Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America QUOTES

2 " My brief exposure to hacking communities left a permanent impression. You learn that no system is absolutely –nothing is impenetrable and barriers are a dare. The hacker philosophy taught me that if you shift your perspective on any system: a computer, a network, even society, you may discover flaws and vulnerabilities. "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

4 " Soon we were sharing personal information without the slightest hesitation. This was encouraged, in part, by a new vocabular. What were in effect privately owned surveillance networks became “communities,” the people these networks used for profit were “users,” and addictive design was promoted as “user experience” or “engagement. "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

6 " He reads about intersectional feminism or the fluidity of identity –not as I later learned that, because he’s open to those ideas –but because he wants to invert them: to identify what ideas people attach themselves to and then to weaponize it. What I didn’t know that day is that Bannon wanted to fight a cultural war, and so he had come to people who specialized in informational weapons to help him build his arsenal. "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

8 " The first tool of authoritarian regimes is always informational control—both in the gathering of information on the public through surveillance and the filtration of information to the public through owned media. In its early days, the Internet seemed to pose a challenge to authoritarian regimes, but with the advent of social media, we are watching the construction of architectures that fulfill the needs of every authoritarian regime: surveillance and information control. Authoritarian movements are possible only when the general public becomes habituated to—and numbed by—a new normal. "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

10 " We like to think of ourselves as immune from influence or our cognitive biases, because we want to feel like we are in control, but industries like alcohol, tobacco, fast food, and gaming all know we are creatures that are subject to cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities. And tech has caught on to this with its research into “user experience,” “gamification,” “growth hacking,” and “engagement” by activating ludic loops and reinforcement schedules in the same way slot machines do. So far, this gamification has been contained to social media and digital platforms, but what will happen as we further integrate our lives with networked information architectures designed to exploit evolutionary flaws in our cognition? Do we really want to live in a “gamified” environment that engineers our obsessions and plays with our lives as if we are inside its game? "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

12 " In one experiment, CA would show people on online panels pictures of simple bar graphs about uncontroversial things (e.g., the usage rates of mobile phones or sales of a car type) and the majority would be able to read the graph correctly. However, unbeknownst to the respondents, the data behind these graphs had actually been derived from politically controversial topics, such as income inequality, climate change, or deaths from gun violence. When the labels of the same graphs were later switched to their actual controversial topic, respondents who were made angry by identity threats were more likely to misread the relabeled graphs that they had previously understood. What CA observed was that when respondents were angry, their need for complete and rational explanations was also significantly reduced. In particular, anger put people in a frame of mind in which they were more indiscriminately punitive, particularly to out-groups. They would also underestimate the risk of negative outcomes. This led CA to discover that even if a hypothetical trade war with China or Mexico meant the loss of American jobs and profits, people primed with anger would tolerate that domestic economic damage if it meant they could use a trade war to punish immigrant groups and urban liberals. "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

14 " We are all vulnerable to manipulation. We make judgments based on the information available to us, but we are all susceptible to manipulation when our access to that information becomes mediated. Over time, our biases can become amplified without our even realising it. "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

16 " In psychological warfare, the weak points are flaws in how people think. If you’re trying to hack a person’s mind, you need to identify cognitive biases and then exploit them. "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

18 " It turns out that Republicans can accept a batshit insane candidate, so long as it’s consistent insanity. "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

20 " What Cambridge Analytica did was use complex corporate setups across jurisdictions not only to launder money but to launder something that was becoming just as valuable: your data. "

― , Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America