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Announcement: RT and Sputnik Advertising

180 points by runesoerensen 9y ago

CoolGuySteve 9y ago
While I understand Russian propaganda in the US election is disconcerting, I feel like the fury over it is very reactionary. There's nothing stopping someone on US soil from exercising their first amendment rights in the same way to subvert an election. In fact I expect the next presidential election will be dominated by the same tactics from local organizations. The susceptibility of Americans to shitty lies, conspiracy theories, and a lack of numeracy is a vastly greater threat to the integrity of the US government and much more difficult to fix.
- betolink 9y ago
  What about when U.S. media outlets do the same in other countries? Like all the time. I'm not saying RT is not Russian propaganda but come on, next time CNN publishes a headline like "Inside Hussein's WMD facilities " I hope @jack will ban them as well.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    Seriously, this is where Twitter's hypocrisy reaches its pinnacle. The US "news" media is a combination of war propaganda and "living in countries other than the US sucks" propaganda.
    - soundwave106 9y ago
      I'm not sure how it's hypocritical per se, when looked at from the angle that Twitter is headquartered in the United States. It seems like a fair portion of the US government now strongly believes that Russian social media propaganda is attempting to destabilize the United States government, with Twitter being a dominant platform for spreading the disinformation. So I'm sure there was quite an incentive to block some of this in some form. The US has its own propaganda networks, of course. Russia's response to them tends to be far harsher. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/moscow-turns-off-voice-of-america-radio/2014/04/10/9c184fd8-8362-43fd-9dc0-26a80f849a0e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/moscow-turns-off-voice-...)
      - grandalf 9y ago
        > Twitter is headquartered in the United States So you expect companies to have jingoistic political allegiance to the jurisdiction that they happen to have been founded in? That is actually quite scary. > strongly believes that Russian social media propaganda is attempting to destabilize the United States government The key word here is "destabilize". If the NYT were to write a story about the water pollution in Flint Michigan and also break a story that officials covered up polluted water in 20 other major US cities, would that cause "destabilization"? I certainly hope it would! More than a few people should not win office again after such a fiasco. The purpose of journalism is to be adversarial to powerful interests, and to share the truth (even if it's unflattering) with the public, so that corrective actions can be taken... corrective actions may involve changing the status quo. As for "disinformation", nobody has pointed out what stories should be considered disinformation, and whether they were completely false, or if they were true but misleading. Russia shutting down VOA is not terribly relevant here. The VOA is obviously propaganda if you listen for 10-15 minutes, while RT has focused on some important issues for the poorest Americans that do not get reliable coverage from other big media outlets.
        soundwave106 9y ago
        I don't see many businesses having huge instinctive "jingoistic political allegiances", frankly, unless perhaps if it's a SOA or military driven or the like. However, most businesses in any nation tend to work with and cooperate with national governments on various probes, particularly where they are headquartered, unless there is a huge reason not to. Congress is heavily scrutinizing Facebook and Twitter over Russian influence at the moment; reports like this (https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf) heavily critical of RT and Sputnik's role in this election are being produced by our intelligence agencies. So in this regard, Twitter's reaction is not surprising. We'll never know is how much Twitter management agreed to drop RT/Sputnik advertising based on what they felt was right (due to whatever reason), what was right or good for the business, or whether they did this largely due to pressure from the government. The main thing we know is that Twitter's corporate reaction here is obviously different than, say, Twitter's corporate reaction to their role in the Arab Spring. Most of the time, in general, I think RT / Sputnik do report actual events, but with a very heavy pro-Kremlin slant (so not unlike VOA in this regard). However, they dip enough of their toes into the Infowars style conspiracy theory stuff (in part because relying on native disaffected groups is part of their strategy -- http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/571339/EPRS_BRI%282015%29571339_EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/57133... ) that I wouldn't trust an article only sourced there at all. If RT "broke" that officials covered up polluted water in 20 other major US cities, for instance, I'd look elsewhere to confirm that story.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  > The susceptibility of Americans to shitty lies, conspiracy theories, and a lack of numeracy is a vastly greater threat to the integrity of the US government and much more difficult to fix. This susceptibility is likely not particular to Americans. It's this difficult-to-fix nature that necessitates taking an indirect approach to solving this problem.
  - mcny 9y ago
    > This susceptibility is likely not particular to Americans. It's this difficult-to-fix nature that necessitates taking an indirect approach to solving this problem. There was a podcast where locals in a small town in Eastern Ukraine said they leave the area immediately if a camera crew (for tv news I presume) shows up because they think wherever there is a camera crew in that town, the chances of some kind of bombing or another becomes very high. I mean there are various degrees of "fake" news. One could argue that "suits are back" [submarine] is fake news as well. [submarine] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  - eternalban 9y ago
    > an indirect approach How about a direct approach: Governments should stop lying 24/7 to their citizens; Corporate Media needs to get off (rather kicked off) the privileged 'Fourth Estate' pedastal; and education and mental health issues are taken [as] central and fundamental issues to address. That would do it.
    - theorique 9y ago
      What do education and mental health issues have to do with this?
      - eternalban 9y ago
        Humanity imho clearly suffers from various forms of psychological problems and is generally poorly educated. Our problem is that the power elite have historically considered the first a lost cause and confused propaganda with education. And here we are. And far as I can deduce, civilization boils down to sanity and thoughtfulness. The rest is window dressing and 'product'. (I am /not/ dismissing the fruits here, but rather focusing on 'roots'.) What is necessary is sanity. What is necessary is the ability to think effectively. Individually and collectively. Everything else is secondary, and if the former are lacking, abundance in other dimensions only gets you so far and then it peters out.
- jerkstate 9y ago
  That susceptability is borne, perhaps rightly so, from mistrust of our government - just look at the election, both sides were going to great lengths including speaking to foreign powers in order to try to get dirt on the other, and one went as far as to use federal law enforcement for political gain. Once our government learns that the consequence for subverting the trust of their citizenry is chaos, things will get better. But not until then. These people work for us, not the other way around.
  - pvg 9y ago
    both sides were going to great lengths including speaking to foreign powers in order to try to get dirt on the other, and one went as far as to use federal law enforcement for political gain. Other than the one thing for which there is some evidence, all of these are conspiracy theories so perhaps you're making your point but not in the way you'd like.
    - jerkstate 9y ago
      Oh yeah? https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_dossier-630pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.401a7c949591 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clint... http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/fbi-dossier-carter-page-donald-trump-russia-investigation/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/fbi-dossier-carter-pa...
      - lern_too_spel 9y ago
        Neither of those articles says a campaign used the government to do its investigation. The Clinton campaign used a private investigation firm in your first article just like all campaigns in history. The FBI investigated Trump in your second article because that's its job — it didn't give special access to the Clinton campaign. You've proven GP's point.
        9y ago
- jonknee 9y ago
  > The susceptibility of Americans to shitty lies, conspiracy theories, and a lack of numeracy is a vastly greater threat to the integrity of the US government and much more difficult to fix. Seems bullish for advertising. I've chuckled at the fact Facebook tells its advertisers how amazing advertising Facebook is, while at the same time saying to the public that it's ludicrous to think Facebook had any impact on the election.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Advertisers themselves aren't much more immune to advertising than everyone else. In fact, I believe adtech industry scams itself internally just as much as it does that to everyone else.
    - C4stor 9y ago
      From my experience working in adtech industry, you're 100% right.
- irmc 9y ago
  https://goo.gl/MbJtN3 https://goo.gl/MbJtN3 wow that's a very interesting source
- gadders 9y ago
  People have said that the "Russia won the election" conspiracy theory is the Democrat's equivalent of "Obama was born in Kenya" birthers.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    One of these has a growing body of evidence behind it[1] and the other is pure wackadoodle gibberish that would make even Flat Earthers ashamed. [1] I wouldn't say "won" but I would say "definitely helped" - there are a large number of other forces that contributed much, much more to the GOP win than Russia.
    - tripplethrendo 9y ago
      >there are a large number of other forces Like Hillary being the worst candidate in a lifetime.
      - davesque 9y ago
        Think back to where you might have acquired this belief.
        DonHopkins 9y ago
        And be honest about why you're giving Trump such a disproportionate pass. Would a good candidate brag about grabbing pussies, and attack a gold star family?
      - CalChris 9y ago
        Yale Law grad, law partner, First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State. Most Admire Woman in America 21 times. Yep that there is a pretty bad candidate. But hey, email.
    - davesque 9y ago
      I would say "won", actually. Think about how the average person behaves. Our community here at Hacker News is unusual. Most people believe whatever they see and tell their friends and family so. Once enough people in a group acquire a belief this way, there's almost no way you can make inroads into their minds. I believe that Russia, and only Russia, won the election in 2016. We just depend too much on the internet for information nowadays and its too easy to disseminate disinformation on that platform. I mean, come on, a lot of us here know how web sites work. For a major country's spy agency, it would be trivially easy to automate account sign up and posting. Is it that hard to imagine? And when every dumb Joe on the planet is likely to believe the first thing they read that strategically appeals to their emotions? You do the math.
- zemo 9y ago
  > There's nothing stopping someone on US soil from exercising their first amendment rights in the same way to subvert an election. Individuals exercising their first amendment rights do not have the same reach as a propaganda apparatus of a major nation state. It's ridiculous to say that one person has the same reach as a government propaganda machine.
  - nejenendn 9y ago
    Did you respond to the right comment? I’m having difficulty figuring out where the OP compared reaches.
    - davesque 9y ago
      Then you're not reading the OP's comment very carefully.
  - anilshanbhag 9y ago
    The method in question is here RT using Twitter advertising to reach out to millions of Twitter users. RT itself is small but the reach comes from the cheap advertising. They spent ~ $250k in total which is pretty small compared to total ad budget of a number of PACs. There are many individuals who donate more than that amount and could easily spend it on Twitter ads.
    - leggomylibro 9y ago
