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How Twitter pushed RT to spend big on 2016 US election
- trumpownsyou420 9y agonot a surprise. twitter will go down with the rest of the neo-nazi leftist trash.
- powertower 9y agoThat is more or less the main way the media in the US, the EU, and some other world regions, is operating right now. For each major story, they remove all the real details, even the context, and just present you with a well crafted narrative which itself is mostly supported only by promises of inside-knowledge, secret/anon sources, and "proofs" that are never released. Then after some time passes the details are re-introduced by the non-liars and the narrative collapses. Except nothing changes because the general public has already been conditioned to want to be lied to daily and just moves on to the next fake-news story.
- smoll 9y ago>They remove all the real details, even the context, and just present you a well crafted narrative that has no basis in reality. I don't normally comment on political topics, but who are you talking about here? Is the "they" in this sentence RT or Twitter? Both have huge incentives to misrepresent facts to make themselves look good. >Except nothing changes because the general public has already been conditioned to want to be lied to daily and just moves on to the next fake-news story. Sounds about right. I just assume both parties are lying here.
- bhhaskin 9y agoThey being the media. Journalistic integrity died years ago. We like to blame Russian for the last election outcome, but are quick to forget that mega corporations spent way more time and effort trying to sway the election. For some reason we are ok with Google trying to influence voters through recommends and search results, but aren't ok when Russian does the same thing using ads (on Google platforms). Google, Twitter, Facebook had no problem taking Russian money during the election.
- icebraining 9y agoAre we ok with and/or easy to forget about mega corporations trying to sway the elections? Why do you think so?
- bhhaskin 9y agoIt seems to be most people are focused on blaming Russian involvement instead of asking how much impact Google, Facebook and Twitter had on the election. It's the blame game and it's way easier to blame a foreign country.
- mistermann 9y agoIf Hillary won, no one would care. If they cared, the whole process would be under review for obvious corruption.
- danjoc 9y agoRussia rigged the election with a couple of hundred thousand dollars in propaganda. Clinton spent more than a million dollars on CTR alone. The Koch Brothers dumped over one billion dollars according to some articles I've seen. Either the Russians have vastly superior propaganda and probably in control of global politics or their influence in the US election is overstated.
- DashRattlesnake 9y agoThe scandalous thing isn't this scale or the effects of the Russian effort, but that it occurred at all. Russia, unlike those other actors, is not permitted to get involved in US elections in this way.
- megaman22 9y agoIt's incredibly naive to think that there aren't foreign parties involved in influencing elections and shifting public opinion; it's a tactic as old as civilization, and US intelligence agencies do it on a daily basis.
- coldtea 9y agoSo, like the US has been meddling with local politics all around the globe since forever, including supporting political parties, "NGOs" etc in Russia?
- travmatt 9y agoOr RIS broke into state election boards to get hyper accurate data on voter and voting patterns unavailable within legal means, broke into campaigns to find information they could construe as satanic (like child sex slave rings run out of pizzeria shops), and then colluded with Republicans to distribute their propaganda to the most low information voters they could find in swing states for maximum impact.
- vim_wannabe 9y agoCan someone link some of these "fake news articles" from rt.com? That sounds crazy, heh.
- everdev 9y agoDon't we have a bigger issue if ad money can swing an election? Where's the critical thought on the part of the electorate?
- FLUX-YOU 9y agoCritical thought doesn't make you immune to propaganda.
- moomin 9y agoThis is a really important point. Everyone thinks that they, personally, are immune to this sort of thing. Every scientific study suggests they’re wrong. The Mercers and Putins of the world do this because it’s cost-effective.
- rtx 9y agoTrue, as visibly in this comment section. Old people reading twitter flipped the election. Yes, I see the irony.
- mistermann 9y agoThe Mercers and Putins of the world do this because it’s cost-effective. An interesting comment if you think about it in the context of your prior paragraph.
- 1001101 9y ago> Every scientific study suggests they’re wrong. Which scientific studies? Interested.
- bcg1 9y agoCritical thought often requires intentional effort, even by those who value it. And many people that I come across do not even seem to value critical thought, especially when it comes to politics... to the contrary, there exists a movement promoting the idea that thinking is a practice that makes you some sort of elitist.
- 9y ago
- nimos 9y agoHas anyone seen what the promoted tweets were? Would be interesting to see which tweets got promoted. The twitter report says: "Based on our findings thus far, RT spent $274,100 in U.S. ads in 2016. In that year, the @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT accounts promoted 1,823 Tweets that definitely or potentially targeted the U.S. market. These campaigns were directed at followers of mainstream media and primarily promoted RT Tweets regarding news stories." Which doesn't seem particularly nefarious to me. Does RT have a political bend to their organization? Probably. What state funded news organization doesn't? It's 270k on stuff that "definitely or potentially" targeted Americans? What does potentially mean and what is the breakdown? What % actually had to do with the election? Also if I have the timeline correct Twitter bans RT from advertising two hours after they publish their side of the events?