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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 Spieg

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."
  - SEJeff 9y ago
    They strongly pushed these narrative through social media campaigns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_camps_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_camps_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theo... Even president 45 fell for this admittedly pathetic troll: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/22/politics/donald-trump-retweet-white-genocide/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/22/politics/donald-trump-retw...
    - infodroid 9y ago
      Unfortunately the links you posted don't provide any evidence or suggestion that RT or Sputnik promoted these stories.
      - soundwave106 9y ago
        Jade Helm is mentioned as one of many stories mentioned in this testimony by Clint Watts concerning on Russia's information war: https://www.thedailybeast.com/clint-watts-testimony-russias-info-war-on-the-us-started-in-2014 https://www.thedailybeast.com/clint-watts-testimony-russias-... It does seem like there are a fair bit of analysts in United States intelligence (Clint Watts being on that side of the fence, essentially) who strongly believe that RT or Sputnik are less media sources, and are instead funnels of disinformation propaganda designed to destabilize the United States government. Whatever your personal opinion of these media sources are, in this light, Twitter's action here is hardly surprising.
  - danem 9y ago
    I think they are talking about Jade Helm 15, and RTs coverage of it. For example: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/272920-us-army-jade-helm/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/272920-us-army-jade-helm/
mschuster91 9y ago
There's a difference between legitimate opinion pieces and fraudulent/faked propaganda.
- hennsen 9y ago
  The latter being like just what CIA et al do in just about any country and election they wish...
- RasputinsBro 9y ago
  What's your view on the Washington Post writing how Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? Legitimate opinion piece or fraudulent/faked proaganda?
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    That message was lead by the Bush-Cheny administration. Multiple press orgaisations repeated that message, it's true, and practices could have been better. But it can be very difficult to arrive at the truth when you are being very deliberately and relentlessly lied to. Which gets us back to the issue of Russian propaganda through social networks. Washpo admit they got it wrong, at least. 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/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/...
    - RasputinsBro 9y ago
      So the US administration said a lie which was convenient for them, and the media repeated it. The Russian administration said a lie which was convenient for them, and the media repeated it. What's the difference exactly? Is the difference that the Russian gov has more influence in Russian media than the US gov has in US media? Why is it that you treat one case as "look at their evil propaganda" and the other as "oh gee practices could be better"? Let me be honest with you. I'm European so I shouldn't really have a stake here. But I look at the world and what I see is that US media is infinitely more influential in Europe than Russian media. Infinitely more influential in Europe than even European media, and that concerns me. So your "oh gee practices could be better but we're the good guys trust me" doesn't fly with me.
eugenekolo2 9y ago
There's a difference between having strong opinions, and actually conspiring to have somebody elected. One is posting news, the other is creating news (see entire Facebook groups from Russia posting fake news). There is still the question though: have other nations participated in this creation of news? Probably so, so perhaps the spot light shouldn't be on Russia only, but more generalized into this problem. But, the problem exists nonetheless and taking action is reasonable.
- tertius 9y ago
  If the action is taken because of political pressure then it's not about being reasonable. If they were being reasonable they would be listing a lot more organizations that spread propaganda than just RT. This looks completely reactionary.
- pizzetta 9y ago
  Has a conspiracy to have someone elected been confirmed? IFAIK, Russian ops was to sow distrust in the electorate not so much to favor one candidate over the other. The ultimate goal would be to have the elections questioned by the losers (whoever the winner was) in order to diminish US influence abroad as the winner would be busy with internal affairs. It was probably a bet against Hillary winning since she had a more hawkish international vision.
  - awinder 9y ago
    Clinton's involvement with the Magnitsky Act gave Putin a lot to be specifically angry about, versus Trump who has a lot of existing ties to Russia (not to mention the campaign being filled with people who also had their own positive ties to Russia). It's possible that they did not have the specific goal of influencing for one candidate, but they had a ton more to gain from one specific candidate winning over the other. I think it takes some naiveté to assume they didn't have a focused effort on behalf of one candidate over the other.
    - pizzetta 9y ago
      That would make sense if the odds had been plus or minus 5 pts but by all accounts the odds were something like 93:7 in Hillary's favor. I don't think Russian intelligence had better understanding of our electorate than the DNC itself --they can't have been that out of touch with the people they were looking to represent.