      They also spent a lot of man-hours spreading and sharing that content, making it look like it was supported by 'American citizen' sockpuppet accounts, and coordinating that effort across several platforms to actively drive a consistent and singular message. Not the sort of thing that a grassroots could easily manage; buying a few hundred ads was just a small part of the wider propaganda and sabotage. Twitter has just been complete shit at figuring out what happened on their platform, anyways; half of their 'identifications' come from, "Facebook told us this account was a sockpuppet on their platform..."
      - 9y ago
- beepboopbeep 9y ago
  >I feel like the fury over it is very reactionary. I think the fact that the core of our democracy was attacked with a vast and sophisticated operation by a foreign government to potentially prop up a candidate both friendly to and quite possibly compromised by that foreign government should lead to MORE fury than is currently happening.
  - 1001101 9y ago
    Democracy is the heart of the US, and an attack on it is an existential threat. If there's any evidence of this, it should be responded to with due measure. This is nothing new though. For decades (perhaps longer), democracies have been subverted and are, unfortunately, a liability for many countries. Patriots see it as their duty to protect their countries by insulating themselves against this subversion and consolidating power. It's a dangerous trend.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      > an attack on it is an existential threat You may want to investigate the voter ID / disenfranchisement question.
      - 1001101 9y ago
        I have, it makes my blood boil. Don't get me started on Citizens United. Indeed, foreign governments aren't the only threat.
    - beepboopbeep 9y ago
      >This is nothing new though. No one is arguing if it's new. The point is it was massive, sophisticated, and targeted. It was an organized attack. We can debate the history of election subversion some other time, but there is a real threat happening right now. Let's focus on that, yes?
      - 1001101 9y ago
        The only piece of solid evidence I personally have inventoried so far is about 100k$ ad spend on divisive issues, rather than supporting a particular candidate. That was not massive (compared to campaign billions). It was targeted at regions and individuals. As far as sophistication, some of the ads I have seen didn't have proper grammar and spelling - they didn't seem credible to my bologna detector. These ads were likely a foreign psychological operation, and have no place in our political discourse, but I guess I'd like to see more before we gut the Bill of Rights. If these ads were enough to subvert our democratic institutions, there's nothing but trouble ahead.
- davesque 9y ago
  True, there's nothing stopping any random person from doing the same thing. However, no random person has the same incentives as a foreign government to pollute dialog on political matters. The personal gain or sense of satisfaction that an individual might get from launching a disinformation campaign pales in comparison to the economic and ideological pressure that motivates heads of state to do the same thing. So it seems far less likely that we're under threat from random individuals than from foreign governments. Also, how are you going to "fix" people being dumb? We've been trying to figure that one out for a long time and it's going to take a while to make progress on that front.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    > to pollute dialog on political matters. Please explain where the "pollution" occurred. Over the past few years I have read RT from time to time and most of the stories were simply about negative aspects of American life that do not get much exposure/focus from American news organizations because they are not flattering. Things like the Flint Michigan water crisis, other areas of failed infrastructure, etc. For many Americans, reading RT would be likely to create valuable awareness of important issues and make that person more likely to vote in his/her own best interest in the next election. To say that RT has "polluted" the marketplace of ideas you really have to back that statement up with what you think "pure" ideas are that Americans should be exposed to before casting their vote.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      Russia Today are well known as a fake news org. Are you reading the Russian language articles they put out? https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage_en/32408/Don't%20be%20deceived:%20EU%20acts%20against%20fake%20news%20and%20disinformation https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage_en... https://euvsdisinfo.eu https://euvsdisinfo.eu
      - grandalf 9y ago
        I am reluctant to use a buzzword like "fake news" when I have been reading Chomsky's detailed critiques of American newspapers for a long time and have been (for a long time) well aware of the significant political and corporate motivations behind news organizations (print and television). What are the "memes" (per Dawkins' definition) that RT intends to publicize? Which of those are false, which are true but misleading, and which are actually true? Does publishing stories that might make some voters angry with the status quo constitute being "fake news"? Is RT "fake news" simply because of its origin? Or because of its content? Or because of the timing of its content? Specific examples please. Under whatever definition you would use to classify RT as fake news, are any American news orgs (NYT, WaPo, CNN, Fox News, WSJ, etc.) also fake news? How do you draw the line? Is it based on content that is false, true but misleading, or true? Do you believe that certain ideas are dangerous for Americans to believe? Should reading the writings of some of history's dictators be banned? Should violent music lyrics be banned?
- mFixman 9y ago
  It's not only Americans. In my history classes in an Argentine high school my professor was a serious conspiracy theories who taught how, among other things, the 9/11 attacks were engineered by the US government for world domination, George Bush wanted to buy southern Argentina to steal our freshwater reserves, and Cuba found the "natural" cure for cancer (but of course the US government doesn't allow it to be exported). I heard these conspiracies coming from otherwise smart people all the time. The issue here is that we have an entire generation that was raised in an environment where having stupid beliefs didn't matter, since news came from mostly "expert" sources, which is now living in a world where a big part of the information you give and receive comes from sites like Facebook or Twitter. If it's an education problem, it's unsolvable: you can't easily teach 50 year old the way they thought about media their entire life was wrong.
- JonFish85 9y ago
  "I feel like the fury over it is very reactionary." I think this is the current boogey-man to go after. I think it's a useful tool for politicians (DNC, Hillary Clinton, Democrats and Republicans - none of them wanted Trump where he is today) to bury their heads in the sand and say that it wasn't their fault that they got the election so wrong. They can point to Russia and ignore their own shortcomings that in my opinion put people off of voting for what they "should" have voted for. Given the choice of a deeper soul-searching or blaming someone else, humans usually choose to point the finger at someone else. Did Russia/Russians attempt to influence the election? Absolutely. I'm sure most major powers in the world did, in one way or another. They'd be silly not to at least consider it, in the same way that I'm sure the United States attempts to serve its own interests via other countries' elections. But I don't think it's anywhere near as effective as politicians seem to want to make it appear.
cryptoz 9y ago
It doesn't matter, twitter. Delete the bots, ban the people making them, use ML to find out how they make so many and look so convincing to Americans, be transparent about how many people vs. bots you have. Or go home. Right, you can't do any of that because then your shareholders would know about your hugely inflated growth numbers and your stock would collapse. I wonder, Twitter is so much worse for society than anyone ever knew, and they have been so quiet and complacent in the Russian takeover of the USA, that maybe they have acted illegally? Is it possible Twitter has been lying about bot account numbers and inflating their userbase counts to increase share value? Okay, kick off the ads made by Russian enemies of the USA, that's a good move. But why did you allow it in the first place? Because of the money, and because nobody thought at Twitter than Russians buying political ads is a bad idea? The purchased ads weren't even the main issue - it's the millions and millions of bots echoing racist and hateful things to divide and wreck the US. Fuck twitter. This isn't enough. Apologize for the Russian takeover that you let happen. Don't donate that money to some cause about civic debates in the future. America is under attack right now. Give that money to someone who can stop the Russians because it's not you or your civic debates.
- megous 9y ago
  What would be next? Google apologizing that you can find misinformation on the web? Paper apologizing for people writing on it?
  - cryptoz 9y ago
    > Google apologizing that you can find misinformation on the web? Did Google run political ads that were purchased by other countries and intended to deceive the US electorate? If so then YES + a lot more than apologize. > Paper apologizing for people writing on it? There's no need for this. This is a major issue and I'm taking it very seriously. The "it's a joke bro" attitude here on HN, in your comment, all over reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc., is sickening. It plays right into the Russian books - make the Americans argue about it and make jokes and make fun of the people who care!
    - 9y ago
tertius 9y ago
I wonder if they'll do the same for American propaganda abroad.
- hennsen 9y ago
  That is, erm, sonethingh different, cough. I also wonder what about lobbyism in general. Why is this allowed and the other not. Because it’s good for economy? What if it’s still bad for society?
  - tertius 9y ago
    > What if it’s still bad for society? I think we can both agree that we don't want @jack to be the arbiter of that...
  - alexasmyths 9y ago
    Lobbyism is just 'someone making a case'. It's not unreasonable for individuals or groups to 'lobby their cause' to politicians. It just has a bad name because it can be abused. And yes, it's not unreasonable for nation-state actors to take steps to thwart American intervention in whatever. Though often, the state in question is not elected, which begs a serious question of legitimacy -> if you're going to make a 'moral equivalence' argument of tit-for-tat interference ... it's hard to do if one side is a dictatorship. :)
    - tertius 9y ago
      We're talking about Russia right? Not North Korea?
      - alexasmyths 9y ago
        Russia does not have open elections. Political opposition figures, business figures and members of the press are murdered or imprisoned arbitrarily. Media networks and large businesses are arbitrarily confiscated. Primary media channels are direct forms of state propaganda. State agencies are deeply systematically corrupt - always in the control of the friends of Putin, taking massive kickbacks, using state power to force deals. Sochi is a good example of how these shennanigans work. See the CBC expose on Sochi construction - kickbacks were up to 85% on construction (i.e. state pays $500M for a building, most of it goes back to the buyer, a 'friend of Putin'), and 15% goes into actual construction. So it's not 'North Korea' but it's not a normal democracy, not by a stretch.
sgarrity 9y ago
"off-board"?
- athenot 9y ago
  The opposite of on-board. It's a ship metaphor.
  - DonHopkins 9y ago
    Disembark. What would they call walking the plank: transplanking? Going down with the ship: defloating?
- jsperx 9y ago
  Ugh, exactly: drowning in corpo-speak. “We have decided to remove...” is apparently too clear. Reminds me of my company’s HR department, where employees don’t quit, they “separate.” We don’t train, we “in-service”. Etc.
alva 9y ago
Also revealed today was slides from pitch desk Twitter provided RT, proposing RT spend a large amount of money advertising during and about the US election. https://twitter.com/M_Simonyan/status/923519609269116928 https://twitter.com/M_Simonyan/status/923519609269116928 edit: as questioned by comments below, there is no confirmation this is authentic yet.
- gruez 9y ago
  is there a link to the full pitch deck somewhere? that tweet only has the cover
- intopieces 9y ago
  What reason does anyone have to believe this is authentic?
- bobuk 9y ago
  https://www.rt.com/op-edge/407858-rt-twitter-us-election/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/407858-rt-twitter-us-election/ this is not a confirmation but...
diminish 9y ago
Afaik - most international US media interferes in many elections, anywhere in the world with strong opinions. Why is it wrong with the reverse? Germany's Spiegel, or UK's Guardian can also have opinions about US elections and what's wrong in it?
