All language subtitles for BBC.Secrets.of.Silicon.Valley.2of2.The.Persuasion.Machine.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.[www.EramDownload.com]

It was the biggest political
earthquake of the century.

We will make America great again!

But just how did Donald Trump
defy the predictions

of political pundits
and pollsters?

The secret lies here,
in San Antonio, Texas.

This was our Project Alamo.

This is where the digital arm of the
Trump campaign operation was held.

This is the extraordinary story
of two men

with two very different views
of the world.

We will build the wall...

The path forward
is to connect more, not less.

And how Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg
inadvertently helped Donald Trump

become the most powerful man
on the planet.

Without Facebook,
we wouldn't have won.

I mean, Facebook really and truly
put us over the edge.

With their secret algorithms
and online tracking,

social media companies
know more about us than anyone.

So you can predict mine and
everybody else's personality

based on the things that
they've liked?

That's correct.

A very accurate prediction
of your intimate traits such as

religiosity, political views,
intelligence, sexual orientation.

Now, this power is transforming
politics.

Can you understand though why maybe

some people find it a little bit
creepy?

No, I can't - quite the opposite.
That is the way the world is moving.

Whether you like it or not,
it's an inevitable fact.

Social media can bring politics
closer to the people,

but its destructive power

is creating a new
and unpredictable world.

This is the story of how
Silicon Valley's mission to connect

all of us is disrupting politics,

plunging us into a world of
political turbulence

that no-one can control.

It might not look like it, but anger
is building in Silicon Valley.

It's usually pretty quiet
around here.

But not today.

Every day you wake up and you wonder
what's going to be today's grief,

brought by certain politicians
and leaders in the world.

This is a very unusual
demonstration.

I've been to loads
of demonstrations,

but these aren't the people

that usually go to demonstrations.

In some ways, these are
the winners of society.

This is the tech community
in Silicon Valley.

Some of the wealthiest
people in the world.

And they're here protesting
and demonstrating...

against what they see
as the kind of changing world

that they don't like.

The problem, of course,
is the election of Donald Trump.

Every day, I'm sure, you think,

"I could be a part of resisting
those efforts

"to mess things up for
the rest of us."

Trump came to power promising
to control immigration...

We will build the wall, 100%.

..and to disengage from the world.

From this day forward,
it's going to be

only America first.

America first.

Now, Silicon Valley
is mobilising against him.

We are seeing this explosion of
political activism, you know,

all through the US and in Europe.

Before he became an activist,

Dex Torricke-Barton was speech
writer to the chairman of Google

and the founder of Facebook.

It's a moment when people who
believe in this global vision,

as opposed to the nationalist
vision of the world,

who believe in a world that
isn't about protectionism,

whether it's data or
whether it's about trade,

they're coming to stand up and
to mobilise in response to that.

Because it feels like the whole of
Silicon Valley

has been slightly taken by surprise
by what's happening. Absolutely.

But these are the
smartest minds in the world.

Yeah. With the most amazing
data models and polling.

The smartest minds in the world
often can be very,

very ignorant of the things
that are going on in the world.

The tech god with the most ambitious
global vision is Dex's old boss -

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

One word captures the world
Zuck, as he's known here,

is trying to build.

Connectivity and access.
If we connected them...

You give people connectivity...
That's the mission.

Connecting with their friends...
You connect people over time...

Connect everyone in the world...
I'm really optimistic about that.

Make the world more open and
connected, that's what I care about.

This is part of the critical
enabling infrastructure
for the world.

Thank you, guys.

What's Mark Zuckerberg worried
about most?

Well, you know, Mark has dedicated
his life to connecting, you know,

the world. You know, this is
something that he really, you know,

cares passionately about.

And, you know, as I said, you know,

the same worldview and set
of policies that, you know,

we'll build walls here,

we'll build walls against
the sharing of information

and building those
kind of, you know, networks.

It's bigger than just the tech.

It is. It's about the society that
Silicon Valley also wants to create?

Absolutely.

The tech gods believe the election

of Donald Trump threatens
their vision

of a globalised world.

But in a cruel twist,

is it possible their mission
to connect the world

actually helped
bring him to power?

The question I have is whether
the revolution brought about

by social media companies
like Facebook

has actually led to the political
changes in the world

that these guys are
so worried about.

To answer that question,

you have to understand how
the tech titans of Silicon Valley

rose to power.

For that, you have to go back
20 years

to a time when the online world
was still in its infancy.

MUSIC: Rock N Roll Star by Oasis

There were fears the new internet
was like the Wild West,

anarchic and potentially harmful.

Today our world is being remade, yet
again, by an information revolution.

Changing the way we work,
the way we live,

the way we relate to each other.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996

was designed to civilise
the internet,

including protect children
from pornography.

Today with the stroke of a pen, our
laws will catch up with our future.

But buried deep within the act was a
secret whose impact no-one foresaw.

Jeremy?

Jamie. How are you doing?

