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I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" or "interfering with the election." I also think the no

I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" or "interfering with the election." I also think the notion that there's a way to prevent external actors from influencing internal affairs in an ostensibly free and open republic in a networked world is somewhat... ill conceived: a democracy so fragile it needs a great firewall of some kind to protect its citizens from "fake" and "unhealthy" views is probably already on the road to failure. If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective. And of course that's not to mention all the inconsistent double standards. Where's the outrage over things like Confucius Institutes and other similar influence operations? And that's not even getting in to the whole "do as I say, not as I do" aspect, where we try to pretend that dictatorships and totalitarian states should see our pro-democracy pro-human rights initiatives and NGOs and VOA and such as perfectly fine and friendly and obviously different than RT, etc. The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well.

antidaily 9y ago
We don't need a great firewall, just Facebook and Twitter to get their fucking shit together. Also, there's more to charges this than just social engineering. They actually did hack voting commission data.
- dbatten 9y ago
  What do you mean by that? Filtering billions of posts, trying to figure out which ones are "real news" vs. "fake news," and which ones come from well-meaning vs. nefarious actors, AND doing so in a way that is not only politically neutral but also perceived as politically neutral is a MASSIVELY non-trivial problem. Even if you think the social networks should be trying to solve this problem (and some would argue that it's a hornets nest they would do well to avoid), acting as if they're being negligent or incompetent because they haven't figured it out already is a bit unfair.
  - antidaily 9y ago
    How about simple transparency in who's buying ads like tv and print have to go through?
    - dbatten 9y ago
      Again, what do you mean by that? Most (all?) Facebook ads already state which business page they're associated with. (I'm admittedly not on Facebook, but I have trafficked some ads for work.) If you're asserting that Facebook should say who's REALLY behind by the ads, you're basically asking for Facebook to hire a crack team of private investigators. Should they be responsible for figuring out that Nice Ad Buyers LLC is really a wholly-owned subsidiary of some other corporation, which some neo-nazi millionaire owns the controlling stake of?
      - antidaily 9y ago
        https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964952978657509376 https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964952978657509376 they’re smarter than you give them credit for. they just don’t do anything about it. got it?
gfodor 9y ago
If you consider this national discussion about foreign interference in elections as part of a national grieving process about the surprising outcome of a specific election, it makes a lot more sense and implies it is likely to pass once people have moved on.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Except for the fact that people interested in strategic matters have been discussing this and warning of the downsides since long before the electoral campaign in question.
- moorhosj 9y ago
  I’ve never heard of people being indicted as part of a grieving process. Isn’t it also possible that a bunch of people broke the law? If yes, then we should make sure to investigate that.
  - gfodor 9y ago
    Certainly, but there are plenty of crimes that go uninvestigated due to lack of resources driven by lack of public interest. In fact even within the very narrow realm of election interference you can see that we are only directly pursuing specific forms by specific countries. It's hard to imagine this situation emerging in a scenario where the events of Nov 2016 did not unfold the way that they did. In particular, if there was no potential hope that the winning candidate could potentially be found guilty of crimes that would result in impeachment, I doubt you'd see anywhere nearly as much public interest in this subject. Thought exercise: if Mueller cleared Trump of any wrongdoing today, do you think people would be waking up tomorrow with as much fervor to go after these Russians? Do you think people would not suddenly be searching for reasons to call into question the integrity of this investigation at that point, despite holding it up as of utmost importance to our democracy up to now? It seems obvious that public interest in these Russian hijinx would plummet if they were no longer potentially useful vectors towards achieving political goals.
    - moorhosj 9y ago
maxerickson 9y ago
Hypocrisy is the essential purpose of a nation-state.
- lolsal 9y ago
  Uh, could you elaborate? This seems like a totally nonsensical statement.
bllguo 9y ago
This is remarkably disingenuous. The Russians hacked into both political parties and leaked their information selectively to support their agenda. They even got access to voting rolls. There is no evidence AFAIK that they changed anything, but they should rightfully be charged for penetrating the US at all. EDIT: voter roll != voter systems... edited so I don't spread FUD. Don't want to distract from the main point. The success of Russia's efforts may be only a symptom of the problems in the US - you still have to treat the symptoms.