- notyourday 9y ago
  Because the smartest people in the room got their asses kicked in the most public way by an adversary that they claimed is an incapable drunk. Now they are embarrassed.
  - nejenendn 9y ago
    Wait, who are you talking about?
    - dang 9y ago
      Would you please not create bulk accounts to post with here? Throwaways are fine if there's some specific purpose, e.g. something personally sensitive, but we ban users who do it routinely. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Hacker News is a community. You don't have to use your real name, of course, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum.
- matt4077 9y ago
  The Guardian or Spiegel don't pay for ads saying a candidate is planning to use FEMA to invade Texas and force all white people with guns to have abortions.
  - diminish 9y ago
    Forgive my ignorance - I never read them b/c I'm not interested in main news but Could you point me where RT/Sputnik said "a candidate is planning to use FEMA to invade Texas" and "force all white people with guns to have abortions."
CapacitorSet 9y ago
>U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government. The US intelligence community also concluded that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  Please don't parrot Trump's lies and Russian sponsored propaganda intended to distract from the Russia investigation. This is not the place for that. You're only embarrassing and discrediting yourself, and fooling nobody, while insulting everyone's intelligence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/13/the-pre-war-intelligence-on-iraq-wrong-or-hyped-by-the-bush-white-house/?utm_term=.2c5384af9241 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/... “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” — statement from the Trump transition team on Washington Post report that the CIA concluded that Russia intervened in the election to help Trump Donald Trump’s staff dismissed U.S. intelligence conclusions that Russia actively interfered in the presidential election by noting the flawed intelligence cited by the Bush administration in making the case for invading Iraq nearly 14 years ago. An alternative perspective came from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who pinned the blame on the Bush White House for misrepresenting the intelligence. Nancy Pelosi @NancyPelosi: The intel didn't state that Iraq had WMDs. The Bush-Cheney WH made that misrepresentation. 12:21 AM - Dec 11, 2016 Trump’s complaint about this semi-ancient history is a bit odd because a) the intelligence analysts who worked on Middle East WMDs are not going to be the same as analysts focused on Russian cyber-behavior; b) the intelligence collection for hacking in the United States by overseas powers would be different from assessing illicit weapons programs in the Middle East; and c) reforms were put in place after the Iraq War to make it harder for suspect intelligence to bubble up to the top ranks without careful scrutiny. (For instance, a new procedure required heads of intelligence agencies to vouch personally for the credibility of any of their own agency’s sources that are used in a major estimate.) Moreover, the Bush administration appeared determined to attack Iraq for any number of reasons beyond suspicions of WMDs; officials simply seized on WMDs because they concluded that that represented the strongest case for an invasion. “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,” then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair in 2003.
irmc 9y ago
https://goo.gl/u1qWQ9 https://goo.gl/u1qWQ9 go visit this site as it's so useful
DonHopkins 9y ago
If they wanted to live up to their civic duty, they would kick Donald Trump off for bullying, and kick Melania Trump off for trolling that she would do something to stop bullying.
moomin 9y ago
Meanwhile, the plague of Twitter accounts that claim to be from Northampton but keep St Peterburg office hours continues apace.
- hidenotslide 9y ago
  It seems like this is the bigger problem. Few people think RT/Sputnik are unbiased, but when you have some foreign intelligence agency micro-targeting voters it's hard to even judge the extent of the influence operations taking place. They use pseudonyms and stock photos to seem like part of an in-group, then amplify divisive hashtags and messaging. They disappear from historical records when they delete the accounts, making it even harder to track their activity. Reddit, twitter, facebook, and newspaper comment sections are all filled with disinformation and nobody seems to be doing much about it.
djsumdog 9y ago
This shouldn't matter or even be remotely relevant. Walled gardens and silos. We know those terms, and we know we need to encourage people onto my decentralized systems. Twitter, Google, Facebook, et. al. know they dictate the narrative just as much as the major news networks; maybe even more so. And there is so little hosting today that can scale that the big organizations can effectively censor whoever they want: http://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ http://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-c... If we had more open platforms that didn't filter and sift through everything and run _fact checks_ (i.e. you're too stupid to do your own research so let's tell you what to think), yes we'd have a lot more garbage .. but we'd have a more unfiltered equal playing field where you'd also have much more of everything. Twitter is just another example of a filtered world that needs to die off.
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  As much as I loathe walled gardens, and disagree with Twitter 90% of the time ... This is a good instance of why some degree of regulation is important. In unregulated systems, it's entirely possible that corporate and state actors can basically control election outcomes, utterly lie and mislead people towards some pretty crazy consequences. The Rawandan genocide was largely propagated by guess who -> Radio Hosts. 'Mass Media' in Rwanda was Radio, and hosts calling the other side 'cockroaches that need to be exterminated' was a critical factor that led to the tipping point. So much so that General Dallaire (Head of UN mission) left a bunch of Belgian soldiers in a building that was being attacked, in an attempt to get to the stations. The idea that 'decentralized networks' will be 'free' is not quite right - they will still be controlled, but just in a different way, by anyone who has the means. This is our fault as humans. I know a lot of educated professionals who believe some crazy stuff, and it's very easy to misinform. I don't like that Twitter has this control, but I don't see any reasonable alternative on the horizon yet. When there is 'true decentralization' - you will have some groups calling for mass murder of others pretty quickly. And they will create all sorts of Hollywood style propaganda in support of it. ISIS would not exist without social media. There would be a few ISIS-like groups in every civilized country if they were allowed to exist - sadly. It's not a simple situation we have, unfortunately. --- "i.e. you're too stupid to do your own research so let's tell you what to think" Nobody (including you) has enough time and wherewithal to 'do their own research' - that's the whole point of a free press. Do you have access to White House aids to find out 'what Trump said'? Do you have time to read 100's of papers on Climate Change? Etc.. ---- "yes we'd have a lot more garbage .. but we'd have a more unfiltered equal playing field where you'd also have much more of everything." We'd have - and we already kind of do have - 99% garbage. Even the mainstream press is kind of crap - why? Attention. CNN would devote more time to specific issues if it were up to them, but Americans just 'tune out'. Major news outlets have to keep it a little light and America focused or else nobody will watch. Anyhow. A big, fat existential issue ...
SapphireSun 9y ago
Whatever twitter. You still let the President threaten war and attack individuals using your platform. We still haven't seen convincing evidence that the Russian interference mattered, or even mattered more than our direct assistance to Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. We have a sick and disintegrating society, blaming external enemies is way too easy.
- tertius 9y ago
  > You still let the President threaten war I for one think the President should be allowed to do this. It may be illegal for a regular citizen to do this, but not for the President. The letter of the TOS vs. the spirit of the TOS. He's(or she's) a special case, no?
  - SapphireSun 9y ago
    I think the spirit of the TOS of humanity (e.g. Article II paragraph 4 of the UN Charter) would banish offensive war and the threat of war. These threats are _worse_ coming from the president. His being the president doesn't make these things more allowable, only our deference to hierarchy does. Mere legalism is failing us, let alone the spirits of legalism. I'm not happy about it.
    - tertius 9y ago
      > His being the president doesn't make these things more allowable, only our deference to hierarchy does. You mean the constitution right?
      - SapphireSun 9y ago
        The constitution makes him the commander in chief and delegates war authority to congress. The AUMF signed after 9/11 was poorly drafted, contained no expiration, and has ceded control from congress to the executive in extraordinary ways. Nuclear authorities that allow one man to destroy the world have always been egregious since we instituted them. Nonetheless, Commander in Chief ≠ Command of Twitter. A private entity doesn't have to indulge him and such dissent is protected by the 1st amendment.
dilap 9y ago
$274,100 is a hilariously low number. Zero effect on the election. It’s quite a remarkable thing to be in the eye of the storm of a mass hysteria.
- convery 9y ago
  This is what baffles me about the narrative. A candidate spent upwards of 1,3 billion on their campaign, had the backing of most mainstream media, celebrity endorsements, back-room deals, and literal paid-shills on social media (CTR) when they went against one of the most unpopular people in America. Yet <300,000 in foreign advertising is what got the public to vote for the hated candidate.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    It doesn't add up in any way, and the whole thing is ridiculous on its face. The only money that matters here is the money media platforms milk off the outrage of people caused by making this a top story.
- gourou 9y ago
  Trolls are also shaping opinions https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-...
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  Folks like you are being willfully ignorant. It's very easy to understand how the Russian fake news operation got such a good ROI. The election came down to around 20k votes in three states. Combine an unprecedented data mining operation (Cambridge Analytica) with microtargetting enabled by social media companies, as well as the viral nature of fake news, its easy to see how a small amount of money can sway a marginal amount of voters in key states.
- hbosch 9y ago
  Incorrect. Viral media is incredibly cheap compared to traditional ad buys — their reach is reliably fast, global, and free beyond the means of production. Don’t forget that much of the clickbait conspiracies that altered this election were written on WordPress blogs by individuals peddling “fake news” narratives, eg Obama wiretapping Trump, Pizzagate, Clinton Foundation trafficking Haitian earthquake victims, etc. RT wasn’t just spending money on “sponsored Tweets” and that sort of thing. The Kremlin operates twitter bot armies that game propaganda visibility.
SEJeff 9y ago
One thing literally no one on this thread thusfar has mentioned is that the Department of Justice has compelled RT and Sputnik to fill out the paperwork[1] for FARA[2] registration. The DOJ isn't going to just target journalists for FARA registration without some sort of (probably classified under a FISA order) information letting them know that indeed, this org is working as an agent for a foreign government. Thus far, RT has not complied. [1] http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/350226-russian-network-rt-must-register-as-foreign-agent-in http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/3... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Wonder if they'll ever get around to making AIPAC do so. Until they do it makes it obviously political posing.
  - SEJeff 9y ago
    Very much agreed, but that is super unlikely given the current administration.
excalibur 9y ago
If Twitter actually wanted to promote civic responsibility, they would ban Donald Trump for repeated ToS violations and try to encourage him to be a little more thoughtful about his proclamations to the world.
- tertius 9y ago
