He copied the method Trump used to suppress voting but the Brexit campaign urged people who normally wouldn't vote to go and vote for Brexit.
Most of us look at the Facebook profile of our friend's friend's profiles and the profiles of people who have liked other people's posts to find out more.
Dominic Cumming took this to a whole new level in the Brexit and 2019 election campaigns. He was successful in both and, in my view has done enormous damage to Britain.
This is how he did it. it's important for the sake of democracy to know this.
Working with AggregateIQ which grew out of Cambridge Analytica, which grew out of British Military Intelligence which is the best in the world and I should know because I used to teach this subject to British Army majors and half colonels.
We used focus groups and human applied creative thinking.
AggregateIQ used machine learning and AI to speed up the gathering of information, refine the results and even define the exact messages aimed at specific groups and down as far as individual influencers.
1. Enter keywords relevant to Brexit into Facebook search.
2. Log and record posts that use the same keywords.
3. Refine keywords into phrases, and then refine them into long tail phrases.
4. Match phrases to users and note users whose posts generate the most interaction, likes, comments etc. Class these as influencers. Log exactly what these people say. Look for posts that get lots of likes, shares and comments and remember them.
5. Log all the people who interact with influencers.
6. (Automatically) Generate posts that resonate with the influencers. Use the same language tone, words and messages.
7. Set up temporary companies around the world, called superpacs. These are used to get around UK laws governing election funding.
8. Use 'dark cash' in this case much of it came from alt free market American billionaires and it's said, though no one knows for certain, that Russia also donated.
9. The Superpacs buy highly targeted Facebook advertising. Targeted to the individual level in the case of influences and using messages using the same words and phrases used by influences to targeted groups. There are a variety of message types. Cummings mainly used fear, ethnic and, keeping within the law, racial fears and concerns.
The advertisements have to use the word sponsored but they are made to look like posts from credible sources. Weak counter messages from less credible sources are also used; this adds to the overall credibility.
It only just succeeded.
In the British version of democracy only a relatively small number of voters are needed to win (or lose) elections.
Johnson knew of Cummings' Facebook antics and hired him to win the 2019 election, which he did using the same methods outlined above.
Although the Tories have a large 80 seat majority only a small number of highly targeted voters and highly targeted constituencies were needed to bring it about.
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