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Wasn’t Russia responsible for spending $100k or so on ads on Facebook? Didn’t Hillary spend $1B on her media buy? This reads like clickbait to me. I didn’t v

Wasn’t Russia responsible for spending $100k or so on ads on Facebook? Didn’t Hillary spend $1B on her media buy? This reads like clickbait to me. I didn’t vote for Trump but he’s demonstrably reducing government size and put a strict constitutionalist on the Supreme Court. The media needs to stop with sensationalist headlines like Russia alone caused Hillary to lose.

gipp 9y ago
I feel like it's a law on HN that the first comments criticizing the article are always actually in complete agreement with the article, and either didn't read it or completely misread it. Every time, that happens.
BayesStreet 9y ago
The irony of this quote in the intro is palpable. "They reveal a society that is painfully divided, gullible to misinformation, dazzled by sensationalism, ..."
daveguy 9y ago
Well, considering $1 spent on a US election by a foreign power is illegal the comparative ad buys of the campaigns themselves aren't relevant. Also, the 0.1MM estimate from Facebook is a severe underestimate. Twitter id'ed ~20x that.
- adventured 9y ago
  There's also nothing new about that. The 1996 Clinton Campaign broke the law by illegally taking piles of foreign Chinese money. The foreign money scandals have followed the Clintons for decades, which has seen several of the money runners arrested. Naturally nobody on the left has ever cared about any of that.
adventured 9y ago
It's a combination of clickbait and residual election rage (blame offloading). Hillary spent ~$2.2 billion on her total campaign start to finish and ran one of the worst campaigns in modern US history. She lost a very easy state like Wisconsin, a semi-easy state like Pennsylvania and nearly lost New Hampshire and Minnesota (states Obama took soundly). Trump spent a third as much across his entire Presidential campaign. There's definitely some democracy destruction going on alright, with Russia and Silicon Valley low on the list of issues. Russia has been tampering with US elections as long as the US has been tampering with Russian elections, it goes back to before WW2. Nothing is going to stop world powers from messing with each other. The US has been screwing with Putin's Russia when it comes to elections, since he has been in power. That's not to ignore Putin's authoritarian rule or its abuses, it's a fact of what the US has been doing for many decades: aggressive meddling in Russian politics. Why wouldn't Russia meddle in US politics? It's fair game. The hysteria is about control and regulation, it's not about $100k in Russia ad spend, that's the boogeyman necessary to implement the changes.

gipp 9y ago

I feel like it's a law on HN that the first comments criticizing the article are always actually in complete agreement with the article, and either didn't read it or completely misread it. Every time, that happens.

BayesStreet 9y ago

The irony of this quote in the intro is palpable. "They reveal a society that is painfully divided, gullible to misinformation, dazzled by sensationalism, ..."

daveguy 9y ago

Well, considering $1 spent on a US election by a foreign power is illegal the comparative ad buys of the campaigns themselves aren't relevant. Also, the 0.1MM estimate from Facebook is a severe underestimate. Twitter id'ed ~20x that.

adventured 9y ago
There's also nothing new about that. The 1996 Clinton Campaign broke the law by illegally taking piles of foreign Chinese money. The foreign money scandals have followed the Clintons for decades, which has seen several of the money runners arrested. Naturally nobody on the left has ever cared about any of that.

adventured 9y ago

It's a combination of clickbait and residual election rage (blame offloading). Hillary spent ~$2.2 billion on her total campaign start to finish and ran one of the worst campaigns in modern US history. She lost a very easy state like Wisconsin, a semi-easy state like Pennsylvania and nearly lost New Hampshire and Minnesota (states Obama took soundly). Trump spent a third as much across his entire Presidential campaign. There's definitely some democracy destruction going on alright, with Russia and Silicon Valley low on the list of issues. Russia has been tampering with US elections as long as the US has been tampering with Russian elections, it goes back to before WW2. Nothing is going to stop world powers from messing with each other. The US has been screwing with Putin's Russia when it comes to elections, since he has been in power. That's not to ignore Putin's authoritarian rule or its abuses, it's a fact of what the US has been doing for many decades: aggressive meddling in Russian politics. Why wouldn't Russia meddle in US politics? It's fair game. The hysteria is about control and regulation, it's not about $100k in Russia ad spend, that's the boogeyman necessary to implement the changes.