The Dark Side of That Personality Quiz You Just Took

[jpak]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/07/the-internet-is-one-big-personality-test/531861/

I am the Danube River.

My spirit is sparkling and swift. I yearn for new experiences and deep connections with people. I’m adaptable, but to a fault; I rarely see danger ahead. I’m capable of infidelity without much remorse. I’m also great at ceramics.

So says Meet Yourself As You Really Are, the oldest, longest, and WTF-est personality quiz I’ve taken. Published in 1936, Meet Yourself is a 336-page home-psychoanalysis test that promises to “‘X-ray’ the reader’s fundamental character.” It does so with an interminable line of questions both probing and random. Are your parents dead? Have you ever had the sensation of standing outside your own body? Do Mickey Mouse cartoons freak you out? What do you think of unskimmed milk?

<snip>

Clearly, personality quizzes have some sort of perennial appeal. Facebook newsfeeds are filled with BuzzFeed quizzes and other oddball questionnaires that tell you which city you should actually live in, which ousted Arab Spring ruler you are, and which Hogwarts house you belong in. But these new online quizzes have a dark edge that their analog predecessors didn’t. In the wake of the U.S. election, a secretive data firm hired by Donald Trump’s campaign boasted that it has been using quizzes for years to gather personal information about millions of voters. Its goal: the creation of digital profiles that can predict—and possibly exploit—Americans’ values, anxieties, and political leanings.

Whether this firm, Cambridge Analytica, has actually used predictive profiles to influence people isn’t certain; reports suggest it hasn’t, at least not directly. But the company’s methods nonetheless expose the growing scale of personality analysis online—and the dangers that come with it. On the internet, anything you do is like taking a personality quiz: Everywhere you click reveals something about you. And you’re not the only one who sees the results.

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[WhiteTara]

1. Here's the column I wrote a few weeks ago

Facebook is in everyone’s life. We keep up with friends and family and explore our world through this medium. Personality tests appear all through everyone’s Facebook feeds. Some fun ones: What is the color of your rainbow? Who were you in your last life? What does your real spirit look like? Innocent and silly games, right? Wrong! These are serious psychological profiles being built individually for each of us who play the games. The question is who wants to know our most intimate emotional details? The answer? The makers of fake news. They need to know all about our emotional lives so they can feed us fake news stories designed for our personalities.

Fake news continues to be a trending topic, what does this mean? We are all targets of fake news. Sounds kind of creepy, doesn’t it? It’s more than creepy; it can unconsciously shape our thoughts about people and politics.

We are targeted with ads based on where we go on the internet and this is just an extension of that manipulative marketing. When you visit a site that interests you, suddenly you receive sales pitches about that subject. Fake news works in much the same way.
Give them a profile and they will give you fake news you might believe.

The data driven company, Cambridge Analytica became known after the Brexit vote in the U.K. Owned by an American named Robert Mercer, this company engineered the outcome of that vote using fake news. After the vote, the most common Google search was “What is Brexit?” Overcome with fear created by imaginary stories about immigrants, England left the European Union; whose destruction is a goal of Vladimir Putin.

Here at home, Trump paid Giles-Parschal, a San Antonio, Texas company, $72 million to target US voters based on our emotional profiles. For example, they targeted Democrats with anti-Hillary fake news. Remember the phony story about Hillary’s pedophile ring being run out of pizza restaurant basement? The pizza parlor didn’t even have a basement, but that didn’t stop a man with a gun from trying to shoot the place up “to save little children.”

The Latin phrase, Caveat Emptor means Buyer Beware! The Internet is a wonderful place but Caveat Emptor! Our constitution and country depend on our discernment between fact and fiction.

[Leith]

2. I've Noticed That Ads Are Getting Too Specific for Comfort

I can understand ones for building websites (I have a personal website and do maintenance every few days). Why Wix thinks that I would be interested when my website is one where you have to write your own HTML, etc., is just the pitfalls of computer logic.

But now, every time I log onto DU, there's an ad for makeup tips for older women. I do not visit and I have never visited such a website. I am an older woman but I never mention makeup. I don't wear makeup because it irritates my eyes and skin, but I don't remember ever mentioning that before. I have checked that the camera on my laptop is covered. If I were paranoid, that one would creep my out.

It creeps me out. If ads for keeping things uncluttered start popping up, I'm putting duct tape over the camera.

[DBoon]

4. We use our dog for our facebook profile

She is listed as a 34 year old single female (which in human years she is)

When her profile was created, she got lots of ads for lesbian dating sites

[Leith]

5. My FB Pic Is Some Weird Green Plastic Face

Not a real person.

I double checked my profile and my birth date is there. That may be it.

[Qutzupalotl]

3. Cambridge Analytica is reported to have been involved in coordinating

the Russian attack on the 2016 election:
http://time.com/4783932/inside-russia-social-media-war-america/

And they're backed by the Mercers. They are bad news.