{"id":30292,"date":"2020-09-29T18:21:52","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T18:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colorlines.madeostudio.com\/article\/leak-trump-campaign-used-facebook-suppress-millions-black-votes-2016\/"},"modified":"2020-09-29T18:21:52","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T18:21:52","slug":"leak-trump-campaign-used-facebook-suppress-millions-black-votes-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/article\/leak-trump-campaign-used-facebook-suppress-millions-black-votes-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Leak: Trump Campaign Used Facebook to Suppress Millions of Black Votes in 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Leak: Trump Campaign Used Facebook to Suppress Millions of Black Votes in 2016<\/h3>\n

\n By Shani Saxon<\/span> Sep 29, 2020<\/span>\n <\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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In a report published on Monday (September 28), British news outlet Channel 4<\/a> uncovered data showing the 2016 Trump presidential campaign used Facebook in an attempt to suppress 3.5 million Black votes. The leak revealed that campaign officials gathered information on nearly 200 million voters and divided them up into eight categories. One category, referred to as \"Deterrence,\" included the names of Black voters the campaign hoped \"don’t show up to vote\" on Election Day. <\/p>\n

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The suppression campaign disproportionally targeted Black voters in an attempt to hurt Hillary Clinton\u2019s support at the polls. Reports Channel 4:<\/p>\n

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In Georgia, despite Black people constituting 32% of the population, they made up 61% of the \u2018Deterrence\u2019 category. In North Carolina, Black people are 22% of the population but were 46% of \u2018Deterrence.’ In Wisconsin, Black people constitute just 5.4% of the population but made up 17% of \u2018Deterrence.’<\/p>\n

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The disproportionate [categorizing] of Black Americans for \u2018Deterrence\u2019 is seen across the U.S. Overall, people of [color labeled] as Black, Hispanic, Asian and \u2018Other\u2019 groups made up 54% of the \u2018Deterrence\u2019 category. In contrast, other categories of voters the campaign wished to attract were overwhelmingly white.<\/p>\n

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The 2016 campaign preceded the first fall in Black turnout in 20 years and allowed Donald Trump to take shock victories in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan by wafer-thin margins, reaching the White House despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n
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Channel 4 reports the Trump campaign worked with highly controversial British data firm Cambridge Analytica<\/a>, which is no longer in business, to build the database used to target voters with discouraging ads.<\/p>\n

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The Washington Post<\/a> says Trump\u2019s re-election campaign denies the Channel 4 report, calling it \u201cfake news.\u201d The news is still \u201clikely to intensify concerns about voter suppression and the opportunities afforded by Facebook to narrowly segment and target portions of the electorate,\u201d according to The Post. Channel 4 does not indicate how they obtained the database. <\/p>\n

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Reports The Post:<\/p>\n

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The material revives debates over the extent to which the voter profiles touted by Cambridge Analytica were actually used to sway the vote in 2016. The firm was founded in part by the Trump campaign\u2019s onetime chief executive, Stephen K. Bannon<\/a>, and collapsed<\/a> in 2018 after news reports detailed its improper use of Facebook data<\/a> in analyzing voters and other allegations of impropriety.<\/p>\n
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Wisconsin State Sen. Lena Taylor<\/a> (D) spoke to The Post about the Channel 4 report, calling the news \u201cshocking.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\u201cIt just makes me feel disgusted what the president of the United States did to disenfranchise the citizens of our most important thing, which is our democracy,\u201d Taylor said. <\/p>\n

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In a statement to The Post, Facebook, which was criticized by Channel 4 for its part in delivering ads meant to discourage voting in 2016, said this type of targeting isn\u2019t taking place today. <\/p>\n

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\u201cSince 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook\u2014what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn\u2019t happen today,\u201d Facebook spokesman Andy Stone<\/a> told The Post. \u201cWe have 35,000 people working to ensure the integrity of our platform, created a political ads library to make political advertising more transparent than anywhere else, and have protected more than 200 elections worldwide. We also have rules prohibiting voter suppression and are running the largest voting information campaign in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Tags<\/h3>\n <\/div>\n
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\n 2016 Presidential Race<\/a>Archive<\/a>Black Voters<\/a>Politics<\/a>Trump Presidency<\/a>Voter Suppression<\/a> <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data uncovered by British news outlet Channel 4 reveals 3.5 million Black Americans were targeted as part of a larger strategy to keep voters home on Election Day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_gspb_post_css":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[460,16402,2287,16418,16409,15656],"article-type":[],"topic-meta":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30292"},{"taxonomy":"article-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-type?post=30292"},{"taxonomy":"topic-meta","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic-meta?post=30292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}