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29th July 2019
05:14pm BST

Simply put, if you believed that bus, then you'll believe whatever you want. Objectivity is a distant memory to you, or an inconvenience. They don't need Facebook to get you. You'll pick up a copy of The Telegraph. Or the Sun. Listen to the words of the Prime Minister or the President. Nigel Farage has a programme on national radio. Digital propaganda is just one arm of the squid, and we haven't got a harpoon.
The problem is us. The persuadables. The brainwashables. Those amongst us who either will not, or cannot, identify the truth.
Too much is made of these data points, and their efficiency in predicting human behaviour. Go buy a watch on Amazon. If their system was so advanced, then why all of a sudden is Amazon trying to sell you more watches? Have you ever actually bought anything through a Facebook ad, or a promoted tweet? Spare me.
Whistleblower Chris Wylie explained to a parliamentary hearing on the subject that it doesn't matter how much you cheat, or whether the cheating had a significant impact on the outcome. Of course it matters. If we're going to devote immeasurable public attention to solving this problem then those specific details need to be investigated and isolated so they can inform how we proceed.
At the very end of the documentary, it's revealed that the Trump campaign ran over one million visual ads on Facebook compared to Hillary Clinton's 66,000.
I don't know what point they thought they were making by including that detail, but all it really confirms is the well-known wisdom that the Clinton campaign was almost shockingly lethargic. Trump's ads were lies - just like much of what he said out loud - but maybe if the Clinton campaign hadn't ignored the digital realm, then they would have a stronger leg to stand on here.
People don't care about handing over their data if it makes their lives more convenient than they ever could have imagined even 10 years ago. Invisible strands of data, silently mined and stored away somewhere you'll never have to think about them ever again.
We have proven that we are prepared to make this trade. In spite of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has continued to grow. Some people may have been deleted it, but they certainly won't delete WhatsApp and Instagram too, lest they be wiped off the social map.
We've made our choice on data - they can have it as long as it makes our lives easier. But it is incumbent upon us to be able to recognise when it is used to make our lives worse.
Alexander Nix, the man behind Cambridge Analytica, is dangerous. The most uncomfortable moment comes as he gleefully describes manipulating the democracy of Trinidad & Tobago with a voter-apathy movement targeted at Afro-Caribbean youths, in a successful attempt to keep them from voting.
To hear Nix's description of the plot played over footage of young Trinidadians taking part in it, you'd be mystified by how it could possibly have happened. How all these people could believe they were achieving their goals by not voting.
Any society that believes in that, believes in lies behind Trump, believes in lies behind Brexit, is there for the taking.
Unless we work out how to fix ourselves, we're going to be taken one way another.Explore more on these topics: