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Comment by brnt | Hacker News Reader

Psychological science is now thoroughly privatized. Don't read papers if this subject is of interest to your, look al big tech, ad tech, troll factories, influencer science, media consolidation, for-pay research-charities (great rabbithole to dive into btw).

Academics are thoroughly out of the loop on this one, as are we all incidentally.

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I became a Data Scientist because in 3rd year, I found the OKCupid data blog and realized their research had methodological soundness these "20 undergraduate lab students forced to be there" research never would.

You trade 'shot-in-the-dark lab experiments' for 'a clear and obvious agenda'. The trick is to just make sure the agenda isn't morally reprehensible.

more than one third of the entire world population believes that OKCupid is "morally reprehensible" (!)

This is an interesting statement. Do you have links to something more I can read? Who thinks dating sites are morally reprehensible?

> for-pay research-charities (great rabbithole to dive into btw).

Any getting-started pointers for this (or your other suggestions)?

A useful keyword is psychographics, but you'll find that much research is privatized (comes from media/software companies), and that some of the meat seems to be not publicized. Which makes sense, it's what gives them an edge over the competition. The Cambridge Analytica dossier is of course a good way to find references.

In terms of the why, and the who's paying, Dark Money (Mayer) and Democracy in Chains (MacLean) touch on it: psychographics is huge for anyone doing manipulation, not just commercial ads, also political ones. Probably even moreso.

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