Nice to meet you.

VOICEOVER: Jeremy Malcolm
is an analyst

at the Electronic Frontier
Foundation,

a civil liberties group
for the digital age.

Much of Silicon Valley's accelerated
growth in the last two decades

has been enabled by one clause
in the legislation.

Hidden away in the middle
of that is this Section 230.

What's the key line?
It literally just says,

no provider or user of an
interactive computer service

shall be treated as
the publisher or speaker

of any information provided

by another information content
provider. That's it.

So what that basically means is,
if you're an internet platform,

you don't get treated as
the publisher or speaker

of something that your users say
using your platform.

If the user says something online
that is, say, defamatory,

the platform that
they communicate on

isn't going to be held
responsible for it.

And the user, of course, can be held
directly responsible.

How important is this line
for social media companies today?

I think if we didn't have this,
we probably wouldn't have

the same kind of social media
companies that we have today.

They wouldn't be willing to take on
the risk of having so much

unfettered discussion. It's key
to the internet's freedom, really?

We wouldn't have the internet
of today without this.

And so, if we are going to make
any changes to it,

we have to be really,
really careful.

These 26 words changed the world.

They allowed a new kind
of business to spring up -

online platforms that became
the internet giants of today.

Facebook, Google, YouTube - they
encouraged users to upload content,

often things about their lives
or moments that mattered to them,

onto their sites for free.

And in exchange,
they got to hoard all of that data

but without any real responsibility

for the effects of the content
that people were posting.

Hundreds of millions of us
flocked to these new sites,

putting more of our lives online.

At first, the tech firms
couldn't figure out

how to turn that data
into big money.

But that changed when a secret
within that data was unlocked.

Antonio, Jamie.

'A secret Antonio Garcia Martinez
helped reveal at Facebook.'

Tell me a bit about your time
at Facebook.

Well, that was interesting.

I was what's called
a product manager for ads targeting.

That means basically taking your
data and using it to basically

make money on Facebook,
to monetise Facebook's data.

If you go browse the internet or
buy stuff in stores or whatever,

and then you see ads related
to all that stuff

inside Facebook - I created that.

Facebook offers advertisers ways

to target individual users
of the site with adverts.

It can be driven by data about
how we use the platform.

Here's some examples of what's data
for Facebook that makes money.

What you've liked on Facebook,
links that you shared,

who you happen to know on Facebook,
for example.

Where you've used Facebook,
what devices, your iPad,
your work computer,

your home computer.
In the case of Amazon,

it's obviously what you've
purchased.

In the case of Google,
it's what you searched for.

How do they turn me...
I like something on Facebook,

and I share a link on Facebook,
how could they turn that

into something that another
company would care about?

There is what's called
a targeting system,

and so the advertiser can actually
go in and specify,

I want people who are within
this city and who have liked BMW
or Burberry, for example.

So an advertiser pays
Facebook and says,

I want these sorts of people?
That's effectively it, that's right.

The innovation that opened up bigger
profits was to allow Facebook users

to be targeted using data about what
they do on the rest of the internet.

The real key thing
that marketers want

is the unique, immutable, flawless,
high fidelity ID

for one person on the internet,
and Facebook provides that.

It is your identity online.

Facebook can tell an advertiser,
this is the real Jamie Barlow,

this is what he's like? Yeah.

A company like Walmart can literally
take your data, your e-mail,

phone number, whatever you use
for their frequent shopper
programme, etc,

and join that to Facebook
and literally target those people
based on that data.

That's part of what I built.

The tech gods suck in all this data
about how we use their technologies

to build their vast fortunes.

I mean, it sounds like data is like
oil, it's keeping the economy going?

Right. I mean, the difference
is these companies,

instead of drilling for this oil,
they generate this oil via,

by getting users to actually use
their apps and then they actually

monetise it. Usually via advertising
or other mechanisms.

But, yeah, it is the new oil.

Data about billions of us
is propelling Silicon Valley

to the pinnacle of
the global economy.

The world's largest hotel company,
Airbnb,

doesn't own a single piece
of real estate.

The world's largest taxi company,
Uber, doesn't own any cars.

The world's largest media company,
Facebook, doesn't produce
any media, right?

So what do they have?

Well, they have the data around how
you use those resources and how you

use those assets. And that's really
what they are.

The secret of targeting us with
adverts is keeping us online

for as long as possible.

I thought I'd just see
how much time I spend on here.

So I've got an app that counts
how often I pick this thing up.

Our time is the Holy Grail
of Silicon Valley.

Here's what my life looks like
on a typical day.

Yeah, could I have a flat white,
please? Flat white? Yeah.

Like more and more of us, my phone
is my gateway to the online world.

It's how I check
my social media accounts.

On average, Facebook users spend
50 minutes every day on the site.

The longer we spend connected,

the more Silicon Valley
can learn about us,

and the more targeted and effective
their advertising can be.

So apparently, today, I...

I've checked my phone 117 times...