  > be a little more thoughtful about his proclamations to the world. Censoring the speech of the President is probably not something that they want to get engaged with. He's a special case. So I would argue that some of the terms should not apply to him. For instance, he has the right to make violent threats in certain circumstances compared to normal citizens. Whether I personally agree with his threats or tact is not important. Now when he does something that he does not have the legal right to, I'll let the courts handle that one.
  - albinofrenchy 9y ago
    > For instance, he has the right to make violent threats in certain circumstances compared to normal citizens. No one has the 'right' to make violent threats on twitter. It is a private service with a ToS. There are no principled reasons to treat the president as a special case here. The practical reason is simply that it is often and free advertising for them and the terms of service dictate what they can do when breached; not what they must do.
    - tertius 9y ago
      > No one has the 'right' to make violent threats on twitter. I never claimed this. My argument hinges on the fact that he has the right, in certain circumstances, to make violent threats as opposed to normal citizens. The TOS is written for normal citizens because it is indeed illegal for normal citizens to do so. And I therefore agree with you that the TOS technically does not allow any violent threats on twitter. I do not think it is unreasonable to allow the President to communicate his threats on Twitter, a modern means of communication. I think it's actually a good thing to allow, for this and all future presidents. Again, letter of the TOS vs. spirit of the TOS.
vowelless 9y ago
I hope next up is blocking Saudi funded groups from advertising. Oh wait, https://qz.com/519388/this-saudi-prince-now-owns-more-of-twitter-than-jack-dorsey-does/ https://qz.com/519388/this-saudi-prince-now-owns-more-of-twi... So that won't happen -- and everything now makes sense ...
- tertius 9y ago
  @jack doesn't own a particularly large stake in Twitter.
- truxus 9y ago
  The Saudis are locked in golden handcuffs. We provide them lavish lifestyles, they provide us irreplaceable energy resources. When the oil is gone those people go back to living in the dark ages.
  - gourou 9y ago
    > When the oil is gone those people go back to living in the dark ages. Except they invest everywhere, SoftBank Vision fund included http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/21/technology/saudi-softbank-tech-fund-target/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/21/technology/saudi-softbank-te...
YouAreGreat 9y ago
Well, there is an explanation that doesn't make them look like complete fools: Supporting the "Russians stole election with paltry spend on social media" narrative, they hope to encourage Americans to massively spend on social media to "steal" coming elections...
- Tasboo 9y ago
  You put it in quotes like it hasn't already been proven that Russian led a massive effort to influence the election via social media.
  - YouAreGreat 9y ago
    What I've seen proven wasn't massive. If people can be convinced that non-massive social media spending is as effective as is currently insinuated, they'll likely spend. Mission accomplished. There "culture wars" are approaching cold civil war status. Great times to be a virtual arms dealer...
gressquel 9y ago
this is great news. There is journalism, and then there is agenda-based LIES. RT and their likes are lying to create chaos in the western world. They make up things out of nothing. Wish youtube banned RT aswell.
Alex3917 9y ago
Wasn't Twitter bragging about how they were interfering with the Iranian elections a few years ago? Seems extremely hypocritical of them.
truxus 9y ago
RT and Sputnik are weapons of information warfare. It would be rational for USA's society and government to end their toleration of Russian media in domestic space. The only legitimate reason for Russia to have US news media arms is to show public discord and private confusion. I don't know why this even needs to be discussed. There exist some foriegn nation's who's objectives and values align with the US, but Russia is not one of them.
grandalf 9y ago
This is profoundly disappointing, and is yet another indication that Twitter is clueless about being a platform and wants to be a content company. There have been many other decisions where Twitter was tone-deaf about its platform status, but this is perhaps the worst. RT has had some great coverage of under-publicized issues in the US... issues involving the poor, failing infrastructure, hypocrisy, etc. Yes it's not flattering to the US that these stories are written, but they are true and newsworthy and should absolutely not be suppressed. During the election, RT ran a unflattering stories about both major candidates. This is now being spun as "trying to sow discord" in the US. Journalism is supposed to shine a light on things that need to be improved, it is supposed to rally people to act to fix those problems. If you read the major newspapers in the US, particularly in the section on world affairs, there is a steady stream of stories that address the dangers of living abroad, the corrupt politicians, the failing infrastructure, etc. These stories may or may not be true (many are obviously overblown to anyone who has visited those countries) but the purpose they serve is to help foster the idea of American exceptionalism. Our papers don't have to run headlines like "Americans happiest citizens in the world" or "America has the cleanest water and the happiest children in the world" when it can simply run stories that make other nations (particularly political adversaries) seem far worse. We still don't know much about the Hillary Clinton or Podesta emails as none of the few possibly troubling things (mostly campaign finance violation stuff) has been investigated. RT ran stories about that topic when it was fresh during the election, even when the major US papers were focused mainly on rude things Trump had said. When RT first launched I was surprised that it was "allowed" to exist simply because of its origin. But after reading the reporting for several years I came to appreciate that it was offering a view of the US that was not really available from American news outlets. This makes RT valuable to the sharing of ideas and the creation of an informed public. Twitter's decision to block the advertising is cowardly in so many ways.
- eduren 9y ago
  >RT has had some great coverage of under-publicized issues in the US... issues involving the poor, failing infrastructure, hypocrisy, etc. Yes it's not flattering to the US that these stories are written, but they are true and newsworthy and should absolutely not be suppressed. RT hasn't been blocked from twitter, it is still allowed to do all those things.
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
I feel an inflated sense of self-worth here. The only people who get swayed by twitter ads are bots that are programmed to. I bet Silicon Valley is eating up this national discussion around fake news and Russian ads. Surely the only reason the country swung so strongly in the last election is because of hacking/Facebook/Twitter/Russia etc. It has nothing to do with things like economy and jobs /s
AzzieElbab 9y ago
there is a difference between propaganda and simply stirring shit, pretending to be anyone from black-lives-matter to white supremacists
MichaelGG 9y ago
As a proponent of nationalism, I'm very pleased with this move. Now only if Canada, Japan and Europe could get in on it, so each major area would have its own social media. It's obvious that Twitter isn't going to block agents of the US Government for similar "offences". So despite how pathetic and partisan this is, hopefully it'll have great long term secondary effects by siloing countries. Or at least a small step in that direction.
egeozcan 9y ago
The response from RT: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/407858-rt-twitter-us-election/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/407858-rt-twitter-us-election/ Also the news of the ban: https://www.rt.com/news/407861-twitter-policy-rt-accounts/ https://www.rt.com/news/407861-twitter-policy-rt-accounts/
- pizzetta 9y ago
  That's interesting, so at first Twitter wanted RT to spend more on the election, to do more exposes and journalism with the elections as a backdrop because having RT and others on their platform would be good for the company (and the electorate having more information?) But this was before they were against it --now apparently they, Twitter, had made a bad calculus and RT might have benefitted the eventual winner more than the then presumed winner.
falcolas 9y ago
If you've been following Twitter's business decisions over the years, this is neither surprising nor unprecedented. Twitter has a set of moral values, and isn't afraid to hurt its bottom line to keep those values. For example, it has previously blocked consumers of the firehose (companies in which Twitter has some significant ownership) from selling aggregates of that data to the three letter agencies in the US government. Whether this move is good or bad for their bottom line, I have to applaud them for sticking to their values.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
codedokode 9y ago
It is interesting that the case with Twitter looks similar to what happens in Russia: many russian companies like advertisement agencies don't want to make deals with opposition, major mass media don't cover anti-government protests. Well, as a private company Twitter can decide for itself with whom they want or don't want to make a deal. But is it their own independent decision I wonder?
maxxxxx 9y ago
Maybe the American political establishment should tell people not to believe every nonsense they read and hear about. But then they would also have to give up on their attack ads too... When I see attack ads most of them seem also geared towards spreading baseless or distorted accusations so maybe the American system should first clean up its own act before pointing fingers at other countries.
revmoo 9y ago
They going to ban Shareblue as well?
indubitable 9y ago
This seems unusual. Other nations discussing the politics of yet other nations is par for the course, including with a nationalist spin from the originating country. What precisely made RT's ads notably grievous? I think examples of what they showed that was completely unacceptable would be valuable in helping people come to an informed conclusion. It would also help other advertisers ensure they don't cross whatever invisible boundaries have been set. Things look particularly peculiar when we look at them in reverse. @GolosAmeriki is the Twitter for the Russian language Voice of America, which is our own state run news come propaganda organization. This [1] is their webpage providing content primarily to Russian speaking viewers on topics related to Russia. And the material as could be expected tends to be incredibly critical of Russia, Putin, and other interests which do not necessarily align with US interests. And we're quite expansive. You can find regional Voice of America 'implementations' for a whole plethora of nations here. [2] The coverage could easy be labeled as attempting to "sew discord". But that's because presenting information that does not present a nation in a positive light can always be considered "sewing discord" even if it's a critical and productive part of progress. The primary benefit of foreign coverage is that it does not need to play by the same rules as domestic coverage. Even private interests are subject to problems. For instance the press has no legal right to access to politicians. There's certainly a sort of symbiosis between politicians and the reporters, but it creates artificial boundaries. On top of this the day in, day out interactions between reporters and the people they report on results in relationships forming. These can be positive or negative relationships but that adds yet another layer of bias to coverage. All those problems without even getting into the dirtier aspects of society... But these sort of issues are mitigated to a large degree when viewing things through a foreign nation's eyes. So long as their material is not overtly lying, I think these news come propaganda channels have substantial informative value for citizens. It's important to understand that it will be biased, but it's equally important to understand that of domestic news as well. It seems a shame that Twitter are going this route. Hopefully this is not the beginning of an effort to restrict foreign inflows of information. [1] - https://www.golos-ameriki.ru/ https://www.golos-ameriki.ru/ [2] - https://www.voanews.com/navigation/allsites https://www.voanews.com/navigation/allsites
raprp 9y ago
Breaking: Clinton Colluded With Russia To Smear Trump During Election! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waGnHlRIsWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waGnHlRIsWM
- raprp 9y ago
  Washington Post: Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clint...
throw-away-8 9y ago
200+ comments. Why this never made HN front page?
allenleein 9y ago
Twitter is doing a better job than @Facebook on Russian ad/election interference work - but both entities weren't doing enough pre-election.

