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"Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said that he worries the site is vulnerable to Russian political influence

"Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said that he worries the site is vulnerable to Russian political influence campaigns." The "site" is vulnerable? Isn't the problem that Americans are vulnerable to influence campaigns?

balls187 9y ago
Humans are vulnerable to influence. Hence marketing.
toomuchtodo 9y ago
> Isn't the problem that Americans are vulnerable to influence campaigns? Hard to wage a campaign against intellectually lazy voters.
- BeefySwain 9y ago
  I think that's pretty disingenuous. Humans are vulnerable to influence. In theory that is a feature more than a bug, but that's not super relevant to this point. There are a number of steps that our country could take towards having elections that require or at least strongly encourage more informed voting. I think a solid first step would be stripping all party affiliations from the ballots. If you want to vote for only one party blindly, that's fine, but you are going to need to memorize the name of the Democrat running for the school board then. Other/alternative steps include switching to STV or Ranked Choice voting, and anything that discourages a duopoly in political parties, such as mixed member proportional representation and perhaps even making the president an appointed position. Some of that is pretty out there though.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    That's not a rebuttal. That's finding ways around lazy voters. The problem is the electorate. No one likes Congress, but everyone who voted voted for someone in Congress.
    - bluGill 9y ago
      That is not a contradiction. Most people like their congressman, even while hating congress in general. There are 432 of them in the house, you vote for exactly one of them (assuming you are not committing fraud). In Red states the majority likes the republicans in congress and hate the democrats, in blue states the majority likes the democrats and hate the republicans.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      You're comparing two different things. How you feel your Congress people are doing, and how you feel Congress is doing as a whole.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        Enough people think their congressperson is doing well enough to keep them around while Congress as a whole is riding the country into the ground. Who's right?
        s73ver_ 9y ago
        Those aren't incongruent thoughts. My one person in Congress can only do so much, and I can believe that they are trying to do the right thing, while being blocked by groups from other states.
empath75 9y ago
Reddit is absolutely swarmed with Russian trolls and bots, and I suspect that a great deal of the power mods are under the influence of Russia (particularly The_Donald and conspiracy, but really the entire alt-right network — (the red pill, European, etc)
- debacle 9y ago
  Re-read what you wrote, mentally find/replace the right with the left, and see if you think that might be a bit red-scare-ish.
  - ddingus 9y ago
    Yup.
  - archagon 9y ago
    I'm sorry, but screw that approach. Your baseline assumption is that "both sides are the same". If — hypothetically, of course — one side was composed of misanthropic, weaponized liars and the other was at least attempting to act in good faith, then the good-faith side would eventually get bludgeoned out of existence by appeal-to-balance arguments like this one.
- CM30 9y ago
  And I'm sure a lot of right wing users would suspect the same thing about the left wing subreddits. Or about the politics subreddit in general, which is about as far from neutral as you can get nowadays.
creaghpatr 9y ago
I think they've just discovered that people and organizations from other countries can post messages on reddit that pertain to US politics. And that reddit does not protect US users from seeing these potentially unsafe opinions during election periods.
- Stanish 9y ago
  One of reddit's top locations for users is a US military base. The problem is not just with foreign manipulation.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Oh for fuck's sake. It's not like the candidates' rhetoric towards each other is any more accurate. Since most people seem to be incapable of scrutinizing information they receive, I guess we need politicians to save us by legislating away the problem!
  - sp332 9y ago
    It's not about accuracy. It's about whose interests are being served. At least if the R/D's lie to you it's still some kind of American.
    - craftyguy 9y ago
      So it's about being lied to to support someone gaining power vs being lied to to fuck with the political system in the US? How about the root of the actual problem: that the voting populous is trained to absorb information without questioning its authenticity or accuracy. It's more convenient to hear something you agree with and believe it is true, so this is the general way that folks "become informed." Now this strategy of "becoming informed" is biting us in the ass, and the plan is to play this cat/mouse game with questionable sources of information rather than try to tackle the actual problem?
      - sp332 9y ago
        No, it's really a separate issue. It's possible to influence an election even without lying. It's just undemocratic and illegal for someone outside the country to try to persuade people in the country to vote a certain way.
StillBored 9y ago
Many years ago a friend had a tirade about how schools no longer teach people to recognize propaganda and apply critical reasoning to the arguments being made. I'm generally not a conspiracy theorist, but it sure seems that having a populace without strong critical thinking skills, and without formal training to recognize propaganda (and marketing) plays into the hands of the elite* by allowing them to maintain and expand their hold on the economy and government. *noblemen might be more appropriate here than Bourgeoisie, even the 1% term is fairly inaccurate because its more like .01%.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > *noblemen might be more appropriate here than Bourgeoisie Nobleman are the land-bound pre-capitalist elite; other than a handful tolerated for symbolic purposes, those that remain elites have done so by joining the capitalist elite, the bourgeoisie. So, no, bourgeoisie is the more accurate term.
  - StillBored 9y ago
    My problem with bourgeoisie is that its too broad a term. The "bourgeoisie" is a larger part of the population than the part setting the political agenda in the US. It implies that there are all these individually owned businesses in the cities controlling the political agenda, when the businesses with a voice are really the large corps with lobbyists which are controlled by a few dozen board members frequently sitting on multiple corps boards.
unabridged 9y ago
I love how the Russia discussion moved the blame from "voters being turned off by shady practices of the party" to "giving voters truthful information is bad".
- lobf 9y ago
  Do you think anybody actually believes "giving voters truthful information is bad?" Do you think the issue might be a little more nuanced than that?
  - pdx 9y ago
    Don't know. Why are we not talking about servers in closets and smashed blackberries and bleach-bit? Why, instead, are we talking about those mean old Russians! Why are we not talking about the Democratic primary rigging? Seems like that's a subject that even liberals should like to talk about (at least half of them), but again, it's Russia Russia Russia. Seems like there are some folks who would rather change the subject to Russia Russia Russia.
    - akhilcacharya 9y ago
      There was no primary rigging. The fact that you think this is the result of Russian propaganda, because it works.
      - unabridged 9y ago
        >There was no primary rigging. No vote tampering or anything to that level. But the emails show how embedded the party leadership is with the media and how much they can use their influence. I believe pushing the superdelegate count everyday for months before even the first primary is one of the worst things I've seen.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        Media including committed superdelegates in primary election delegate counts is not at all new (having a candidate that isn't a sitting President or Vice President gain such a strong commitment before a single primary vote is cast is unusual, especially when they don't have similar runaway support in the electorate.)
gamad 9y ago
The losing side simply thinks that Americans who didn't vote for Hillary must have been bamboozled or tricked and they need to be protected because they're not smart enough to think for themselves.
amigoingtodie 9y ago
As a US citizen, I worry our senators are vulnerable to lobbyist influence campaigns.