..and I've been on this phone
for nearly five and a half hours.

Well, I mean, that's a lot,
that's a lot of hours.

I mean, it's kind of
nearly half the day,

spent on this phone.

But it's weird, because it doesn't
feel like I spend that long on it.

The strange thing about it is

that I don't even really know
what I'm doing

for these five hours
that I'm spending on this phone.

What is it that is keeping us hooked
to Silicon Valley's global network?

I'm in Seattle to meet someone who
saw how the tech gods embraced

new psychological insights
into how we all make decisions.

I was a post-doc
with Stephen Hawking.

Once Chief Technology Officer
at Microsoft,

Nathan Myhrvold is the most
passionate technologist

I have ever met.

Some complicated-looking equations
in the background.

Well, it turns out if you work
with Stephen Hawking,

you do work with
complicated equations.

It's kind of the nature
of the beast!

Amazing picture.

A decade ago, Nathan brought
together Daniel Kahneman,

pioneer of the new science
of behavioural economics,

and Silicon Valley's leaders,
for a series of meetings.

I came and Jeff Bezos came.

That's Jeff Bezos, the founder
of Amazon, worth $76 billion.

Sean Parker. Sean was there.

That's Sean Parker,
the first president of Facebook.

And the Google founders were there.

The proposition was, come to this
very nice resort in Napa,

and for several days,
just have Kahneman

and then also a couple of

other behavioural economists
explain things.

And ask questions
and see what happens.

Kahneman had a simple but brilliant
theory on how we make decisions.

He had found we use one of two
different systems of thinking.

In this dichotomy, you have...

over here is a hunch...

..a guess,

a gut feeling...

..and "I just know".

So this is sort of emotional
and more like, just instant stuff?

That's the idea.
This set of things

is not particularly good
at a different set of stuff

that involves...

..analysis...

..numbers...

..probability.

The meetings in Napa didn't deal
with the basics

of behavioural economics, but how
might the insights of the new

science have helped the tech gods?

A lot of advertising is about trying
to hook people

in these type-one things to get
interested one way or the other.

Technology companies undoubtedly
use that to one degree or another.

You know, the term "clickbait",

for things that look exciting
to click on.

There's billions of dollars
change hands

because we all get enticed
into clicking something.

And there's a lot of things that
I click on and then you get there,

you're like, OK, fine, you were just
messing with me.

You're playing to
the type-one things,

you're putting a set
of triggers out there

that make me want to click on it,

and even though, like, I'm aware
of that, I still sometimes click!

Tech companies both
try to understand

our behaviour by having smart humans
think about it and increasingly

by having machines think about it.

By having machines track us

to see, what is the clickbait
Nathan falls for?

What are the things he really likes
to spend time on?

Let's show him more of that stuff!

Trying to grab the attention
of the consumer is nothing new.

That's what advertising
is all about.

But insights into how we make
decisions helped Silicon Valley

to shape the online world.

And little wonder, their success
depends on keeping us engaged.

From 1-Click buying on Amazon
to the Facebook like,

the more they've hooked us,
the more the money has rolled in.

As Silicon Valley became
more influential,

it started attracting
powerful friends...in politics.

In 2008, Barack Obama had pioneered
political campaigning on Facebook.

As President, he was drawn
to Facebook's founder, Zuck.

Sorry, I'm kind of nervous.

We have the President
of the United States here!

My name is Barack Obama
and I'm the guy who got Mark

to wear a jacket and tie!

How you doing?

Great. I'll have
huevos rancheros, please.

And if I could have an egg and
cheese sandwich on English muffin?

Aneesh Chopra was Obama's
first Chief Technology Officer,

and saw how close the relationship

between the White House
and Silicon Valley became.

The President's philosophy
and his approach to governing

garnered a great deal
of personal interest

among many executives
in Silicon Valley.

They were donors to his campaign,
volunteers,

active recruiters of
engineering talent

to support the campaign
apparatus.

He had struck a chord.

Why? Because frankly,

it was an inspiring voice
that really tapped into

the hopefulness of the country.

And a lot of Silicon Valley
shares this sense of hopefulness,

this optimistic view that we can
solve problems

if we would work together

and take advantage of these new
capabilities that are coming online.

So people in Silicon Valley
saw President Obama

as a bit of a kindred spirit?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

If you'd like, Mark,
we can take our jackets off.

That's good!

Facebook's mission
to connect the world

went hand-in-hand with Obama's
policies promoting globalisation

and free markets.

And Facebook was seen
to be improving

the political process itself.

Part of what makes for
a healthy democracy

is when you've got citizens
who are informed, who are engaged,

and what Facebook allows us to do

is make sure this isn't just
a one-way conversation.

You have the tech mind-set and
governments increasingly share

the same view of the world.
That's not a natural...

It's a spirit of liberty.

It's a spirit of freedom.

That is manifest today
in these new technologies.

It happens to be that freedom means
I can tweet something offensive.

