5 ms·

Main questions and comments that strike me when I see the $100,000 amount is: With Clinton spending $141.7 million and Trump spending $58.8 million on advertis

Main questions and comments that strike me when I see the $100,000 amount is: With Clinton spending $141.7 million and Trump spending $58.8 million on advertising, does that miniscule amount even matter? What was even the CTR with those advertisements? Is there even anything wrong with any country or person(s) doing that or trying to do that since we already have Super PACs and lobbyists? I have more thoughts that aren’t worth writing about (its impact on a person’s view), but is this Facebook advertising issue blown out of proportion?

balls187 9y ago
When we test ads on a platform, we always run a small amount first, then scale up. The $100k could be just the test size.
- point78 9y ago
  No one tests 3k a day...
  - abiox 9y ago
    i reckon that state actors are (often) in their own universe when it comes to behavioral expectations.
s73ver_ 9y ago
Most of that money was likely spent on TV ads and stuff. Nothing as targeted and intimate as FB ads.
dragonwriter 9y ago
First, the $100,000 may not be the full spend, it's just the minimum based on what has been identified as false-flag accounts linked to Russia. There may well have been orders of magnitude more spending that has not been identified as false flag accounts (further, it's not even the total expenditure of resources on the false flag accounts, just the part actually spent buying placement—when comparing to campaign spending numbers, when all the resources spent on content development, etc., and not just placement are counted.) Second, people may discount messages that are official campaign messages (which have required disclosures to prevent falsifying origin), so there may be a significant influence multiplier for false-flag “astroturf” spending of the kind Russia engaged in.
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  But I can't see any reason to think that Russia would be the main actor in the "false-flag/astroturf space". I mean, it's hard not to think everyone with an interest in the outcome would be pushing here to get their interests served. Certainly, the DNC emails seemed to demonstrate an interest in underhanded approaches (not that I'd discount a similar interest from the Trump campaign). And PACs that are actually independent would be jumping in the action, etc.
- tynpeddler 9y ago
  The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down. We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down The outrage isn't about the amount spent, so why should it be kept down absent evidence of greater amount spent. > We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation. I see no evidence of the former (at least not on this subject, though I think there are structural reasons to think that that's unlikely to be a useful reference point more generally), and don't see avoiding polarization at all costs as a goal.
  - Harimwakairi 9y ago
    > the outrage needs to be kept down No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.
    - hellbanner 9y ago
      You're American (USA)? How often do you get outraged about your country's government interfering with OTHER country's elections?
zeckalpha 9y ago
Clinton and Trump are US Citizens.
frandroid 9y ago
> Is there even anything wrong with any country It's illegal? But you ask good questions.
- monochromatic 9y ago
  You may well be right, but what law would it violate?
  - chris11 9y ago
    US Law (specifically the Federal Election Campaign Act) generally tries to prohibit foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns. It seems like that act has some pretty broad restrictions: "The Act prohibits knowingly soliciting, accepting or receiving contributions or donations from foreign nationals. In this context, "knowingly" means that a person: ... Is aware of facts that would lead a reasonable person to inquire whether the source of the funds solicited, accepted or received is a foreign national." So a candidate could be taking a legal risk if he took a large donation from a foreigner and his excuse was that he didn't realize who the donation was from and wasn't interested enough to find out who was making the donation. But I don't really think the US has decent enough disclosure laws for political donations or enforcement of current laws to adequately prevent or prosecute foreigners donating to political campaigns. https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/
    - Shivetya 9y ago
      well to get around that one well known campaign simply made sure the donations from "unknown" sources were sufficiently small and diversified in identifying data so they would not be reported/flagged. the current political parties set up the donation game so they could work it to their advantage and eliminate possibility of a 3rd or more parties.
- VickBear 9y ago
  Is it actually illegal for the actual Russian government to buy advertising on Facebook/Google linking to influential material? Not being condescending but actually asking this. Facebook can easily terminate the ads but does the US gov’t have this as illegal?
hackinthebochs 9y ago
Targeting ads to play on deep seated racial issues using the fruits of an unprecedented data mining operation, combined with targeting to swing states can have a very high ROI considering the rust belt and some midwest states were going to be razor close regardless.
kbenson 9y ago
