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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDigital Jim Crow - Suppression of 3.5 million black voters in 2016 by Trump Campaign
Last edited Mon Sep 28, 2020, 03:00 PM - Edit history (2)
Channel 4 news (UK) is reporting that the Trump campaign targeted millions of black voters to deter them from voting. There has been a massive leak of the campaign database, which shows what information about every voter and how they used it. In one of the biggest data dumps ever they are reporting that they database held detailed information on 200 million people - used to bombard them with tailored messages. 3.5 million black people were targeted with messages not to vote. They identified and classified people into audiences/groups. They had a group called deterrents, who were black, the Trump campaign knew they could not win them over so did whatever they could so they would not turn up to the poll, actively trying to silence the POC he so obviously despises. Strategic disenfranchisement... getting people to stay at home on voting day, and it worked in swing states on the data they are reporting tonight. Do you remember Trump chatting after the election about drop in black voter turnout helped him win the seat? Heh... In one Wisconsin precinct alone only 36% of deterrents turned out to vote, overall turnout fell from 75% in 20120 to 56% in 2016. And plenty more examples just like that ward by ward. 20-30% turnout deficit over and over.
I am sure there will be much more to come.
Digital Jim Crow Profilers of the back population to suppress their vote and steal the election. Fascist wankers.
EDIT: Clip from the show
Link to tweet
EDIT 2 Whole report @ link
https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-strategy-to-deter-millions-of-black-americans-from-voting-in-2016
Although not sure if you will be able to access in America. so transcript here:
It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trumps campaign as Deterrence voters they wanted to stay home on election day.
Tonight, civil rights campaigners said the evidence amounted to a new form of voter suppression and called on Facebook to disclose ads and targeting information that has never been made public.
The Deterrence project can be revealed after Channel 4 News obtained the database used by Trumps digital campaign team credited with helping deliver his shock victory to become president four years ago.
Vast in scale, it contains details on almost 200 million Americans, among more than 5,000 files, which together amass almost 5 terabytes of data making it one of the biggest leaks in history.
It reveals not only the huge amounts of data held on every individual voter, but how that data was used and manipulated by models and algorithms.
In 16 key battleground states, millions of Americans were separated by an algorithm into one of eight categories, also described as audiences, so they could then be targeted with tailored ads on Facebook and other platforms.
One of the categories was named Deterrence, which was later described publicly by Trumps chief data scientist as containing people that the campaign hope dont show up to vote.
Analysis by Channel 4 News shows Black Americans historically a community targeted with voter suppression tactics were disproportionately marked Deterrence by the 2016 campaign.
In total, 3.5 million Black Americans were marked Deterrence.
In Georgia, despite Black people constituting 32% of the population, they made up 61% of the Deterrence category. In North Carolina, Black people are 22% of the population but were 46% of Deterrence. In Wisconsin, Black people constitute just 5.4% of the population but made up 17% of Deterrence.
The disproportionate categorising of Black Americans for Deterrence is seen across the US. Overall, people of colour labelled as Black, Hispanic, Asian and Other groups made up 54% of the Deterrence category. In contrast, other categories of voters the campaign wished to attract were overwhelmingly white.
The 2016 campaign preceded the first fall in Black turnout in 20 years and allowed Donald Trump to take shock victories in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan by wafer-thin margins, reaching the White House despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.
Trumps digital campaign, called Project Alamo and based in San Antonio, Texas, involved a team from the now defunct British company Cambridge Analytica, working with a team from the Republican National Committee. Two senior members of the Cambridge Analytica team are working on the Trump 2020 campaign.
Cambridge Analytica collapsed after investigations by Channel 4 News, The Guardian and the New York Times in 2018.
Facebook is facing calls to ban political advertising, following an international backlash over the use of its platform to spread misinformation, disinformation, and suppression during election campaigns.
The Trump campaign spent £44 million on Facebook ads alone during 2016, posting almost six million different versions of highly targeted messages that were pumped directly into the feeds of target voters across America, helped by a Facebook employee embedded within the Trump campaign.
But many of the ads were so called dark posts, which could vanish from recipients feeds once a campaign stopped paying for them.
It means no complete public record exists of the ads posted on Facebook during the 2016 campaign or the audience lists used to target voters. The platform offered no Ad Library at the time.
Without Facebook or the campaign itself revealing the information, it means its not possible to ascertain exactly how potential voters in the Deterrence group may have been targeted on Facebook.
The Trump campaign itself has categorically stated that it did not target African Americans.
Brad Parscale, the campaigns 2016 digital director told PBS Frontline: I would say Im nearly 100 percent sure we did not run any campaigns that targeted even African Americans.