balls187 9y ago

Humans are vulnerable to influence. Hence marketing.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

> Isn't the problem that Americans are vulnerable to influence campaigns? Hard to wage a campaign against intellectually lazy voters.

BeefySwain 9y ago
I think that's pretty disingenuous. Humans are vulnerable to influence. In theory that is a feature more than a bug, but that's not super relevant to this point. There are a number of steps that our country could take towards having elections that require or at least strongly encourage more informed voting. I think a solid first step would be stripping all party affiliations from the ballots. If you want to vote for only one party blindly, that's fine, but you are going to need to memorize the name of the Democrat running for the school board then. Other/alternative steps include switching to STV or Ranked Choice voting, and anything that discourages a duopoly in political parties, such as mixed member proportional representation and perhaps even making the president an appointed position. Some of that is pretty out there though.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  That's not a rebuttal. That's finding ways around lazy voters. The problem is the electorate. No one likes Congress, but everyone who voted voted for someone in Congress.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    That is not a contradiction. Most people like their congressman, even while hating congress in general. There are 432 of them in the house, you vote for exactly one of them (assuming you are not committing fraud). In Red states the majority likes the republicans in congress and hate the democrats, in blue states the majority likes the democrats and hate the republicans.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    You're comparing two different things. How you feel your Congress people are doing, and how you feel Congress is doing as a whole.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Enough people think their congressperson is doing well enough to keep them around while Congress as a whole is riding the country into the ground. Who's right?
      - s73ver_ 9y ago
        Those aren't incongruent thoughts. My one person in Congress can only do so much, and I can believe that they are trying to do the right thing, while being blocked by groups from other states.

