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I don't think it is a conspiracy theory to say Russia influenced them as well (at a $$$$ level): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnolog

• rdtsc 9y ago
  > I don't think it is a conspiracy theory to say Russia influenced them as well (at a $$$$ level): Exactly. It went from Russians hacked or elections in Wisconsin. As in they logged in and changed vote counts. To piss dossier. To secret coded gestured at an official dinner between Putin and Trump. And now we are down to Milner considered "Russian influence". In this case we are in deep trouble. It means Alibaba, AirBnB, WhatsApp, Facebook, Flipkart, Zynga, Spotify are all their "pocket". By that token Google is a "Russian" company with a Russian born founder who is now creating robots, knows everyone's search history, and spies on everyone via Android phones. Everything is lost, nowhere to run. That's exactly how conspiracy theory works, it at the same level as contrails and lizard people.
  • SEJeff 9y ago
    Lizard people are real! At least if you consider pepe the frog related to them.
  • steve_musk 9y ago
    I mean, the Department of Homeland Security under Trump has publicly stated that Russia attempted to hack voter rolls in at least 21 states, no?[1] Trump did fire the head of the FBI who was leading the investigation into his campaigns ties with Russia, and then admitted that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he did it.[2] There is even a special counsel investigating Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. Mueller has been investigating the dossier so we will see if any parts of it were accurate. My point is there is a lot of reasons to be suspicious about what is going on with Russia and Trump, and it’s wrong to compare this with contrail conspiracy theories. That said, the constant state of outrage is annoying and I agree that this Twitter ad thing is probbly overblown. The bots on twitter are a much bigger problem. One thing the adds do show though is that Russia was actively looking to influence the election. 1. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/us/politics/us-tells-21-states-that-hackers-targeted-their-voting-systems.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/us/politics/us-tells-2... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/11/donald-trump-james-comey-firing-russia-investigation https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/11/donald-trump...
    • rdtsc 9y ago
      > Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems. Right, that's exactly the type of news I meant. It is worded to sound like there was kind of a major breach or votes were almost altered. Only further down in the article we see: "Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems." Anyone running or maintaining production systems connected to the public internet is scanned and pinged all the time by everyone from Russia, China, Europe, etc. I was running a relatively unknown service for a few clients and ended up blacklisting whole countries' IP ranges and moving ssh to non-default ports just to avoid all the log noise, from constant pinging attempted logins. If that scanning + the Russians buying Facebook ads, and then got pitched by Twitter to advertise there as well is all there is, it's just not enough compared to the amount of money and time spent talking about for months on end. > Trump did fire the head of the FBI who was leading the investigation into his campaigns ties with Russia, and then admitted that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he did it.[2] Indeed. So I was on /r/politics and we were discussing how finally Comey was testifying on Thursday and we should all watch. It was finally the end of Trump. Comey will lay the cards on the table and tell us all about the Russian interference. I never bought into the "Russians" story as is, I always thought it was clever PR trick and all, but I was excited about Comey's testimony. Except nothing happened. He said that Trump was mean to him basically. > There is even a special counsel investigating Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. Mueller has been investigating the dossier so we will see if any parts of it were accurate. I don't believe they have anything substantial to justify the hysteria so far. At this point with the amount of talk and time spent on this, it would have to be something like a blackmail file or literally Russian hackers in the bushes in Wisconsin twiddling vote counts on the machines. If any of those things had happened, I have no doubt it would have leaked to the press by now and media and everyone would be talking about. People involved are invested enough in getting rid of Trump that they wouldn't be waiting for a year if there was anything juicy there. One dangerous thing that I see happening is that there is an opportunity cost. Every minute or time spend on this Russia thing, is a minute not spent on seeing how to organize better politically, maybe clean up the DNC, form a new party. Just yelling "Trump is stupid" and "Russia" and having protests over and over will ensure another re-election for him.