But it also means
that I have a voice.

Please raise your right hand
and repeat after me...

By the time Obama won
his second term,

he was feted for his mastery of
social media's persuasive power.

But across the political spectrum,

the race was on to find new ways
to gain a digital edge.

The world was about to change
for Facebook.

Stanford University,
in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Home to a psychologist
investigating just how revealing

Facebook's hoard of information
about each of us could really be.

How are you doing?
Nice to meet you.

Dr Michal Kosinski specialises
in psychometrics -

the science of predicting
psychological traits

like personality.

So in the past, when you wanted to
measure someone's personality

or intelligence, you needed
to give them a question or a test,

and they would have to answer
a bunch of questions.

Now, many of those questions
would basically ask you

about whether you like poetry,

or you like hanging out
with other people,

or you like the theatre,
and so on.

But these days, you don't need
to ask these questions any more.

Why? Because while going through
our lives,

we are leaving behind
a lot of digital footprints

that basically contain
the same information.

So instead of asking you
whether you like poetry,

I can just look at
your reading history on Amazon

or your Facebook likes,

and I would just get exactly
the same information.

In 2011, Dr Kosinski and his team
at the University of Cambridge

developed an online survey

to measure volunteers'
personality traits.

With their permission,
he matched their results

with their Facebook data.

More than 6 million people
took part.

We have people's Facebook likes,

people's status updates
and profile data,

and this allows us to build those...
to gain better understanding

of how psychological traits
are being expressed

in the digital environment.

How you can measure psychological
traits using digital footprints.

An algorithm that can look
at millions of people

and it can look at
hundreds of thousands

or tens of thousands of your likes

can extract and utilise even those
little pieces of information

and combine it
into a very accurate profile.

You can quite accurately predict
mine, and in fact, everybody else's

personality, based on the things
that they've liked?

That's correct.

It can also be used to turn
your digital footprint

into a very accurate prediction

of your intimate traits,
such as religiosity,

political views, personality,
intelligence,

sexual orientation and a bunch of
other psychological traits.

If I'm logged in, we can maybe see
how accurate this actually is.

So I hit "make prediction"
and it's going to try and predict

my personality from
my Facebook page.

From your Facebook likes.

According to your likes,

you're open-minded,
liberal and artistic.

Judges your intelligence
to be extremely high.

Well done.
Yes. I'm extremely intelligent!

You're not religious,
but if you are religious,

most likely you'd be a Catholic.
I was raised a Catholic!

I can't believe it knows that.

Because I... I don't say anything
about being a Catholic anywhere,

but I was raised as a Catholic,
but I'm not a practising Catholic.

So it's like...

It's absolutely spot on.

Oh, my God! Journalism,
but also what did I study?

Studied history, and I didn't put
anything about history in there.

I think this is one of the things

that people don't really get about
those predictions, that they think,

look, if I like Lady Gaga
on Facebook,

obviously people will know that
I like Lady Gaga,

or the Government will know
that I like Lady Gaga.

Look, you don't need
a rocket scientist

to look at your Spotify playlist
or your Facebook likes

to figure out that you like
Lady Gaga.

What's really world-changing about
those algorithms is that they can

take your music preferences
or your book preferences

and extract from this
seemingly innocent information

very accurate predictions about your
religiosity, leadership potential,

political views,
personality and so on.

Can you predict people's
political persuasions with this?

In fact, the first dimension here,
openness to experience,

is a very good predictor
of political views.

People scoring high on openness,
they tend to be liberal,

people who score low on openness,
we even call it conservative and

traditional, they tend to vote
for conservative candidates.

What about the potential
to manipulate people?

So, obviously, if you now can use an
algorithm to get to know millions

of people very intimately
and then use another algorithm

to adjust the message
that you are sending to them,

to make it most persuasive,

obviously gives you a lot
of power.

I'm quite surprised at just how
accurate this model could be.

I mean, I cannot believe
that on the basis of a few things

I just, you know, carelessly clicked
that I liked,

the model was able to work out
that I could have been Catholic,

or had a Catholic upbringing.

And clearly, this is a very powerful
way of understanding people.

Very exciting possibilities,
but I can't help

fearing that there is that
potential, whoever has that power,

whoever can control that model...

..will have sort of unprecedented
possibilities of manipulating

what people think, how they behave,
what they see,

whether that's selling things
to people or how people vote,

and that's pretty scary too.

Our era is defined
by political shocks.

None bigger than the rise
of Donald Trump,

who defied pollsters
and the mainstream media

to win the American presidency.

Now questions swirl around
his use of the American affiliate

of a British insights company,

Cambridge Analytica,
who use psychographics.

I'm in Texas to uncover how far

Cambridge Analytica's expertise
in personality prediction

played a part in Trump's
political triumph,

and how his revolutionary campaign

exploited Silicon Valley's
social networks.

Everyone seems to agree

that Trump ran an exceptional
election campaign

using digital technologies.