180 points by runesoerensen 9y ago

While I understand Russian propaganda in the US election is disconcerting, I feel like the fury over it is very reactionary. There's nothing stopping someone on US soil from exercising their first amendment rights in the same way to subvert an election. In fact I expect the next presidential election will be dominated by the same tactics from local organizations. The susceptibility of Americans to shitty lies, conspiracy theories, and a lack of numeracy is a vastly greater threat to the integrity of the US government and much more difficult to fix.

betolink 9y ago
What about when U.S. media outlets do the same in other countries? Like all the time. I'm not saying RT is not Russian propaganda but come on, next time CNN publishes a headline like "Inside Hussein's WMD facilities " I hope @jack will ban them as well.
- grandalf 9y ago
  Seriously, this is where Twitter's hypocrisy reaches its pinnacle. The US "news" media is a combination of war propaganda and "living in countries other than the US sucks" propaganda.
  - soundwave106 9y ago
    I'm not sure how it's hypocritical per se, when looked at from the angle that Twitter is headquartered in the United States. It seems like a fair portion of the US government now strongly believes that Russian social media propaganda is attempting to destabilize the United States government, with Twitter being a dominant platform for spreading the disinformation. So I'm sure there was quite an incentive to block some of this in some form. The US has its own propaganda networks, of course. Russia's response to them tends to be far harsher. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/moscow-turns-off-voice-of-america-radio/2014/04/10/9c184fd8-8362-43fd-9dc0-26a80f849a0e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/moscow-turns-off-voice-...)
    - grandalf 9y ago
      > Twitter is headquartered in the United States So you expect companies to have jingoistic political allegiance to the jurisdiction that they happen to have been founded in? That is actually quite scary. > strongly believes that Russian social media propaganda is attempting to destabilize the United States government The key word here is "destabilize". If the NYT were to write a story about the water pollution in Flint Michigan and also break a story that officials covered up polluted water in 20 other major US cities, would that cause "destabilization"? I certainly hope it would! More than a few people should not win office again after such a fiasco. The purpose of journalism is to be adversarial to powerful interests, and to share the truth (even if it's unflattering) with the public, so that corrective actions can be taken... corrective actions may involve changing the status quo. As for "disinformation", nobody has pointed out what stories should be considered disinformation, and whether they were completely false, or if they were true but misleading. Russia shutting down VOA is not terribly relevant here. The VOA is obviously propaganda if you listen for 10-15 minutes, while RT has focused on some important issues for the poorest Americans that do not get reliable coverage from other big media outlets.
      - soundwave106 9y ago
        I don't see many businesses having huge instinctive "jingoistic political allegiances", frankly, unless perhaps if it's a SOA or military driven or the like. However, most businesses in any nation tend to work with and cooperate with national governments on various probes, particularly where they are headquartered, unless there is a huge reason not to. Congress is heavily scrutinizing Facebook and Twitter over Russian influence at the moment; reports like this (https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf) heavily critical of RT and Sputnik's role in this election are being produced by our intelligence agencies. So in this regard, Twitter's reaction is not surprising. We'll never know is how much Twitter management agreed to drop RT/Sputnik advertising based on what they felt was right (due to whatever reason), what was right or good for the business, or whether they did this largely due to pressure from the government. The main thing we know is that Twitter's corporate reaction here is obviously different than, say, Twitter's corporate reaction to their role in the Arab Spring. Most of the time, in general, I think RT / Sputnik do report actual events, but with a very heavy pro-Kremlin slant (so not unlike VOA in this regard). However, they dip enough of their toes into the Infowars style conspiracy theory stuff (in part because relying on native disaffected groups is part of their strategy -- http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/571339/EPRS_BRI%282015%29571339_EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/57133... ) that I wouldn't trust an article only sourced there at all. If RT "broke" that officials covered up polluted water in 20 other major US cities, for instance, I'd look elsewhere to confirm that story.
wyldfire 9y ago
> The susceptibility of Americans to shitty lies, conspiracy theories, and a lack of numeracy is a vastly greater threat to the integrity of the US government and much more difficult to fix. This susceptibility is likely not particular to Americans. It's this difficult-to-fix nature that necessitates taking an indirect approach to solving this problem.
- mcny 9y ago
  > This susceptibility is likely not particular to Americans. It's this difficult-to-fix nature that necessitates taking an indirect approach to solving this problem. There was a podcast where locals in a small town in Eastern Ukraine said they leave the area immediately if a camera crew (for tv news I presume) shows up because they think wherever there is a camera crew in that town, the chances of some kind of bombing or another becomes very high. I mean there are various degrees of "fake" news. One could argue that "suits are back" [submarine] is fake news as well. [submarine] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- eternalban 9y ago
  > an indirect approach How about a direct approach: Governments should stop lying 24/7 to their citizens; Corporate Media needs to get off (rather kicked off) the privileged 'Fourth Estate' pedastal; and education and mental health issues are taken [as] central and fundamental issues to address. That would do it.
  - theorique 9y ago
    What do education and mental health issues have to do with this?
    - eternalban 9y ago
      Humanity imho clearly suffers from various forms of psychological problems and is generally poorly educated. Our problem is that the power elite have historically considered the first a lost cause and confused propaganda with education. And here we are. And far as I can deduce, civilization boils down to sanity and thoughtfulness. The rest is window dressing and 'product'. (I am /not/ dismissing the fruits here, but rather focusing on 'roots'.) What is necessary is sanity. What is necessary is the ability to think effectively. Individually and collectively. Everything else is secondary, and if the former are lacking, abundance in other dimensions only gets you so far and then it peters out.
jerkstate 9y ago
That susceptability is borne, perhaps rightly so, from mistrust of our government - just look at the election, both sides were going to great lengths including speaking to foreign powers in order to try to get dirt on the other, and one went as far as to use federal law enforcement for political gain. Once our government learns that the consequence for subverting the trust of their citizenry is chaos, things will get better. But not until then. These people work for us, not the other way around.
- pvg 9y ago
  both sides were going to great lengths including speaking to foreign powers in order to try to get dirt on the other, and one went as far as to use federal law enforcement for political gain. Other than the one thing for which there is some evidence, all of these are conspiracy theories so perhaps you're making your point but not in the way you'd like.
  - jerkstate 9y ago
    Oh yeah? https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_dossier-630pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.401a7c949591 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clint... http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/fbi-dossier-carter-page-donald-trump-russia-investigation/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/fbi-dossier-carter-pa...
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      Neither of those articles says a campaign used the government to do its investigation. The Clinton campaign used a private investigation firm in your first article just like all campaigns in history. The FBI investigated Trump in your second article because that's its job — it didn't give special access to the Clinton campaign. You've proven GP's point.
      - 9y ago
jonknee 9y ago
> The susceptibility of Americans to shitty lies, conspiracy theories, and a lack of numeracy is a vastly greater threat to the integrity of the US government and much more difficult to fix. Seems bullish for advertising. I've chuckled at the fact Facebook tells its advertisers how amazing advertising Facebook is, while at the same time saying to the public that it's ludicrous to think Facebook had any impact on the election.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Advertisers themselves aren't much more immune to advertising than everyone else. In fact, I believe adtech industry scams itself internally just as much as it does that to everyone else.
  - C4stor 9y ago
    From my experience working in adtech industry, you're 100% right.
irmc 9y ago
https://goo.gl/MbJtN3 https://goo.gl/MbJtN3 wow that's a very interesting source
gadders 9y ago
People have said that the "Russia won the election" conspiracy theory is the Democrat's equivalent of "Obama was born in Kenya" birthers.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  One of these has a growing body of evidence behind it[1] and the other is pure wackadoodle gibberish that would make even Flat Earthers ashamed. [1] I wouldn't say "won" but I would say "definitely helped" - there are a large number of other forces that contributed much, much more to the GOP win than Russia.
  - tripplethrendo 9y ago
    >there are a large number of other forces Like Hillary being the worst candidate in a lifetime.
    - davesque 9y ago
      Think back to where you might have acquired this belief.
      - DonHopkins 9y ago
        And be honest about why you're giving Trump such a disproportionate pass. Would a good candidate brag about grabbing pussies, and attack a gold star family?
    - CalChris 9y ago
      Yale Law grad, law partner, First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State. Most Admire Woman in America 21 times. Yep that there is a pretty bad candidate. But hey, email.
  - davesque 9y ago
    I would say "won", actually. Think about how the average person behaves. Our community here at Hacker News is unusual. Most people believe whatever they see and tell their friends and family so. Once enough people in a group acquire a belief this way, there's almost no way you can make inroads into their minds. I believe that Russia, and only Russia, won the election in 2016. We just depend too much on the internet for information nowadays and its too easy to disseminate disinformation on that platform. I mean, come on, a lot of us here know how web sites work. For a major country's spy agency, it would be trivially easy to automate account sign up and posting. Is it that hard to imagine? And when every dumb Joe on the planet is likely to believe the first thing they read that strategically appeals to their emotions? You do the math.
zemo 9y ago
> There's nothing stopping someone on US soil from exercising their first amendment rights in the same way to subvert an election. Individuals exercising their first amendment rights do not have the same reach as a propaganda apparatus of a major nation state. It's ridiculous to say that one person has the same reach as a government propaganda machine.
- nejenendn 9y ago
  Did you respond to the right comment? I’m having difficulty figuring out where the OP compared reaches.
  - davesque 9y ago
    Then you're not reading the OP's comment very carefully.
- anilshanbhag 9y ago
  The method in question is here RT using Twitter advertising to reach out to millions of Twitter users. RT itself is small but the reach comes from the cheap advertising. They spent ~ $250k in total which is pretty small compared to total ad budget of a number of PACs. There are many individuals who donate more than that amount and could easily spend it on Twitter ads.
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    They also spent a lot of man-hours spreading and sharing that content, making it look like it was supported by 'American citizen' sockpuppet accounts, and coordinating that effort across several platforms to actively drive a consistent and singular message. Not the sort of thing that a grassroots could easily manage; buying a few hundred ads was just a small part of the wider propaganda and sabotage. Twitter has just been complete shit at figuring out what happened on their platform, anyways; half of their 'identifications' come from, "Facebook told us this account was a sockpuppet on their platform..."
    - 9y ago
beepboopbeep 9y ago
>I feel like the fury over it is very reactionary. I think the fact that the core of our democracy was attacked with a vast and sophisticated operation by a foreign government to potentially prop up a candidate both friendly to and quite possibly compromised by that foreign government should lead to MORE fury than is currently happening.
- 1001101 9y ago
  Democracy is the heart of the US, and an attack on it is an existential threat. If there's any evidence of this, it should be responded to with due measure. This is nothing new though. For decades (perhaps longer), democracies have been subverted and are, unfortunately, a liability for many countries. Patriots see it as their duty to protect their countries by insulating themselves against this subversion and consolidating power. It's a dangerous trend.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > an attack on it is an existential threat You may want to investigate the voter ID / disenfranchisement question.
    - 1001101 9y ago
      I have, it makes my blood boil. Don't get me started on Citizens United. Indeed, foreign governments aren't the only threat.
  - beepboopbeep 9y ago
    >This is nothing new though. No one is arguing if it's new. The point is it was massive, sophisticated, and targeted. It was an organized attack. We can debate the history of election subversion some other time, but there is a real threat happening right now. Let's focus on that, yes?
    - 1001101 9y ago
      The only piece of solid evidence I personally have inventoried so far is about 100k$ ad spend on divisive issues, rather than supporting a particular candidate. That was not massive (compared to campaign billions). It was targeted at regions and individuals. As far as sophistication, some of the ads I have seen didn't have proper grammar and spelling - they didn't seem credible to my bologna detector. These ads were likely a foreign psychological operation, and have no place in our political discourse, but I guess I'd like to see more before we gut the Bill of Rights. If these ads were enough to subvert our democratic institutions, there's nothing but trouble ahead.
davesque 9y ago
True, there's nothing stopping any random person from doing the same thing. However, no random person has the same incentives as a foreign government to pollute dialog on political matters. The personal gain or sense of satisfaction that an individual might get from launching a disinformation campaign pales in comparison to the economic and ideological pressure that motivates heads of state to do the same thing. So it seems far less likely that we're under threat from random individuals than from foreign governments. Also, how are you going to "fix" people being dumb? We've been trying to figure that one out for a long time and it's going to take a while to make progress on that front.
- grandalf 9y ago
  > to pollute dialog on political matters. Please explain where the "pollution" occurred. Over the past few years I have read RT from time to time and most of the stories were simply about negative aspects of American life that do not get much exposure/focus from American news organizations because they are not flattering. Things like the Flint Michigan water crisis, other areas of failed infrastructure, etc. For many Americans, reading RT would be likely to create valuable awareness of important issues and make that person more likely to vote in his/her own best interest in the next election. To say that RT has "polluted" the marketplace of ideas you really have to back that statement up with what you think "pure" ideas are that Americans should be exposed to before casting their vote.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    Russia Today are well known as a fake news org. Are you reading the Russian language articles they put out? https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage_en/32408/Don't%20be%20deceived:%20EU%20acts%20against%20fake%20news%20and%20disinformation https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage_en... https://euvsdisinfo.eu https://euvsdisinfo.eu
    - grandalf 9y ago
      I am reluctant to use a buzzword like "fake news" when I have been reading Chomsky's detailed critiques of American newspapers for a long time and have been (for a long time) well aware of the significant political and corporate motivations behind news organizations (print and television). What are the "memes" (per Dawkins' definition) that RT intends to publicize? Which of those are false, which are true but misleading, and which are actually true? Does publishing stories that might make some voters angry with the status quo constitute being "fake news"? Is RT "fake news" simply because of its origin? Or because of its content? Or because of the timing of its content? Specific examples please. Under whatever definition you would use to classify RT as fake news, are any American news orgs (NYT, WaPo, CNN, Fox News, WSJ, etc.) also fake news? How do you draw the line? Is it based on content that is false, true but misleading, or true? Do you believe that certain ideas are dangerous for Americans to believe? Should reading the writings of some of history's dictators be banned? Should violent music lyrics be banned?
mFixman 9y ago
It's not only Americans. In my history classes in an Argentine high school my professor was a serious conspiracy theories who taught how, among other things, the 9/11 attacks were engineered by the US government for world domination, George Bush wanted to buy southern Argentina to steal our freshwater reserves, and Cuba found the "natural" cure for cancer (but of course the US government doesn't allow it to be exported). I heard these conspiracies coming from otherwise smart people all the time. The issue here is that we have an entire generation that was raised in an environment where having stupid beliefs didn't matter, since news came from mostly "expert" sources, which is now living in a world where a big part of the information you give and receive comes from sites like Facebook or Twitter. If it's an education problem, it's unsolvable: you can't easily teach 50 year old the way they thought about media their entire life was wrong.
JonFish85 9y ago
"I feel like the fury over it is very reactionary." I think this is the current boogey-man to go after. I think it's a useful tool for politicians (DNC, Hillary Clinton, Democrats and Republicans - none of them wanted Trump where he is today) to bury their heads in the sand and say that it wasn't their fault that they got the election so wrong. They can point to Russia and ignore their own shortcomings that in my opinion put people off of voting for what they "should" have voted for. Given the choice of a deeper soul-searching or blaming someone else, humans usually choose to point the finger at someone else. Did Russia/Russians attempt to influence the election? Absolutely. I'm sure most major powers in the world did, in one way or another. They'd be silly not to at least consider it, in the same way that I'm sure the United States attempts to serve its own interests via other countries' elections. But I don't think it's anywhere near as effective as politicians seem to want to make it appear.

