WEBVTT - The Founding of Cambridge Analytica 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.680 stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff. 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.320 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:20.119 How Stuff Works and I love all things tech. Just 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:23.160 a reminder, we are in our deep, dark, scary week 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:27.000 where I'm talking about stuff that tends to have to 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:30.160 do with a social media and the web and communications 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:33.840 and politics. We've got midterm elections coming up pretty soon 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:36.560 here in the United States as I record this, so 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.280 these are are kind of related back to that without 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:43.760 being too political in one stance or another. Also a reminder, 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.520 I'm recovering from getting sick. I'm recording this right after 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:50.760 I just recorded the Echo Chamber episode, and so my 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:56.440 voice is going to continually decrease in quality over this 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:58.840 episode and the following one, which will be Part two. 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:03.680 So we have had tons of conversations in the United 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:08.280 States about all things political. It's probably getting a little 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:10.640 exhausting for those of you who are in the US. 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.000 And in our last episode, I talked a little bit 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:16.200 about propaganda and how delivering the right type of information 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.520 or misinformation depending on the message to the right audience 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.560 at the right time. Can really influence outcomes, and this 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:24.720 and the next episode we're going to look at a 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:28.280 specific story involving a company that specialized in that type 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.200 of thing, or at least claimed to specialize in that 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:36.560 type of thing. The company was the UK based Cambridge Analytica. 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:38.480 So if you're in the United States or the UK, 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:42.759 you've probably heard that name. If you're outside of those countries, 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:45.360 you might have heard it because it was the center 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:50.240 of pretty massive controversies that may have involved the personal 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:53.480 data of up to eight seven million Facebook users, only 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:56.800 a small number of whom agreed to share any information 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:00.560 with this group in the first place. And you'll understand 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:02.800 why all this means over the course of the next 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:05.880 couple of episodes. Now, the story is a complicated one, 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:09.320 and it involves a lot of people and other organizations, 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:11.119 and one of the big ones we're going to talk 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:15.040 about is Facebook and how Facebook's policies were what made 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:20.240 Cambridge Analytica's actions possible, or at least one part of 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.840 Cambridge Analytica's actions, the part that really took a lot 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.560 of focus in the spring of and then there's the 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:31.400 responsibility that we social media users bear as well. We 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:35.440 also play a part in this. So what the heck 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:40.160 was Cambridge Analytica because spoiler alert, the company, at least 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:45.840 officially no longer exists. Well simply, but Cambridge Analytica was 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:51.440 in the business of gathering information, personal information, psychological information 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:55.519 about people and then crafting messaging specifically aimed at those 0:02:55.520 --> 0:03:01.359 people to make the biggest impact possible, specifically or political campaigns, 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:05.960 in other words, to help elect certain candidates. Candidates that 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:10.919 had reserved the services of Cambridge Analytica, which was acting 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:14.120 as a political consultant. They were guns for hire. You 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:17.240 could go out and secure the firm services and try 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.520 to get elected. Um, they would gather information about the 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:24.679 people you were hoping to reach, and they were meant 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:28.160 to determine the most effective approach on how to do that, 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:30.840 how to reach those people based on the information they 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:34.160 had learned about your target audience, and they would serve 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:38.760 up and almost personalized form of messaging based on that data, 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:43.200 at least in theory. So it wasn't a guarantee that 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:45.960 your message was going to be received well, but it 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:48.560 was about as close as you can get. And in fact, 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.280 sometimes you might say that Alexander Nicks, who who ran 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:58.080 Cambridge Analytica was in fact guaranteeing those results that messaging 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:01.720 could include misinformation, it could include propaganda, didn't have to, 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:04.760 but it could, and it could be used to create 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.880 a larger wedge between different people within a region. It 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:13.360 was a powerful and therefore potentially dangerous claim to make. Now. 