What If Cambridge Analytica Owned Its Own Social Network? CA Backer Rebekah Mercer Admits She's A Co-Founder Of Parler

from the oh-look-at-that dept

Since the election, Parler has found renewed life among Trump supporters who feel that... [checks notes] being fact-checked, or limited for sharing debunked and dangerous conspiracy theories, is somehow an attack on... something (reality: it's an attack on their delusions). And as Parler has gotten a new round of attention, some questions were raised about the funding behind it. After all, there was no big VC or known investor behind the company, so it wasn't entirely clear how it was surviving. There was a crazy and incorrect conspiracy theory making the rounds that it was owned by Trumpists' favorite bogeyman, George Soros. That's not true, though it would have been completely hilarious if it had been.

Late last week, a Twitter thread made the rounds trying to tie Parler's founding to Russia, though it involves a lot of conjecture and guilt by association, rather than facts.

But then, on Friday, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Parler was being funded by the Mercer family, the same family who funded a bunch of pro-Trump projects, including Cambridge Analytica, Breitbart, and, well, Trump's own presidential campaign. Over the weekend, Rebekah Mercer took it up a further notch by claiming that she was the co-founder of the company along with CEO John Matze.

That's a post from Rebekah Mercer saying:

John and I started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended, and also to create a social media environment that would protect data privacy. Benjamin Franklin warned us: "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." The ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone lead the fight against data mining, and for the protection of free speech online. That someone is Parler, a beacon to all who value their liberty, free speech, and personal privacy.

That's... information that is brand new. Prior to this weekend, it was always claimed that the company was founded by Matze and a friend, Jared Thomson. In the past they had claimed that they founded it together, and had some support from a "small group of close friends and employees." But they never mentioned the Mercers. That's some "friends."

Also, Rebekah Mercer's claims are pretty ridiculous when you pick them apart. Despite claiming that they're setting up "a neutral platform for free speech" we know perfectly well that's utter garbage. As we've seen, they've got no problem banning people they dislike for ideological reasons. In fact, despite claiming on the website that they would only take down content if it violated the 1st Amendment, the company quickly realized that it would have to ban a lot more than that.

My favorite example of this was in a Forbes interview, where Matze admits that he's sitting around banning trolls as quickly as he can:

“I hope you don’t mind that I’m eating: I haven’t eaten all day,” says Parler founder John Matze, devouring a late lunch. His social media app—a new favorite of President Trump’s and other GOP leaders—has been under siege for the past few hours. “I’m sitting here like, banning trolls.”

By trolls he means teenage leftists who’ve flooded onto Parler....

As we said, they've sort of speed-run the content moderation learning curve that every website goes through when they claim to support free speech. They insist they'll allow anything. Then they start banning spammers. Then trolls. And, that's the same damn thing Twitter does, and even here they're admitting that they're banning "leftist trolls." In fact, over the past week or so we keep having people showing up on our article from the summer about Parler banning users it doesn't like and screaming at us about how it's okay because they're just banning trolls. But, that's the point. That's what Twitter is doing too. Except that Twitter isn't complaining about ideological trolls.

It's only Parler that seems to be staking out an ideological claim, trying to ban "leftist" trolls after being cofounded by one of the most extreme partisans around, who laughably claims that Parler will be neutral.

The other incredibly ridiculous claim is that Parler is a response to "the ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords" and that it is trying to "lead the fight against data mining." Or that Parler is "a beacon to all those who value their liberty, free speech, and personal privacy." We already covered how its views on free speech are not very different from other social media platforms, but the privacy claims are ridiculous as well.

Remember, Cambridge Analytica's entire claim to fame was collecting a shit ton of data on people by abusing the rules on an academic's personality quiz on Facebook, and then use it to target political messages. Remember, part of the reason Facebook got hit with a huge FTC fine was that it had let Cambridge Analytica extract a bunch of data it had promised not to.

Former Cambridge Analytica data expert Christopher Wylie noted this weekend that when he was there, the Mercers had always wanted their own social network in order to cut out the middle man and collect the data directly (and distribute propaganda directly). And now they've got that:

Oh, and they've got access to a lot more private data than Facebook, Google or Twitter do. Hell, Matze practically brags to a Forbes reporter how he has all sorts of private data on the "leftist trolls" he's trying to ban:

Matze knows the leftists’ ages of the trolls, as he calls them, because some verified their accounts, coughing up selfies and driver’s licenses or passports (a set of highly unusual requirements for proving identity and registering for an online account).

