union exploded hydrogen bombs. But it turns out we now understand that at the end of the Second World War the world also entered into a new geological epic. Its called the Anthropocene, the epic in which humans have a severe, in fact maybe disastrous impact on the environment. It moved again in 2015, again in 2016. Immediately after the Trump election late January this year, the clock was moved again to two and a half minutes to midnight, the closest its been since 53.

So theres the two existential threats that weve createdwhich might in the case of nuclear war maybe wipe us out; in the case of environmental catastrophe, create a severe impactand then some.

A third thing happened. Beginning around the 70s, human intelligence dedicated itself to eliminating, or at least weakening, the main barrier against these threats. Its called neoliberalism. There was a transition at that time from the period of what some people call regimented capitalism, the 50s and 60s, the great growth period, egalitarian growth, a lot of advances in social justice and so on

CL: Social democracy

NC: Social democracy, yeah. Thats sometimes called the golden age of modern capitalism. That changed in the 70s with the onset of the neoliberal era that weve been living in since. And if you ask yourself what this era is, its crucial principle is undermining mechanisms of social solidarity and mutual support and popular engagement in determining policy.

Its not called that. What its called is freedom, but freedom means a subordination to the decisions of concentrated, unaccountable, private power. Thats what it means. The institutions of governanceor other kinds of association that could allow people to participate in decision makingthose are systematically weakened. Margaret Thatcher said it rather nicely in her aphorism about there is no society, only individuals.

Since the Second World War, we have created two means of destruction. Since the neoliberal era, we have dismantled the way of handling them.

She was actually, unconsciously no doubt, paraphrasing Marx, who in his condemnation of the repression in France said, The repression is turning society into a sack of potatoes, just individuals, an amorphous mass cant act together. That was a condemnation. For Thatcher, its an idealand thats neoliberalism. We destroy or at least undermine the governing mechanisms by which people at least in principle can participate to the extent that societys democratic. So weaken them, undermine unions, other forms of association, leave a sack of potatoes and meanwhile transfer decisions to unaccountable private power all in the rhetoric of freedom.

Well, what does that do? The one barrier to the threat of destruction is an engaged public, an informed, engaged public acting together to develop means to confront the threat and respond to it. Thats been systematically weakened, consciously. I mean, back to the 1970s weve probably talked about this. There was a lot of elite discussion across the spectrum about the danger of too much democracy and the need to have what was called more moderation in democracy, for people to become more passive and apathetic and not to disturb things too much, and thats what the neoliberal programs do. So put it all together and what do you have? A perfect storm.

CL: What everybody notices is all the headline things, including Brexit and Donald Trump and Hindu nationalism and nationalism everywhere and Le Pen all kicking in more or less together and suggesting some real world phenomenon.

NC: its very clear, and it was predictable. You didnt know exactly when, but when you impose socioeconomic policies that lead to stagnation or decline for the majority of the population, undermine democracy, remove decision-making out of popular hands, youre going to get anger, discontent, fear take all kinds of forms. And thats the phenomenon thats misleadingly called populism.

CL: I dont know what you think of Pankaj Mishra, but I enjoy his book Age of Anger, and he begins with an anonymous letter to a newspaper from somebody who says, We should admit that we are not only horrified but baffled. Nothing since the triumph of vandals in Rome and North Africa has seemed so suddenly incomprehensible and difficult to reverse.

NC: Well, thats the fault of the information system, because its very comprehensible and very obvious and very simple. Take, say the United States, which actually suffered less from these policies than many other countries. Take the year 2007, a crucial year right before the crash.

(Illustration by Susan Coyne)

What was the wondrous economy that was then being praised? It was one in which the wages, the real wages of American workers, were actually lower than they were in 1979 when the neoliberal period began. Thats historically unprecedented except for trauma or war or something like that. Here is a long period in which real wages had literally declined, while there was some wealth created but in very few pockets. It was also a period in which new institutions developed, financial institutions. You go back to the 50s and 60s, a so-called Golden Age, banks were connected to the real economy. That was their function. There were also no crashes because there were New Deal regulations.

Starting in the early 70s there was a sharp change. First of all, financial institutions exploded in scale. By 2007 they actually had 40 percent of corporate profits. Furthermore, they werent connected to the real economy anymore.

In Europe the way democracy is undermined is very direct. Decisions are placed in the hands of an unelected troika: the European Commission, which is unelected; the IMF, of course unelected; and the European Central Bank. They make the decisions. So people are very angry, theyre losing control of their lives. The economic policies are mostly harming them, and the result is anger, disillusion, and so on.