SEJeff 9y ago
Neither of those was acting as though they weren't pushing foreign influence directly in the united states. If they were, the DOJ would likely also ask them to fill out FARA[1] paperwork, just as they've asked RT[2] and Sputnik. Your comparison doesn't quite work apples to apples in any regard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac... [2] 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...
gressquel 9y ago
RT - just makes up things out of thin air with no root in reality. Spiegel, LeMonde, Guardian, NYT dont do that. Usually there is some fire before the smoke
awinder 9y ago
Spiegel and Guardian aren't part of a state-sponsored program with an explicit goal of destabilization. It's not difficult to understand & imagine what the difference is between both creating story lines & hyping / targeting those stories for maximum damage versus straight journalism. The US interferes with elections and those states combat those attempts. Other states interfere with US elections, and we must combat those attempts as well. Welcome to the game, not playing is not an option.
- truxus 9y ago
  Well put. Glad there are rational people in the discussion.
- infodroid 9y ago
  The problem in the case of the Twitter announcement is that it appears dishonest. RT/Sputnik were not the source of the fake news stories that marred the US election, and yet are taking the blame for it. While the real producers of fake news aren't mentioned and get a free pass: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became... https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38168281 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38168281
  - nickbauman 9y ago
    RT/Sputnik is part of an integrated state propaganda machine which is indeed the source of the election interference. You cannot separate them.
    - grandalf 9y ago
      Yet somehow this "integrated state propaganda machine" manages to write better journalism about many issues of concern to the least powerful Americans than the American press. I don't disagree with your characterization, but I'd also characterize cable news, the NYT, WaPo, etc. that way. These big "news and entertainment" companies do not offer any meaningful political dissent whatsoever.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jdietrich 9y ago
Some of the replies to this comment fall glibly on one side or another, but I think that there's a remarkably fine and fuzzy line. Consider the international broadcasters like Voice of America, the BBC World Service or Deutsche Welle. These organisations are state-funded, broadcast to dozens of foreign countries via shortwave or satellite and often have explicit foreign policy goals. A government beaming news reports into a foreign (and often hostile) country is at the very least suspicious. We know as a fact that the US has engaged in major international astroturfing campaigns, using large clusters of VPN nodes and thousands of bogus personae to influence public debate in foreign countries. There's a not-unreasonable argument that this capability is mainly being used to combat "extremism", but there's a huge amount of disagreement about what exactly constitutes "extremism". Perhaps it's time for an international convention on psychological warfare? At the very least, it would be useful to have some kind of high-level debate on where we draw the line between providing an alternative viewpoint and engaging in hostile propaganda activities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
- fpig 9y ago
  I don't understand what is fuzzy about it - Deutsche Welle might be a state actor but the US intelligence agencies apparently don't consider it hostile/dangerous to the US. This argument basically comes down to the childish "if they don't take money from 1 state actor, they should stop taking money from every state actor in the world". To me it makes perfect sense that when a foreign state actor is determined to be hostile to your country by your intelligence community, that you are going to stop accepting money from them. Also seems (if RT is telling the truth) that the paid RT election propaganda on twitter was actually twitter's idea that they pitched to RT, so perhaps twitter got greedy and is complicit (as opposed to just having ran ads indiscriminately) and now they're trying to wash their hands to avoid a PR disaster. Link: https://twitter.com/M_Simonyan/status/923519609269116928 https://twitter.com/M_Simonyan/status/923519609269116928
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > These organisations are state-funded, broadcast to dozens of foreign countries via shortwave or satellite I think it's not just about being state-funded, but "powerful interests" funded. Large corporations want to control public opinions just as much. US government doesn't sponsor CNN directly, but it itself as a business as well as its advertisers are vested in having one political outcome vs another. They are far from neutral. As to the topic at hand, it all started with a PR campaign promoted by Clinton and the media organizations which backed her candidacy (to the point of handing her debate questions beforehand or smearing or silencing her opponents) that Russians significantly altered the results of the election, up to and including flipping the result completely. We've heard for months Russians, Russians, Russians, "17 Intelligence agencies", piss dossier blackmail, secret meetings or coded gestures being signaled at some dinners and so on. It is a story many want to believe, because it explains their view of the world -- "my compatriots could not have possibly have voted how they did", or "my candidate was so good and experienced there is no way people could