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:17.480 According to the company itself, it would pair consumer information 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:22.520 with psychological profile information on each person in your target audience, 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:29.160 and it would gather that information from different sources like surveys, research, 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:34.000 and social media platforms, namely Facebook. It would also conduct 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:38.200 other ways to try and gather data. It would sort 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:42.200 people into different buckets, different categories, and the four big 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:47.560 ones would be are you confrontational or non confrontational? Are 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.400 you agreeable? Are you a follower? Are you a leader? 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.400 That sort of stuff, and it could formulate strategies to 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:59.599 target each bucket based on those qualities. So if these 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:04.159 claim as were all supported by evidence and had really 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:08.880 strong results, it would be both really impressive and really disturbing. 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.560 This idea that we can learn a lot about the 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:15.760 people you are trying to get to support you, and 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:18.320 we can send out the message that is most likely 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:23.240 to get you that support disturbing because the information this 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:27.880 company gathered about people went well beyond just general information 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:32.200 like a name and an age and zip code or something. 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:36.200 It would include stuff like occupations, maybe the types of 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:39.200 shows they like to watch, the type of car they drove, 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:42.240 their voting record, the sort of stuff they shopped for, 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.040 what kind of medications they took. These were the claims 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.800 Cambridge Analytica made that they had these data points. And 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:51.560 here's the kicker, A whole lot of the information was 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:55.120 stuff the target audience was already sharing. They were posting 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:58.919 this information to social media, though the company was claiming 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.000 to have access to these data points long before it 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:05.520 actually got that access. So, in other words, Gambrage Analytica 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:10.600 seemed to be making some pretty grandiose claims about their capabilities. 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:14.160 Alexander Nicks, the head of it, was making most of 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:19.440 those claims and very public forums before they had any 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:25.360 real means of delivering upon it. But it did sort 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.920 of catapult them into the spotlight for a while. Now, 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:33.800 keep in mind, we are often talking in this episode 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:37.400 and the next one about stuff that people were willingly 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.520 sharing regularly on social media. It's the same sort of 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:43.599 stuff that they might get upset about if they heard 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.400 that some research firm had a spreadsheet and their name 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:49.640 was in that spreadsheet and the data that they had 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.920 just shared on Facebook or Twitter ended up being in 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:56.320 that spreadsheet. It kind of changes the context because when 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:58.920 you pop on Facebook, let's say you're celebrating the fact 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:01.279 that you just bought a brand new car. To you, 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.040 you are sharing some fun news with your friends. You're like, Hey, 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.159 I got my new card. It's pretty cool, blah blah blah. 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.000 And to you, that's just like I'm excited, be excited 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:12.640 with me. But to these research firms, what you've done 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:15.320 is just revealed a little bit more information about yourself 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:18.080 that might potentially be valuable in the future, and they're 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:21.200 taking note of it. However, it would be too easy 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.880 to put all the blame on social media users. We 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:28.000 probably could share less in a lot of cases than 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:31.040 we are sharing, but we don't hold all the blame. 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:34.640 Cambridge Analytica also employed tools that went beyond looking at 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:38.600 public profiles. So this story involves not just user behavior, 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:44.600 not just Cambridge Analyticas behavior, but also Facebook and its policies. 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:47.320 Facebook had in place of policy that developers could take 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:51.360 advantage of that gave those developers access to enormous amounts 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.200 of data, not just the information belonging to the people 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.920 who downloaded the apps, but others who never gave any 0:07:57.000 --> 0:08:00.720 consent for their information to be shared. That's also at 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.080 the heart of this issue, so we're going to cover 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.800 that as well. By the way, I'm making no effort 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.000 to be unbiased in this episode as far as the 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:13.360 behavior of Cambridge Analytica, because I think it's pretty clear 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.720 that they did business in a dangerous and unethical way. 