5 ms·

Does this not make Twitter AND RT look bad? They've just proven something they and Trump have been denying.

by lawlessone 9y ago

commenter1 9y ago
I don't get it, please explain what do you mean.
- lawlessone 9y ago
  All the Trump supporters etc have been screaming for months that there is nothing to see here. Russia has been claiming there was nothing to see. Yet here is Russia's state owned propaganda station a admitting twitter pitched the idea of them targeting the the US elections with their adverts.
  - nathankunicki 9y ago
    The presentation specifically promotes unbiased political reporting. In addition, many media organisations promote themselves as the go-to place for political reporting. They proposed a partnership with an organisation they hoped would buy ads promoting political reporting. I don't see why this casts Twitter in a negative light.
    - wavefunction 9y ago
      It shows a Twitter desperate for profitability willing to work with known hostile foreign propagandists to target the US elections. That kind of sounds like traitorous behavior to me, but I'm also a bit judgmental.
      - supergreg 9y ago
        It sounds like Twitter is unbiased about who to work with to me.
      - heartbreak 9y ago
        > known hostile foreign propagandists If you believe this statement is true, then how do you know the post we’re commenting on is not propaganda?
  - imron 9y ago
    How many similar pitches did Twitter make to the BBC, Al Jazeera, and a bunch of other foreign media organisations? Where are the cries of UK and Qatari collusion and interference? And how is Putin responsible for Twitter pitching this to RT? And how does this have anything to do with Trump? You have to jump through some pretty impressive mental hoops to view this as sign of Trump-Russia collusion.
    - akavel 9y ago
      Eh, it's absolutely not yet Twitter doing something. It's only RT saying that Twitter was doing something. Please, if I say you did something, does this already mean you really did it? Wow, or maybe I wanted to damage your reputation by saying a lie?
      - imron 9y ago
        If that was happening I'd expect Twitter to be issuing denials and saying that this was disinformation from RT. And yet there is silence.
    - cat199 9y ago
      > Where are the cries of UK and Qatari collusion and interference? ^^ my point exactly.. does anyone honestly believe that russia is the only state actor that attempted to influence the elections, and further, the only one that broke the law to do so? or is it only those countries who agree with status quo policies are allowed to interfere to maintain the status quo?
    - soundwave106 9y ago
      The extent of Trump's relationship with Putin is unknown at this time, but Russian election interference was largely about promoting one favored candidate (Trump) over another (Clinton). This report from RT (which in my opinion doesn't say a lot except "Twitter advertised targeted marketing", a non-story in my mind) is simply RT's reaction to Twitter refusing advertisements from them. And Twitter's advertisement withdrawal appears to be their response to getting the "spotlight" in the election interference probe last month. The US government does not seem very concerned with Al Jazeera despite being a Qatar mouthpiece in essence. If it was just RT and Sputnik alone, I speculate there wouldn't be too much concern. (The UK is a strong political ally so bringing up the BBC is a non-starter. :) ) The key here IMHO is that that Russia also used bot networks, "troll armies", and "fake news" to promote their candidate. They also engaged in hacking computers of a certain political party. I speculate that all of this combined, as far as US intelligence is concerned, stepped over the line. What is pretty clear at this point that fairly decent sized portions of the United States government are not very happy about this -- new sanctions were applied largely over this issue, there are several high-level intelligence reports focused on the above election interference issue, etc. As far as cries of Qatari collusion and interference goes, actually, that has happened. Qatar is undergoing a blockade by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt at the moment. A large part of that is due to Qatar's role in financing Al Jazeera, and much of the problem these nations have with that channel began with Al Jazeera's role in the Arab Spring. ( https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21724366-arab-worlds-leading-news-channel-independent-voice-or-propaganda https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/217243... ). So, where Al Jazeera / Qatar most directly influenced politics, there most definitely was an outcry and a government response.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I mean they're a cable news station. What's nefarious about them advertising?
