President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Biden*

(R) Donald Trump

80%

20%↓

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(D) Adam Frisch

(R) Jeff Hurd

(R) Ron Hanks

40%

30%

20%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(R) J. Sonnenberg

(R) Ted Harvey

20%↑

15%↑

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Dave Williams

(R) Jeff Crank

(R) Doug Bruce

20%

20%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

90%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) Brittany Pettersen

85%↑

 

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

(R) Janak Joshi

60%↑

40%↑

20%↑

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
March 28, 2018 02:11 PM UTC

Sorry Colorado Voters, Your Stolen Data Is Still Out There

  • 6 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

The UK’s Channel 4 News–not our local Channel 4, mind you–breaks more disturbing news for Coloradans about the use of improperly obtained social media usage data by Republicans to “microtarget” voters here in the 2014 elections. Despite the claims by embattled “psychoanalytics” firm Cambridge Analytica that all such data had been deleted, reporters from England have been knocking on doors in Arvada to explain to local voters that no, sorry…

The cache of campaign data from a Cambridge Analytica source, details 136,000 individuals in the US state of Colorado, along with each person’s personality and psychological profile.

The data, which dates from 2014, was used by Cambridge Analytica to target specific messages at residents who would be most susceptible to them.

As the harvesting scandal grew last week, Cambridge Analytica insisted all Facebook data it held, and any information they had derived using the Facebook data, “had been deleted”.

Facebook also said it took steps to ensure all information related to harvested profiles was “destroyed”.

But the Colorado dataset, along with similar data for Oregon, suggests copies of the Facebook-derived data still exists, and raises questions about who still has them.

Interviews with Colorado voters with a psychoanalytic profile in Cambridge Analytica’s dataset seem to poke holes in the idea that it was some kind of omniscient predictor of human behavior. At least in terms of self-identification, voters interviewed for this story found significant discrepancies from their profiled selves.

On the other hand, who wants to cop to a high level of “neuroticism?”

Image of voter analysis breakdown via Channel 4

The real problem here is that the data used to construct these profiles of American voters was improperly obtained without the consent of the Facebook users it was gleaned from. That problem is further compounded by the fact that the data has not been deleted despite the insistence of Cambridge Analytica that it had been. For all Colorado voters know, data we thought was confidential–and then we were told was deleted–is still being used to manipulate our behavior.

Safe to say, the Republicans who brought this chicanery down on Colorado have a lot to answer for.

Comments

6 thoughts on “Sorry Colorado Voters, Your Stolen Data Is Still Out There

    1. The funny part is that Moldy is probably one of the 136,000 profiled voters.  Now you know where the mindless little bot gets all his talking points devil

  1. Fake News!

    Facebook told us that they asked Cambridge Analytics to erase the data. Who are we supposed to believe? Colorado Pols or Facebook or Cambridge Analytics.

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

211 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!