have voted for any other candidate". So there is a desire to believe in these conspiracy theories, simply because they provide an explanation for what happened. As you said, Russia is interfering with elections, so are Americans, Chinese, anybody with money is going to trying to influence election results in US. They'd be stupid not to. And I agree in general with the idea of identifying and stopping the influence as much as possible, so good on Twitter here. What is suspicious is this continuous obsession with Russia. I think it is a distraction and a waste of time. I think a better obsession would be an obsession with US. Say looking at what's happening here and why did so many people voted how they did. It has nothing to do with KGB. But then again I've accused of being a "Russian shill" since I don't seem to like Clinton and don't tow the party line here. So you know, take these words with a grain of salt (or maybe a shot of vodka).
DanBC 9y ago
The problem isn't strong opinion, it's outright dishonesty. You can check Sputnik and RT here: https://euvsdisinfo.eu https://euvsdisinfo.eu
bsparker 9y ago
Because this is paid advertising... not opinions, but promoted media.
everdev 9y ago
Public opinion and intervention are two different things. Free speech is protected while a foreign government working to benefit a candidate is not. If the US was using CNN to plant false narratives, that would be a similarly egregious offence.
vetinari 9y ago
Not only that, but according to Bloomberg[1], Clinton raised 1,1191M for her campaing and Trump raised 646.8M for his. Anybody, who claims that RTs and Sputniks $274,100 spent during the campaign had a material effect on the elections should very well explain, how the Russians are getting orders of magnitude better ROI than everyone else. I'm all ears and I'm sure all the DC lobbyists too. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/ https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  This RT/Sputnik thing is probably misdirection, but knowing how Trump/Russia/etc got such good ROI is not hard to understand. 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.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    Your comment does a good job of summarizing the unique aspects of the 2016 election. But keep in mind that all of the projections based on data collection, historical trends, polling, etc., had Trump suffering a decisive loss up until several hours into election night. In order for the description to give to be true, you have to believe that all of the pollsters, Nate Silver, etc., didn't know what they were doing. The thing is, they did actually know what they were doing. Crediting Cambridge Analytica, RT, the Russian government, Donald Trump, or anyone else with some sort of strategic genius because Trump won is utterly ludicrous. Trump's strategy was innovative in that it blended things that had traditionally been part of the Democrats' and Republicans' platforms, but at no point did anyone on Trump's side have any remote degree of certainty that it would succeed. Trump was outspent by 4:1 or even 5:1 by the Clinton campaign. This is not because he had a far more efficient approach and enjoyed a comfy lead the whole time, but because he simply didn't have the support from donors needed to spend more than that (and wasn't willing or able to invest more of his own alleged wealth). Trump's win was not really even a win in the sense that many of the voters in rust belt areas that he "won" from Hillary had voted for Obama previously. HRC's campaign felt that the rust belt was not an area where Hillary needed to do more campaigning, and it's not clear they were wrong in thinking that. Maybe Trump's gruff pro-American bluster was unbeatable there, and Hillary would have struggled to seem sympathetic to the economic struggles going on there. But the point is that Trump simply chose a strategy of combining national defense "strong man" posturing with the typical rust belt "buy American" playbook that Democrats have been using for years. Yes it's a bit racist, but it was when Democrats used it too. Trump's strategy almost didn't work, and everyone who expected it not to work was probabilistically right. It had very low chances of winning and came down to the moves made by both candidates in the final days before the election that drove turnout more than they influenced candidate choice. Yes the leaked email stories hurt HRC, but I think that her refusal to address the issue head on when asked about it and to offer full transparency was a big mistake. It conveyed an elitism and arrogance that might very well have led a lot of former or lukewarm supporters to stay home. My point is that it wasn't about the detailed analytics, it was about the big, slow trends of rust-belt economic hardship and the resulting resentments, and Trump managing to beat a very mediocre and uninspiring GOP field to win the primary with his populist message. I'd actually been predicting the onset of an authoritarian, trade-protectionist trend for a while but I did not think Trump would beat such a strong and well-funded establishment candidate. I say this because in all of the chaos about "Russian meddling" we are told to believe a story that involves too many evil geniuses and too little acknowledgement of big, slow trends.
raprp 9y ago
Maybe twitter should ban ads by the DNC too? 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...
nickbauman 9y ago
Interference in foreign elections of the nature in which Russia has interfered and colluded with the Trump campaign is unprecedented to say the least. It's a whole new game. Foreign intervention in elections up till then have been pure amateur hour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention

