He Gets Us data mining
About the internet & personal data, as related to the “He Gets Us” ad campaign.
“He Gets Us” is powered by “Insights”— a platform created by the software company GLOO through a partnership with Cambridge Analytica (yes, THAT Cambridge Analytica).
Insights is the brainchild of the Koch brothers, and is funded by Communio—formerly Cofi, which was created to leverage personal data for voting. Insights, however, puts the data to work for churches….while also collecting data from their congregants and feeding it into the larger data pool.
When a person inputs their email into a platform powered by GLOO (whether it’s church management software or on the “He Gets Us” website), it’s combined with MASSIVE amounts of third party data attached to that email address. That information is analyzed to create micro-detailed user profiles with information on their mental health, relationships, job prospects, political leanings etc. It‘s also used to predict who might be, say, headed for divorce, or eviction, or struggling with depression.
Churches who pay for the service can log into “Insights” to view local data and find areas of town with high levels of addiction and divorce. There’s a drop down menu that allows filtering….. including an option for mental health data.
Any organization that pays for access to Insights can then launch *extremely* targeted ad campaigns to users likely to be receptive to the ads—for things like recovery programs, daycares, counseling services, etc. While local churches likely aren’t thinking about it exploitively, the ad company is: they can target people at certain times of day, when their online activity shows they’re say, up at night looking for answers. So it’s able to be extremely invasive and manipulative.
The platform works in reverse too, actually *collecting* data on congregants and integrating that info into profiling. Want to know what the hot-button issues are for your congregation without even having to get to know them? Insights can tell you—and while the data itself is allegedly kept anonymous, there’s really no guarantee.
Theoretically, I guess that *could* be used for good (in a very “Big Brother” sort of way), but the potential for exploitation is absolutely massive.
Case in point: a recent documentary showed that big oil & big pharma have been dumping money into the organization created to fund the initiative—that same data is used to power other initiatives that are designed around right wing political campaigns.
So there you have it. “He gets us.”
FYI, it’s got nothing to do with Jesus. It’s data mining, and the company that powers it, GLOO worked with Cambridge Analytica to create a platform that can be used to target people going through “mental or relational crisis.”
GLOO sells access to its platform to churches and politicians, which allows use of the anonymized (but still regionally targeted) datasets.
Churches that use the platform are encouraged to used Gloo’s toolset, which also harvest data in the congregational level and feeds it onto the data pool.
https://gizmodo.com/targeted-ad-firm-taps-into-the-ultimate-influencer-jes-1848278681
The Gizmodo article sort of focuses on the church dataset aspect, but I know WSJ and the Guardian did pieces that touched on how its leveraged for politics. There was recently a documentary on it, but is such a niche topic that its only gotten a bit of traction.
https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/28/people-you-may-know-review-data-mining-christian-fundamentalism-documentary
Cr: Chorus in the Chaos & Susan Tuma
He Gets Us is a liberal organization promoting lgbt and redirecting people to lgbt churches.