But no-one really knows
what they did,

who they were working with,
who was helping them,

what the techniques they used were.

So I've come here to try to unravel
the mystery.

The operation inside this unassuming
building in San Antonio

was largely hidden from view,
but crucial to Trump's success.

Since then,
I'm the only person to get in here

to find out what really happened.

This was our Project Alamo,

so this was where the digital arm

of the Trump campaign operation
was held.

Theresa Hong is speaking publicly

for the first time about her role
as digital content director

for the Trump campaign.

So, why is it called Project Alamo?

It was called Project Alamo
based on the data, actually,

that was Cambridge Analytica -

they came up with the Alamo
data set, right?

So, we just kind of adopted
the name Project Alamo.

It does conjure up sort of images
of a battle of some sort.

Yeah. It kind of was!

In a sense, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Project Alamo was so important,

Donald Trump visited the hundred
or so workers based here

during the campaign.

Ever since he started tweeting
in 2009,

Trump had grasped the power
of social media.

Now, in the fight of his life,

the campaign manipulated
his Facebook presence.

Trump's Twitter account, that's
all his, he's the one that ran that,

and I did a lot of his Facebook,

so I wrote a lot for him, you know,
I kind of channelled Mr Trump.

How do you possibly write a post
on Facebook like Donald Trump?

"Believe me."

A lot of believe me's,
a lot of alsos, a lot of...verys.

Actually, he was really wonderful
to write for, just because

it was so refreshing,
it was so authentic.

We headed to the heart
of the operation.

Cambridge Analytica was here.

It was just a line of computers,
right?

This is where their operation was
and this was kind of

the brain of the data,
this was the data centre.

This was the data centre, this was
the centre of the data centre.

Exactly right, yes, it was.
Yes, it was.

Cambridge Analytica were using data

on around 220 million Americans to
target potential donors and voters.

It was, you know,

a bunch of card tables that sat here
and a bunch of computers and people

that were behind the computers,
monitoring the data.

We've got to target this state, that
state or this universe or whatever.

So that's what they were doing,
they were gathering all the data.

A "universe" was the name
given to a group of voters

defined by Cambridge Analytica.

What sort of attributes
did these people have

that they had been able to work out?

Some of the attributes would be,
when was the last time they voted?

Who did they vote for?

You know, what kind of car
do they drive?

What kind of things do they
look at on the internet?

What do they stand for?

I mean, one person might really be
about job creation

and keeping jobs in America,
you know.

Another person, they might
resonate with, you know,

Second Amendment
and gun rights, so...

How would they know that?

..within that... How would they know
that? That is their secret sauce.

Did the "secret sauce"

contain predictions of personality
and political leanings?

Were they able to kind of
understand people's personalities?

Yes, I mean, you know,

they do specialise
in psychographics, right?

But based on personal interests and
based on what a person cares for

and what means something to them,

they were able to extract
and then we were able to target.

So, the psychographic stuff,
were they using that here?

Was that part of the model
you were working on?

Well, I mean, towards the end
with the persuasion, absolutely.

I mean, we really were targeting

on these universes
that they had collected.

I mean, did some of the attributes
that you were able to use

from Cambridge Analytica have a sort
of emotional effect, you know,

happy, sad, anxious, worried -
moods, that kind of thing?

Right, yeah.

I do know Cambridge Analytica
follows something called Ocean

and it's based on, you know,
whether or not, like,

are you an extrovert?

Are you more of an introvert?

Are you fearful? Are you positive?

So, they did use that.

Armed with Cambridge Analytica's
revolutionary insights,

the next step in the battle
to win over millions of Americans

was to shape the online messages
they would see.

Now we're going to go into the big
kind of bull pen where a lot of

the creatives were, and this is
where I was as well. Right.

For today's modern
working-class families,

the challenge
is very, very real.

With childcare costs...

Adverts were tailored to particular
audiences, defined by data.

Donald Trump wants to give families
the break they deserve.

This universe right here
that Cambridge Analytica,

they've collected data and they
have identified as working mothers

that are concerned about childcare,

and childcare, obviously,
that's not going to be, like,

a war-ridden, you know,
destructive ad, right?

That's more warm and fuzzy,

and this is what Trump is going
to do for you.

But if you notice,
Trump's not speaking.

He wasn't speaking,
he wasn't in it at all.

Right, Trump wasn't speaking in it.

That audience there, we wanted
a softer approach,

so this is the type of approach
that we would take.

The campaign made thousands
of different versions

of the same fundraising adverts.

The design was constantly tweaked
to see which version performed best.

It wasn't uncommon to have
about 35-45,000 iterations

of these types of ads
every day, right?

So, you know, it could be

as subtle and just, you know,
people wouldn't even notice,

where you have the green button,

sometimes a red button
would work better

or a blue button would
work better.

Now, the voters Cambridge Analytica
had targeted

were bombarded with adverts.

I may have short-circuited...

I'm Donald Trump
and I approve this message.

