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I think you underestimate how much this whole Russian fake news during and after the election has angered many Americans (at least outside of the ~30% of hard-c
by jnbiche 9y ago
I think you underestimate how much this whole Russian fake news during and after the election has angered many Americans (at least outside of the ~30% of hard-core Trump supporters).
Facebook was already on a lot of people's shit list because they know they're the product, they know their privacy isn't respected, and yet they can't keep in touch with their friends without it. This direct attack on our democracy mounted via Facebook and other social media, while they performed no meaningful monitoring or self-policing of their own network, has made the situation all the worse.
So blame all of this on "old media" to your detriment. Bitter complaints about Facebook and other social media pervade far beyond the media.
- Clubber 9y agoI dare say the Russian fake news didn't do anything that Fox and Limbaugh and Brietbart haven't been doing for decades. I'd really like to see some samples of Russian planted news and comments. I wonder if they would even be detectable compared to "normal" stuff the aforementioned organizations produce.
- jnbiche 9y agoYes, but we don't give foreign governments and intelligence agencies unhampered access to our TV and radio airwaves to broadcast whatever the hell they want. There's a big difference between US nationals broadcasting bullshit and hostile foreign governments broadcasting bullshit. Neither is ideal, but the latter is completely unacceptable, at least to me, because it touches on sovereignty issues.
- Clubber 9y agoI agree, but I think broadcast is a misleading term. They were buying ads on websites. And their buy footprint is very small. To say, as the media has insinuated, the Russians swayed the election by buying $100K in Facebook ads is disingenuous and alarmist.
- danenania 9y agoThat was just a single front. There were others on other platforms as well, and likely others on FB. It's unlikely we'll ever know the full extent of this operation, but it was clearly huge in its scope.
- 123e1daAdfafsdf 9y agoDoes Murdoch (an Australian national) own Fox News still?
- Animats 9y agoYoutube and Gmail, too.[1] Google is trying to sort out the Russian ad buyers from the rest of their bottom-feeder advertisers. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-alphabet/google-uncovered-russia-backed-ads-on-youtube-gmail-source-says-idUSKBN1CE192 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-alphabet...