    - dmix 9y ago
      Twitter wants to appear to be responding to the election 'scandal'. Stopping thousands of people from using normal looking accounts to push propaganda is hard, if not impossible, so they went after the one organization that is overtly pushing Russian propaganda. Not sure what effect it will actually have in practice. Pushing propaganda on well-known propaganda sites is hardly the best way to go about it. Instead of taking the "we're just a platform" position Twitter is only further digging themselves into this hole. They are further making themselves the arbitrators of what content is allowed on the site. So when anything happens in the future they can't say they don't have a role, as they happily demonstrated their willingness here. So I expect to see plenty more of this going forward.
  - dmix 9y ago
    They are talking about promoting their own coverage of the election. They're a news media organization, that's what they all do... this has nothing specifically to do with them admitting to 'influencing the election' any differently than any other news organization. There is zero admission of guilt here... unless you're looking for very weak correlations that fit your worldview.
    - usrusr 9y ago
      Even if they were only promoting their coverage (I don't necessarily disagree with that), they can still push an agenda of destabilization by being cheeky about it. Gravely denying something you did not do is an effective way to play those who don't trust you in the first place. PS: This "leak" or whatever we want to call it looks pretty much as if someone with that agenda (might be just a fraction of RT, I consider them much more a freewheeling agent of chaos than a micromanaged propaganda machine) identified a situation were they could not lose and decided to stoke the fire.
imron 9y ago
Trump has been denying his campaign colluded with Russia. This doesn't contradict that, rather it shows that Twitter was the one 'colluding'.
- nathankunicki 9y ago
  No, it shows Twitter partnering with a media organisation. I'm willing to bet Twitter offered similar deals to many other media outlets, both US and abroad. Twitter does nothing to promote biased reporting in this, merely that RT should use their platform for political reporting.
  - imron 9y ago
    I agree hence the reason I put 'colluding' in quotes. This is grasping at straws.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Multiple parties can collude with Russia. The fact that Twitter was and Trump extensively uses Twitter for his own propaganda might underline that fact.
  - imron 9y ago
    > Trump extensively uses Twitter for his own propaganda might underline that fact. Him and how many other hundreds of millions of other users, using Twitter for its primary purpose. If 'Twitter sold ads to Russia and <candidate> used Twitter to promote their own propaganda' is the baseline for collusion with Russia to influence the election then that would make every single presidential candidate guilty of collusion also.
    - wavefunction 9y ago
      Only one candidate colluded with Russia though.
jdietrich 9y ago
Good and bad are obsolete, there is only confusion. RT don't care about being trusted, they don't care about credibility, they only want to undermine the credibility of everyone else. If nobody is credible, if no information can be trusted, then there is no truth and no lies, only gut feeling. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/putins-rasputin https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/putins-raspu...
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Let's not get carried away
  - akavel 9y ago
    If I assume that RT is a propaganda tube (which I do), there's nothing to be carried away by here. For people living in communist countries, there was an important mental exercise: if Russian media claim something, let's start by assuming, that most probably something exactly opposite happened!!!
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      RT obviously has an angle but it isn't Pravda.
      - dmix 9y ago
        WaPo/NYTimes has a very obvious agenda as well and thinks nothing of citing anonymous government sources in puffy articles. I'm struggling to see the difference here, other than Jack/Twitter doesn't care that it has an agenda or is influenced by a government, but they disagree with the particular agenda... Yes RT is worse, but it's also more overt, this divide will always be full of shades of gray not black/white. It's a very dangerous road to travel down, letting Twitter be the arbiter of news orgs, and if this is going to be limited to simply Russia and not hundreds of other news orgs then it's quite obvious it has it's own agenda as well.