On a typical day, the campaign would
run more than 100 different adverts.

The delivery system was Silicon
Valley's vast social networks.

We had the Facebook
and YouTube and Google people,

they would congregate here.

Almost all of America's voters could
now be reached online in an instant.

I mean, what were Facebook and
Google and YouTube people actually

doing here, why were they here?
They were helping us, you know.

They were basically our kind of
hands-on partners

as far as being able to utilise
the platform

as effectively as possible.

The Trump campaign spent the lion's
share of its advertising budget,

around $85 million, on Facebook.

When you're pumping in millions
and millions of dollars

to these social platforms,

you're going to get
white-glove treatment,

so, they would send people,
you know,

representatives to, you know,

Project Alamo to ensure that all
of our needs were being met.

The success of Trump's digital
strategy was built on

the effectiveness of Facebook
as an advertising medium.

It's become a very powerful
political tool

that's largely unregulated.

Without Facebook,
we wouldn't have won.

I mean, Facebook really
and truly put us over the edge,

I mean, Facebook was the medium

that proved most successful
for this campaign.

Facebook didn't want to meet me,
but made it clear that like all

advertisers on Facebook,
political campaigns must ensure

their ads comply with all applicable
laws and regulations.

The company also said
no personally identifiable

information can be shared
with advertising,

measurement or analytics partners
unless people give permission.

In London, I'm on the trail

of the data company
Cambridge Analytica.

Ever since the American election,
the firm has been under pressure

to come clean over its use
of personality prediction.

I want to know exactly how the firm
used psychographics

to target voters for
the Trump campaign.

Alexander. Hi.

How do you do? Pleasure.

VOICEOVER: Alexander Nix's firm
first used data to target voters

in the American presidential
elections while working on

the Ted Cruz campaign
for the Republican nomination.

When Cruz lost,
they went to work for Trump.

I want to start with
the Trump campaign.

Did Cambridge Analytica ever use

psychometric or psychographic
methods in this campaign?

We left the Cruz campaign in April
after the nomination was over.

We pivoted right across
onto the Trump campaign.

It was about five and a half
months before polling.

And whilst on the Cruz campaign,
we were able to invest

a lot more time
into building psychographic models,

into profiling, using behavioural
profiling to understand different

personality groups
and different personality drivers,

in order to inform
our messaging and our creative.

We simply didn't have the time
to employ this level of

rigorous methodology for Trump.

For Cruz, Cambridge Analytica built
computer models which could crunch

huge amounts of data on each voter,
including psychographic data

predicting voters'
personality types.

When the firm transferred
to the Trump campaign,

they took data with them.

Now, there is clearly some legacy
psychographics in the data,

because the data is, um, model data,

or a lot of it is model data
that we had used across

the last 14, 15 months
of campaigning through the midterms,

and then through the primaries.

But specifically, did we build
specific psychographic models

for the Trump campaign?
No, we didn't.

So you didn't build specific models
for this campaign,

but it sounds like you did use some
element of psychographic modelling,

as an approach
in the Trump campaign?

Only as a result
of legacy data models.

So, the answer... The answer
you are looking for is no.

The answer I am looking for
is the extent to which it was used.

I mean, legacy... I don't know what
that means, legacy data modelling.

What does that mean
for the Trump campaign?

Well, so we were able to take models
we had made previously

over the last two or three years,

and integrate those into some of
the work we were doing.

Where did all the information

to predict voters' personalities
come from?

Very originally, we used a
combination of telephone surveys

and then we used a number of...

..online platforms...

for gathering questions.

As we started to gather more data,

we started to look
at other platforms.

Such as Facebook, for instance.

Predicting personality
is just one element in the big data

companies like Cambridge Analytica
are using to revolutionise

the way democracy works.

Can you understand, though,
why maybe

some people find it
a little bit creepy?

No, I can't. Quite the opposite.

I think that the move away
from blanket advertising,

the move towards ever more
personalised communication,

is a very natural progression.

I think it is only going
to increase.

I find it a little bit weird,
if I had a very sort of detailed

personality assessment of me,
based on all sorts of different data

that I had put all over
the internet,

and that as a result of that,
some profile had been made of me

that was then used to target me
for adverts,

and I didn't really know
that any of that had happened.

That's why some people might find it
a little bit sinister.

Well, you have just said yourself,

you are putting this data out
into the public domain.

I'm sure that you have
a supermarket loyalty card.

I'm sure you understand the
reciprocity that is going on there -

you get points, and in return,
they gather your data

on your consumer behaviour.

I mean, we are talking about
politics

and we're talking about shopping.
Are they really the same thing?

The technology is the same.

In the next ten years,

the sheer volumes of data
that are going to be available,

that are going to be driving
all sorts of things

including marketing and
communications,

is going to be a paradigm shift
from where we are now

and it's going to be a revolution,

and that is the way the world
is moving.

And, you know, I think,

whether you like it or not,
it, it...

it is an inevitable fact.

