robert peston’s WTF?... and ‘influencing’ democracy

I’m half way through Robert Peston’s latest book “WTF?”… and am finding it absolutely fascinating (and hugely illuminating). I’ve got a lot of time for Peston. I think we share similar views (perhaps this why I like him?!) about society, the world, politics(?), the establishment etc. He describes himself as “a fully paid-up member of the community of internationalist liberals – and we are as intolerant of those who challenge our convictions, which we arrogantly take to be universal truths, as the nationalists we hatefully and wrongly see as being small-minded” - I might have written this myself!. In the book, he tries to provide an even-handed analysis of ‘stuff’. It’s passionate, personal, angry, funny… and very readable.

I’ll no doubt quote various bits of his book over the coming weeks(!), but I’ve been particularly intrigued (and not a bit frightened!) by what he wrote in the chapter entitled “Algorithms Win Elections”. I’ve long shaken my head in disbelief when it comes to elections/referendums and democracy… Now I don’t want to bore you(!) but, apart from urging you to buy a copy of his book for yourself, I’m going to quote a number of extracts from this particular chapter (don’t worry, I’m not going to reproduce all 37 pages verbatim !).

In the chapter - regarding the EU Referendum and the notorious ‘additional £350 million every week’ to spend on the NHS’ bus slogan - Peston quickly and effectively discounts it as a ridiculous “charlatan claim”, but goes on to point out that Dominic Cummings, campaign director of Vote Leave, says the £350million claim was: “the most effective argument not only with the crucial swing fifth (of voters) but with almost every demographic. Even with UKIP voters it was level-pegging with immigration. Would we have won without immigration? No. Would we have won without £350m/NHS? All our research and the close result strongly suggests No… The IN campaign realised the effectiveness of this as Andrew Cooper, Ryan Coetze and others said after 23 June, eg: ‘The power of their £350 million a week can’t be overstated’”.

Peston later goes on to say: “There is no doubt, for example, that Vote Leave understood far better than Britain Stronger In (the official campaign to keep the UK in the EU) the opportunity presented by new technologies for gathering information about potential voters and then communicating with them. Looking back on the contest, Vote Leave was deploying a Star Wars  battle cruiser against Wild West gunslingers on the other side. In some ways, it is miraculous that the margin of victory for Leave was not greater”.

“The In campaign’s treasurer, Poland Rudd, is withering about what went wrong with his side’s polling, approach to social media and fundamental message: ‘Craig Oliver ran the campaign on the slogan “Don’t Risk it”’, he says. ‘What we failed to understand was there were too many voters with absolutely nothing to risk’”.

“The star performer for Vote Leave, according to Cummings, was its operations director, Victoria Woodcock… According to Cummings, Woodcock was the ‘most indispensable person in the campaign’… What she did that was so valuable, for Cummings, was manage the creation of new ‘canvassing software’… The point, according to Cummings, was to suck in and process data about voters ‘from social media, online advertising, websites, apps, canvassing, direct mail, polls, online fundraising, activist feedback and… a new way to do polling’… There is no ambiguity about the importance of social media to Vote Leave”.

(After reference to various betting markets and hedge funds that benefited from the referendum result): “The fundamental point, relevant here, is that our shaky confidence that democracy yields equal benefits for all is tested when very wealthy people both finance political campaigns and become enriched when those campaigns succeed. It creates the impression – perhaps mistaken, but hard to dispel – that the system is rigged in favour of the rich and powerful”.

“In a future not very far away – and it may be as soon as the next election – campaigns could be won and lost in the way that hedge funds such as the multi-billionaire Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies have beaten the market for years, with data gathering and self-learning algorithms. Cummings and Vote Leave got close with the way they used their VICS program and the expertise of AggregataIQ to gather information about voters and then targeted their marketing in a more laser-like way. A party’s values and messages matter. But in today’s digital babel, they are probably less important than how the message is presented and to whom it is communicated”.

“What we need, and urgently, is a proper public debate about where to draw the new line in this social-media and online age between complete freedom of expression and rules that do not deliver unfair political advantage to technologically savvy plutocrats. This is a pressing question, not just for the conduct of elections and referendums but also for the everyday discourse that takes place online…”.

“Today’s Big Brother is Big Data. If we don’t give our political and data regulators powers fit for the Facebook age, a deep-pocketed tech billionaire will fix the outcome of an election, by dint of his or her ownership of a self-learning model that gathers and processes information about voters’ preferences and susceptibilities”.

Of course, you probably already knew all about this (yes, I had a very limited understanding… but the more I think and learn about it, the more worried I become!).

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Big Brother IS watching.
But, hey, read the book. It’s quite brilliant.