He said many of those things because Cambridge analytics said he should
the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine
Yikes, what an article. Today's challenge to those who still support Trump: read the above and share your thoughts. I am genuinely interested. Not so much in whether you agree about how this process helped Trump win (doubt you'll go there), but more on the overall implications of this use of personal data.
Other than the fact that Google is much more powerful, how is that materially different than this -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/julian-assange-google-hillary-clinton_us_5633acc9e4b0631799123a7d
1) That link explicitly states that "To date, however, there’s no evidence that any engineers or executives currently working for Google or Alphabet, Google’s parent company, are doing anything to support Clinton’s campaign."
2) I would need to read more about what The Groundwork is doing specifically in comparison to Cambridge Analtytica before agreeing that they are the same, a conclusion you are taking as a matter of course.
3) This quote from the article I linked (which is unclear you read in its entirety or at all): "Political analysts in the Clinton campaign, who were basing their tactics on traditional polling methods, laughed when Trump scheduled campaign events in the so-called blue wall — a group of states that includes Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and has traditionally fallen to Democrats. But Cambridge Analytica saw they had an opening based on measured engagement with their Facebook posts. It was the small margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that won Trump the election."
3a) And this one: "Dark posts were also used to depress voter turnout among key groups of democratic voters," which is a whole nother level beyond standard political ads being sent to targeted audiences...
3b) And implies that even if they are trying to do the same thing and The Groundwork was working for Clinton (which your link implies they were not), The Groundwork clearly has worse algorithms and/or potentially is not as insidiously invasive of privacy and/or is not as unethical in their use. Not that I would condone them anyway because...
4) Even if I'm wrong and they are the same (yet to be proven) I find them equally objectionable, and so should you.
5)
ETA - And then there is this quote: "Research by Woolley and his Oxford-based team in the lead-up to the 2016 election found that pro-Trump political messaging relied heavily on bots to spread fake news and discredit Hillary Clinton. By election day, Trump’s bots outnumbered hers, 5:1."
So there you go, she used them too, but at a far lower level which implies quite a lot about how she perceived them and what exactly her bots were doing. Still questionable though, depending on those exact details, to be sure.
ETA#2 - "Cambridge Analytica
may be slated to secure more federal contracts and is likely about to begin managing White House digital communications for the rest of the Trump Administration. What new predictive-personality targeting becomes possible with potential access to data on U.S. voters from the IRS, Department of Homeland Security, or the NSA?"
I suspect you did not read the whole article at all (I'll admit I was only about halfway through when I first posted).