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:22.280 Maybe an illegal way, but definitely in an ethical way. 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.760 And it's not just my opinion. There are a lot 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:29.080 of others who share this opinion. There's an article in 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:33.120 mother Jones that's titled Cloak and Data, the real story 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:38.160 behind Cambridge Analytica's Rise and Fall, which is quite good, uh. 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:41.600 And in that article, an employee of Cambridge Analytica said 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:45.400 that the staff would never employ their techniques on British 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:49.200 political campaigns because it was too close to home, it 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.360 was too questionable, but it seemed like it was okay 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:55.800 to do it when it involved a different countries political system, 0:08:55.920 --> 0:09:00.680 that that would be fair game. That seems pretty ugly 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:03.160 to me. The idea that oh, no, we would never 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:06.760 do this here, that would be probably not cool at all, 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.840 but it's okay to do it in other country's political system. 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.000 That's fine. It's because that's over there, that's not over here. 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:19.240 That's troubling to a great degree. Also spoiler alert, there 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.280 are a lot of allegations that suggest that Cambridge Analytica 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:28.920 at least had some involvement with British politics, specifically the 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:33.640 referendum to vote on on leaving the European Union, also 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:38.559 known as Brexit. But those are allegations that Cambridge Analytica 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:43.559 has denied vehemently and there are ongoing investigations into that matter. 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.520 So that story still hasn't played out. I'll touch on 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:49.559 it probably again in the course of these episodes. So 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:52.400 Cambrage Analytica was a company that, at the bottom line, 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.160 would scrape data about people and then form messaging strategies 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:59.280 around that data. So let's get into the details. So 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.120 before there was at Cambridge Analytica, there was a guy 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.679 named Nigel Oaks. Oaks went to Eaton, which is a 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:10.240 boarding school in England, one of the more posh ones, 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:17.920 certainly expensive. A lot of statesman from England have attended there. Uh, 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:22.920 it is a boy's only boarding school, and he is 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:26.640 an old Etonian. That's what they call the folks who 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:32.440 who graduated from Eaton. Oaks started out in advertising. Actually 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:34.200 he started out as a DJ, but he went on 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:37.200 into advertising, became an executive at Sachi and Sacchi, and 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:41.520 according to Oaks, in nine he founded an academic working 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:45.960 group called Behavioral Dynamics Institute. And I say according to 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.760 because it's really hard to track down official information about 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:52.000 these things. The purpose of this working group was to 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:56.479 advance research and development quote into persuasion and social influence 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:00.920 end quote according to the official history of research group, 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.400 So sort of an offshoot of advertising. How can you 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.760 shape public opinion about a given subject? That was the key. 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:12.800 How can we use our understanding of human psychology to 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:17.960 have better success with any kind of communications campaign which 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:20.680 could be for marketing purposes, It didn't have to be political. 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:25.400 And the main focus was, according to Oaks, communication for 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:29.200 conflict reduction, So an idea of how can a government 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:33.320 or how can an organization communicate in a way that's 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:39.240 effective to reduce conflict around the situation. Oakes brought on 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:41.600 a couple of psychologists to work with him on this. 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:45.200 One of them was Barry Gunter, who is now a 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:49.560 professor emeritus at Leicester University, and the other was Adrian Furnham, 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:52.880 and apparently the three would meet semi regularly between ninet 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.520 to talk about psychology, potential applications of it in the 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:02.680 commercial world, and about research projects. But the two psychologists 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:07.960 eventually broke ties with Oaks. They, at least Barry Gunter, 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:10.559 said they felt that Oaks was sort of taking their 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:15.839 work and making grandiose promises about leveraging psychology to get results, 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.920 such as in advertising, and Gunter was contacted by The 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:22.680 New Yorker and said, quote we felt he was promising 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.200 more than the science of psychology at that time could 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:29.520 substantiate end quote. So in other words, psychologists were saying, 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:32.880 