- justicezyx 9y ago
  You'll need to fix the corruption first, and then fixing the bad actor outside. Like an old Chinese proverb: Mosquito only sting the eggs already with cracks.
  - klodolph 9y ago
    That's unreasonable. There are a lot of people working on this… we can work against corruption and against undue foreign influence in parallel.
    - justicezyx 9y ago
      Those are not separate issues. The corruption is to a degree that anyone can influence US political system with comparably very insignificant cost. At this juncture, how can you fix the external influence while the internal is so eager to cooperate? Like a stick without support on ground, are you going to put a sign that no one should touch it, but how can you keep it stand? And what's the point of disallow people touching it, which I can blow it off using my mouth...
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    When someone points out two problems, you don't try to "order" which problems to be fixed first. Fix both of them. In any order. US has both a corruption problem (although less so than other countries IMO), AND an outside influence problem. There are 300+ million people in the country and a budget of over $3 Trillion / year. We can afford the resources to simultaneously fix both problems. There's absolutely no reason to fix things one at a time.
decacorn 9y ago
Blame the republicans for everything you just said. Go Blue November
tmaly 9y ago
I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the Citizens United ruling and you pair that with the implications of the 17th amendment you see there is a huge possibility to influence elections.
trgv 9y ago
I agree with you generally...the uproar over twitter bots and fake news stories has struck me as a little silly. At the same time, some Russian activities seem to have risen to the level of espionage. According to the article, Russian agents traveled around the US, posing as Americans, gathering information. The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies. Making a big deal over that stuff is hypocritical given US actions abroad over the past hundred years, but that's a separate issue. Maybe the US shouldn't be interfering in the elections of other countries, but every country probably has rules like these: https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ and every country seeks to minimize foreign influence on internal politics.
- pdx 9y ago
  > The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies. I remember the one after the election in NYC that was supposedly set up by BLM against Trump, but turned out to be organized by Russians on Facebook
  - toxican 9y ago
    Which only goes to show that nobody is "safe". Their goal is to sow chaos and there's no better way to do that than to play both sides at every opportunity.
- smsm42 9y ago
  > At the same time, some Russian activities seem to have risen to the level of espionage There has always been Russian espionage. Not only that - there has been Russian (or Soviet, same difference) agents in Manhattan project, high positions in State Department (see Alger Hiss) and so on. Recent kerfuffle has nothing on that. Russia sees itself as a geopolitical foe of the US, of course they are spying on the US. In fact, US spied on Germany, Britain and Israel (and Israel spied back on US as we know, others probably too but were not caught) - and those are close allies! Of course Russians would do the same. It's not something new that "have risen" recently. > The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies. So? US and US-related organizations funded and organized political and quasi-political activities in many countries. So do many other countries - EU finances a wide variety of NGOs that do all kinds of political campaigns, so does the US. All this fainting about "oh, Russians dare to have opinion about US politics and tell us about it using Facebook! Oh horrors! Our democracy is dead!" just sounds bizarre. Yeah, we live in a global world, Russians can have opinion about US politics, and Americans can have opinion about Russian politics, and both can publish real opinions or any crap they like on Facebook. Making a conspiracy of the century out of it is insane.
Thriptic 9y ago
I am inclined to agree with you. If this is limited to Russia waging a propaganda campaign, even if it involved selectively hacking a political organization and data dumping, then it speaks volumes as to how poorly educated and insulated from reality our citizens are. That is a deep structural problem which is our fault, and it can't be fixed simply by firewalling off the country from propaganda or demanding that Facebook filter content for validity. That being said, if Russia is able to interfere with voter registration, voting equipment, or state election boards, that is a very different problem which needs to be addressed aggressively.
- Glyptodon 9y ago
  100% agree with you.
raverbashing 9y ago
Your post shows a very idealistic position. It assumes that all ideas come from a legitimate point and are worth discussing. But guess what, the person that came up with the anti-vaxxer BS just wanted more money, and fuck whoever dies because of it. It's not an issue with lack of education. BS is easier to produce than it is to refute. That's the fundamental problem All democracies are subject to propaganda (be either external OR internal) > were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population Both parties are responsible for that, (though I'd say R makes it worse usually) but even then, populations love to shoot themselves in the foot
