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Comment by letslightafire | Hacker News Reader

My guess: Selling psychological data to advertisers is boring but if you get Bannon involved and rope it into the Trump news cycle, it suddenly gets a lot of people talking.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistl...

This article is probably the biggest one right now.

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Selling psychological data to advertisers is boring, but when you get billionaires and foreign powers involved to elect a would-be autocrat who is degrading American democracy, it suddenly gets a lot of people talking.

Yup. It's not a surprise why people are interested in the role of data in modern public debate and democracy.

That's why we need safeguards in place. Everyone was happy when Obama used it and never thought it can be used by someone else too.

Edit: Someone linked this below - http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-market...

Did Obama acquire the data under false pretense, use it to lie and mislead people, or downright coerce candidates through bribes and sex?

I have seen no evidence that the efforts of “foreign powers” were even remotely close to effective. Has anyone done a study proving that people either changed their votes or didn’t vote based upon the Russian campaign?

I think most people believe Russian hackers literally hacked voting machines to give Trump the election. Subtle manipulation of emotions it too complex for the public.

Wait until people find out American democracy is smoke and mirrors, then you'll see people talking. They better this situation under control soon or that might just happen.

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