cryptoz 9y ago

It doesn't matter, twitter. Delete the bots, ban the people making them, use ML to find out how they make so many and look so convincing to Americans, be transparent about how many people vs. bots you have. Or go home. Right, you can't do any of that because then your shareholders would know about your hugely inflated growth numbers and your stock would collapse. I wonder, Twitter is so much worse for society than anyone ever knew, and they have been so quiet and complacent in the Russian takeover of the USA, that maybe they have acted illegally? Is it possible Twitter has been lying about bot account numbers and inflating their userbase counts to increase share value? Okay, kick off the ads made by Russian enemies of the USA, that's a good move. But why did you allow it in the first place? Because of the money, and because nobody thought at Twitter than Russians buying political ads is a bad idea? The purchased ads weren't even the main issue - it's the millions and millions of bots echoing racist and hateful things to divide and wreck the US. Fuck twitter. This isn't enough. Apologize for the Russian takeover that you let happen. Don't donate that money to some cause about civic debates in the future. America is under attack right now. Give that money to someone who can stop the Russians because it's not you or your civic debates.

megous 9y ago
What would be next? Google apologizing that you can find misinformation on the web? Paper apologizing for people writing on it?
- cryptoz 9y ago
  > Google apologizing that you can find misinformation on the web? Did Google run political ads that were purchased by other countries and intended to deceive the US electorate? If so then YES + a lot more than apologize. > Paper apologizing for people writing on it? There's no need for this. This is a major issue and I'm taking it very seriously. The "it's a joke bro" attitude here on HN, in your comment, all over reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc., is sickening. It plays right into the Russian books - make the Americans argue about it and make jokes and make fun of the people who care!
  - 9y ago

tertius 9y ago

I wonder if they'll do the same for American propaganda abroad.

hennsen 9y ago
That is, erm, sonethingh different, cough. I also wonder what about lobbyism in general. Why is this allowed and the other not. Because it’s good for economy? What if it’s still bad for society?
- tertius 9y ago
  > What if it’s still bad for society? I think we can both agree that we don't want @jack to be the arbiter of that...
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  Lobbyism is just 'someone making a case'. It's not unreasonable for individuals or groups to 'lobby their cause' to politicians. It just has a bad name because it can be abused. And yes, it's not unreasonable for nation-state actors to take steps to thwart American intervention in whatever. Though often, the state in question is not elected, which begs a serious question of legitimacy -> if you're going to make a 'moral equivalence' argument of tit-for-tat interference ... it's hard to do if one side is a dictatorship. :)
  - tertius 9y ago
    We're talking about Russia right? Not North Korea?
    - alexasmyths 9y ago
      Russia does not have open elections. Political opposition figures, business figures and members of the press are murdered or imprisoned arbitrarily. Media networks and large businesses are arbitrarily confiscated. Primary media channels are direct forms of state propaganda. State agencies are deeply systematically corrupt - always in the control of the friends of Putin, taking massive kickbacks, using state power to force deals. Sochi is a good example of how these shennanigans work. See the CBC expose on Sochi construction - kickbacks were up to 85% on construction (i.e. state pays $500M for a building, most of it goes back to the buyer, a 'friend of Putin'), and 15% goes into actual construction. So it's not 'North Korea' but it's not a normal democracy, not by a stretch.

sgarrity 9y ago

"off-board"?

athenot 9y ago
The opposite of on-board. It's a ship metaphor.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  Disembark. What would they call walking the plank: transplanking? Going down with the ship: defloating?
jsperx 9y ago
Ugh, exactly: drowning in corpo-speak. “We have decided to remove...” is apparently too clear. Reminds me of my company’s HR department, where employees don’t quit, they “separate.” We don’t train, we “in-service”. Etc.

alva 9y ago

Also revealed today was slides from pitch desk Twitter provided RT, proposing RT spend a large amount of money advertising during and about the US election. https://twitter.com/M_Simonyan/status/923519609269116928 https://twitter.com/M_Simonyan/status/923519609269116928 edit: as questioned by comments below, there is no confirmation this is authentic yet.

gruez 9y ago
is there a link to the full pitch deck somewhere? that tweet only has the cover
intopieces 9y ago
What reason does anyone have to believe this is authentic?
bobuk 9y ago
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/407858-rt-twitter-us-election/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/407858-rt-twitter-us-election/ this is not a confirmation but...

diminish 9y ago

Afaik - most international US media interferes in many elections, anywhere in the world with strong opinions. Why is it wrong with the reverse? Germany's Spiegel, or UK's Guardian can also have opinions about US elections and what's wrong in it?

notyourday 9y ago
Because the smartest people in the room got their asses kicked in the most public way by an adversary that they claimed is an incapable drunk. Now they are embarrassed.
- nejenendn 9y ago
  Wait, who are you talking about?
  - dang 9y ago
    Would you please not create bulk accounts to post with here? Throwaways are fine if there's some specific purpose, e.g. something personally sensitive, but we ban users who do it routinely. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Hacker News is a community. You don't have to use your real name, of course, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum.
matt4077 9y ago
The Guardian or Spiegel don't pay for ads saying a candidate is planning to use FEMA to invade Texas and force all white people with guns to have abortions.
- diminish 9y ago
  Forgive my ignorance - I never read them b/c I'm not interested in main news but Could you point me where RT/Sputnik said "a candidate is planning to use FEMA to invade Texas" and "force all white people with guns to have abortions."