jdoliner 9y ago
The other, more immediate, problem with this type of thinking is that it's unlikely to change anyone's mind. I doubt that very many Trump voters will read this news and think: "I was influenced by Russia when I voted for Trump." They, like anyone casting a vote, felt they were voting for someone for their own reasons based on their own research. The most common reason I've heard for people voting for Trump is that they felt it was the only way to make their voices heard. Saying that no, actually the only voices that's being heard here is Russia's and thus it's illegitimate seems likely to make people feel the same way in 2020.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  While Russians had a part, Trump was not completely propped up by Russian propaganda support. It's not unreasonable that many Trump voters had no or little contact with fake profiles run by Russians, and were not significantly influenced by it. But we can't really know that without tracking down all of their activity. I abhor Trump, but he had plenty of organic and authentic support here in America. I don't think we'll ever find a smoking gun that says "Trump wouldn't have been president or won the primary if it weren't for this one Russian effort" (but stranger things have happened).
  - pdx 9y ago
    It seems that the goal was to promote discontent in general. There were anti-Trump activities as well, such as the post-election NYC protest set up on Facebook.
    - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
      They switched to that after they won, but before the election, they only supported Trump and discredited Hillary it seems. It would be weird if they had supported Hillary in any significant way before the election.
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    As close as modern elections have been in the US, you don’t need to prop, just nudge.
Zigurd 9y ago
Even stipulating all that, which I would not do, the purpose of this indictment is not to bring these Russians to justice, nor to criminalize "fake news." The purpose is to keep them out of the US, out of US and allies' banks accounts, and, quite possibly, to set up other parties to be "unindicted co-conspirators."
narrator 9y ago
The litmus test for whether someone is controlled by Russian trolls is whether they supported Hillary for president last election. She spent more on her election and got more endorsements from the mainstream patriotic media. She should have won and Russian trolls successfully remote controlled almost half the country to defeat her! You see the American people don't control their own minds. They only believe what they see and hear. Thus they should only see snd hear patriotic messages from the patriotic Hillary backing media or they will become confused. They are all little children and cannot tell what's fake and what's real. They must learn about the outside world from approved sources to prevent... confusion... Geez... Why do we even have elections? We should just have a panel of anonymous leakers to the Washington Post choose who gets into office.
- vthallam 9y ago
  People lost on traditional media outlets since sometime and they now only rely on social media to get their news. So it is easy to attempt to influence the public with fake news and a question mark at the end. Buzzfeed ran a profile of a news website which used to write border line fake news and made a ton of money.
  - narrator 9y ago
    What about all the Washington Post and New York times articles with anonymous sources? How do you know that isn't all fake? Are we now only to blindly trust specifically whitelisted authorities that relies on unknown sources? Why keep playing around? Just put these unknown sources in charge of everything. Maybe the public should directly elect the people behind "anonymous sources say" since they largely determine the news these days and thus what people believe and who they vote for anyway.
cryptoz 9y ago
Have you seen the recent NRA videos? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGOQFf9VCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGOQFf9VCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wk4F3_qtf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wk4F3_qtf8 The FBI is investigating Russia for funnelling money to NRA for purposes of inciting violence and hatred in the USA. These are Russian efforts to hurt Americans. Do you really consider this okay behaviour by another country and our own? This is absolutely akin to hacking the brains of Americans. This is election hacking and it is a real physical threat to American Democracy.
Asdfbla 9y ago
I don't disagree with you in principle and I don't think it's at all clear that the Russian boogeyman had the significant influence on election results in the west that many media outlets pretend, but at the same time the idea that a hypothetical "true" democracy should be able to take all misinformation campaigns thrown at it seems to be heavily idealistic. I don't think we really have any historical basis to make that claim since there was never such a tool for spreading global misinformation as the internet before. Maybe democracies won't be able to take it? Maybe they can, who knows. (I am somewhat optimistic though since the radical election results in the west can plausibly be explained even without foreign meddling.)
