Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak
1. Something surreal happening today - just as Tusk and Juncker are talking about progress on Brexit, Dominic Cummings, former Vote Leave campaign chief, blasts back at claims about links btw Cambridge Analytica and the Brexit campaign
2. Cummings provides detailed responses to claims he says are to be made by whistleblowers about Vote Leave in next few days, he says allegations are 'factually wrong, hopelessly confused, or nonsensical'
3. Cummings also publishing emails that seem to suggest that Chris Wylie pitched to Vote Leave to provide the kind of thing that Cambridge Analytica provide - he says, 'Wylie, I rediscovered yesterday, tried to flog me the same crap he's attacking CA for doing'
4. The blog also reveals that Theresa May's political secretary, Stephen Parkinson, who was part of Vote Leave, was in a relationship with one of the whistleblowers, who was a volunteer
5. There will undoubtedly be pushback from the other side, but if you've been following the CA saga it's well worth a read - story online soon
dominiccummings.com/2018/03/23/on-the-referendum-24-global-conspiracies-and-a-scooby-doo-ending/
On the referendum #24: Global conspiracies and a Scooby Doo ending?
Someone worried?
I must read back about what Cummings said straight after the ref (it was one of the first things on the original Westministenders threads).
I seem to recall he made his systems publically available on GitHub. DH took one look at it and said it was bollocks and was spectacle that it could have done what Cummings suggested.
So that leaves me in a few minds. Is this all over stated? But why did Cummings feel the need to share his engine? It always seemed weird to be that he would. Why? There had to be a purpose, and I couldn't work it out at the time. Especially if what DH says is right.
Cummings makes this argument in his defence:
Another problem with CC’s theory is it requires that you believe simultaneously that a) Mercer/Putin et al are so brilliant and powerful they could orchestrate this global conspiracy AND b) it fell apart because they’re so dumb they entrusted the Brexit arm of it to Banks and Wigmore who promptly blabbed the whole dastardly scheme on the record to CC by mistake.
But I'm always minded by the fact that Banks brags of other stuff which might happen to be criminal, not because he's dumb, but because he feels untouchable.
I also don't think its a global conspiracy as such. Just an aligning of interests and a shared goal, which made either collaboration or exploitation of the situation attractive to 'the baddies'.
Cummings frames it as an attempt to over turn the ref.
I actually don't think that's true at this point. Whilst some would like that, for many others, they are more concerned about the integrity of democracy rather than the result and all these things do bring that - and the ref result - into question.
Cummings also argues:
Much of the political science world is dominated by bullshit ‘research’ and their claims cannot be relied on.
I studied this a long time ago, and my memory is rusty, but I think he is largely right but there were things that were also widely known and have been used for decades. More to the point this resembles psy ops black propaganda operations more than traditional political science. These methods have been used in other forms by states for many years with little of this knowledge and research in the public domain, so I rather take issue with his defence here.
He says
It is hard to change people’s minds
But that's not what Vote Leave, et al set out to do...
Lord Ashcroft did a graph on his site to do with the referendum which illustrates my point well. It wasn't about changing minds at all. This was part of the fatal flaw of the remain campaign and what they tried to do. The reality was it was all about the tiny group of undecided voters who didn't make up their mind until right at the end. The Remain vote was an 'on balance' argument, whereas the Leave one was about 'having something to vote for'. And this is why it appeals most, at the last minute, to the undecided. It also goes a long way to explaining why the polls showed Remain ahead right up to the last minute. Persuading people who are undecided is a whole different ball game to persuading those who already had an opinion. The other mistake Remain made was in discounting people who didn't normally vote. Remain didn't make an effort with this group. It was the late deciders and the disengaged voters which were targeted by Leave and ultimately won the vote. Cummings is extraordinarily disingenuous with this argument, because this has been explained in the past by Leave campaigners and to suggest that Cummings is unaware of this is laughable.
But Facebook cannot program fashion and opinions. Neither can marketing companies — almost all they do fails. Nobody can in free societies (Communist/fascist countries are obviously a different argument.)
Nope but because of the way platforms work they reflect their programmers and they challenge particular opinions in a particular way. They can not programme for it, but they can influence it simply by what they deem unimportant in features for a platform and their censorship policy. Social media is not a free society. The perception is that it is, but it is certainly not as free as we believe. That gap between perception and reality is important as it allows exploitation of its flaws.
This story going global is a great example of how little facts matter and how much context matters when looking at news. Facebook’s screwup has been in the public domain for two years. Everybody ignored it.
No everyone did NOT ignore it. It was simply difficult to get a platform and get taken seriously about these concerns because people were under false impressions. That's in part, down to who controls the media. That it was ignored by the main stream media isn't saying that everyone ignored it. Many people DIDN'T want to believe it, because its something that would shatter their world view about how FB was a liberal force for good and would bring freedom. We shy away from truths so terrible they hurt, even when they are in plain sight (Jimmy Saville).
His massive attempt to discredit Wylie and CC is not unexpected. You'd be more surprised if it wasn't there.
I do agree with Cummings in some of his points, but his truly epic rant (he gives me a run for his money) smells of fear too.