The tie between the fifth and second volumes of the report, is the way in which the internal Republican polling (potential voter) data given by Paul Manafort to Russian military intelligence office Konstantin Kilimnik would be used by the Russians to micro-target their pro-Trump social media campaign. My brother, who has been running soc…
The tie between the fifth and second volumes of the report, is the way in which the internal Republican polling (potential voter) data given by Paul Manafort to Russian military intelligence office Konstantin Kilimnik would be used by the Russians to micro-target their pro-Trump social media campaign. My brother, who has been running social media as a business for a very long time, wrote a post elsewhere explaining how it works, which I reproduce here with permission:
IT'S COLLUSION
The Senate Intelligence Report states that the Trump Campaign shared polling data with Russian Intelligence Officers. Via Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort who is also described as a grave counter intelligence threat. Some Republicans read this and say there was no collusion. Democrats are saying this is collusion. Some say, it depends on what they did with the information, was it of value.? As a veteran social media expert, allow me to explain why this information was of extraordinary value and magnified by many times the power and impact of Russian disinformation interference in the election with the objective to elect Trump. So valuable that it easily could have made and likely did make the difference in getting Trump elected.
1) Micro-targeted dark ad posts is the killer app of politics
A key success factor in the Russian interference was using Facebook to micro-target voters with dark ad posts, spreading and amplifying the disinformation. The only people that see dark ad posts are those they are targeted to, thus enabling a campaign to say different things (lies) to different people without being caught in the public eye. For example advertising to specific Black people in rust belt states that Clinton was anti-Black people as evidenced by her decades prior predators comment. Then advertising to specific white people in those same states that Clinton was easy on crime, as evidenced by her liberal crime policies that would let dangerous Black criminals off easy. As people repeatedly get targeted with variations of such posts they start to believe them. They get directed to Facebook pages and web sites full of false information to make them think it more. These people in turn start spreading the word to other people. At the core it's not that different from disinformation robo calls, and other deceitful political tactics - Except 1,000s of times more powerful due to social media's unparalleled ability to target, do so in the dark, and have viral-tribal effects.
2) Success is a function of narrow targeting
Such dark post advertising is only this effective if it's micro-targeted to very specific sets of people, to ensure the disinformation is chosen to hit the nerves of those very narrow profiles. Facebook has advertising tools that enable campaigns and brands to do just that. Micro-target on a very narrow basis that can be tuned continuously, measuring the results in terms of engagement, shares, comments, click throughs to destinations, and even what happens at those destinations.
3) You have to know who you want to target
For all this to work, you have to know who you want to target. Once you have that information it's easy. Simplest approach is to just type in the various criteria, including, age, gender, race, political views, interests, and a host of other criteria. Then run your dark ad posts, see the results and tune. More sophisticated is to load your database into Facebook and say who you want to target. Facebook's algorithms take that list, match it to their user database and target your ads to the exact people in your list. For privacy reasons they do this without letting you know exactly which people's Facebook IDs match your list . But the net is your dark ad posts are going directly to the people in your list. Due to the election swing impact of the Russian disinformation campaign in 2016, and a lot of public pressure, Facebook has since constrained some aspects of the this micro-targeting. But in 2016 the full power was available, and it only makes sense that Russian Intelligence agents made full use of it for their and Trump's benefit.
4) The Trump Campaign gave Russian Intelligence the polling data that enabled them to know who to target. This empowered Russian Intelligence to use that information in conjunction Facebook features to deploy their disinformation, and swing the election.
And that, in the social media age is how we spell COLLUSION!
(Our founders called this consorting with a foreign power to secure office, which they considered a big time Constitutional no-no)
Thanks to your brother for enlightening us on the process for spreading disinformation using social media. It boils down to what so many of us "older" people have been saying for years: just because it is on FB doesn't make it true. If you can't check a fact, it probably isn't one (use the extensive research done by Professor Richardson as an example of checking facts). However, saying that doesn't mean targeted people are suddenly going to start checking everything they read or hear. It is a mindset, and if you are a fact-checker, it is extremely frustrating to be unable to get people who aren't to listen to those facts. Thank him for me, please, and tell him I appreciate his work. And thank you for posting it!
My brother has given permission to say not only his name, but a bit about him.
Peter Friedman is founder, Chairman and CEO of LiveWorld, a social-media digital agency and software company that manages social media for some of the larger brands in the world. Peter has over 30 years of experience in the space and is considered a pioneer in social media. He is the author of “The CMO’s Social Media Handbook, A Step By Step Guide To Marketing In The Social Media Age” and “Is Privacy Dead In The Digital Age! And What To Do About It?”
He also wants to point out that social media does a great deal more good in the world than bad. Connecting people and helping them understand each other. Uniting and keeping families closer. Education, awareness, enabling positive movements. Empowering people to provide disaster relief and emotional support. Giving cancer patients and many other a channel for emotional support and medical care. Literally saving lives and so much more. The bad is only a fraction of the good. Nevertheless the bad must be addressed.
Watch "The Great Hack" about precision targeting undecided voters is swing precincts. This is how it was done in the 2016 election, along with voting machine tampering. Absentee balloting will alleviate the tampering, but the targeting will continue unabated.
Thanks Joan. I always appreciate information over opinions, and your sharing of this has helped to make clear how this works for those who don’t understand how social media can be deployed effectively on a minuscule budget. Before social media, it required the deployment of State run intelligence agencies (a sometimes risky act), at great expense and dubious results.
