It seems like the purpose was narrowly tailoring messages, which is something political campaigns are really keen to do now (Obama's campaign was kind of a trailblazer here, right?).
> Obama's campaign was kind of a trailblazer here, right?
It's a pretty big gap between using and abusing social media and as far as I know Obama's campaign did not 'narrowly tailor messages'. They did target broad groups using generic messages and they did quite effectively use social media presence to build support.
But they did not - as far as I know, so please correct me if I'm wrong - go so far as to single out individuals or really small groups with the express intent of flipping their votes or targeting them with disinformation in order to try to stop them from voting.
And Cambridge Analytica seems to have been doing just that if the currently available information is to be believed.
> The former president also hired Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes to help in developing his social media strategy. Obama furthered the use of Facebook for his 2012 re-election bid, utilizing it to encourage young people to cast their votes. His team developed a Facebook app that looked into supporters’ friends list to find younger voters. The team then asked supporters to share online content with these voters. More than 600,000 supporters responded to the call, sending content to over 5 million contacts.
> During his presidency, Obama continued to use Facebook to reach out to the public. In 2016, he became the first president to go live on the site, just before his final State of the Union Address.
Yes, that pretty much confirms what I wrote above. Your point being?
Please read the article and compare what we know about Cambridge Analytica vs what the Obama campaign did, it is comparing snipers with someone setting off fireworks.
Look, I don't think anyone can realistically doubt that Obama's campaign was the first to effectively slice-and-dice the electorate and use social media to target them. You're arguing against a much more expansive claim than I'm making.
