ITE302x

ASSIGNMENT 3

I. Do you think that companies like CA can actually affect elections? Do you have any
personal experience about evaluating another person only through their behaviors on
social networks?
Election is an event which allows people to make their choice about a particular problem. Its
result is totally based on participation’s decision, without any external affections. Each’s
decision is built from their experiences and knowledge in the past, then when these things
changes, decisions will also change.
The secret weapon of companies like CA is that, they have powerful tools, methods and
experiences to collect user data, not just a specific type of data, but in every corner of
people life, like what do they read, what do they like, what do they avoid to watch, what do
they buy,… The method they use to collect data is so perfect and complicated that it
become very hard for user to avoid being monitored, for example, they collect data through
an app that ask people about their habits, after answering a number of questions, user can
know if they match another user’s personality. With the rapid development of Big Data and
dimensional data analysis. The company can then extract useful data from raw data, in
composition with another user data, to build a user’s model of personality. This model helps
them a lot in the work of analysis. They can category user by different aspect, dividing them
into groups, then count the group, or applying specific action to each group to maximize the
success. The more important and dangerous thing is, with the built model of data, the
company can make an easier attempt to change the target’s decision and behavior.
The principle of how personal data can be used to affect one’s behavior is very simple. Let
take a basic example of it. Imagine you are going to a beach to enjoy your holiday, and
someone do not want unauthorized people to enter an area of the beach, then they put one
of the following signs near the restricted area:

Source: Cambridge Analytica

 Both of the sign is to ensure people to leave the area. Which one do you think that will bring
more affect? The left one look good, you will probably turn away, but, maybe, there
someone that so interested what’s going one inside, then they can still break in. But in the
second sign, most people will leave the area immediately, because of the fear of an attack
by a shark. In this example, everyone would probably have the strongest urge to undertake
the action of leaving the beach after seeing the message on the right.
Affecting an election just follow the same principle, but in a higher level. In the political
realm, however, depending on pre-existing beliefs and values, different people would be
better persuaded with varying messages in support of the same candidate or issue. In the
example of CA and Trump’s 2016 election. CA has used Facebook advertisement to affect
people’s vote. With many collected user data, CA analyzed that if they had a measure of
someone’s personality, they could curate an advertisement that would be most convincing
to them. Therefore, they would be able to convince many different people with different
personalities, to have the same opinion on a particular issue or candidate by using
personalized, targeted advertisements.

II. In your opinion, what can be done to limit the impact of spreading news on social
networks like Facebook on each individual's decisions. Give an example.
In my opinion, methods that limit the impact of social network on audience must be taken
from all relating party:
- User should avoid sharing too much sensitive data about their own on internet. They
should be aware that they can be monitor online at any time, and their data online may
be collected without their permission. For example, user should only share information
with trusted source, avoid posting private information like hobby, interest to public.
Another important thing is, user should be aware of news they read on social network
and test them carefully with different aspect to avoid being scammed by fake new
- Social network provider like Facebook and Twitter should pay more effort to protect
user data against data miner
- Governments should establish rules and law to protect user information