Big data was always going to have a profound impact on society.

I think many of the people who have been working with IoT and Big Data had visions of what the future was going to look like, and none of it included DDoS attacks or fake content or electing a Nazi sympathizer as the de facto leader of the free world.

Almost as if a cancer researcher who had developed a tremendous breakthrough discovering that their life-altering research was being used to create biological weapons.

It seems legit from that prospective.

...........when I came to this -
"Another big winner is Cambridge Analytica. Its board member Steve Bannon, former executive chair of the right-wing online newspaper Breitbart News, has been appointed as Donald Trump’s senior counselor and chief strategist."

Perhaps Bannon, privy to this new methodology, fully aware of it's effectiveness via the Brexit vote, simply shopped the republican candidates and got behind the one who was the most easily controlled?

I'm a software developer, I do work with databases day in and day out, and the methodology is absolutely, positively, certainly legit. Brilliant in its simplicity, really.

1)Connect self-reported personality traits to social media patterns via reams of data from voluntary subjects.

2)Develop models of social media patterns to search for personalities that are likely to be influenced toward a desired outcome, whether that outcome is buying a car or voting for a fascist. You know who the most likely targets are, and you know their insecurities, their like, dislikes - you know the easiest "marks" and how best to manipulate them.

It's brilliant, and quite disturbing.

to make sure that Democrats are using it effectively as well.

Everything we do online is tracked and this kind of big data is used? I can't see myself never using the internet, but maybe cutting down.

And spy on them to make sure they don't leak shit to Cambridge Analytics or Bannon.

There is no way to hide everything you buy unless you are Amish.