Rebel Tech AllianceHow is Big Tech and Surveillance Capitalism a threat to democracy?
Surveillance capitalism has lead to an abundance of citizen personal behavioural data available in the public domain. This was supposed to be just used by advertisers to influence our buying decisions. The Spanish word for advert is 'propaganda', and it turns out that buying stuff is not the only thing that ads data can be used to influence. It can also be used to micro-target undecided voters and gradually change their mind on what issues they find shocking and who they will vote for.
Brexit and Trump - 2016
The Cambridge Analytica scandal
Everyboby came to know the name Cambridge Analytica after Carole Cadwalladr, the investigative journalist working for the Observer in the UK, broke the story in 2018:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election
The investigation was explosive and confirmed what many already thought: "something weird was going on in the background of both the Brexit and Trump votes". To get the full picture on what happened watch the excellent documentary The Great Hack:
The Great Hack (2019) - Netflix
Why is it called The Great Hack? Because they hacked democracy. Detailed knowledge of the personal data on swing voters was used against them to influence how they voted. And it worked.
The Mueller Report and the Russia Report
It wasn't just the Leave campaign and the Trump campaign that influenced elections. Remember we told you that it's not just advertisers that can access the RTB system data?
It turns out that Russia has been waging information warfare against the West since around 2011. And they are able to do this due to the ease of access to behavioural data on all our citizens, which they can use to sway elections. Both the Brexit vote (destablilsing the EU block) and the Trump vote (installing a corrupt authoritarian leader in the White House) were clearly in Russia's interest
The Mueller Report concluded that Russia did indeed interfer in the 2016 US election:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
The Russia Report in the UK was mysteriously delayed by then-PM Boris Johnson, and when published was heavily redacted. It implied that the UK security services did not do enough to counter the threat:
Download the Russia Report pdf
Carole Cadwalladr and Peter Dukes reveal the bizarre story of the Russia Report cover-up in their excellent podcast Sergei & The Westminster Spy Ring
Fake news, micro-targeting and elections
When each person receives their own version of the news, different to their friends and family, it is impossible to have a shared narrative. Personalised news is possible thanks to the same micro-targeting that enables peronalised ads. And when the articles are allowed to propagate so fast and are presented so confidently, perhaps even you would believe them. Here's an example of how far fake news travels on Facebook:
And that was in 2016. It has continued since then.
The Romanian 2024 Presidential Election
This election was annulled by their Constitutional Court due to Russian interference via bot farm social media accounts:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2yl2zxrq1o
The 2024 US Election
If you're wondering how a convicted felon know for lying was elected president of the USA in November 2024, then you're not alone. Clearly there were failings by the Democrats to present a compelling narrative, and many thought that Trump would be better for the economy*. But the theme of 'flooding the zone with shit', as Steve Bannon famously stated, cannot be ignored as a factor:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-disinformation-defined-the-2024-election-narrative/
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-sources/index.html
*At the time of writing (April 2025) this is ironic, since the world stock markets have just crashed due to Trumps tarrifs