I believe the number of voters in key districts needed to swing the electoral college to Clinton was in the tens of thousands. If it was targeted perfectly (which of course is impossible), that's almost two dollars a person that needed to be influenced. How many Facebook ads impressions does that buy per person? While I think it's unlikely that anyone could have accurately targeted to that degree, it does put into perspective just how important targeted advertising might be to something like this. Additionally (and I think more likely), the advertising might have been been used more as an agitation device, and to reduce the trust in traditional information through highly effective misinformation. If you can start viral memes, it doesn't matter how many impressions you paid for, what's important is how far the meme spreads in the end. A single shared article can lead to tens of millions of views and re-shares. In this case, money is purely a way to help get critical mass for your specially crafted meme, so it doesn't necessarily compare to candidate spending directly, which needs to both educate and counteract opponent messaging. Targeted disinformation can just ignore failed meme campaigns and counteractions to them and move onto the next meme, since it's effectively anonymous. 1: https://medium.com/@hoffa/hillary-only-needed-to-switch-53-650-voters-to-win-94940ff263b7 https://medium.com/@hoffa/hillary-only-needed-to-switch-53-6...
- KGIII 9y ago
  Did you change your vote based on memes or fake news? So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles. I'm sure a few people did have their views changed by them, but I suspect the number was vanishingly small. It's nice to find an easy reason and shuffle the blame elsewhere, but I think the election results can be squarely blamed on America. Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts. No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. A good portion of the country still feels this is a good thing. If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > Did you change your vote based on memes or fake news? No, but I'm not in a swing state, nor was I close to undecided. > So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles. That's not surprising. Do you know which stories you saw were fake? Are you sure you know them all? Does it matter that you intellectually know now that some might have been fake, or is the emotional response to them originally still present? How many people that were influenced are unconsciously using self self justification[1] to think they were unaffected (I'm sure we all want to think our news sources were unaffected)? > Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts. I think all you can say from that is that you were self-selecting for people that think they were targeted and influenced by fake news, and by people self reporting, which is known to be a horrible way to get accurate data from people.[2] Additionally, unless you travel quite a bit and attempt to ask this question of a wide subset of people, you might find that your area is not a targeted population. Even if oyu did travel a lot to get an accurate subset of the population, and even if you get get perfectly accurate self reported answers, you would have to ask 70 people in a perfectly representative sample of those that voted to have a better than even chance of finding someone answering affirmative if it change the voted of 1 million people, and that's far more than actually needed to be influenced. Thus, I'm not entirely convinced be some ad-hoc surveying unless you put some real time and effort into it and are significantly underplaying that. > No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. ... If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate. I'm not making some case that this did change anything. I'm just trying to express that there's a lot of ways it could have, and it's not very simple to tease out the how or the affects that resulted. This isn't a Democrat/Republican or Trump/Anti-Trump thing to me, this is about the future of democracy, free-will, and how to navigate in a future where trustworthy information so much harder to come by (not that it was perfect before). At this point, I look to CNN for the general politics headlines (which I'm under the impression is (was?) one of the less biased organizations, but I pull up Fox News' website occasionally to see the other take on the news (and what is and isn't being considered a story on each). I tried Breitbart the same way. Once. The extreme pandering and fear-mongering was hard to stomach. I'm disheartened by what I see as cheap shots at and purposefully disingenuous interpretations of Trump, and this comes as someone who is definitely not a fan of that man. I just think it's slowly eroding my trust to see the bias exposed occasionally (and in obvious and petty ways). Put simply, I recognize that pandering as well, and am left wondering if this is the best we've got right now? To revisit your first question, no, I didn't change my vote, but maybe it did nudge my opinion of people, or of their personalities. At this point, I don't even remember everything I read during election season. I'm sure it affected my emotional base response as I took in more input though, so who's to say how much I was affected? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-justification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-justification 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_study#Disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_study#Disadvantage...

