6 ms·

How a Russian Troll Fooled America

21 points by okket 9y ago

dogruck 9y ago
I do not believe that a single Twitter account, from some faceless, vapid entity (not verifiably connected to a real person) meaningfully impacted the election. Also, this argument ignores bots that were pro-HRC and anti-Trump.
- jimrandomh 9y ago
  A single fake/propaganda account doesn't have much impact, but this was part of a large disinformation campaign; the point of this is to analyze one facet of that campaign, to get a sense for how it worked as a whole. (As for pro-HRC/anti-Trump bots, I haven't seen any, nor have I heard of a foreign state mass-producing them.)
  - __s 9y ago
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Clinton+astroturfing+campaign https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Clinton+astroturfing+campaign https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4fupos/paid_digital_astroturfing_effort_by_correct_the https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4fupos...
    - kurthr 9y ago
      Huh... if those reports are true, they look like they were financed by HRC and not by a FOREIGN government. Do you have an example of the latter? That is the comparable example requested.
      - __s 9y ago
        I do not, should've mentioned these don't disagree with your foreign government point Foreign aide seems masked behind donations to the Clinton Foundation tho: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jul/07/fact-checking-donations-clinton-foundation http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jul/07/... Trump's even worse on this front; this is not in any way condoning him. I was more watching this dirt during the DNC primary
- kurthr 9y ago
  Great, you say that. So show me a pro-HRC bot with 130k followers on Twitter. Are you saying that bots with more followers are less relevant? I had learned that impact was ~N^2. Are you saying that only "meaningful" impacts on an election are bad? Is that only 10k votes or or 10? Are you really against all the Photo ID, registration, and voting controls since there are only some 10s of illegal in-person voters found in the last 17 years? http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665966.pdf http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665966.pdf Do you think that funding of election campaigns by foreign entities (and governments) is OK, even though it's against election laws? Why?
  - dogruck 9y ago
    Huh? You seem angry.
maltalex 9y ago
As heinous and improper this may be, I feel like "The Russians" are being used as a simple answer for Trump's election. Yes, it seems that they played a role, but was it a key role? Would have the elections gone to Hilary otherwise? I'm not saying that their actions are permissible, or that they should be tolerated. No. There should be a thorough investigation, and precautions should be taken to avoid such external influence in the future. But the story doesn't end (or rather doesn't start) with the Russians. There are deeper questions here. How is it that the elections ended up being between two candidates hated by the public? How did so many Americans chose to vote for a racist, lying bigot? Was it just the Russian influence? There were many forces at play here. While and blaming everything on a foreign country is convenient to some people, no one should accept such a simple narrative for something as complex as what happened during these elections.
- locopati 9y ago
  Since she won the popular vote by almost 3 million and since the margins of victory in important states were slim, it's fair to say that not much was needed to shift the results of the elections. Hated by the public? Each was hated by half the public who voted, which was only half of the potential voting public. Hard to draw any grand conclusions from that. Also, it's hard to say that the hatred of Clinton and the hatred of Trump are comparable. One was based on decades of propaganda with little concern for policy; the other based on a look at the candidate and their unprepraredness for office. Many forces - sure - you can always say that, but sometimes the reality is right there in front of us and, for whatever reasons, people don't want to acknowledge it.
  - maltalex 9y ago
    > it's fair to say that not much was needed to shift the results of the elections. Yes, the Russians contributed to that shift, but that's the small picture. How did we even get to a point in which Trump is so close to being elected? > Each was hated by half the public who voted, which was only half of the potential voting public. Hard to draw any grand conclusions from that. From fivethirtyeight.com's analysis titled "Americans’ Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking" (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-...): Part of the negativity voters feel toward Clinton and Trump probably has something to do with growing political polarization in our country. But polarization doesn’t explain everything. If Trump and Clinton’s strongly unfavorable ratings were simply a byproduct of polarized politics, you’d expect them to have high “strongly favorable” ratings too. They don’t. You can see this in their net strong favorability ratings (the “strongly favorable” rating minus the “strongly unfavorable” rating): No major party nominee before Clinton or Trump had a double-digit net negative “strong favorability” rating. Clinton’s would be the lowest ever, except for Trump. > Also, it's hard to say that the hatred of Clinton and the hatred of Trump are comparable. One was based on decades of propaganda with little concern for policy; the other based on a look at the candidate and their unprepraredness for office. Problem is, both viewpoints equal in the ballot box, regardless of their validity.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
I think a more interesting subject is how we allowed ourselves to become so gullible. I was once told by a campaign manager that you can get a vote to believe just about anything. The trick is to get them to believe it about 15 minutes before they walk into the voter booth.
boards2x 9y ago
The truth is that intellectualy the USA is an underdeveloped country. Once the uninformed (which is probably half the ooplulation) got access to a megaphone, they’ve drowned the conversation and were able to legitimize a candidate such as trump, which we believed can only get elected in countries featured in Ali G movies. The mentality in Alabama and other states in the south is not that different (to mean enlightened) than many places the west assumes are backwards. The only difference is the language they speak and the false messiah they follow.
Grazester 9y ago
This would be a good place to post this PBS documentary on Putin and his sentiments towards the U.S. and particularly Hillary https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-revenge/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-revenge/
- Overtonwindow 9y ago
  Be sure to watch both parts. Quite good.
RickJWag 9y ago
First, I wish the left-side flood of not-hacker-news-items would let up. Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is in full force here. About the Russian Troll: I am glad they took part, if it helped tip the election. Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie, Trump didn't cheat the primaries. Clinton is totally compromised morally. As for the loss to the Democratic party-- the DNC is now re-visiting the poisonous worship of Bill Clinton, (which occurred in spite of the group of women rightly accusing him.) Of course Hollywood is now also suffering from chickens coming home to roost. Once the Democrats (of which I am not) work through these issues and really align with the pro-diversity message they espouse, they will be stronger and better able to serve the American people. (As it was, it was just a bunch of hypocrisy.) America will be better off with a strong Democratic party. The GOP still needs it's reckoning.

