the facebook experiment that could make a president

FACEBOOK EXPERIMENTTHAT COULD MAKE A

PRESIDENT

THE

This story takes place on

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The day of the 2012

United States Presidential

Election between

Barack Obama & Mitt Romney

Spoiler:

Obama Won.

But America faced a problem

on election day…

Voting isn’t compulsory in the U.S. and

over the past few decades voter turn-out

on election day had been in decline.

Facebook

decided they

wanted to

help out‘sup guys. I hear you

need a hand with some

democracy?

So they selected 1.9 million U.S.

Facebook users at random to receive this

voting reminder on their newsfeed

When a user voted, they were

encouraged to press the

‘I Voted’ button.

This would then be shared

automatically with their friends

list.

The message to ‘get out

and vote’ spread

By the end of the experiment, Facebook data

scientists noted that the number of users who had

seen the notification & voted had increased from

63% 67%to

340,000Which equated to approximately

additional votes being placed

GREAT!Voter turn out is low.

Facebook is helping democracy.

But wait just a second…

But wait just a second

while I go and put my tinfoil hat on Let me go and put my

tinfoil hat on

And yes, this is Dave Grohl

Facebook has A LOT of information

about its users.

Here’s a sample of some of the information a typical Facebook account hands over:

• Name

• City of birth

• City of residence

• Phone

• Email

• Current employment

• Previous employment

• Relationship

• Anniversary

• Previous relationships

• Previous names (aliases)

• Screen names

• Address book

• Family members

• Birthday

• Religious views

• Bands you like

• Movies you’ve seen

• TV Shows you watch

• Video games you play

• Food you eat

• Your Favorite Athletes

• Restaurants you’ve eaten at

• Activities you participate in

• Websites you visit

• Apps you’ve downloaded

• Games you’ve played

• Pages/Businesses you’ve

un-liked (when)

• Videos you’ve watched

• Comments you’ve liked

• Websites you’ve visited

• Articles and websites you’ve

commented on

• Level of online engagement

• When you changed jobs

• How long you stayed in a job

• Credit card details

• IP Address

• Device you’ve accessed the

Internet from

• Exact Geo-location

(longitude, altitude, latitude,

time/date stamp)

• TV, Film, Concert you are

currently watching

• Book or publication you are

currently reading

• Audio you are currently

listening too

• Drink you are currently

drinking

• Food you are currently eating

• Activities you participate in

• Advertising you interact with

• Profiles you interact with most

• Locations you access Facebook

• Locations you access web

properties connected to Facebook

• Surveys you’ve filled out

• Companies you like

• People you’ve been tagged with

• People you frequently hang

out with

• Friends you’ve requested

• Friends you denied

• Friends you’ve un-friended

• How often you are online

• Apps you Admin/created

• Pages you admin/created

• Your current mood

• Sports teams you support

• Your Favorite Sports

• Inspirational people

• Favorite Clothing brands

• Places you’ve visited

• Events you’ve attended

• Events you plan on attending

• Address

• Website

• Email address(s)

• Sexual preference

• Gender

• Languages spoken

• Friends

• Books you’ve read

• Events your friends are

attending

• Major life events

(location, dates, who)

• Photos

• Pokes

• Wall posts

• Private messages

• Groups you’ve joined

• Networks you are a part of

And of course, information that can

identify your political preferences.

Barack Obama has

nearly 43million fans.

It’s pretty safe to

assume that they

won’t be voting for

Jeb Bush next year.

So, if targeting a reminder to vote

to 1.9million random people can

encourage 320,000 additional

votes…

…what if that reminder was

targeted at one particular group of

people, yet avoided another

group completely?

Target & encourage

supporters of one

party to vote.

But don’t target the

supporters of the other party.

This kind of simple targeting could literally

encourage more votes for one party, but avoid

doing it for the other.

Which can be a VERY big deal.

Of course, deliberate targeting to influence political

agendas is not something I am suggesting that Facebook

are currently doing. Nor am I suggesting that they would

do something like that.

But I guess what I am suggesting is…

…they’ve proven they can.

This is a SlideShare version of the article

‘The Facebook Experiment that could Make a President’

by Daylan Pearce.

The full version is available here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebook-experiment-

could-make-president-daylan-pearce

For more words I’ve put in an interesting sequence or to keep in touch please visit

http://daylandoes.com or via Twitter on @DaylanDoes