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Putins information war: number of web sites or fake social media accounts does not imply lots of people are reading them. In any case, Trump and Hillary wanted

Putins information war: number of web sites or fake social media accounts does not imply lots of people are reading them. In any case, Trump and Hillary wanted to win - all the strategies of the Russians would have been open to Hillary and Trump, too. Why should Putin be better able to employ them? War - everybody has some interest to pursue, sure. That is nothing new, though. Europe on its own: what risk do you mean? "congratulating the dog on catching the car" Becoming president seems more useful than a car is for a dog, though. Edit: only now read the BBC link. That's even more ridiculous than "The Russians did it". Now it is Macedonian teenagers who rigged the US election? Come on...

jacquesm 10y ago
> only now read the BBC link. That's even more ridiculous than "The Russians did it". Now it is Macedonian teenagers who rigged the US election? Come on... No, but it's but a small wheel in the much larger machine. There has been plenty of reporting on the Russian propaganda machine, if you're going to reject each and every component out of hand then you'll end up rejecting the conclusion as well but that would be a step too far. See, for this to succeed a number of things have to happen: - reliable sources of news need to be discredited - a large amount of flak needs to be generated so people are discussing that rather than the real news - a consistent barrage of the 'right' talking points needs to be presented so people start repeating those things as though they are real All of those components are well represented, I would be highly surprised if all this would amount to coincidence.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Most "reliable sources of news" discredited themselves in the last couple of months. And the barrage was pretty onesided, too, wasn't it? As for the barrage - again, how do you do that? Like creating bots on Twitter and Facebook and zillions of web sites doesn't mean people will read them.

jacquesm 10y ago

> only now read the BBC link. That's even more ridiculous than "The Russians did it". Now it is Macedonian teenagers who rigged the US election? Come on... No, but it's but a small wheel in the much larger machine. There has been plenty of reporting on the Russian propaganda machine, if you're going to reject each and every component out of hand then you'll end up rejecting the conclusion as well but that would be a step too far. See, for this to succeed a number of things have to happen: - reliable sources of news need to be discredited - a large amount of flak needs to be generated so people are discussing that rather than the real news - a consistent barrage of the 'right' talking points needs to be presented so people start repeating those things as though they are real All of those components are well represented, I would be highly surprised if all this would amount to coincidence.

facepalm 10y ago
Most "reliable sources of news" discredited themselves in the last couple of months. And the barrage was pretty onesided, too, wasn't it? As for the barrage - again, how do you do that? Like creating bots on Twitter and Facebook and zillions of web sites doesn't mean people will read them.