Reports say the Trump campaign deterred millions of Black voters in 2016

By Michael Ranger

A prominent British news outlet is claiming that the Trump campaign aimed to deter 3.5 million Black voters in 2016.

The news outlet Channel 4 has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data that was used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on nearly 200 million American voters. The information collected was used and manipulated by models and algorithms.

In 16 key battleground states, millions of Americans were separated by an algorithm into one of eight categories. They were then targeted with tailored ads on Facebook and other online platforms.

The data reveals that the 3.5 million potential black voters were categorized under ‘deterrence.’ This category was later described publicly by Trump’s Chief Data Scientist as containing people that the campaign hoped “don’t show up to vote.” Overall, people of colour labelled as Black, Hispanic, Asian or other made up 54% of the ‘deterrence’ category. The 2016 election saw the first fall in Black voter turnout in 20 years

Voters labelled in the ‘deterrence project’ were targeted with negative ads taking aim at Trump’s 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton. These ads included videos featuring Clinton referring to Black youth as “super predators.” The videos aired on television 402 times in October 2016 and received millions of views on Facebook.

Civil rights campaigners are saying the evidence amounts to a new form of voter suppression. They are calling on Facebook to disclose ads and targeting information that has yet to be made public.

The ‘deterrence’ project contains details of more than 5,000 files, which amass almost 5 terabytes of data, making it one of the biggest leaks in history.

 

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