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."
- SEJeff 9y ago
  They strongly pushed these narrative through social media campaigns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_camps_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_camps_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theo... Even president 45 fell for this admittedly pathetic troll: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/22/politics/donald-trump-retweet-white-genocide/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/22/politics/donald-trump-retw...
  - infodroid 9y ago
    Unfortunately the links you posted don't provide any evidence or suggestion that RT or Sputnik promoted these stories.
    - soundwave106 9y ago
      Jade Helm is mentioned as one of many stories mentioned in this testimony by Clint Watts concerning on Russia's information war: https://www.thedailybeast.com/clint-watts-testimony-russias-info-war-on-the-us-started-in-2014 https://www.thedailybeast.com/clint-watts-testimony-russias-... It does seem like there are a fair bit of analysts in United States intelligence (Clint Watts being on that side of the fence, essentially) who strongly believe that RT or Sputnik are less media sources, and are instead funnels of disinformation propaganda designed to destabilize the United States government. Whatever your personal opinion of these media sources are, in this light, Twitter's action here is hardly surprising.
- danem 9y ago
  I think they are talking about Jade Helm 15, and RTs coverage of it. For example: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/272920-us-army-jade-helm/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/272920-us-army-jade-helm/

mschuster91 9y ago

There's a difference between legitimate opinion pieces and fraudulent/faked propaganda.

hennsen 9y ago
The latter being like just what CIA et al do in just about any country and election they wish...
RasputinsBro 9y ago
What's your view on the Washington Post writing how Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? Legitimate opinion piece or fraudulent/faked proaganda?
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  That message was lead by the Bush-Cheny administration. Multiple press orgaisations repeated that message, it's true, and practices could have been better. But it can be very difficult to arrive at the truth when you are being very deliberately and relentlessly lied to. Which gets us back to the issue of Russian propaganda through social networks. Washpo admit they got it wrong, at least. 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/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/...
  - RasputinsBro 9y ago
    So the US administration said a lie which was convenient for them, and the media repeated it. The Russian administration said a lie which was convenient for them, and the media repeated it. What's the difference exactly? Is the difference that the Russian gov has more influence in Russian media than the US gov has in US media? Why is it that you treat one case as "look at their evil propaganda" and the other as "oh gee practices could be better"? Let me be honest with you. I'm European so I shouldn't really have a stake here. But I look at the world and what I see is that US media is infinitely more influential in Europe than Russian media. Infinitely more influential in Europe than even European media, and that concerns me. So your "oh gee practices could be better but we're the good guys trust me" doesn't fly with me.

eugenekolo2 9y ago

There's a difference between having strong opinions, and actually conspiring to have somebody elected. One is posting news, the other is creating news (see entire Facebook groups from Russia posting fake news). There is still the question though: have other nations participated in this creation of news? Probably so, so perhaps the spot light shouldn't be on Russia only, but more generalized into this problem. But, the problem exists nonetheless and taking action is reasonable.

tertius 9y ago
If the action is taken because of political pressure then it's not about being reasonable. If they were being reasonable they would be listing a lot more organizations that spread propaganda than just RT. This looks completely reactionary.
pizzetta 9y ago
Has a conspiracy to have someone elected been confirmed? IFAIK, Russian ops was to sow distrust in the electorate not so much to favor one candidate over the other. The ultimate goal would be to have the elections questioned by the losers (whoever the winner was) in order to diminish US influence abroad as the winner would be busy with internal affairs. It was probably a bet against Hillary winning since she had a more hawkish international vision.
- awinder 9y ago
  Clinton's involvement with the Magnitsky Act gave Putin a lot to be specifically angry about, versus Trump who has a lot of existing ties to Russia (not to mention the campaign being filled with people who also had their own positive ties to Russia). It's possible that they did not have the specific goal of influencing for one candidate, but they had a ton more to gain from one specific candidate winning over the other. I think it takes some naiveté to assume they didn't have a focused effort on behalf of one candidate over the other.
  - pizzetta 9y ago
    That would make sense if the odds had been plus or minus 5 pts but by all accounts the odds were something like 93:7 in Hillary's favor. I don't think Russian intelligence had better understanding of our electorate than the DNC itself --they can't have been that out of touch with the people they were looking to represent.