The tie between the fifth and second volumes of the report, is the way in which the internal Republican polling (potential voter) data given by Paul Manafort to Russian military intelligence office Konstantin Kilimnik would be used by the Russians to micro-target their pro-Trump social media campaign. My brother, who has been running social media as a business for a very long time, wrote a post elsewhere explaining how it works, which I reproduce here with permission:
IT'S COLLUSION
The Senate Intelligence Report states that the Trump Campaign shared polling data with Russian Intelligence Officers. Via Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort who is also described as a grave counter intelligence threat. Some Republicans read this and say there was no collusion. Democrats are saying this is collusion. Some say, it depends on what they did with the information, was it of value.? As a veteran social media expert, allow me to explain why this information was of extraordinary value and magnified by many times the power and impact of Russian disinformation interference in the election with the objective to elect Trump. So valuable that it easily could have made and likely did make the difference in getting Trump elected.
1) Micro-targeted dark ad posts is the killer app of politics
A key success factor in the Russian interference was using Facebook to micro-target voters with dark ad posts, spreading and amplifying the disinformation. The only people that see dark ad posts are those they are targeted to, thus enabling a campaign to say different things (lies) to different people without being caught in the public eye. For example advertising to specific Black people in rust belt states that Clinton was anti-Black people as evidenced by her decades prior predators comment. Then advertising to specific white people in those same states that Clinton was easy on crime, as evidenced by her liberal crime policies that would let dangerous Black criminals off easy. As people repeatedly get targeted with variations of such posts they start to believe them. They get directed to Facebook pages and web sites full of false information to make them think it more. These people in turn start spreading the word to other people. At the core it's not that different from disinformation robo calls, and other deceitful political tactics - Except 1,000s of times more powerful due to social media's unparalleled ability to target, do so in the dark, and have viral-tribal effects.
2) Success is a function of narrow targeting
Such dark post advertising is only this effective if it's micro-targeted to very specific sets of people, to ensure the disinformation is chosen to hit the nerves of those very narrow profiles. Facebook has advertising tools that enable campaigns and brands to do just that. Micro-target on a very narrow basis that can be tuned continuously, measuring the results in terms of engagement, shares, comments, click throughs to destinations, and even what happens at those destinations.
3) You have to know who you want to target
For all this to work, you have to know who you want to target. Once you have that information it's easy. Simplest approach is to just type in the various criteria, including, age, gender, race, political views, interests, and a host of other criteria. Then run your dark ad posts, see the results and tune. More sophisticated is to load your database into Facebook and say who you want to target. Facebook's algorithms take that list, match it to their user database and target your ads to the exact people in your list. For privacy reasons they do this without letting you know exactly which people's Facebook IDs match your list . But the net is your dark ad posts are going directly to the people in your list. Due to the election swing impact of the Russian disinformation campaign in 2016, and a lot of public pressure, Facebook has since constrained some aspects of the this micro-targeting. But in 2016 the full power was available, and it only makes sense that Russian Intelligence agents made full use of it for their and Trump's benefit.
4) The Trump Campaign gave Russian Intelligence the polling data that enabled them to know who to target. This empowered Russian Intelligence to use that information in conjunction Facebook features to deploy their disinformation, and swing the election.
And that, in the social media age is how we spell COLLUSION!
(Our founders called this consorting with a foreign power to secure office, which they considered a big time Constitutional no-no)
Thanks to your brother for enlightening us on the process for spreading disinformation using social media. It boils down to what so many of us "older" people have been saying for years: just because it is on FB doesn't make it true. If you can't check a fact, it probably isn't one (use the extensive research done by Professor Richardson as an example of checking facts). However, saying that doesn't mean targeted people are suddenly going to start checking everything they read or hear. It is a mindset, and if you are a fact-checker, it is extremely frustrating to be unable to get people who aren't to listen to those facts. Thank him for me, please, and tell him I appreciate his work. And thank you for posting it!
My brother has given permission to say not only his name, but a bit about him.
Peter Friedman is founder, Chairman and CEO of LiveWorld, a social-media digital agency and software company that manages social media for some of the larger brands in the world. Peter has over 30 years of experience in the space and is considered a pioneer in social media. He is the author of “The CMO’s Social Media Handbook, A Step By Step Guide To Marketing In The Social Media Age” and “Is Privacy Dead In The Digital Age! And What To Do About It?”
He also wants to point out that social media does a great deal more good in the world than bad. Connecting people and helping them understand each other. Uniting and keeping families closer. Education, awareness, enabling positive movements. Empowering people to provide disaster relief and emotional support. Giving cancer patients and many other a channel for emotional support and medical care. Literally saving lives and so much more. The bad is only a fraction of the good. Nevertheless the bad must be addressed.
Your brother Peter sounds like such a good guy! He doesn't want to subscribe and join this discourse?
Peter says: Thank you. I find it very interesting but I’m full up.
Deep appreciation for posting this and for your brothers sharing also
Watch "The Great Hack" about precision targeting undecided voters is swing precincts. This is how it was done in the 2016 election, along with voting machine tampering. Absentee balloting will alleviate the tampering, but the targeting will continue unabated.
Can I provide this post to my network without identifying anyone? Or is it posted somewhere public?
yes
thanks!
Yes, you can. It's on FB but that is not a stable URL.
Thanks Joan. I always appreciate information over opinions, and your sharing of this has helped to make clear how this works for those who don’t understand how social media can be deployed effectively on a minuscule budget. Before social media, it required the deployment of State run intelligence agencies (a sometimes risky act), at great expense and dubious results.
In the case of Donald Trump's campaign in 2016, the Senate report confirms that a state run intelligence agency (Russian) was deployed.