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Radical election results are not a recent problem suddenly brought about by the internet. Hitler didn't rely on foreign meddling on the internet to get elected. This is not a new problem, and we (the US) would be wise to look at historical breakdowns of the democratic process to understand how they happened and take active actions to prevent it from happening again. (I'm somewhat pessimistic that we won't, and it'll happen again. I just hope it's not within my lifetime)
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  The part that was wholly unexpected was that the leadership of a political party would embrace rather than reject illegal foreign intervention when they had the chance. And for those that think GOP leadership didn't know about it, there was leaked audio that certainly suggests Paul Ryan was aware: > “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia. > Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.” > Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/house-majority-leader-to-colleagues-in-2016-i-think-putin-pays-trump/2017/05/17/515f6f8a-3aff-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/house...
anigbrowl 9y ago
The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well. Then you need to have some sort of standards for how that is conducted or how truth is established. If people are fed a constant barrage of lies of lise then some portion of them will believe in those, and history furnishes us with numerous examples of foolish collective behavior when a sufficient portion of the population becomes enamoured of a bad idea. A friend of mine observed last year that it's easier to weaponize fiction than to monetize truth in a market economy, because the truth includes things that many people don't want to hear.
disease 9y ago
>If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective. A well-educated population capable of critical thinking is a threat to a ruling class that aims to take as much as they can from the world while pawning off all of society's problems on whatever boogeyman they see fit.
jacob019 9y ago
It should be dealt with quietly, but we can't have foreign governments paying agents to undermine our interests on our soil regardless of whether it is working or not.
galieos_ghost 9y ago
Russia is a meme, the only legit threat to the US is China. The fact nobody talks about them shows how deeply they have infiltrated our media and government. Also interesting that Steele wasn't indicted, the guy is a foreign actor who took money to create a dossier with intent to influence our election. Why not Soros as well? He's a foreigner who donated 10s of millions not only for ads but for astroturfing online communities via Shareblue and Correct the Record and stoking violence and destruction by busing in agitators to protests.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  Isn't their economy like 70% of Italy's? Just wait until the Italians want to influence our elections! Meanwhile, all of the studios are tripping over themselves to keep the Chinese market happy and unoffended.
marshray 9y ago
> I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" You realize you're on a site named "Hacker News", using the term to refer to influence operations, right? > If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective. And this is exactly what classic Soviet/Russian propaganda wants you to conclude: "So in practice I guess the 'Democracy' system is no better than the Soviet Communist/Putinist system after all."
- 8note 9y ago
  thats a big leap you're making from "we need better a better engaged and more knowledgeable populace with a higher standard of living" to "we should scrap democracy and become Soviets"
  - moorhosj 9y ago
    Almost as big of a leap as putting something that was never said in quotes.
siidooloo 9y ago
In a free society you can’t stop influence and propaganda. But, the allegations in the indictment include things like stealing real people’s identities and using them to fay for political advertisements. These are things we should be able to stop.
pjc50 9y ago
> The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed Unfortunately this is as obsolete as medieval ideas of chivalry and trial by combat in the age of nuclear weapons and poison gas. In a two-party democracy, there might be some stable equilibrium where the parties agree not to wreck civic trust and institutions because they have to live there. This won't survive a third party coming in and releasing the informational equivalent of toxic gas, because they don't care if it makes peaceful democratic government impossible.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government (or the American people). It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3 of the indictment [1]) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90). [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Research-Agency-Indictment.html#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a] [a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-for-conspiracy-2498f173-ad1a-4609-b233-c40ea0c041dc.html https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...
dragonwriter 9y ago
> I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" or "interfering with the election." The campaign was not limited to propaganda, it included (that has been identified so far) hacking voter records in a majority of states and at least attempting to alter them in some. It was absolutely both hacking and attempting to interfere with the election.

