How Dominic Cummings "hacked the referendum"

[Wishingstarr]

Dominic Cummings said in his own words that he "hacked the referendum" by emphasizing the fears of some sections of the British population. He and his team deliberately created a "barrage" of false or misleading information and carefully directed it at British citizens online from personal information that was stolen or obtained in ways apparently unconnected to politics.

It was a form of "psychological operations" usually used by the secret service.

Everything is explained with factual evidence:
www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-dominic-cummings-hacked-eu-referendum-lloyd-hardy

Another very interesting report. Dominic Cummings spent years in Russia and it does make me wonder about his motives...

three part video report on Russia psych ops on western democracies

I agree Miljea. People have been too comfortably protected from their idiotic ideas for too long. Other people have had to take the pain. Things are changing though, its a simple case of demographics.

People don’t like to hear they’ve been manipulated and like to think they made up their minds themselves.

However only they know whether they really took the time to read around and research the claims made in the referendum campaign. Only they know if they really thought critically about things without reading or hearing sound bites and believing it because it chimed with their views.

It’s hard to think critically when it comes to emotional subjects. It’s even harder to admit that.

OP, thanks for the link. We should not forget this in a hurry even if it’s been said before.

I recommend everyone watch The Great Hack on Netflix; it is jaw dropping. It's a documentary on how social media / our personal data has been used to influence voting behaviours. It's been going on for over a decade now, in elections in countries across the world, and over time the way that our personal information is being used to manipulate us has got very sophisticated.

Companies like Cambridge Analytica using personal information in a very sinister way, as in the EU referendum, the US 2016 election and many many more. It's a scandal, and makes me very concerned whether we will ever have a fair election/referendum again.

Worryingly, some of the key players from companies who utilised our personal data for psyops for the 'dirty' Brexit campaign now have their feet under the table at No 10, and are heavily involved in the Government Track and Trace app that they are intending to roll out. There's a reason why the Govn didn't want to use the pre-existing platforms that other countries are using for their T&T, and why they want to centralise our personal data.

It is all very, very concerning and there is little we can do about it. On a personal level I could delete my social media accounts but it won't stop these highly effective operations from happening. Democracy is being hijacked in front of our eyes.

Every party had the ability to do this. You sell your party to the people. The party fulfilled a need. In a democracy it is a level playing field for each party. Get over yourselves and do better!

You don't have to believe all leave voters were swayed by Cummings.

He won by targeting undecided voters and those who don't usually vote but did this time. It was a couple of percent of the total vote but enough to win.

Read about it, even if you're a brexit supporter. This isn't about whether brexit happens any more, it's about the level of manipulation and adherence to the law we're prepared to accept in politics.

Every party has the ability but theres one party very much doing it.

However only they know whether they really took the time to read around and research the claims made in the referendum campaign. Only they know if they really thought critically about things without reading or hearing sound bites and believing it because it chimed with their views.

Cummings is very clear in that video I posted. The vast, vast majority of voters didn't have a clue what they were voting for re sm/cu and neither did the vast majority of MPs. That's why Leave campaign didn't talk about it, Remain talking about just went straight over the heads of voters. Aaron Banks said similar, he said "they didn't need facts, they had feelings, Remain could keep the facts." Leave won by lying. I think this is as much a scandal as anything. If they had been an advertisement selling tins of beans it would be illegal to lie like they did. This really needs to be addressed. For some reason there just isn't the public appetite to make this illegal. I know (before someone tells me) MPs would have to vote in parliament to stop themselves lying but with enough public pressure it could be done. Instead we just shrug our shoulders.

Also with regard other political parties can use the same micro targeting, true. But worryingly so can other countries, they can and do use it to micro target our electorate and cause instability. Brexit hugely benefits Putin. Do you think we'll ever see the Russia report?

The other thing about all the lying. Politicians have realised they lying to the public WORKS. There is no political fallout afterwards, they just get away with it and can continue lying to the public, even blatant demonstrably false claims can be sold to the public largely unchallenged by media. This is really wrong. I guess there's no fallout afterwards from the public for two reasons, firstly, lots of people are uninterested in politics so genuinely don't care, and secondly, people don't want to look like fools so pretend they knew all along.

@LastTrainEast

You're assuming all British people are gullible fools who decided based on something they saw on the side of a bus. If so isn't it possible that you have been misled by some cleverly constructed arguments?

I usually assume that. I have found that I am then not disappointed.

Dominic Cummings very extensive research found the bus lie won them the referendum.

The other thing about hostile powers using micro targeting to manipulate foreign voters, they can throw vastly more money at it than a political party here would have to spend on a campaign.

I care but what to do other than when the time comes try to vote the Tories out. A petition with around a million bloody signatures to call for Johnson to fire Cummings didn’t work. Every journalist at the press briefings fired questions at Johnson about whether he was going to fire him for a week or two, yet as per usual Johnson blustered and obfuscated and deflected them. Then the dreadful murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests/statue toppling dominated the headlines and just like that sodding Cummings is forgotten. Short of personally murdering a black protester himself Cummings and Johnson seem untouchable right now. I voted Corbyn last time in desperation to stop the Tories getting back in. And that was saying something as a British Jew as I was very concerned about Corbyns lack of responsibility for anti-Semitism within the party. I’ve never voted Tory and I won’t and I hope to goodness Kier Starmer is able to win over enough voters next time. Rishi Sunak does wear nice suits and sound coherent and as if he actually cares about his country but that aside his party and it’s policies are a disaster.

@swampusdonkus

Just watch The Great Hack. Thanks for the recommendation.

