Tag: Cambridge Analytica

The vast majority of users surveyed (74 percent) said they were not aware that Facebook lists their interests for advertisers and that these interests can be found in the “ad preferences” page on user profiles. One in five Facebook users (21 percent) report they are listed as having “multicultural affinity,” the Pew Research survey found. Of those, 43 percent were assigned an affinity to African-American culture and 43 percent assigned Hispanic culture, and 10 percent were assigned an affinity with Asian-American culture. Facebook is under federal investigation for privacy violations resulting from the Cambridge Analytica involvement. But it apparently has not communicated these tools well enough to users, he added, if only one in four users are aware of the ad preferences page. Osborne said Facebook often receives complaints from users that ads are not relevant, so the company tries to balance making ads useful while not violating user privacy. While we and the rest of the online ad industry need to do more to educate people on how interest-based advertising works and how we protect people’s information, we welcome conversations about transparency and control.” How to change your preferences: The list of interests Facebook thinks you have can be found under Settings>Ads>Your ad preferences. “We’re aware of the statement of interest filed and will respond in court; we’ll continue working directly with HUD to address their concerns.” Facebook still has a “multicultural affinities” listing on its ad preference page — meant to designate people who likely have an interest in a racial or ethnic culture, according to Pew. While Facebook has been the target of many investigations for such practices as of late, it is far from the only company that engages in these practices, said David Ginsburg, vice president of marketing at security firm Cavirin. “It really goes beyond Facebook and privacy,” he said.

5 1: Can big tech stocks recover? Apple even breached the $1trn trillionmark, with Amazon close behind. Tech companies, in the eyes of many, are simply getting too big and powerful. In Ireland, tech firm’sfirms’ political importance came to the fore when some of the biggest internet firms took an unprecedented decision not to allow campaigning ads in the weeks preceding the country’s abortion referendum in May. 3: When Chinese tech firms ran into political trouble Huawei is now Ireland’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer and second in the world after Samsung. The reason, they say, is that Huawei has close links to Chinese authorities. Huawei comes in for particular atttention because it’s such a big player in communications network infrastructure. British Telecom will now move Huawei kit away from “core” network functions in rolling out 5G infrastructure, the Financial Times reported. The Chinese government was outraged by the detention, interpreting it as a direct assault on Chinese interests. This might dash hopes for connections to rural homes by the end of 2019, something that had been on the cards until the controversy around Mr Naughten’s meetings blew up at the tail end of 2018. disruption.

While the data firm Cambridge Analytica and questions of data privacy propelled Facebook into the headlines in recent months, Facebook has been under the critical eye of media scholars for years. “The sad conclusion to my book is that the problem with Facebook is Facebook,” declared Siva Vaidhyanathan, the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, during his opening remarks at the first of this semester’s Berkman Klein Center Luncheon Series, which was co-sponsored with the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. The event, moderated by Nicco Mele, director of the Shorenstein Center, revolved around Vaidhyanathan’s latest book, “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy.” Vaidhyanathan cited the sheer scale of Facebook, with over 2 billion people, along with its underlying engagement and promotion algorithms and its precise, targeted advertising system, as central to Facebook’s problems with disinformation, surveillance, and data sharing that have been associated with the platform. According to Vaidhyanathan, the crux of Facebook’s issues stem from the idea that Facebook is a political tool, although, he said, those at Facebook would likely disagree. Yet Facebook’s intention is likely not to cause harm or to have a negative impact. One attendee at the luncheon, a former Facebook employee, pointed out during the discussion that the company has features to encourage people to register to vote, and to vote on election day. “Having Facebook reminders for people to register to vote and to vote might move things a little bit, marginally,” he said. “But it doesn’t address the problem that there is an active force to undermine democratic participation in this country and in many, if not most, countries right now.” Despite his concerns with Facebook, deactivating individual accounts is not the solution, Vaidhyanathan argued. What sort of media ecosystem do we need, do we deserve, to be able to operate responsibly as citizens in a democratic republic?” he asked. In this short Q&A, media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan talks about how Facebook has changed journalism and how reporters can do a better job covering Facebook and its influence.

It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States. In Russia, it is impossible to tell where the decisions of government end and the interests of Vladimir Putin and his circle of oligarchs begin. We must understand that these authoritarians are part of a common front. The Mercer family, for example, supporters of the infamous Cambridge Analytica, have been key backers of Trump and of Breitbart News, which operates in Europe, the United States and Israel to advance the same anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda. Our job is to fight for a future in which new technology and innovation works to benefit all people, not just a few. Together governments of the world must come together to end the absurdity of the rich and multinational corporations stashing over $21tn in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and then demanding that their respective governments impose an austerity agenda on their working families. In order to effectively combat the rise of the international authoritarian axis, we need an international progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people, and that addresses the massive global inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power. While the authoritarian axis is committed to tearing down a post-second world war global order that they see as limiting their access to power and wealth, it is not enough for us to simply defend that order as it exists now. We must take the opportunity to reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity, an order that recognizes that every person on this planet shares a common humanity, that we all want our children to grow up healthy, to have a good education, have decent jobs, drink clean water, breathe clean air and live in peace. It is high time that Democrats from across the world form a Progressive International in the interests of a majority of people on every continent, in every country.

