Dark arts my arse

Substantial moral paniccontinues over the dark arts  of Facebooking that persuaded so many people to vote for Brexit against their will and by manipulation of their unconscious.

It is hard to reference this,but, as I recall, last night's BBC Newsnight had K Wark quoting from the Report's condemnation of FB allowing race hate stuff on the Rohingya minority, with a half-jhearted attempt to go from there to suggest something nasty about FB ads paid for by Vote Leave. From a quick scan, I can see that the FB ads were  'morally if not legally wrong' as I remember Wark saying, in not clearly attributing their ads to Vote Leave, and the DCMS Report does huff and puff about the need for clarity. It makes sense only if viewers of ads were somehow unlikely to perceive the link with voting for Brexit, which would then render them pointless.

C Wylie, who blew the whistle on Cambridge Analytica was cut short in his attempt to say that FB had acted illegally in placing the Vote Leave ads because the Electoral Commission had found that VL had overspent and so FB was using illegal money -- even Wark saw the need to make clear that was an allegation. As usual, the whole thing only makes sense if you think that FB and/or Cambridge Analytica practice dark arts that manipulate people.

The FB ads that worried the DCMS seemed pretty standard fare to me, warning of immigration and demanding we not spend UK money on the EU. These themes might enrage Remainers but the case that putting them in little ads on FB make them sinisterly potent remains undemonstrated.

The Guradian today has a general blast about fake news and disinformation based on the DCMS Report and does its best to talk up the menace:

Democracy at risk due to fake news and data misuse, MPs conclude

The report is expected to say that the “relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views, which play to the fears and prejudices of people, in order to influence their voting plans and their behaviour” posed a greater threat to democracy than more familiar forms of so-called fake news, raising particular concerns about the way online data could be manipulated to impact elections.

There is no attempt to define these terms of course, nor to consider how actual evidence might be obtained. The hilarious view that this is a threat to some pure and spotless 'democracy' is also asserted, depite the Guardian's past record in exposing corruption, inefficiency or malpractice. 
 
There is an attempty at further dark artery:

The MPs will raise concerns about foreign funding of Brexit campaign groups, saying they remained unconvinced about the source of some of the money spent by the leave side, especially the funding of Leave.EU.

D Cummings has his own views about the process and its findings, including saying that the Committee failed to see the attributions because they used only the actual images from FB's database, noting the Remainer membership of the Committee and challenging them to attend a hearing before Parliament at which all parties (incuding himslef) will be under oath.

Conspiratorial Guardiain readers ,having just selcted a suspicioulsy American and techy company to embody their deepest fears,might have been disappointed to read another Guardian article.It does its best to frighten readers with its data on the large number of 'impressions' ( showings) of Vote Leave's FB ads (165m) ,but then reveals that:

Vote Leave’s supposedly youth-focused sister group showed most of its Facebook advertising to older voters during the EU referendum campaign [about 2/5 of those shown the ad were over 35]...The data suggests Vote Leave largely used Facebook adverts as a blunt instrument to promote a relatively small number of core messages on immigration and NHS funding. It promoted these adverts to millions of people across all age groups, a tactic more in line with traditional advertising practices...The data also points to apparent incompetence in the way the official Brexit campaign placed some of its adverts. Vote Leave targeted hundreds of thousands of Facebook users in India, including with ads featuring the former cricketer Sir Ian Botham promoting a pro-Brexit football prediction competition, potentially wasting campaign funds....Some adverts touched on topics designed to appeal to niche demographics, such as opposing bullfighting in Spain or calling for money to be spent on flood defences in Yorkshire rather than being sent to Brussels...Despite the DUP being based in Northern Ireland, more than half of the Facebook adverts the party ran during the referendum period were not shown to anyone in the region, according to Facebook’s data [ I'm not sure if this is incompetence or something sinister again]