21 points by okket 9y ago

I do not believe that a single Twitter account, from some faceless, vapid entity (not verifiably connected to a real person) meaningfully impacted the election. Also, this argument ignores bots that were pro-HRC and anti-Trump.

jimrandomh 9y ago
A single fake/propaganda account doesn't have much impact, but this was part of a large disinformation campaign; the point of this is to analyze one facet of that campaign, to get a sense for how it worked as a whole. (As for pro-HRC/anti-Trump bots, I haven't seen any, nor have I heard of a foreign state mass-producing them.)
- __s 9y ago
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Clinton+astroturfing+campaign https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Clinton+astroturfing+campaign https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4fupos/paid_digital_astroturfing_effort_by_correct_the https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4fupos...
  - kurthr 9y ago
    Huh... if those reports are true, they look like they were financed by HRC and not by a FOREIGN government. Do you have an example of the latter? That is the comparable example requested.
    - __s 9y ago
      I do not, should've mentioned these don't disagree with your foreign government point Foreign aide seems masked behind donations to the Clinton Foundation tho: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jul/07/fact-checking-donations-clinton-foundation http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jul/07/... Trump's even worse on this front; this is not in any way condoning him. I was more watching this dirt during the DNC primary
kurthr 9y ago
Great, you say that. So show me a pro-HRC bot with 130k followers on Twitter. Are you saying that bots with more followers are less relevant? I had learned that impact was ~N^2. Are you saying that only "meaningful" impacts on an election are bad? Is that only 10k votes or or 10? Are you really against all the Photo ID, registration, and voting controls since there are only some 10s of illegal in-person voters found in the last 17 years? http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665966.pdf http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665966.pdf Do you think that funding of election campaigns by foreign entities (and governments) is OK, even though it's against election laws? Why?
- dogruck 9y ago
  Huh? You seem angry.