A Republican political consultant linked to Paul Manafort and Cambridge Analytica has admitted to funneling $50,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration committee. Patten, 47, admitted causing the Ukrainian funds to be paid to the inauguration committee, and to lying to a Senate committee investigating Russian interference in an attempt to cover this up. He pleaded guilty to one count of working as an unregistered agent for the oligarch’s Ukrainian political party, Opposition Bloc, which also employed Manafort, the former chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign. The charge was brought by the US attorney’s office in the capital, which took over the case following a referral from Mueller’s office. The court filings indicated that Patten had been in discussions with Mueller’s office for at least three months. Kilimnik, identified as “foreigner A” in the filings, has also worked extensively with Manafort, who was a consultant to Opposition Bloc in Ukraine. The tickets were used by Patten, Kilimnik, the oligarch and another Ukrainian. In all, according to the court documents, Patten’s firm was paid about $1m for advising Opposition Bloc and lobbying US politicians on its behalf. Kilimnik is charged alongside Manafort in a separate criminal case brought in Washington by Mueller. Patten also carried out work for Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct consultancy that is under scrutiny for its work on Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is working on a cryptocurrency project to reward political activism and “provide an alternative to the financial system”, according to an entrepreneur who claims to be working on the project. Last week, during an hour-long interview with CNBC, Bannon briefly mentioned a plan to launch his cryptocurrency tokens. Neither company would comment on Wernick’s alleged investment. Sitting next to Wernick at the press conference was former Cambridge Analytica director-turned-whistleblower Brittany Kaiser, now an IOVO advisor. “[A utility token’s] primary purpose is not just as a means of speculation, but it has intrinsic value on a network. “It is the Holy Grail to be a utility token rather than a security token because you avoid all the security laws.” The very concept of "utility tokens" is, nonetheless, disputed: while the category is recognised in Switzerland — alongside payment tokens and security tokens — the US Securities and Exchange Commission is more lukewarm on the idea. Ironically, the person who many credit for initiating Bannon to cryptocurrency owes most of his recent fame to an ICO. In September 2017, Pierce said he had been talking to Bannon about blockchain technology “many, many times”, although he added that the then-White House strategist was probably too busy to pay much attention to crypto just yet. He adds he felt it was “important that educators and stewards of technology provide the understanding”. “[Bannon] has surrounded himself with people who understand the value of [cryptocurrency], and he himself is very intelligent.

Rachel Maddow reports on how new revelations about an executive from Cambridge Analytica, the data firm hired by the Donald Trump campaign, meeting with Julian Assange, and the firm's use of data from a Russia-sponsored academic. » Subscribe to MSNBC:…

Life and work as an MEP Today, he sees elections both in Estonia and the EU as being a way to resolve issues adequately, even in the case of the European elections (where there are actually two elections to be held in March and May of next year). But in general Mr. Tarand pointed out that he had gone about as far as he could in the European Parliament: ''I have spent almost 20% of my life in the European Parliament, coming up to ten years, and have done everything I can to represent the country there,'' he explained. Of possible allies in the domestic Estonian political scene, an obvious choice would be the Greens, the party which he became allied to in the European parliament after the 2009 election, but there are no Greens currently holding seats in the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu). Tarand said. The other party which Tarand has had links with, one which does have a few seats in the Riigikogu, is the Free Party (Vabaerakond), a party which has just seen a change in leadership with Artur Talvik stepping down and Andres Herkel being chosen as his successor. in Estonian). So what did Mr. Tarand think of the Free Party and its leadership? Mr. Tarand's relationship with the new Free Party leader, Andres Herkel, runs similarly deep. ''We were both on the Estonian Committee [a national body involved in the run up to Estonian independence – ed.] -- Indrek Tarand has been an MEP since being elected with over 100,000 votes as an independent in 2009.

NBC sat in on a focus group with some voters in Wisconsin who for the most part, when asked whether the government should regulate social media companies, didn't seem to care. Roger McNamee, an early Facebook and Google Investor, disagrees:…

n an interview with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota, Sen. John Kennedy said he wants the Department of Justice investigation to find out how Cambridge Analytica operated from the inside.