Noam Chomsky: What Did Adam Smith Really Mean by The Invisible Hand?

We just saw it two weeks ago in the last French election. The two candidates were both outside the establishment. Centrist political parties have collapsed. We saw it in the American election last November. There were two candidates who mobilized the base: one of them a billionaire hated by the establishment, the Republican candidate who won the nominationbut notice that once hes in power its the old establishment thats running things. You can rail against Goldman Sachs on the campaign trail, but you make sure that they run the economy once youre in.

CL: So, the question is, at a moment when people are almost ready when theyre ready to act and almost ready to recognize that this game is not working, this social system, do we have the endowment as a species to act on it, to move into that zone of puzzlement and then action?

NC: I think the fate of the species depends on it because, remember, its not just inequality, stagnation. Its terminal disaster. We have constructed a perfect storm. That should be the screaming headlines every day. Since the Second World War, we have created two means of destruction. Since the neoliberal era, we have dismantled the way of handling them. Thats our pincers. Thats what we face, and if that problem isnt solved were done with.

CL: I want to go back Pankaj Mishra and the Age of Anger for a moment

NC: Its not the Age of Anger. Its the Age of Resentment against socioeconomic policies which have harmed the majority of the population for a generation and have consciously and in principle undermined democratic participation. Why shouldnt there be anger?

CL: Pankaj Mishra calls itits a Nietzschean wordressentiment, meaning this kind of explosive rage. But he says, Its the defining feature of a world where the modern promise of equality collides with massive disparities of power, education, status and

NC: Which was designed that way, which was designed that way. Go back to the 1970s. Across the spectrum, elite spectrum, there was deep concern about the activism of the 60s. Its called the time of troubles. It civilized the country, which is dangerous. What happened is that large parts of the populationwhich had been passive, apathetic, obedienttried to enter the political arena in one or another way to press their interests and concerns. Theyre called special interests. That means minorities, young people, old people, farmers, workers, women. In other words: the population. The population are special interests, and their task is to just watch quietly. And that was explicit.

Two documents came out right in the mid-70s, which are quite important. They came from opposite ends of the political spectrum, both influential, and both reached the same conclusions. One of them, at the left end, was by the Trilateral Commissionliberal internationalists, three major industrial countries, basically the Carter administration, thats where they come from. That is the more interesting one [The Crisis of Democracy, a Trilateral Commission report]. The American rapporteur Samuel Huntington of Harvard, he looked back with nostalgia to the days when, as he put it, Truman was able to run the country with the cooperation of a few Wall Street lawyers and executives. Then everything was fine. Democracy was perfect.

But in the 60s they all agreed it became problematic because the special interests started trying to get into the act, and that causes too much pressure and the state cant handle that.

CL: I remember that book well.

NC: We have to have more moderation in democracy.

CL: Not only that, he turned Al Smiths line around. Al Smith said, The cure for democracy is more democracy. He said, No, the cure for this democracy is less democracy.

NC: It wasnt him. It was the liberal establishment. He was speaking for them. This is a consensus view of the liberal internationalists and the three industrial democracies. Theyin their consensusthey concluded that a major problem is what they called, their words, the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young. The schools, the universities, churches, theyre not doing their job. Theyre not indoctrinating the young properly. The young have to be returned to passivity and obedience, and then democracy will be fine. Thats the left end.

Now what do you have at the right end? A very influential document: The Powell Memorandum, came out the same time. Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer, later Supreme Court justice, he produced a confidential memorandum for the US Chamber of Commerce, which has been extremely influential. It more or less set off the modern so-called conservative movement. The rhetoric is kind of crazy. We dont go through it, but the basic picture is that this rampaging left has taken over everything. We have to use the resources that we have to beat back this rampaging new left which is undermining freedom and democracy.

Connected with this was something else. As a result of the activism of the 60s and the militancy of labor, there was a falling rate of profit. Thats not acceptable. So we have to reverse the falling rate of profit, we have to undermine democratic participation, what comes? Neoliberalism, which has exactly those effects.

Listen to the full conversation with Noam Chomsky on Radio Open Source.

See the original post:
Noam Chomsky: Neoliberalism Is Destroying Our Democracy - The Nation.

Quartz

Scientists, your mission is to save US democracy. Do you accept? Quartz By taking a deep dive into redistricting, researchers are helping to clarify how the US democracy can maximize political participation and representation in elections. With a Supreme Court hearing on partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin around the bend ...

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Scientists, your mission is to save US democracy. Do you accept? - Quartz