Wk 2 - Democracy or Weaponized Marketing?

It is not a secret that most of us carry our phones, laptops, tablets, etc. almost 100% of the time. Also, we use social media to communicate with the world and feel more connected. According to Pew Research By 2021, 72% of the public uses some type of social media. Shown in the graph below Facebook is one of the most popular and widely used, so it is not surprising they have found themselves in some data breaching scandals lately.  

Facebooks offers very simple ways to advertise and market your business, but can your fun Facebook surveys be gathering data from you and your friends for political campaigns? This weekend I was doing my usual Netflix documentary watching and came across “The Great Hack.” The documentary focuses on a political consulting agency, Cambridge Analytica, that throughout the investigation was found to have used Facebook surveys to harvest data and create personality profiles that could help them sway the votes towards their candidate during elections. Their interest was in those that the profile would describe as “The Susceptibles” and through targeted marketing could be pushed to the result they wanted. Here is a clip from the documentary that shows a sales presentation from Cambridge Analytica describing a previous campaign they did for a political party in Trinidad and Tobago. 

After watching the documentary and learning more about marketing and AI, I can’t help but wonder how much of our choices are truly ours. Can all of us be “pushed” to make a choice without even knowing? If you really analyze it, it is no coincidence that at lunch and dinner time all you see is fast food or restaurant commercials. How about just mentioning or looking up an item online and you will see it nonstop constantly in every app or page you open. So.......did you consciously make that choice to hit the "Pay Now” button? 

However, things get more complicated when weaponized marketing is used to change political systems, create wars, spread misinformation and just create confusion. So, where and when do we draw the line? Please post any comments below and let me know what you are thinking. Here is the trailer for the documentary.  Enjoy!