Indias political parties have mined voters psychographic data for years

[Judi Lynn]

WRITTEN BY
Gilles Verniers and Sudheendra Hangal
2 mins ago Quartz India

The Cambridge Analytica controversy is unlikely to die down soon as it touches a series of important democratic nerves. First, it concerns our ability to freely exercise our civic rights and duties. The fear of manipulation through data casts a cloud of suspicion over the sanctity of elections, which in turn shakes our belief in the legitimacy of the entire democratic system. Many democracies now fear that elections can be “stolen” through targeted manipulation.

Second, the extent of the data mining by social media platforms and the opacity with which this collected information is shared with third-party organisations for a variety of interested purposes heighten these anxieties. Social media platforms have a responsibility and moral duty to be more transparent about how they use the data instead of hiding behind legalities and technicalities that in effect exempt them from making any effort towards clarification.

The ongoing controversy involves a chain of finger-pointing that would be amusing had the matter been less serious: Facebook claims Aleksandr Kogan, a researcher at Cambridge University in the UK, collected data in violation of its terms of service; the researcher says he sold the data but had no idea what nefarious purposes it would be used for, and Cambridge Analytica (or at least Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower who worked there) says it simply used the data it bought.

One could pick one’s favourite scapegoat in this chain, but it is important to keep our attention focused on the heart of the problem. Regardless of the perniciousness of the ways in which personal data is being harvested by private companies, social media users are responsible for the type and amount of information they willingly give up online. Users are perfectly willing to post bits of information about themselves to a loosely defined group of “friends,” allow digital applications and services to track them all day, or to publicly tweet about their likes and dislikes. While the users’ attitude may be “it’s just a trivial detail, who could possibly care?” these ostensibly “trivial details” reveal much of their personalities and render them vulnerable to targeting and even subtle coercion.

More:
https://qz.com/1247197/cambridge-analytica-indias-bjp-and-congress-mined-voters-psychographic-data/

[Skittles]

1. if they successfully made you hate Hillary

they won