To the new data barons,
this is all just business.

But to the rest of us,
it's more than that.

By the time
of Donald Trump's inauguration,

it was accepted that his mastery
of data and social media

had made him the most powerful man
in the world.

We will make America
great again.

The election of Donald Trump

was greeted with barely concealed
fury in Silicon Valley.

But Facebook and other
tech companies had made

millions of dollars by helping
to make it happen.

Their power as
advertising platforms

had been exploited
by a politician

with a very different view
of the world.

But Facebook's problems
were only just beginning.

Another phenomenon of the election

was plunging the tech titan
into crisis.

Fake news, often targeting
Hillary Clinton,

had dominated the election campaign.

Now, the departing President
turned on the social media giant

he had once embraced.

In an age where, uh...

there is so much
active misinformation,

and it is packaged very well,

and it looks the same
when you see it on a Facebook page,

or you turn on your television,

if everything, uh...

seems to be the same,

and no distinctions are made,

then we won't know what to protect.

We won't know what to fight for.

Fake news had provoked
a storm of criticism

over Facebook's impact on democracy.

Its founder, Zuck, claimed it was
extremely unlikely

fake news had changed
the election's outcome.

But he didn't address why
it had spread like wildfire

across the platform.

Jamie. Hi, Jamie.

VOICEOVER: Meet Jeff Hancock,

a psychologist who has investigated
a hidden aspect of Facebook

that helps explain how the platform
became weaponised in this way.

It turns out the power of Facebook
to affect our emotions is key,

something that had been uncovered

in an experiment the company itself
had run in 2012.

It was one of the earlier, you know,

what we would call big data,
social science-type studies.

The newsfeeds of nearly 700,000
users were secretly manipulated

so they would see
fewer positive or negative posts.

Jeff helped interpret the results.

So, what did you actually find?

We found that if you were one
of those people

that were seeing less negative
emotion words in their posts,

then you would write with less
negative emotion in your own posts,

and more positive emotion.

This is emotional contagion.
And what about positive posts?

Did that have the same kind
of effect?

Yeah, we saw the same effect

when positive emotion worded posts
were decreased.

We saw the same thing. So I would
produce fewer positive

emotion words, and more negative
emotion words.

And that is consistent with
emotional contagion theory.

Basically, we were showing that
people were writing in a way

that was matching the emotion
that they were seeing

in the Facebook news feed.

Emotion draws people to fake news,
and then supercharges its spread.

So the more emotional the content,

the more likely it is
to spread online.

Is that true? Yeah, the more intense
the emotion in content,

the more likely it is to spread,
to go viral.

It doesn't matter whether it is sad
or happy, like negative or positive,

the more important thing
is how intense the emotion is.

The process of emotional contagion

helps explain why fake news
has spread

so far across social media.

Advertisers have been well aware
of how emotion can be used

to manipulate people's attention.

But now we are seeing this with
a whole host of other actors,

some of them nefarious.

So, other state actors trying
to influence your election,

people trying
to manipulate the media

are using emotional contagion,

and also using those original
platforms like Facebook

to accomplish other objectives,
like sowing distrust,

or creating false beliefs.

You see it sort of,
maybe weaponised

and being used at scale.

I'm in Germany,

where the presence of more
than a million new refugees

has caused tension
across the political spectrum.

Earlier this year,

a story appeared on the American
alt-right news site Breitbart

about the torching of a church
in Dortmund by a North African mob.

It was widely shared
on social media -

but it wasn't true.

The problem with social networks

is that all information
is treated equally.

So you have good, honest,
accurate information

sitting alongside
and treated equally to

lies and propaganda.

And the difficulty for citizens
is that it can be very hard

to tell the difference
between the two.

But one data scientist here has
discovered an even darker side

to the way Facebook
is being manipulated.

We created a network
of all the likes

in the refugee debate on Facebook.

Professor Simon Hegelich has
found evidence the debate

about refugees on Facebook

is being skewed by anonymous
political forces.

So you are trying to understand
who is liking pages?

Exactly.

One statistic among many used
by Facebook to rank stories in

your news feed is the number
of likes they get.

The red area of this chart shows
a network of people liking

anti-refugee posts on Facebook.

Most of the likes are sent by just a
handful of people - 25 people are...

..responsible for more than 90%
of all these likes.

25 Facebook accounts each liked

more than 30,000 comments
over six months.

These hyperactive accounts could be
run by real people, or software.

I think the rationale behind this

is that they tried to make
their content viral.

They think if we like all
this stuff, then Facebook,

the algorithm of Facebook,

will pick up our content
and show it to other users,

and then the whole world sees
that refugees are bad

and that they shouldn't come
to Germany.

This is evidence the number of likes
on Facebook can be easily gamed

as part of an effort to try
to influence the prominence

of anti-refugee content on the site.

Does this worry you, though?

It's definitely changing
structure of public opinion.

Democracy is built
on public opinion,

so such a change definitely has
to change the way democracy works.