balls187 9y ago

When we test ads on a platform, we always run a small amount first, then scale up. The $100k could be just the test size.

point78 9y ago
No one tests 3k a day...
- abiox 9y ago
  i reckon that state actors are (often) in their own universe when it comes to behavioral expectations.

s73ver_ 9y ago

Most of that money was likely spent on TV ads and stuff. Nothing as targeted and intimate as FB ads.

dragonwriter 9y ago

First, the $100,000 may not be the full spend, it's just the minimum based on what has been identified as false-flag accounts linked to Russia. There may well have been orders of magnitude more spending that has not been identified as false flag accounts (further, it's not even the total expenditure of resources on the false flag accounts, just the part actually spent buying placement—when comparing to campaign spending numbers, when all the resources spent on content development, etc., and not just placement are counted.) Second, people may discount messages that are official campaign messages (which have required disclosures to prevent falsifying origin), so there may be a significant influence multiplier for false-flag “astroturf” spending of the kind Russia engaged in.

joe_the_user 9y ago
But I can't see any reason to think that Russia would be the main actor in the "false-flag/astroturf space". I mean, it's hard not to think everyone with an interest in the outcome would be pushing here to get their interests served. Certainly, the DNC emails seemed to demonstrate an interest in underhanded approaches (not that I'd discount a similar interest from the Trump campaign). And PACs that are actually independent would be jumping in the action, etc.
tynpeddler 9y ago
The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down. We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down The outrage isn't about the amount spent, so why should it be kept down absent evidence of greater amount spent. > We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation. I see no evidence of the former (at least not on this subject, though I think there are structural reasons to think that that's unlikely to be a useful reference point more generally), and don't see avoiding polarization at all costs as a goal.
- Harimwakairi 9y ago
  > the outrage needs to be kept down No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.
  - hellbanner 9y ago
    You're American (USA)? How often do you get outraged about your country's government interfering with OTHER country's elections?

zeckalpha 9y ago

Clinton and Trump are US Citizens.

frandroid 9y ago

> Is there even anything wrong with any country It's illegal? But you ask good questions.

monochromatic 9y ago
You may well be right, but what law would it violate?
- chris11 9y ago
  US Law (specifically the Federal Election Campaign Act) generally tries to prohibit foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns. It seems like that act has some pretty broad restrictions: "The Act prohibits knowingly soliciting, accepting or receiving contributions or donations from foreign nationals. In this context, "knowingly" means that a person: ... Is aware of facts that would lead a reasonable person to inquire whether the source of the funds solicited, accepted or received is a foreign national." So a candidate could be taking a legal risk if he took a large donation from a foreigner and his excuse was that he didn't realize who the donation was from and wasn't interested enough to find out who was making the donation. But I don't really think the US has decent enough disclosure laws for political donations or enforcement of current laws to adequately prevent or prosecute foreigners donating to political campaigns. https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/
  - Shivetya 9y ago
    well to get around that one well known campaign simply made sure the donations from "unknown" sources were sufficiently small and diversified in identifying data so they would not be reported/flagged. the current political parties set up the donation game so they could work it to their advantage and eliminate possibility of a 3rd or more parties.
VickBear 9y ago
Is it actually illegal for the actual Russian government to buy advertising on Facebook/Google linking to influential material? Not being condescending but actually asking this. Facebook can easily terminate the ads but does the US gov’t have this as illegal?

hackinthebochs 9y ago

Targeting ads to play on deep seated racial issues using the fruits of an unprecedented data mining operation, combined with targeting to swing states can have a very high ROI considering the rust belt and some midwest states were going to be razor close regardless.