maltalex 9y ago

As heinous and improper this may be, I feel like "The Russians" are being used as a simple answer for Trump's election. Yes, it seems that they played a role, but was it a key role? Would have the elections gone to Hilary otherwise? I'm not saying that their actions are permissible, or that they should be tolerated. No. There should be a thorough investigation, and precautions should be taken to avoid such external influence in the future. But the story doesn't end (or rather doesn't start) with the Russians. There are deeper questions here. How is it that the elections ended up being between two candidates hated by the public? How did so many Americans chose to vote for a racist, lying bigot? Was it just the Russian influence? There were many forces at play here. While and blaming everything on a foreign country is convenient to some people, no one should accept such a simple narrative for something as complex as what happened during these elections.

locopati 9y ago
Since she won the popular vote by almost 3 million and since the margins of victory in important states were slim, it's fair to say that not much was needed to shift the results of the elections. Hated by the public? Each was hated by half the public who voted, which was only half of the potential voting public. Hard to draw any grand conclusions from that. Also, it's hard to say that the hatred of Clinton and the hatred of Trump are comparable. One was based on decades of propaganda with little concern for policy; the other based on a look at the candidate and their unprepraredness for office. Many forces - sure - you can always say that, but sometimes the reality is right there in front of us and, for whatever reasons, people don't want to acknowledge it.
- maltalex 9y ago
  > it's fair to say that not much was needed to shift the results of the elections. Yes, the Russians contributed to that shift, but that's the small picture. How did we even get to a point in which Trump is so close to being elected? > Each was hated by half the public who voted, which was only half of the potential voting public. Hard to draw any grand conclusions from that. From fivethirtyeight.com's analysis titled "Americans’ Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking" (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-...): Part of the negativity voters feel toward Clinton and Trump probably has something to do with growing political polarization in our country. But polarization doesn’t explain everything. If Trump and Clinton’s strongly unfavorable ratings were simply a byproduct of polarized politics, you’d expect them to have high “strongly favorable” ratings too. They don’t. You can see this in their net strong favorability ratings (the “strongly favorable” rating minus the “strongly unfavorable” rating): No major party nominee before Clinton or Trump had a double-digit net negative “strong favorability” rating. Clinton’s would be the lowest ever, except for Trump. > Also, it's hard to say that the hatred of Clinton and the hatred of Trump are comparable. One was based on decades of propaganda with little concern for policy; the other based on a look at the candidate and their unprepraredness for office. Problem is, both viewpoints equal in the ballot box, regardless of their validity.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

I think a more interesting subject is how we allowed ourselves to become so gullible. I was once told by a campaign manager that you can get a vote to believe just about anything. The trick is to get them to believe it about 15 minutes before they walk into the voter booth.

boards2x 9y ago

The truth is that intellectualy the USA is an underdeveloped country. Once the uninformed (which is probably half the ooplulation) got access to a megaphone, they’ve drowned the conversation and were able to legitimize a candidate such as trump, which we believed can only get elected in countries featured in Ali G movies. The mentality in Alabama and other states in the south is not that different (to mean enlightened) than many places the west assumes are backwards. The only difference is the language they speak and the false messiah they follow.

Grazester 9y ago

This would be a good place to post this PBS documentary on Putin and his sentiments towards the U.S. and particularly Hillary https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-revenge/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-revenge/

Overtonwindow 9y ago
Be sure to watch both parts. Quite good.

RickJWag 9y ago

First, I wish the left-side flood of not-hacker-news-items would let up. Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is in full force here. About the Russian Troll: I am glad they took part, if it helped tip the election. Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie, Trump didn't cheat the primaries. Clinton is totally compromised morally. As for the loss to the Democratic party-- the DNC is now re-visiting the poisonous worship of Bill Clinton, (which occurred in spite of the group of women rightly accusing him.) Of course Hollywood is now also suffering from chickens coming home to roost. Once the Democrats (of which I am not) work through these issues and really align with the pro-diversity message they espouse, they will be stronger and better able to serve the American people. (As it was, it was just a bunch of hypocrisy.) America will be better off with a strong Democratic party. The GOP still needs it's reckoning.