SEJeff 9y ago

Neither of those was acting as though they weren't pushing foreign influence directly in the united states. If they were, the DOJ would likely also ask them to fill out FARA[1] paperwork, just as they've asked RT[2] and Sputnik. Your comparison doesn't quite work apples to apples in any regard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac... [2] 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...

gressquel 9y ago

RT - just makes up things out of thin air with no root in reality. Spiegel, LeMonde, Guardian, NYT dont do that. Usually there is some fire before the smoke

awinder 9y ago

Spiegel and Guardian aren't part of a state-sponsored program with an explicit goal of destabilization. It's not difficult to understand & imagine what the difference is between both creating story lines & hyping / targeting those stories for maximum damage versus straight journalism. The US interferes with elections and those states combat those attempts. Other states interfere with US elections, and we must combat those attempts as well. Welcome to the game, not playing is not an option.

truxus 9y ago
Well put. Glad there are rational people in the discussion.
infodroid 9y ago
The problem in the case of the Twitter announcement is that it appears dishonest. RT/Sputnik were not the source of the fake news stories that marred the US election, and yet are taking the blame for it. While the real producers of fake news aren't mentioned and get a free pass: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became... https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38168281 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38168281
- nickbauman 9y ago
  RT/Sputnik is part of an integrated state propaganda machine which is indeed the source of the election interference. You cannot separate them.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    Yet somehow this "integrated state propaganda machine" manages to write better journalism about many issues of concern to the least powerful Americans than the American press. I don't disagree with your characterization, but I'd also characterize cable news, the NYT, WaPo, etc. that way. These big "news and entertainment" companies do not offer any meaningful political dissent whatsoever.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jdietrich 9y ago

Some of the replies to this comment fall glibly on one side or another, but I think that there's a remarkably fine and fuzzy line. Consider the international broadcasters like Voice of America, the BBC World Service or Deutsche Welle. These organisations are state-funded, broadcast to dozens of foreign countries via shortwave or satellite and often have explicit foreign policy goals. A government beaming news reports into a foreign (and often hostile) country is at the very least suspicious. We know as a fact that the US has engaged in major international astroturfing campaigns, using large clusters of VPN nodes and thousands of bogus personae to influence public debate in foreign countries. There's a not-unreasonable argument that this capability is mainly being used to combat "extremism", but there's a huge amount of disagreement about what exactly constitutes "extremism". Perhaps it's time for an international convention on psychological warfare? At the very least, it would be useful to have some kind of high-level debate on where we draw the line between providing an alternative viewpoint and engaging in hostile propaganda activities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice

fpig 9y ago
I don't understand what is fuzzy about it - Deutsche Welle might be a state actor but the US intelligence agencies apparently don't consider it hostile/dangerous to the US. This argument basically comes down to the childish "if they don't take money from 1 state actor, they should stop taking money from every state actor in the world". To me it makes perfect sense that when a foreign state actor is determined to be hostile to your country by your intelligence community, that you are going to stop accepting money from them. Also seems (if RT is telling the truth) that the paid RT election propaganda on twitter was actually twitter's idea that they pitched to RT, so perhaps twitter got greedy and is complicit (as opposed to just having ran ads indiscriminately) and now they're trying to wash their hands to avoid a PR disaster. Link: https://twitter.com/M_Simonyan/status/923519609269116928 https://twitter.com/M_Simonyan/status/923519609269116928
rdtsc 9y ago
> These organisations are state-funded, broadcast to dozens of foreign countries via shortwave or satellite I think it's not just about being state-funded, but "powerful interests" funded. Large corporations want to control public opinions just as much. US government doesn't sponsor CNN directly, but it itself as a business as well as its advertisers are vested in having one political outcome vs another. They are far from neutral. As to the topic at hand, it all started with a PR campaign promoted by Clinton and the media organizations which backed her candidacy (to the point of handing her debate questions beforehand or smearing or silencing her opponents) that Russians significantly altered the results of the election, up to and including flipping the result completely. We've heard for months Russians, Russians, Russians, "17 Intelligence agencies", piss dossier blackmail, secret meetings or coded gestures being signaled at some dinners and so on. It is a story many want to believe, because it explains their view of the world -- "my compatriots could not have possibly have voted how they did", or "my candidate was so good and experienced there is no way people could have voted for any other candidate". So there is a desire to believe in these conspiracy theories, simply because they provide an explanation for what happened. As you said, Russia is interfering with elections, so are Americans, Chinese, anybody with money is going to trying to influence election results in US. They'd be stupid not to. And I agree in general with the idea of identifying and stopping the influence as much as possible, so good on Twitter here. What is suspicious is this continuous obsession with Russia. I think it is a distraction and a waste of time. I think a better obsession would be an obsession with US. Say looking at what's happening here and why did so many people voted how they did. It has nothing to do with KGB. But then again I've accused of being a "Russian shill" since I don't seem to like Clinton and don't tow the party line here. So you know, take these words with a grain of salt (or maybe a shot of vodka).

