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116 Ross Tapsell

sending a post to these people’ (Tan 2018). Invoke then gathered other data,
such as at which polling station a certain individual voted in the last election
and whether they worked in the public or private sector. ey also used
traditional polling companies in order to gather more information. Invoke
collated ‘monthly national tracking’ speci c to each electorate, then provided
certain candidates with funds if they thought they needed support to win these
seats. After the election, Ra zi claimed Invoke spent RM11.2 million assisting
the campaigns of 44 parliamentary candidates and 60 state candidates ( e
Sun Daily 2018).
Invoke was not without critics. Some within Pakatan Harapan believed
Invoke was claiming to be a ‘big data’ company but that the central modus
operandi still involved cold-calling citizens on their mobile phones and
asking their voter preferences, which was never reliable, particularly in a semi-
democracy where citizens can be more reluctant to openly declare support for
opposition parties. Others I interviewed questioned how much information
they could garner from people’s Facebook posts, even if their privacy settings
were minimal. Putting together a ‘sentiment analysis’ sounds impressive, but
Invoke was always rather vague about how they determined such ‘swing’ voter
sentiment, even to other members of Pakatan Harapan. Prior to the election,
Invoke held a public event, broadcast on Facebook and YouTube, where they
predicted ‘a slim win for Harapan’ and ‘wipeout for PAS’ (Malaysiakini 2018).
Because Invoke was part big data analysis, part political vehicle for Ra zi, most
saw this forecast as a pre-election stunt. But on the basis of these predictions,
in the aftermath of the election, Ra zi trumpeted that Invoke was the only
organisation to predict that Harapan would win the election (Lim 2018), even
if it was clearly wrong on the ‘wipeout’ of PAS.
What can we say about the ethics of a company like Invoke? First, Invoke
is somewhat di erent from other big data companies in that it is a big data
company established by a politician. Much of Invoke’s methodology has been
openly discussed by Ra zi (indeed, loudly) in the mainstream media. Ra zi
even published accounts of Invoke’s nances online (Muzliza Mustafa 2017).
Ra zi’s team met with me on three occasions and were generally very open in
their discussions. is is somewhat di erent from many big data companies
that are private businesses and prefer not to disclose their clients, and who do
not want their methods published, in case competitors copy them.
Invoke’s methods certainly have similarities to those of Cambridge
Analytica. ey are using social media and other data which many people do
not realise are being used in this way. Yet Ra zi claimed there were signi cant
di erences between Invoke and Cambridge Analytica. e rst was that

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