I think we are all seeing how precious real Democracy is and how open to manipulation we all are now we are so hyper connected. I have not been involved in physical organizing and political groups up to now, but I do think one of the best things we can do (once COVID is over) is actually meet in person with others and discuss and debate. We can all be isolated with our smart phones and actually talking issues through and doing very through fact checking is really important. These Pysch/Ops and election hacking techniques are to pull us and our nations apart and demonize each other.

I am very hopeful about a new woman's movement growing from all this TRA nonsense. To get women that angry took years because as a sex we tend to be more tolerate. Now there are thousands of furious women who are completely united over this. I love how the newest groups are now uniting all women around biology (just saw them on Twitter) and inviting women across the political spectrum to work together.

If we could work together on issues that affect ALL women around biology so wages, poverty we would improve life for so many women and families. I am not in the UK as I mentioned. But hopefully we can now wise up and know we must continue to meet IN PERSON so protect ourselves from the manipulation that will continue to be developed.

I have been really impressed at the quality of leadership and the consideration and civility in the women's groups that were organized in the UK since 2015. I really think this could be a new political moment. The parties are just not working for us and we keep getting appalling leadership from all parties. We really can do so much better. I think a glavinised political movement that reaches so many women as this has could really offer hope. I am sick of waiting for men to sort it out.

Look how much better the female leaders handled the Pandemic. While we are getting these willy-wavers who are divisive otherwise.

What a load of old bollocks. I never received anything on the referendum other than what came through the post or mainstream media. I even went to three political meetings Labour , Libdem and Conservative and all three heavily promoted staying in the EU , the Conservative candidate even refused to answer any questions on a possible no vote. As for social media , there was a constant stream of abuse posted on this website on anything other than a remain vote. I didn't get anything from UKIP , Vote Leave or Dominic Cummings in email or via any online source. How ever I did get a direct communication from David Cameron saying that it was for the British people to decide and the government would abide by their decision. The campaign itself was weighed massively towards "Remain" with £millions spent of public money and even Obama being wheeled in to support the establishment line. The turn-out was the highest ever for a democratic vote in this country. This was followed , after two years of utter chaos , with a sizeable majority at the ballot box in 2019. We live in a free democracy. The argument for "Remain" was given ever opportunity to assert itself , it failed. That Dominic Cummings was responsible for Manipulating the entire electorate in both a referendum and a general election is a load of old wank. The reality is that there is a democratic mandate to leave the EU. And that was sanctioned in two clear votes. Incidentally the election was largely won by large numbers of northern Labour seats voting , some for the first time in a generation , to support the mandate of the referendum. Or are you saving Cummings hacked that too .

If you watch what Dominic explains, they didn't target those who already had made up their minds. They targeted 1/5 of the population and the information people saw was not necessarily flagged as political.

He said early on in the campaign they established that people did not understand the issues. So rather than worry about convincing people through reason they swayed their EMOTIONS mainly through fear. They let remain position try and reason with people, Cummings instead just focused on 3 issues sometimes 4 that people were particularly afraid of.

When people got worried about Turkey maybe joining the EU and searched on Google, Dominic and his team had created a lot of fake articles and blogs that they made sure all showed up first in the search results. He talks about this openly. It's not a secret.

I also agree with you that Remain did a terrible job. I had already mentioned that. But the same company, Cambridge Analytica, worked on both the Leave and the Trump campaign. The people involved all know each other and they used the stolen data of 87 million Facebook users
www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.amp.html

A big problem for all of us that Dominic openly mocks, is that politicians don't understand how technology works and how social media works. If you watched the Senate hearings with Mark Zuckerburg it was laughable and embarrassing. The Senators were clueless and completely out of their depth. So regular Joe's & Josephines are completely vulnerable. We don't really know the questions to ask to make sure that we are not being manipulated through the social media and technology we all use. And government does not seem very serious about trying to protect us.

Please watch the videos we linked which speak for themselves. Dominic explains what he did and the Russians have been trying to manipulate us for a long time too which is shown in the 3 part report.

The turn-out was the highest ever for a democratic vote in this country.

Nope. That's an oft-repeated myth. More people voted in the 1992 general election. Details here

I don't understand the point of this thread. All of this has been known for a long time - not just the facts of what happened, but a comprehensive understanding of how it was done and what it means for people's privacy. There's always going to be a passing headbanger who insists their Leave vote wasn't carefully manipulated out of them but unless your goal is to wind them up, OP, there's almost nothing new to say.

If you want new news, consider this. Anyone who's signed up for a Covid test online will have had to agree to their personal data being passed on to third party data mining companies, some of which are connected with Cummings. Given that all of that data comes attached to what is potentially a sample of your DNA, Brexit is really quite anodyne by comparison.

@NudgeUnit

Anyone who's signed up for a Covid test online will have had to agree to their personal data being passed on to third party data mining companies, some of which are connected with Cummings.

Do you have a link to that about testing? You don't mean the app that never was do you?

No, I mean if you complete the questionnaire online and they determine that you need a test. If you decide to get a home test, they take all your data (contact info plus NI number and NHS number) and then tell you that to get the test you have to agree to all your data being passed along to a private company that turns out to be TransUnion, an American credit agency, which accumulates the personal information of millions of people from thousands of sources. In fairness, you're given a choice about whether to still proceed and can opt for a drive-thru test instead, but if you choose that and get sent a code to book it, it turns out that instead your data is handled by a 'patient experience management' company that has fingers in a range of government, financial and data management pies. There's a whole list of stakeholders here, which includes among others Cummings's mates Palantir. Here's a link to introduce them if you're not already familiar.

Complete bollocks. Why is Mumsnet so out of touch with what’s going on in the real world? I voted remain. It’s happening so I’ve dealt with it. I have friends in Belgium and Italy and believe me, the EU will crumble. This is only the start

@RightIsRight yeah you were a remainer my arse

Wasn't this common news a couple of years ago? The mans a sociopath.