But Channel 4 News has uncovered evidence that the campaign did target Black voters with negative ads designed to crush Hillary Clintons turnout.
These included videos featuring Hillary Clinton referring to Black youths as super predators which aired on television 402 times in October 2016 and received millions of views on Facebook.
In one confidential document seen by Channel 4 News, Cambridge Analytica admitted the Trump campaign did target AA (African Americans) with what it called the Predators video spending $55,000 USD in the state of Georgia alone.
Reacting to the Channel 4 News revelations, Jamal Watkins, vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branded it a modern-day suppression campaign, using data and digital technology to keep Black voters at home.
He said: The thing thats shocking slash troubling about this is that theres this category of suppression. That Deterrence part. So, we use data similar to voter file data but its to motivate, persuade and encourage folks to participate. We dont use the data to say who can we deter and keep at home. That just seems, fundamentally, its a shift from the notion of democracy.
Its not may the best candidate win at that point its may the best well-funded machine suppress voters and keep them at home thereby rigging the election so that someone can win.
He added: I dont believe Facebook has fully disclosed their role, and fully disclosed the types of ads that were run, who was involved and literally how they may have been embedded in, say, the Trump campaign to make this all come to life.
Facebook is a very profitable platform. It reaches billions of folks every day. It doesnt need this kind of money. If it were to monitor and check these suppressive ads and say this is not the platform for this type of misinformation disinformation suppression tactics, Mark Zuckerberg would still live well, and eat well.
Today, a Facebook spokesperson said: Since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldnt happen today. We have 35,000 people working to ensure the integrity of our platform, created a political ads library and have protected more than 200 elections worldwide. We also have rules prohibiting voter suppression and are running the largest voter information campaign in American history.
The Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and the White House did not provide any comment to Channel 4 News prior to broadcast.
spanone
(135,816 posts)uponit7771
(90,335 posts)... error.
These people should pay for sticking with the stupid
Soph0571
(9,685 posts)Although facebook is refusing to give out the ads used to target individuals. But it worked enough.
Walleye
(31,002 posts)rzemanfl
(29,556 posts)persuadable white voters in swing states. I hope this is made into a searchable database available to the world. Americans hate being spied upon.
Soph0571
(9,685 posts)There is soooo much in there. It is still on the news right now. When they get the report up on the their website I will link it. Cambridge Analytica and Russia is all over this.
rzemanfl
(29,556 posts)VPN skullduggery I won't get involved with.
Soph0571
(9,685 posts)Soph0571
(9,685 posts)rzemanfl
(29,556 posts)I have been saying they were targeting individual voters in swing states since shortly after the election.
Soph0571
(9,685 posts)On how white voters in swing states are feeling about Trump holding all of that data about them!! Hhhhmmm
durablend
(7,459 posts)"I'D RATHER BE SPIED ON THAN BE A DEMOCRAT"
Budi
(15,325 posts)THIS FROM JULY 2020:
Non-Partisan Watchdog Accuses Trump Campaign Of Laundering $170 Million
Andrew SolenderForbes Staff
TOPLINE The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group, filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission Tuesday accusing the Trump campaign of laundering $170 million through numerous companies, some with connections to former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.
Parscale's involvement is detailed in the article.
SNIP
The Trump campaign and Trump Make America Great Again Committee disguised nearly $170 million of campaign spending by laundering the funds through firms, the complaint claims.
It adds that the firms are headed by Trumps recent campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and/or created by Trump campaign lawyers.
The complaint alleges that the Trump campaign paid millions of dollars to campaign-connected vendors without reporting those payments to the FEC, specifically honing in on American Made Media Consultants (AMMC), a firm created by Parscale, which has been paid over $106 million, making it the campaigns largest vendor.
AMMC was ostensibly created to circumvent media buyers, but the complaint points to FCC records that show the campaign has used media buying firm Harris Sikes to place some of its ads, alleging the campaign is failing to report payments to the firms and is instead using AMMC as a conduit for its payments to the firms.
The complaint also points to an app called Phunware, which Parscale has said was created and is directly owned by the campaign, but which has never appeared in the campaigns spending reports because, as the complaint alleges, it was paid through AMMC.
MORE...
rzemanfl
(29,556 posts)Wait, now I think we know why Parscale was suicidal.
Budi
(15,325 posts)The 2 worked hand in hand on this plan run by amateurs and then connected to the likes of Thiel, Mercers, et al, via Jared Kushner & Steve Bannon.
The heart of this beast is the Trump crime family itself.
Every one of them.
cilla4progress
(24,725 posts)beside myself.
Cosmo Blues
(2,478 posts)Of all the arguments I had with anti Hillary people and the bull they were trying to promote, I see now what a futile exercise that was