Twitter doesn't require you to upload your driver's license. Also, if you want to have a verified account on Parler, you're required to hand over your Social Security Number as well.

Basically, the Mercers are building a huge database of gullible idiots that they can now market propaganda to directly, cutting out the Facebook middleman. I'm curious how it was a huge problem when it was happening by Facebook, but somehow fine when it's all directly on the Mercer's own social network?

Filed Under: content moderation, free speech, john matze, mercer family, privacy, rebekah mercer, social media
Companies: cambridge analytica, parler

Cambridge Analytica's Crime Was Not Violating Your Privacy Or Taking Data From Facebook, It Was A Massive Campaign Finance Scam

from the get-the-scandals-right dept

If you asked most people what the Cambridge Analytica scandal was about, many would insist that it involved the company illegally sucking up all sorts of data from Facebook and using that to nefariously micro-target people with ads or information in a way that supported Donald Trump or suppressed the interest in voting for Hillary Clinton. As we pointed out years ago, it seemed like everyone was very much misinterpreting what happened with Cambridge Analytica.

The reality is now coming out, but so many people are so bought into the original myth story that I doubt it will get much attention. First off, over in the UK, government investigators have now admitted that Cambridge Analytica didn't really do anything special or have any access to data that lots of others had:

Detail of the data processing practices undertaken by SCL/CA is set out at Annex 2, but, in summary, we concluded that SCL/CA were purchasing significant volumes of commercially available personal data (at one estimate over 130 billion data points), in the main about millions of US voters, to combine it with the Facebook derived insight information they had obtained from an academic at Cambridge University, Dr Aleksandr Kogan, and elsewhere. In the main their models were also built from ‘off the shelf’ analytical tools and there was evidence that their own staff were concerned about some of the public statements the leadership of the company were making about their impact and influence.

Basically, the company was buying up a ton of data that lots of others also had access to and using off-the-shelf analytical tools that lots of others had access too... but then puffing themselves up to have some sort of secret sauce. They had none.

That doesn't mean there weren't issues though. But the issues were not so much about Facebook coughing up this data to Cambridge Analytica, but rather how Cambridge Analytica was actually a tool for the Mercer family to engage in campaign finance violations by illegally coordinating between a Mercer-created super PAC and the Trump Campaign. As you hopefully know, the whole concept of super PACs is based on the idea that they cannot coordinate with the actual campaigns. Most people recognize that in practice, this is bullshit but they at least try to maintain an appearance of separation. It now appears that the Mercers did no such thing, and Cambridge Analytica was at the center of it all.

A megadonor like Robert Mercer may only contribute millions to a super PAC if it operates independently of—and does not coordinate with—the candidate that it supports.

By the Mercer-owned Cambridge Analytica simultaneously working for the campaign and the super PAC, it was in a position to use strategic information gained from its work for Trump to develop and target the super PAC’s ads supporting Trump.

Federal law limits how a vendor may work for both a candidate and a super PAC backing that candidate. Unless a “common vendor” like Cambridge Analytica creates and complies with an internal firewall separating its work for the candidate from the work for the super PAC, it can act as a conduit for unlawful coordination.

Usually, it can be difficult to assess whether a vendor firewalled their work for the campaign from the super PAC because companies are not required to make their firewall policies public, and they tend to avoid disclosing details about internal operations.

Yet the newly published documents suggest a striking overlap between Cambridge Analytica’s work for Trump and for the Mercer-backed pro-Trump super PAC, which indicates that any firewall policy was not followed.

In other words, there's a real scandal here, but it's not a "Facebook data" scandal, so much as it's a Mercer/Trump campaign finance violation scandal.

However, I'll bet that years into the future, people will remember the other non-scandal instead of what appears to be the real issue.

Filed Under: campaign finance, data, donald trump, mercer family, privacy, robert mercer, steve bannon, superpac
Companies: cambridge analytica, facebook, scl