Does this not make Twitter AND RT look bad? They've just proven something they and Trump have been denying.

commenter1 9y ago

I don't get it, please explain what do you mean.

lawlessone 9y ago
All the Trump supporters etc have been screaming for months that there is nothing to see here. Russia has been claiming there was nothing to see. Yet here is Russia's state owned propaganda station a admitting twitter pitched the idea of them targeting the the US elections with their adverts.
- nathankunicki 9y ago
  The presentation specifically promotes unbiased political reporting. In addition, many media organisations promote themselves as the go-to place for political reporting. They proposed a partnership with an organisation they hoped would buy ads promoting political reporting. I don't see why this casts Twitter in a negative light.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    It shows a Twitter desperate for profitability willing to work with known hostile foreign propagandists to target the US elections. That kind of sounds like traitorous behavior to me, but I'm also a bit judgmental.
    - supergreg 9y ago
      It sounds like Twitter is unbiased about who to work with to me.
    - heartbreak 9y ago
      > known hostile foreign propagandists If you believe this statement is true, then how do you know the post we’re commenting on is not propaganda?
- imron 9y ago
  How many similar pitches did Twitter make to the BBC, Al Jazeera, and a bunch of other foreign media organisations? Where are the cries of UK and Qatari collusion and interference? And how is Putin responsible for Twitter pitching this to RT? And how does this have anything to do with Trump? You have to jump through some pretty impressive mental hoops to view this as sign of Trump-Russia collusion.
  - akavel 9y ago
    Eh, it's absolutely not yet Twitter doing something. It's only RT saying that Twitter was doing something. Please, if I say you did something, does this already mean you really did it? Wow, or maybe I wanted to damage your reputation by saying a lie?
    - imron 9y ago
      If that was happening I'd expect Twitter to be issuing denials and saying that this was disinformation from RT. And yet there is silence.
  - cat199 9y ago
    > Where are the cries of UK and Qatari collusion and interference? ^^ my point exactly.. does anyone honestly believe that russia is the only state actor that attempted to influence the elections, and further, the only one that broke the law to do so? or is it only those countries who agree with status quo policies are allowed to interfere to maintain the status quo?
  - soundwave106 9y ago
    The extent of Trump's relationship with Putin is unknown at this time, but Russian election interference was largely about promoting one favored candidate (Trump) over another (Clinton). This report from RT (which in my opinion doesn't say a lot except "Twitter advertised targeted marketing", a non-story in my mind) is simply RT's reaction to Twitter refusing advertisements from them. And Twitter's advertisement withdrawal appears to be their response to getting the "spotlight" in the election interference probe last month. The US government does not seem very concerned with Al Jazeera despite being a Qatar mouthpiece in essence. If it was just RT and Sputnik alone, I speculate there wouldn't be too much concern. (The UK is a strong political ally so bringing up the BBC is a non-starter. :) ) The key here IMHO is that that Russia also used bot networks, "troll armies", and "fake news" to promote their candidate. They also engaged in hacking computers of a certain political party. I speculate that all of this combined, as far as US intelligence is concerned, stepped over the line. What is pretty clear at this point that fairly decent sized portions of the United States government are not very happy about this -- new sanctions were applied largely over this issue, there are several high-level intelligence reports focused on the above election interference issue, etc. As far as cries of Qatari collusion and interference goes, actually, that has happened. Qatar is undergoing a blockade by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt at the moment. A large part of that is due to Qatar's role in financing Al Jazeera, and much of the problem these nations have with that channel began with Al Jazeera's role in the Arab Spring. ( https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21724366-arab-worlds-leading-news-channel-independent-voice-or-propaganda https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/217243... ). So, where Al Jazeera / Qatar most directly influenced politics, there most definitely was an outcry and a government response.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I mean they're a cable news station. What's nefarious about them advertising?
  - dmix 9y ago
    Twitter wants to appear to be responding to the election 'scandal'. Stopping thousands of people from using normal looking accounts to push propaganda is hard, if not impossible, so they went after the one organization that is overtly pushing Russian propaganda. Not sure what effect it will actually have in practice. Pushing propaganda on well-known propaganda sites is hardly the best way to go about it. Instead of taking the "we're just a platform" position Twitter is only further digging themselves into this hole. They are further making themselves the arbitrators of what content is allowed on the site. So when anything happens in the future they can't say they don't have a role, as they happily demonstrated their willingness here. So I expect to see plenty more of this going forward.
- dmix 9y ago
  They are talking about promoting their own coverage of the election. They're a news media organization, that's what they all do... this has nothing specifically to do with them admitting to 'influencing the election' any differently than any other news organization. There is zero admission of guilt here... unless you're looking for very weak correlations that fit your worldview.
  - usrusr 9y ago
    Even if they were only promoting their coverage (I don't necessarily disagree with that), they can still push an agenda of destabilization by being cheeky about it. Gravely denying something you did not do is an effective way to play those who don't trust you in the first place. PS: This "leak" or whatever we want to call it looks pretty much as if someone with that agenda (might be just a fraction of RT, I consider them much more a freewheeling agent of chaos than a micromanaged propaganda machine) identified a situation were they could not lose and decided to stoke the fire.

imron 9y ago

Trump has been denying his campaign colluded with Russia. This doesn't contradict that, rather it shows that Twitter was the one 'colluding'.

nathankunicki 9y ago
No, it shows Twitter partnering with a media organisation. I'm willing to bet Twitter offered similar deals to many other media outlets, both US and abroad. Twitter does nothing to promote biased reporting in this, merely that RT should use their platform for political reporting.
- imron 9y ago
  I agree hence the reason I put 'colluding' in quotes. This is grasping at straws.
wavefunction 9y ago
Multiple parties can collude with Russia. The fact that Twitter was and Trump extensively uses Twitter for his own propaganda might underline that fact.
- imron 9y ago
  > Trump extensively uses Twitter for his own propaganda might underline that fact. Him and how many other hundreds of millions of other users, using Twitter for its primary purpose. If 'Twitter sold ads to Russia and <candidate> used Twitter to promote their own propaganda' is the baseline for collusion with Russia to influence the election then that would make every single presidential candidate guilty of collusion also.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    Only one candidate colluded with Russia though.

jdietrich 9y ago

Good and bad are obsolete, there is only confusion. RT don't care about being trusted, they don't care about credibility, they only want to undermine the credibility of everyone else. If nobody is credible, if no information can be trusted, then there is no truth and no lies, only gut feeling. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/putins-rasputin https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/putins-raspu...

emodendroket 9y ago
Let's not get carried away
- akavel 9y ago
  If I assume that RT is a propaganda tube (which I do), there's nothing to be carried away by here. For people living in communist countries, there was an important mental exercise: if Russian media claim something, let's start by assuming, that most probably something exactly opposite happened!!!
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    RT obviously has an angle but it isn't Pravda.
    - dmix 9y ago
      WaPo/NYTimes has a very obvious agenda as well and thinks nothing of citing anonymous government sources in puffy articles. I'm struggling to see the difference here, other than Jack/Twitter doesn't care that it has an agenda or is influenced by a government, but they disagree with the particular agenda... Yes RT is worse, but it's also more overt, this divide will always be full of shades of gray not black/white. It's a very dangerous road to travel down, letting Twitter be the arbiter of news orgs, and if this is going to be limited to simply Russia and not hundreds of other news orgs then it's quite obvious it has it's own agenda as well.