there may be something to this, but you're making promises 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:35.680 before we even have a full understanding, and it may 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:39.800 even be that those promises have nothing behind them. In 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:43.920 Behavioral Dynamics Institute had enough funding to make a go 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:46.560 of it and became a company again according to the 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:50.240 company's own accounts. I could not find any actual records 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:54.080 that talked about this, but either in or in two 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:59.040 thousand five, Behavioral Dynamics Institute created a spinoff company called 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:04.360 Strategic Communications Laboratories or sc L, and I say either 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.640 ninete or two thousand five because according to the b 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:12.040 d I history the date is when s c L started, 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.280 but the UK company's house did not register s c 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:19.160 L as a company until two thousand five. The company 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:23.520 official or otherwise certainly did business between nine and two 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:26.920 thousand five. In two thousand there was an article published 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:33.439 about the company working communications strategies for the Indonesian President Wahid, who, 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:36.800 by the way, would later be impeached and removed from office. 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:41.040 So I guess that messaging didn't go so well. I'll 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.320 tell you more about s c L and the journey 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:46.640 towards Cambridge Analytic in a moment, but first let's take 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:56.360 a quick break to thank our sponsor. S c L 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.160 seemed to make a lot of big promises about what 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.920 it could do a psychological data After September eleven, two 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:06.480 thousand one, the company positioned itself as an expert resource 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.240 for psychological warfare and began to go after military contracts 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.880 in the UK and in the US as consultants. In 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:16.960 the early two thousands, s c L hired a salesman 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:20.640 named Alexander Nicks, and Knicks, like Oaks, had attended Eton, 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.680 so he was another old Etonian. In two thousand ten, 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:28.680 Alexander Nicks traveled to America to scope out the possibility 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:33.040 of finding clients for scl UH, specifically political clients. But 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:35.800 Nick saw that the climate in the US was different 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:39.640 than in other places. In the US, political consultants would 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:43.080 tend to ally themselves to a particular side. You would 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:48.400 either be Republican or Democratic consultants, but you rarely saw 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:52.200 anyone who is sort of just a consultant for hire 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:54.840 for either side. And s c L had clients that 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.240 had leaned left and some that leaned right. So it 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:02.600 would be really che challenging to get traction in America 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:07.560 as a foreign company that had worked for both sides 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:12.360 of political philosophies in the past um and so s 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:14.440 c L did not pursue a serious effort to get 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:17.800 into US politics at that time. By two thousand and twelve, 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.480 s c L was in financial difficulty. It was not 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:25.600 regularly pulling in consulting contracts, and there was a fundamental 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:28.880 disagreement between Nicks, who wanted to focus more on election 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:32.160 campaigns as a source for revenue, and Oakes, who wanted 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:35.200 to do more work by selling operations, centers and locations 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.960 across the Middle East as sort of defense contracts. So 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:41.560 Nix and Oakes more or less part of the ways. 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:44.120 Oakes would still head up a branch of SCL that 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.560 focused on defense, and Nicks would take up a group 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.720 that was called SCL Elections. So essentially they said, fine, 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:56.600 you take our research and you apply it that way. 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:58.640 I'm going to take our research and apply it this way. 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:01.640 That research, by the way, from all the reports I 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.960 could find, usually consisted of just just a few small, 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:11.120 very modest studies, nothing of any real major note. Uh, 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.840 so very odd that the companies were making these big, 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.360 big promises because they didn't have a whole lot of 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:19.720 research to back it up, and certainly not a lot 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:23.400 of published research. Two thousand twelve also marked a new 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:27.000 shot at the United States. So in in the US, 0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:31.160 the Obama campaigns had successfully leveraged Facebook and social media 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:34.440 to reach out to young voters and to target audiences 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.840 and send out messaging. Uh. Not totally different from what 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:42.240 SCL and Cambridge Analytica would try to do, although in 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:45.680 a way that was much more transparent. So while the 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:50.240 Obama campaigns kind of led the way there, um, they 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:53.360 they did not go the further the step further the 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:58.320 Cambridge Analytica went. However, it convinced Nix that it meant 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:02.480 that the Republican side was falling behind when it comes 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.159 to technology, and there was a shift happening in the 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.440 way politicians would reach out to their electorate, and because 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.160 the Republican Party was falling behind, it showed an opportunity. 