kbenson 9y ago

I believe the number of voters in key districts needed to swing the electoral college to Clinton was in the tens of thousands. If it was targeted perfectly (which of course is impossible), that's almost two dollars a person that needed to be influenced. How many Facebook ads impressions does that buy per person? While I think it's unlikely that anyone could have accurately targeted to that degree, it does put into perspective just how important targeted advertising might be to something like this. Additionally (and I think more likely), the advertising might have been been used more as an agitation device, and to reduce the trust in traditional information through highly effective misinformation. If you can start viral memes, it doesn't matter how many impressions you paid for, what's important is how far the meme spreads in the end. A single shared article can lead to tens of millions of views and re-shares. In this case, money is purely a way to help get critical mass for your specially crafted meme, so it doesn't necessarily compare to candidate spending directly, which needs to both educate and counteract opponent messaging. Targeted disinformation can just ignore failed meme campaigns and counteractions to them and move onto the next meme, since it's effectively anonymous. 1: https://medium.com/@hoffa/hillary-only-needed-to-switch-53-650-voters-to-win-94940ff263b7 https://medium.com/@hoffa/hillary-only-needed-to-switch-53-6...

KGIII 9y ago
Did you change your vote based on memes or fake news? So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles. I'm sure a few people did have their views changed by them, but I suspect the number was vanishingly small. It's nice to find an easy reason and shuffle the blame elsewhere, but I think the election results can be squarely blamed on America. Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts. No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. A good portion of the country still feels this is a good thing. If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate.
- kbenson 9y ago
  > Did you change your vote based on memes or fake news? No, but I'm not in a swing state, nor was I close to undecided. > So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles. That's not surprising. Do you know which stories you saw were fake? Are you sure you know them all? Does it matter that you intellectually know now that some might have been fake, or is the emotional response to them originally still present? How many people that were influenced are unconsciously using self self justification[1] to think they were unaffected (I'm sure we all want to think our news sources were unaffected)? > Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts. I think all you can say from that is that you were self-selecting for people that think they were targeted and influenced by fake news, and by people self reporting, which is known to be a horrible way to get accurate data from people.[2] Additionally, unless you travel quite a bit and attempt to ask this question of a wide subset of people, you might find that your area is not a targeted population. Even if oyu did travel a lot to get an accurate subset of the population, and even if you get get perfectly accurate self reported answers, you would have to ask 70 people in a perfectly representative sample of those that voted to have a better than even chance of finding someone answering affirmative if it change the voted of 1 million people, and that's far more than actually needed to be influenced. Thus, I'm not entirely convinced be some ad-hoc surveying unless you put some real time and effort into it and are significantly underplaying that. > No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. ... If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate. I'm not making some case that this did change anything. I'm just trying to express that there's a lot of ways it could have, and it's not very simple to tease out the how or the affects that resulted. This isn't a Democrat/Republican or Trump/Anti-Trump thing to me, this is about the future of democracy, free-will, and how to navigate in a future where trustworthy information so much harder to come by (not that it was perfect before). At this point, I look to CNN for the general politics headlines (which I'm under the impression is (was?) one of the less biased organizations, but I pull up Fox News' website occasionally to see the other take on the news (and what is and isn't being considered a story on each). I tried Breitbart the same way. Once. The extreme pandering and fear-mongering was hard to stomach. I'm disheartened by what I see as cheap shots at and purposefully disingenuous interpretations of Trump, and this comes as someone who is definitely not a fan of that man. I just think it's slowly eroding my trust to see the bias exposed occasionally (and in obvious and petty ways). Put simply, I recognize that pandering as well, and am left wondering if this is the best we've got right now? To revisit your first question, no, I didn't change my vote, but maybe it did nudge my opinion of people, or of their personalities. At this point, I don't even remember everything I read during election season. I'm sure it affected my emotional base response as I took in more input though, so who's to say how much I was affected? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-justification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-justification 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_study#Disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_study#Disadvantage...