empath75 9y ago

Reddit is absolutely swarmed with Russian trolls and bots, and I suspect that a great deal of the power mods are under the influence of Russia (particularly The_Donald and conspiracy, but really the entire alt-right network — (the red pill, European, etc)

debacle 9y ago
Re-read what you wrote, mentally find/replace the right with the left, and see if you think that might be a bit red-scare-ish.
- ddingus 9y ago
  Yup.
- archagon 9y ago
  I'm sorry, but screw that approach. Your baseline assumption is that "both sides are the same". If — hypothetically, of course — one side was composed of misanthropic, weaponized liars and the other was at least attempting to act in good faith, then the good-faith side would eventually get bludgeoned out of existence by appeal-to-balance arguments like this one.
CM30 9y ago
And I'm sure a lot of right wing users would suspect the same thing about the left wing subreddits. Or about the politics subreddit in general, which is about as far from neutral as you can get nowadays.

creaghpatr 9y ago

I think they've just discovered that people and organizations from other countries can post messages on reddit that pertain to US politics. And that reddit does not protect US users from seeing these potentially unsafe opinions during election periods.

Stanish 9y ago
One of reddit's top locations for users is a US military base. The problem is not just with foreign manipulation.
craftyguy 9y ago
Oh for fuck's sake. It's not like the candidates' rhetoric towards each other is any more accurate. Since most people seem to be incapable of scrutinizing information they receive, I guess we need politicians to save us by legislating away the problem!
- sp332 9y ago
  It's not about accuracy. It's about whose interests are being served. At least if the R/D's lie to you it's still some kind of American.
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    So it's about being lied to to support someone gaining power vs being lied to to fuck with the political system in the US? How about the root of the actual problem: that the voting populous is trained to absorb information without questioning its authenticity or accuracy. It's more convenient to hear something you agree with and believe it is true, so this is the general way that folks "become informed." Now this strategy of "becoming informed" is biting us in the ass, and the plan is to play this cat/mouse game with questionable sources of information rather than try to tackle the actual problem?
    - sp332 9y ago
      No, it's really a separate issue. It's possible to influence an election even without lying. It's just undemocratic and illegal for someone outside the country to try to persuade people in the country to vote a certain way.

StillBored 9y ago

Many years ago a friend had a tirade about how schools no longer teach people to recognize propaganda and apply critical reasoning to the arguments being made. I'm generally not a conspiracy theorist, but it sure seems that having a populace without strong critical thinking skills, and without formal training to recognize propaganda (and marketing) plays into the hands of the elite* by allowing them to maintain and expand their hold on the economy and government. *noblemen might be more appropriate here than Bourgeoisie, even the 1% term is fairly inaccurate because its more like .01%.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> *noblemen might be more appropriate here than Bourgeoisie Nobleman are the land-bound pre-capitalist elite; other than a handful tolerated for symbolic purposes, those that remain elites have done so by joining the capitalist elite, the bourgeoisie. So, no, bourgeoisie is the more accurate term.
- StillBored 9y ago
  My problem with bourgeoisie is that its too broad a term. The "bourgeoisie" is a larger part of the population than the part setting the political agenda in the US. It implies that there are all these individually owned businesses in the cities controlling the political agenda, when the businesses with a voice are really the large corps with lobbyists which are controlled by a few dozen board members frequently sitting on multiple corps boards.

unabridged 9y ago

I love how the Russia discussion moved the blame from "voters being turned off by shady practices of the party" to "giving voters truthful information is bad".

lobf 9y ago
Do you think anybody actually believes "giving voters truthful information is bad?" Do you think the issue might be a little more nuanced than that?
- pdx 9y ago
  Don't know. Why are we not talking about servers in closets and smashed blackberries and bleach-bit? Why, instead, are we talking about those mean old Russians! Why are we not talking about the Democratic primary rigging? Seems like that's a subject that even liberals should like to talk about (at least half of them), but again, it's Russia Russia Russia. Seems like there are some folks who would rather change the subject to Russia Russia Russia.
  - akhilcacharya 9y ago
    There was no primary rigging. The fact that you think this is the result of Russian propaganda, because it works.
    - unabridged 9y ago
      >There was no primary rigging. No vote tampering or anything to that level. But the emails show how embedded the party leadership is with the media and how much they can use their influence. I believe pushing the superdelegate count everyday for months before even the first primary is one of the worst things I've seen.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        Media including committed superdelegates in primary election delegate counts is not at all new (having a candidate that isn't a sitting President or Vice President gain such a strong commitment before a single primary vote is cast is unusual, especially when they don't have similar runaway support in the electorate.)

gamad 9y ago

The losing side simply thinks that Americans who didn't vote for Hillary must have been bamboozled or tricked and they need to be protected because they're not smart enough to think for themselves.

amigoingtodie 9y ago

As a US citizen, I worry our senators are vulnerable to lobbyist influence campaigns.