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.080 After the two thousand twelve election, the GOP, the Grand 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.760 Old Party Republican Party, issued a post mortem report that 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:21.760 emphasized a need to look into new tools for competing 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:24.920 in elections, including new places they had not or would 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:28.200 not have looked before, and that gave Nix an opening. 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.720 He rebranded SCL as being more than an image and 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:35.720 communications strategy consulting firm. Now, he said, s c L 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:41.160 is a expert in data analytics and using those results 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:46.439 to form actionable strategies. So, according to former employees, Nix 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:49.920 and Oakes both had a habit of promising deliverables without 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.280 having a really strong plan in place on how to 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:56.239 make good on those promises. So, in other words, they 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.639 found out what the potential client wanted. They would promise 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:02.320 to del liver that, and then they would come up 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:05.600 for a price for that promise, and after that they 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:07.919 would go back to their team and say, okay, I 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:10.240 promised that we would give them X. We have to 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:12.920 figure out how to give them X. That was kind 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.560 of what the rebranding was all about. The company was 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.520 positioning itself as having a deep expertise in a fairly 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:21.600 young field. But maybe you could argue it was not 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.880 quite as far along as the pitch would suggest. SCL 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:31.440 elections were a very expensive firm to have on your campaign, 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:35.800 and Nick's strategy was to aim for wealthy underdogs in 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.199 elections around the world, people who add access to a 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:43.000 lot of money but not many political resources. And then 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:46.760 the next piece in the Cambridge Analytica puzzle fell into place. 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:51.160 That piece was a data analyst and political campaign strategist 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:58.280 named Christopher Wiley. Wiley is an anomaly someone that I 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:04.600 really I just don't quite get. Interestingly, he had worked 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:09.159 in political campaigns before, specifically it worked for Obama's political campaigns, 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:11.520 and he had also acted as a consultant for the 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:16.960 Liberal Party in Canada. Ni's met Wiley and thought that 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:19.960 Wiley sounded like a genius and offered him a job 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.200 to help build out s c LS capabilities to actually 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:25.760 do what the company was claiming it could do. And 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:29.800 Wiley accepted the offer, and part of the reason why, 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:31.600 while he said he accepted it, in fact the main 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:34.639 reason was that Nick's essentially told him you're gonna have 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:39.560 free reign to work on your theories about data and 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:44.280 politics and messaging. You're gonna have a a sandbox to 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:46.679 play in where you can you can experiment all you like, 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.719 and that made Widy very happy. He thought that data 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.960 and politics were a place that had not yet really 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:58.520 come to fruition. So around the same time, s c 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:01.520 ls goal was to build out a tool it called Rippen, 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:05.239 or maybe more accurately, its goal was to sell a 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:08.480 tool called Rippen and then take the money from those 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.800 sales and then develop the tool called Ribbon. So in 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:13.919 other words, they were kind of selling a product they 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:17.040 did not really have. This loops us back to all 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:20.480 those data points the company claimed it had access to 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:22.560 early on when I was talking about it in the 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:26.040 opening of this episode. The Rippon tool was supposed to 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:29.399 be software that would allow a company a campaign to 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:33.879 manage things like a voter database, campaign efforts all in 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:38.119 a holistic, coordinated, and micro targeted way to really have 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:43.320 a focused strategy and actionable strategy so that at any 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.000 given step you knew what was happening and what was 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.480 supposed to happen next. And it sounded too good to 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:50.639 be true, And it turned out that that was the 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:54.240 case because Rippon which was named after Rippon, Wisconsin, that's 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:58.320 the birthplace of the Republican Party from the nineteenth century 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:03.440 when the the the party was founded in Rippon, Wisconsin 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:07.640 as mostly as an effort to unify people who were 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:14.480 um anti slavery UH and numerous other UH foundational ideas. 