DanBC 9y ago

The problem isn't strong opinion, it's outright dishonesty. You can check Sputnik and RT here: https://euvsdisinfo.eu https://euvsdisinfo.eu

bsparker 9y ago

Because this is paid advertising... not opinions, but promoted media.

everdev 9y ago

Public opinion and intervention are two different things. Free speech is protected while a foreign government working to benefit a candidate is not. If the US was using CNN to plant false narratives, that would be a similarly egregious offence.

vetinari 9y ago

Not only that, but according to Bloomberg[1], Clinton raised 1,1191M for her campaing and Trump raised 646.8M for his. Anybody, who claims that RTs and Sputniks $274,100 spent during the campaign had a material effect on the elections should very well explain, how the Russians are getting orders of magnitude better ROI than everyone else. I'm all ears and I'm sure all the DC lobbyists too. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/ https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...

hackinthebochs 9y ago
This RT/Sputnik thing is probably misdirection, but knowing how Trump/Russia/etc got such good ROI is not hard to understand. 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.
- grandalf 9y ago
  Your comment does a good job of summarizing the unique aspects of the 2016 election. But keep in mind that all of the projections based on data collection, historical trends, polling, etc., had Trump suffering a decisive loss up until several hours into election night. In order for the description to give to be true, you have to believe that all of the pollsters, Nate Silver, etc., didn't know what they were doing. The thing is, they did actually know what they were doing. Crediting Cambridge Analytica, RT, the Russian government, Donald Trump, or anyone else with some sort of strategic genius because Trump won is utterly ludicrous. Trump's strategy was innovative in that it blended things that had traditionally been part of the Democrats' and Republicans' platforms, but at no point did anyone on Trump's side have any remote degree of certainty that it would succeed. Trump was outspent by 4:1 or even 5:1 by the Clinton campaign. This is not because he had a far more efficient approach and enjoyed a comfy lead the whole time, but because he simply didn't have the support from donors needed to spend more than that (and wasn't willing or able to invest more of his own alleged wealth). Trump's win was not really even a win in the sense that many of the voters in rust belt areas that he "won" from Hillary had voted for Obama previously. HRC's campaign felt that the rust belt was not an area where Hillary needed to do more campaigning, and it's not clear they were wrong in thinking that. Maybe Trump's gruff pro-American bluster was unbeatable there, and Hillary would have struggled to seem sympathetic to the economic struggles going on there. But the point is that Trump simply chose a strategy of combining national defense "strong man" posturing with the typical rust belt "buy American" playbook that Democrats have been using for years. Yes it's a bit racist, but it was when Democrats used it too. Trump's strategy almost didn't work, and everyone who expected it not to work was probabilistically right. It had very low chances of winning and came down to the moves made by both candidates in the final days before the election that drove turnout more than they influenced candidate choice. Yes the leaked email stories hurt HRC, but I think that her refusal to address the issue head on when asked about it and to offer full transparency was a big mistake. It conveyed an elitism and arrogance that might very well have led a lot of former or lukewarm supporters to stay home. My point is that it wasn't about the detailed analytics, it was about the big, slow trends of rust-belt economic hardship and the resulting resentments, and Trump managing to beat a very mediocre and uninspiring GOP field to win the primary with his populist message. I'd actually been predicting the onset of an authoritarian, trade-protectionist trend for a while but I did not think Trump would beat such a strong and well-funded establishment candidate. I say this because in all of the chaos about "Russian meddling" we are told to believe a story that involves too many evil geniuses and too little acknowledgement of big, slow trends.

raprp 9y ago

Maybe twitter should ban ads by the DNC too? 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...

nickbauman 9y ago

Interference in foreign elections of the nature in which Russia has interfered and colluded with the Trump campaign is unprecedented to say the least. It's a whole new game. Foreign intervention in elections up till then have been pure amateur hour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention