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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 o

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.

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.