I found this short article quite interesting. This line really gets me. "Ultimately, Spayd admitted that her publication reduced their coverage of Trump supporters down to soundbites" We certainly do live in times where journalism is no longer reporting the news, factually and unbiased. All of these organizations are owned by somebody, and making money is number one. http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-public-editor-why-we-were-wrong-2016-11 I even saw a video where Google was helping to get people out to vote by using their technology, but it wasn't so much that they wanted everyone's vote to count, its because they knew that voters who didn't want to vote would vote for Hillary, so it was important to get them to vote. In addition to this, I also saw an article where it was proved that google, through the use of the auto fill in feature as you type something into the search box would point to negative stories about Trump, but positive stories about Hillary, as if to suggest that many people were searching these key phrases, thereby trying to influence voter perceptions.
Agreed. I find it almost comical how everyone is shocked by this. I mean its an election, and all you're doing is asking people who they might vote for. Jesus, if these guys were trading, they would the biggest losers because all they would focus on is what they think the market should do and be completely blind to what it is doing. Even saying that Hillary had an 80% chance to win isn't the best odds. Given a setup that results in a win 80% of the time, how much of your account will you risk on this trade? It seems like everyone was all in on this gamble, based, once again, on numbers you can't even really trust. Jesus, you know what these opinion polls is like in reference to trading? Its like using market depth and assuming that all those people placing bids and offers actually want to make those trades. LOL. Seriously, you can't count on bids/offers getting filled until the trade is done.
You can't compare the two. Trading is not about being right but about understanding what he market thinks is right at any given point in time. Politics is or at least should all be about doing the right thing. Usually when educated, wise , mature people vote and express themselves politically they try to do the right thing. Problem here is that a much larger amount of people who are less educated, less informed, more gullible voted with their stomach and not with their brain. That is what shocked the educated and more intelligent people. There is a reason why many cities voted blue but rural areas voted red. And its certainly not because Little Rock, Arkansas or Rush Belt Central in Pennsylvania had to fear immigrants or terrorists but because the electorate has a different educational and information level. That it was so different is what shocked the rest of the people.
I think there are lots of similarities. Like people under estimating the odds and following the crowd. Nearly everyone thought hillary was going to win, but i always thought it looked more like a 50/50 toss up to me. The odds were 85% on clinton on betfair before the election. But its so hard to bet against the crowd because it seems like obviously wasted money if the crowd favourite does in fact win.
It's a stretch to link the outcome with motivation. The negative story thing had to do with the fact that most trump stories were negative. His team didn't spend a lot of time on spinning positive stories of him visiting orphanages and he kept saying negative things. The get out to vote probably resulted in more votes for Hillary, but I would be surprised if that was the motivation by the google corporation. Unfortunately the sound bites is the reality of this election and it probably helped get trump elected. He created most of the sound bytes himself. He said all of those things and not really much of anything else.
I raise my hands in admitting I got it completely wrong. I always assumed only a few are die hard Trump fan boys. I underestimated the anger in the country.
We certainly do. I'm not convinced it's "just" a modern phenomenon, and suspect it may always have been that way, to some extent, but partly because of the internet, these days, it's easier to notice and discuss it? Ususally, yes. Perhaps not always money (I'm thinking of the BBC), but always with their own agenda, whether public or concealed, anyway ... which is effectively the same. I've read one, also (maybe the same one). It got quite a bit of attention. (Google, of course, denied that there was any "underlying intention" in that outcome.)
What negative things? What you call negative things I call it "statement of the facts". And there is nothing negative or positive about that. America wanted someone who speaks the factual truth as it's without the PC spin fed by the establishment and one-eyed media and it got what it wanted. If politics is about not hurting someone's feelings so why having the police then in such a PC world?