CapacitorSet 9y ago

>U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government. The US intelligence community also concluded that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
DonHopkins 9y ago
Please don't parrot Trump's lies and Russian sponsored propaganda intended to distract from the Russia investigation. This is not the place for that. You're only embarrassing and discrediting yourself, and fooling nobody, while insulting everyone's intelligence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/13/the-pre-war-intelligence-on-iraq-wrong-or-hyped-by-the-bush-white-house/?utm_term=.2c5384af9241 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/... “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” — statement from the Trump transition team on Washington Post report that the CIA concluded that Russia intervened in the election to help Trump Donald Trump’s staff dismissed U.S. intelligence conclusions that Russia actively interfered in the presidential election by noting the flawed intelligence cited by the Bush administration in making the case for invading Iraq nearly 14 years ago. An alternative perspective came from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who pinned the blame on the Bush White House for misrepresenting the intelligence. Nancy Pelosi @NancyPelosi: The intel didn't state that Iraq had WMDs. The Bush-Cheney WH made that misrepresentation. 12:21 AM - Dec 11, 2016 Trump’s complaint about this semi-ancient history is a bit odd because a) the intelligence analysts who worked on Middle East WMDs are not going to be the same as analysts focused on Russian cyber-behavior; b) the intelligence collection for hacking in the United States by overseas powers would be different from assessing illicit weapons programs in the Middle East; and c) reforms were put in place after the Iraq War to make it harder for suspect intelligence to bubble up to the top ranks without careful scrutiny. (For instance, a new procedure required heads of intelligence agencies to vouch personally for the credibility of any of their own agency’s sources that are used in a major estimate.) Moreover, the Bush administration appeared determined to attack Iraq for any number of reasons beyond suspicions of WMDs; officials simply seized on WMDs because they concluded that that represented the strongest case for an invasion. “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,” then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair in 2003.

irmc 9y ago

https://goo.gl/u1qWQ9 https://goo.gl/u1qWQ9 go visit this site as it's so useful

DonHopkins 9y ago

If they wanted to live up to their civic duty, they would kick Donald Trump off for bullying, and kick Melania Trump off for trolling that she would do something to stop bullying.

moomin 9y ago

Meanwhile, the plague of Twitter accounts that claim to be from Northampton but keep St Peterburg office hours continues apace.

hidenotslide 9y ago
It seems like this is the bigger problem. Few people think RT/Sputnik are unbiased, but when you have some foreign intelligence agency micro-targeting voters it's hard to even judge the extent of the influence operations taking place. They use pseudonyms and stock photos to seem like part of an in-group, then amplify divisive hashtags and messaging. They disappear from historical records when they delete the accounts, making it even harder to track their activity. Reddit, twitter, facebook, and newspaper comment sections are all filled with disinformation and nobody seems to be doing much about it.

djsumdog 9y ago

This shouldn't matter or even be remotely relevant. Walled gardens and silos. We know those terms, and we know we need to encourage people onto my decentralized systems. Twitter, Google, Facebook, et. al. know they dictate the narrative just as much as the major news networks; maybe even more so. And there is so little hosting today that can scale that the big organizations can effectively censor whoever they want: http://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ http://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-c... If we had more open platforms that didn't filter and sift through everything and run _fact checks_ (i.e. you're too stupid to do your own research so let's tell you what to think), yes we'd have a lot more garbage .. but we'd have a more unfiltered equal playing field where you'd also have much more of everything. Twitter is just another example of a filtered world that needs to die off.

alexasmyths 9y ago
As much as I loathe walled gardens, and disagree with Twitter 90% of the time ... This is a good instance of why some degree of regulation is important. In unregulated systems, it's entirely possible that corporate and state actors can basically control election outcomes, utterly lie and mislead people towards some pretty crazy consequences. The Rawandan genocide was largely propagated by guess who -> Radio Hosts. 'Mass Media' in Rwanda was Radio, and hosts calling the other side 'cockroaches that need to be exterminated' was a critical factor that led to the tipping point. So much so that General Dallaire (Head of UN mission) left a bunch of Belgian soldiers in a building that was being attacked, in an attempt to get to the stations. The idea that 'decentralized networks' will be 'free' is not quite right - they will still be controlled, but just in a different way, by anyone who has the means. This is our fault as humans. I know a lot of educated professionals who believe some crazy stuff, and it's very easy to misinform. I don't like that Twitter has this control, but I don't see any reasonable alternative on the horizon yet. When there is 'true decentralization' - you will have some groups calling for mass murder of others pretty quickly. And they will create all sorts of Hollywood style propaganda in support of it. ISIS would not exist without social media. There would be a few ISIS-like groups in every civilized country if they were allowed to exist - sadly. It's not a simple situation we have, unfortunately. --- "i.e. you're too stupid to do your own research so let's tell you what to think" Nobody (including you) has enough time and wherewithal to 'do their own research' - that's the whole point of a free press. Do you have access to White House aids to find out 'what Trump said'? Do you have time to read 100's of papers on Climate Change? Etc.. ---- "yes we'd have a lot more garbage .. but we'd have a more unfiltered equal playing field where you'd also have much more of everything." We'd have - and we already kind of do have - 99% garbage. Even the mainstream press is kind of crap - why? Attention. CNN would devote more time to specific issues if it were up to them, but Americans just 'tune out'. Major news outlets have to keep it a little light and America focused or else nobody will watch. Anyhow. A big, fat existential issue ...

SapphireSun 9y ago

Whatever twitter. You still let the President threaten war and attack individuals using your platform. We still haven't seen convincing evidence that the Russian interference mattered, or even mattered more than our direct assistance to Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. We have a sick and disintegrating society, blaming external enemies is way too easy.

tertius 9y ago
> You still let the President threaten war I for one think the President should be allowed to do this. It may be illegal for a regular citizen to do this, but not for the President. The letter of the TOS vs. the spirit of the TOS. He's(or she's) a special case, no?
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  I think the spirit of the TOS of humanity (e.g. Article II paragraph 4 of the UN Charter) would banish offensive war and the threat of war. These threats are _worse_ coming from the president. His being the president doesn't make these things more allowable, only our deference to hierarchy does. Mere legalism is failing us, let alone the spirits of legalism. I'm not happy about it.
  - tertius 9y ago
    > His being the president doesn't make these things more allowable, only our deference to hierarchy does. You mean the constitution right?
    - SapphireSun 9y ago
      The constitution makes him the commander in chief and delegates war authority to congress. The AUMF signed after 9/11 was poorly drafted, contained no expiration, and has ceded control from congress to the executive in extraordinary ways. Nuclear authorities that allow one man to destroy the world have always been egregious since we instituted them. Nonetheless, Commander in Chief ≠ Command of Twitter. A private entity doesn't have to indulge him and such dissent is protected by the 1st amendment.

dilap 9y ago

$274,100 is a hilariously low number. Zero effect on the election. It’s quite a remarkable thing to be in the eye of the storm of a mass hysteria.

convery 9y ago
This is what baffles me about the narrative. A candidate spent upwards of 1,3 billion on their campaign, had the backing of most mainstream media, celebrity endorsements, back-room deals, and literal paid-shills on social media (CTR) when they went against one of the most unpopular people in America. Yet <300,000 in foreign advertising is what got the public to vote for the hated candidate.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  It doesn't add up in any way, and the whole thing is ridiculous on its face. The only money that matters here is the money media platforms milk off the outrage of people caused by making this a top story.
gourou 9y ago
Trolls are also shaping opinions https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-...
hackinthebochs 9y ago
Folks like you are being willfully ignorant. It's very easy to understand how the Russian fake news operation got such a good ROI. The election came down to around 20k votes in three states. Combine an unprecedented data mining operation (Cambridge Analytica) with microtargetting enabled by social media companies, as well as the viral nature of fake news, its easy to see how a small amount of money can sway a marginal amount of voters in key states.
hbosch 9y ago
Incorrect. Viral media is incredibly cheap compared to traditional ad buys — their reach is reliably fast, global, and free beyond the means of production. Don’t forget that much of the clickbait conspiracies that altered this election were written on WordPress blogs by individuals peddling “fake news” narratives, eg Obama wiretapping Trump, Pizzagate, Clinton Foundation trafficking Haitian earthquake victims, etc. RT wasn’t just spending money on “sponsored Tweets” and that sort of thing. The Kremlin operates twitter bot armies that game propaganda visibility.

SEJeff 9y ago

One thing literally no one on this thread thusfar has mentioned is that the Department of Justice has compelled RT and Sputnik to fill out the paperwork[1] for FARA[2] registration. The DOJ isn't going to just target journalists for FARA registration without some sort of (probably classified under a FISA order) information letting them know that indeed, this org is working as an agent for a foreign government. Thus far, RT has not complied. [1] http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/350226-russian-network-rt-must-register-as-foreign-agent-in http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/3... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...