Facebook told us they are working
to disrupt the economic incentives

behind false news, removing tens
of thousands of fake accounts,

and building new products

to identify and limit the spread
of false news.

Zuck is trying to hold the line that
his company is not a publisher,

based on that obscure legal clause
from the 1990s.

You know, Facebook is a new kind
of platform.

You know, it's not a traditional
technology company,

it's not a traditional
media company.

Um, we don't write the news
that people...

that people read on the platform.

In Germany, one man is taking on the
tech gods over their responsibility

for what appears on their sites.

Ulrich Kelber is a minister
in the Justice Department.

He was once called a "Jewish pig"
in a post on Facebook.

He reported it to the company,
who refused to delete it.

IN GERMAN:

Under a new law,

Facebook and other
social networking sites

could be fined
up to 50 million euros

if they fail to take down
hate speech posts that are illegal.

Is this too much?

Is this a little bit Draconian?

This is the first time a government
has challenged

the principles underlying
a Silicon Valley platform.

Once this thread has been pulled,

their whole world
could start to unravel.

They must find you a pain.

I mean, this must be annoying
for them.

It must be.

Facebook told us they share
the goal of fighting hate speech,

and they have made
substantial progress

in removing illegal content,

adding 3,000 people to their
community operations team.

Facebook now connects more than
two billion people around the world,

including more and more voters
in the West.

When you think of what
Facebook has become,

in such a short space of time,
it's actually pretty bizarre.

I mean, this was just a platform

for sharing photos
or chatting to friends,

but in less than a decade,
it has become a platform that has

dramatic implications for how
our democracy works.

Old structures of power
are falling away.

Social media is giving ordinary
people access to huge audiences.

And politics is changing
as a result.

Significant numbers were motivated

through social media
to vote for Brexit.

Jeremy Corbyn lost
the general election,

but enjoyed unexpected gains,

an achievement he put down in part
to the power of social media.

One influential force in this new
world is found here in Bristol.

The Canary is an online
political news outlet.

During the election campaign,

their stories got more than
25 million hits on a tiny budget.

So, how much of your readership
comes through Facebook?

It's really high, it's about 80%.

So it is an enormously important
distribution mechanism.

And free.

The Canary's presentation
of its pro-Corbyn news

is tailored to social media.

I have noticed that a lot of your
headlines, or your pictures,

they are quite emotional.

They are sort of
pictures of sad Theresa May,

or delighted Jeremy Corbyn.

Is that part of the purpose
of it all?

Yeah, it has to be. We are out there
trying to have a conversation

with a lot of people, so it is on us
to be compelling.

Human beings work on facts,
but they also work on gut instinct,

they work on emotions, feelings,
and fidelity and community.

All of these issues.

Social media enables those
with few resources to compete

with the mainstream media for
the attention of millions of us.

You put up quite sort of
clickbait-y stories, you know,

the headlines are there
to get clicks.

Yeah. Um... Is that a fair
criticism?

Of course they're there
to get clicks.

We don't want to have a conversation
with ten people.

You can't change the world
talking to ten people.

The tech gods are giving all of us
the power to influence the world.

Connectivity and access...
Connect everyone in the world...

Make the world more open
and connected...

You connect people over time...
You get people connectivity...

That's the mission.
That's what I care about.

Social media's unparalleled
power to persuade,

first developed for advertisers,

is now being exploited by
political forces of all kinds.

Grassroots movements are regaining
their power,

challenging political elites.

Extremists are discovering new ways
to stoke hatred and spread lies.

And wealthy political parties
are developing the ability

to manipulate our thoughts
and feelings

using powerful
psychological tools,

which is leading to a world of
unexpected political opportunity,

and turbulence.

I think the people that connected
the world really believed that

somehow, just by us being connected,
our politics would be better.

But the world is changing
in ways that they never imagined,

and they are probably
not happy about any more.

But in truth,

they are no more in charge of this
technology than any of us are now.

Silicon Valley's philosophy
is called disruption.

Breaking down the way we do things

and using technology
to improve the world.

In this series, I have seen how

sharing platforms
like Uber and Airbnb

are transforming our cities.

And how automation and
artificial intelligence

threaten to destroy
millions of jobs.

Within 30 years, half
of humanity won't have a job.

It could get ugly,
there could be revolution.

Now, the technology to connect the
world unleashed by a few billionaire

entrepreneurs is having a dramatic
influence on our politics.

The people who are responsible
for building this technology,

for unleashing this disruption
onto all of us,

don't ever feel like they are
responsible for the consequences

of any of that.

They retain this absolute religious
faith that technology and

connectivity is always going to make
things turn out for the best.

And it doesn't matter what happens,

it doesn't matter how much
that's proven not to be the case,

they still believe.

How did Silicon Valley
become so influential?

The Open University has produced
an interactive timeline

exploring the history of this place.

To find out more, visit...

..and follow the links
to the Open University.