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:19.840 It all started there. But this the software named after 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:23.199 the birthplace for the Republican Party, didn't really exist as 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:25.760 a finished product. While Nix was out there trying to 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:28.720 sell it, it was consistently in development and the company 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:31.120 was making it a practice to get the train running 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:35.639 without having laid down any tracks at the beginning. So 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:40.640 while the Rippon mess was happening, while campaigns were saying, Hey, 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:43.879 where's this tool you've been promising us, Wiley began to 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:47.400 look around for ways to actually make it a reality 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:49.960 and something that would give the company an actual base 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.720 to stand on, And he heard about the work of 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:56.280 a psychologist named David Stillwell who had built a Facebook 0:21:56.280 --> 0:22:00.479 app called My Personality Now. This app would quiz users 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:05.400 about five factors known as the Ocean model, and Ocean 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:12.160 stands for openness, conscientiousness, extra version, agreeableness, and europe neuroticism. 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:14.800 So it would measure you on the scale of each 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:17.560 of those things, and then we'll tell you how your 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:20.480 personality kind of measures up, what sort of personality you have. 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:23.800 Psychologists had found that it was tricky to get people 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:26.800 to agree to take those sorts of personality tests if 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:29.080 people knew the results would be applied to stuff like 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:32.440 politics or marketing, because they didn't want to share deeply 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:37.359 personal reactions within those contexts. They didn't want to think, oh, 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:40.280 I don't want to give this person information about my 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:45.679 darkest desires or fears or whatever. But on Facebook, in 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:47.600 the form of a quiz that promises to tell you 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:51.159 more about yourself, that would work like Gangbusters. And I 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:53.840 think it's pretty natural that we're all interested in stuff 0:22:54.440 --> 0:22:58.480 that addresses us, specifically that talks about us. We tend 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:01.560 to be our own favorite topic of discussion. There's a 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:03.800 bit of egomaniac in all of us to some extent. 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:08.960 Now some people like me, we've got egomania and droves. 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:12.960 But when you encounter an app on Facebook that says 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:15.440 take this quiz to learn more about yourself, you may 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:19.080 feel inclined to take that quiz. Here's the trick. You're 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:23.120 not the only one learning stuff about yourself. The researchers 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:26.760 are learning things too, and they're collecting an enormous amount 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:31.440 of information about Facebook users. And so if you are 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:35.560 looking at the survey, and if the survey says, hey, 0:23:35.880 --> 0:23:38.840 you can take the survey, uh, the app is going 0:23:38.960 --> 0:23:41.199 to get access to your profile to see what kind 0:23:41.200 --> 0:23:43.760 of stuff you post. It's not gonna post for you, 0:23:44.000 --> 0:23:46.760 but they can see what you've posted publicly or whatever. 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:50.680 And you say, sure, that's fine. Whatever it's posted publicly, 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:54.080 you can know that. Well, that would give more data 0:23:54.480 --> 0:23:57.840 to the developer who had created the survey. So they're 0:23:57.880 --> 0:24:00.520 getting information from the survey that get know what kind 0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:03.560 of personality you have, but they also know the type 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:06.720 of stuff you like based upon your interactions on Facebook 0:24:06.720 --> 0:24:09.240 because they have access to that information as well, and 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:13.040 they can start to try and draw correlations between data points. So, 0:24:13.080 --> 0:24:16.520 for example, they these researchers published a paper in two 0:24:16.560 --> 0:24:20.240 thousand uh talking about their findings, and they said that, 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:23.360 you know, we found that people who displayed high intelligence 0:24:23.440 --> 0:24:27.560 also really tended to like thunderstorms, or people who are 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:31.000 big fans of Hello Kitty. Scored really high on openness, 0:24:31.200 --> 0:24:35.199 but they scored low on agreeableness and emotional stability. The 0:24:35.280 --> 0:24:39.199 researchers knew that information because the app wouldn't again, just 0:24:39.200 --> 0:24:41.680 gather information from the quiz. The app gave researchers a 0:24:41.760 --> 0:24:43.879 chance to look at the profiles of the users themselves, 0:24:45.640 --> 0:24:48.280 you know, so whatever those users had clicked like on 0:24:48.320 --> 0:24:50.639 and Facebook, that stuff got lumped in with all the 0:24:50.680 --> 0:24:52.960 other data. And that's how they were able to draw 0:24:53.040 --> 0:24:58.640