MichaelGG 9y ago
Wonder if they'll ever get around to making AIPAC do so. Until they do it makes it obviously political posing.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  Very much agreed, but that is super unlikely given the current administration.

excalibur 9y ago

If Twitter actually wanted to promote civic responsibility, they would ban Donald Trump for repeated ToS violations and try to encourage him to be a little more thoughtful about his proclamations to the world.

tertius 9y ago
> be a little more thoughtful about his proclamations to the world. Censoring the speech of the President is probably not something that they want to get engaged with. He's a special case. So I would argue that some of the terms should not apply to him. For instance, he has the right to make violent threats in certain circumstances compared to normal citizens. Whether I personally agree with his threats or tact is not important. Now when he does something that he does not have the legal right to, I'll let the courts handle that one.
- albinofrenchy 9y ago
  > For instance, he has the right to make violent threats in certain circumstances compared to normal citizens. No one has the 'right' to make violent threats on twitter. It is a private service with a ToS. There are no principled reasons to treat the president as a special case here. The practical reason is simply that it is often and free advertising for them and the terms of service dictate what they can do when breached; not what they must do.
  - tertius 9y ago
    > No one has the 'right' to make violent threats on twitter. I never claimed this. My argument hinges on the fact that he has the right, in certain circumstances, to make violent threats as opposed to normal citizens. The TOS is written for normal citizens because it is indeed illegal for normal citizens to do so. And I therefore agree with you that the TOS technically does not allow any violent threats on twitter. I do not think it is unreasonable to allow the President to communicate his threats on Twitter, a modern means of communication. I think it's actually a good thing to allow, for this and all future presidents. Again, letter of the TOS vs. spirit of the TOS.

vowelless 9y ago

I hope next up is blocking Saudi funded groups from advertising. Oh wait, https://qz.com/519388/this-saudi-prince-now-owns-more-of-twitter-than-jack-dorsey-does/ https://qz.com/519388/this-saudi-prince-now-owns-more-of-twi... So that won't happen -- and everything now makes sense ...

tertius 9y ago
@jack doesn't own a particularly large stake in Twitter.
truxus 9y ago
The Saudis are locked in golden handcuffs. We provide them lavish lifestyles, they provide us irreplaceable energy resources. When the oil is gone those people go back to living in the dark ages.
- gourou 9y ago
  > When the oil is gone those people go back to living in the dark ages. Except they invest everywhere, SoftBank Vision fund included http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/21/technology/saudi-softbank-tech-fund-target/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/21/technology/saudi-softbank-te...

YouAreGreat 9y ago

Well, there is an explanation that doesn't make them look like complete fools: Supporting the "Russians stole election with paltry spend on social media" narrative, they hope to encourage Americans to massively spend on social media to "steal" coming elections...

Tasboo 9y ago
You put it in quotes like it hasn't already been proven that Russian led a massive effort to influence the election via social media.
- YouAreGreat 9y ago
  What I've seen proven wasn't massive. If people can be convinced that non-massive social media spending is as effective as is currently insinuated, they'll likely spend. Mission accomplished. There "culture wars" are approaching cold civil war status. Great times to be a virtual arms dealer...

gressquel 9y ago

this is great news. There is journalism, and then there is agenda-based LIES. RT and their likes are lying to create chaos in the western world. They make up things out of nothing. Wish youtube banned RT aswell.

Alex3917 9y ago

Wasn't Twitter bragging about how they were interfering with the Iranian elections a few years ago? Seems extremely hypocritical of them.

truxus 9y ago

RT and Sputnik are weapons of information warfare. It would be rational for USA's society and government to end their toleration of Russian media in domestic space. The only legitimate reason for Russia to have US news media arms is to show public discord and private confusion. I don't know why this even needs to be discussed. There exist some foriegn nation's who's objectives and values align with the US, but Russia is not one of them.

grandalf 9y ago

This is profoundly disappointing, and is yet another indication that Twitter is clueless about being a platform and wants to be a content company. There have been many other decisions where Twitter was tone-deaf about its platform status, but this is perhaps the worst. RT has had some great coverage of under-publicized issues in the US... issues involving the poor, failing infrastructure, hypocrisy, etc. Yes it's not flattering to the US that these stories are written, but they are true and newsworthy and should absolutely not be suppressed. During the election, RT ran a unflattering stories about both major candidates. This is now being spun as "trying to sow discord" in the US. Journalism is supposed to shine a light on things that need to be improved, it is supposed to rally people to act to fix those problems. If you read the major newspapers in the US, particularly in the section on world affairs, there is a steady stream of stories that address the dangers of living abroad, the corrupt politicians, the failing infrastructure, etc. These stories may or may not be true (many are obviously overblown to anyone who has visited those countries) but the purpose they serve is to help foster the idea of American exceptionalism. Our papers don't have to run headlines like "Americans happiest citizens in the world" or "America has the cleanest water and the happiest children in the world" when it can simply run stories that make other nations (particularly political adversaries) seem far worse. We still don't know much about the Hillary Clinton or Podesta emails as none of the few possibly troubling things (mostly campaign finance violation stuff) has been investigated. RT ran stories about that topic when it was fresh during the election, even when the major US papers were focused mainly on rude things Trump had said. When RT first launched I was surprised that it was "allowed" to exist simply because of its origin. But after reading the reporting for several years I came to appreciate that it was offering a view of the US that was not really available from American news outlets. This makes RT valuable to the sharing of ideas and the creation of an informed public. Twitter's decision to block the advertising is cowardly in so many ways.

eduren 9y ago
>RT has had some great coverage of under-publicized issues in the US... issues involving the poor, failing infrastructure, hypocrisy, etc. Yes it's not flattering to the US that these stories are written, but they are true and newsworthy and should absolutely not be suppressed. RT hasn't been blocked from twitter, it is still allowed to do all those things.

matt_wulfeck 9y ago

I feel an inflated sense of self-worth here. The only people who get swayed by twitter ads are bots that are programmed to. I bet Silicon Valley is eating up this national discussion around fake news and Russian ads. Surely the only reason the country swung so strongly in the last election is because of hacking/Facebook/Twitter/Russia etc. It has nothing to do with things like economy and jobs /s

AzzieElbab 9y ago

there is a difference between propaganda and simply stirring shit, pretending to be anyone from black-lives-matter to white supremacists

MichaelGG 9y ago

As a proponent of nationalism, I'm very pleased with this move. Now only if Canada, Japan and Europe could get in on it, so each major area would have its own social media. It's obvious that Twitter isn't going to block agents of the US Government for similar "offences". So despite how pathetic and partisan this is, hopefully it'll have great long term secondary effects by siloing countries. Or at least a small step in that direction.

egeozcan 9y ago

The response from RT: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/407858-rt-twitter-us-election/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/407858-rt-twitter-us-election/ Also the news of the ban: https://www.rt.com/news/407861-twitter-policy-rt-accounts/ https://www.rt.com/news/407861-twitter-policy-rt-accounts/

pizzetta 9y ago
That's interesting, so at first Twitter wanted RT to spend more on the election, to do more exposes and journalism with the elections as a backdrop because having RT and others on their platform would be good for the company (and the electorate having more information?) But this was before they were against it --now apparently they, Twitter, had made a bad calculus and RT might have benefitted the eventual winner more than the then presumed winner.

falcolas 9y ago

If you've been following Twitter's business decisions over the years, this is neither surprising nor unprecedented. Twitter has a set of moral values, and isn't afraid to hurt its bottom line to keep those values. For example, it has previously blocked consumers of the firehose (companies in which Twitter has some significant ownership) from selling aggregates of that data to the three letter agencies in the US government. Whether this move is good or bad for their bottom line, I have to applaud them for sticking to their values.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

codedokode 9y ago

It is interesting that the case with Twitter looks similar to what happens in Russia: many russian companies like advertisement agencies don't want to make deals with opposition, major mass media don't cover anti-government protests. Well, as a private company Twitter can decide for itself with whom they want or don't want to make a deal. But is it their own independent decision I wonder?

maxxxxx 9y ago

Maybe the American political establishment should tell people not to believe every nonsense they read and hear about. But then they would also have to give up on their attack ads too... When I see attack ads most of them seem also geared towards spreading baseless or distorted accusations so maybe the American system should first clean up its own act before pointing fingers at other countries.

revmoo 9y ago

They going to ban Shareblue as well?

indubitable 9y ago

This seems unusual. Other nations discussing the politics of yet other nations is par for the course, including with a nationalist spin from the originating country. What precisely made RT's ads notably grievous? I think examples of what they showed that was completely unacceptable would be valuable in helping people come to an informed conclusion. It would also help other advertisers ensure they don't cross whatever invisible boundaries have been set. Things look particularly peculiar when we look at them in reverse. @GolosAmeriki is the Twitter for the Russian language Voice of America, which is our own state run news come propaganda organization. This [1] is their webpage providing content primarily to Russian speaking viewers on topics related to Russia. And the material as could be expected tends to be incredibly critical of Russia, Putin, and other interests which do not necessarily align with US interests. And we're quite expansive. You can find regional Voice of America 'implementations' for a whole plethora of nations here. [2] The coverage could easy be labeled as attempting to "sew discord". But that's because presenting information that does not present a nation in a positive light can always be considered "sewing discord" even if it's a critical and productive part of progress. The primary benefit of foreign coverage is that it does not need to play by the same rules as domestic coverage. Even private interests are subject to problems. For instance the press has no legal right to access to politicians. There's certainly a sort of symbiosis between politicians and the reporters, but it creates artificial boundaries. On top of this the day in, day out interactions between reporters and the people they report on results in relationships forming. These can be positive or negative relationships but that adds yet another layer of bias to coverage. All those problems without even getting into the dirtier aspects of society... But these sort of issues are mitigated to a large degree when viewing things through a foreign nation's eyes. So long as their material is not overtly lying, I think these news come propaganda channels have substantial informative value for citizens. It's important to understand that it will be biased, but it's equally important to understand that of domestic news as well. It seems a shame that Twitter are going this route. Hopefully this is not the beginning of an effort to restrict foreign inflows of information. [1] - https://www.golos-ameriki.ru/ https://www.golos-ameriki.ru/ [2] - https://www.voanews.com/navigation/allsites https://www.voanews.com/navigation/allsites

raprp 9y ago

Breaking: Clinton Colluded With Russia To Smear Trump During Election! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waGnHlRIsWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waGnHlRIsWM

raprp 9y ago
Washington Post: Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clint...

throw-away-8 9y ago

200+ comments. Why this never made HN front page?

allenleein 9y ago

Twitter is doing a better job than @Facebook on Russian ad/election interference work - but both entities weren't doing enough pre-election.