antidaily 9y ago

We don't need a great firewall, just Facebook and Twitter to get their fucking shit together. Also, there's more to charges this than just social engineering. They actually did hack voting commission data.

dbatten 9y ago
What do you mean by that? Filtering billions of posts, trying to figure out which ones are "real news" vs. "fake news," and which ones come from well-meaning vs. nefarious actors, AND doing so in a way that is not only politically neutral but also perceived as politically neutral is a MASSIVELY non-trivial problem. Even if you think the social networks should be trying to solve this problem (and some would argue that it's a hornets nest they would do well to avoid), acting as if they're being negligent or incompetent because they haven't figured it out already is a bit unfair.
- antidaily 9y ago
  How about simple transparency in who's buying ads like tv and print have to go through?
  - dbatten 9y ago
    Again, what do you mean by that? Most (all?) Facebook ads already state which business page they're associated with. (I'm admittedly not on Facebook, but I have trafficked some ads for work.) If you're asserting that Facebook should say who's REALLY behind by the ads, you're basically asking for Facebook to hire a crack team of private investigators. Should they be responsible for figuring out that Nice Ad Buyers LLC is really a wholly-owned subsidiary of some other corporation, which some neo-nazi millionaire owns the controlling stake of?
    - antidaily 9y ago
      https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964952978657509376 https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964952978657509376 they’re smarter than you give them credit for. they just don’t do anything about it. got it?

gfodor 9y ago

If you consider this national discussion about foreign interference in elections as part of a national grieving process about the surprising outcome of a specific election, it makes a lot more sense and implies it is likely to pass once people have moved on.

anigbrowl 9y ago
Except for the fact that people interested in strategic matters have been discussing this and warning of the downsides since long before the electoral campaign in question.
moorhosj 9y ago
I’ve never heard of people being indicted as part of a grieving process. Isn’t it also possible that a bunch of people broke the law? If yes, then we should make sure to investigate that.
- gfodor 9y ago
  Certainly, but there are plenty of crimes that go uninvestigated due to lack of resources driven by lack of public interest. In fact even within the very narrow realm of election interference you can see that we are only directly pursuing specific forms by specific countries. It's hard to imagine this situation emerging in a scenario where the events of Nov 2016 did not unfold the way that they did. In particular, if there was no potential hope that the winning candidate could potentially be found guilty of crimes that would result in impeachment, I doubt you'd see anywhere nearly as much public interest in this subject. Thought exercise: if Mueller cleared Trump of any wrongdoing today, do you think people would be waking up tomorrow with as much fervor to go after these Russians? Do you think people would not suddenly be searching for reasons to call into question the integrity of this investigation at that point, despite holding it up as of utmost importance to our democracy up to now? It seems obvious that public interest in these Russian hijinx would plummet if they were no longer potentially useful vectors towards achieving political goals.
  - moorhosj 9y ago

maxerickson 9y ago

Hypocrisy is the essential purpose of a nation-state.

lolsal 9y ago
Uh, could you elaborate? This seems like a totally nonsensical statement.

bllguo 9y ago

This is remarkably disingenuous. The Russians hacked into both political parties and leaked their information selectively to support their agenda. They even got access to voting rolls. There is no evidence AFAIK that they changed anything, but they should rightfully be charged for penetrating the US at all. EDIT: voter roll != voter systems... edited so I don't spread FUD. Don't want to distract from the main point. The success of Russia's efforts may be only a symptom of the problems in the US - you still have to treat the symptoms.

justicezyx 9y ago
You'll need to fix the corruption first, and then fixing the bad actor outside. Like an old Chinese proverb: Mosquito only sting the eggs already with cracks.
- klodolph 9y ago
  That's unreasonable. There are a lot of people working on this… we can work against corruption and against undue foreign influence in parallel.
  - justicezyx 9y ago
    Those are not separate issues. The corruption is to a degree that anyone can influence US political system with comparably very insignificant cost. At this juncture, how can you fix the external influence while the internal is so eager to cooperate? Like a stick without support on ground, are you going to put a sign that no one should touch it, but how can you keep it stand? And what's the point of disallow people touching it, which I can blow it off using my mouth...
- dragontamer 9y ago
  When someone points out two problems, you don't try to "order" which problems to be fixed first. Fix both of them. In any order. US has both a corruption problem (although less so than other countries IMO), AND an outside influence problem. There are 300+ million people in the country and a budget of over $3 Trillion / year. We can afford the resources to simultaneously fix both problems. There's absolutely no reason to fix things one at a time.

decacorn 9y ago

Blame the republicans for everything you just said. Go Blue November

tmaly 9y ago

I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the Citizens United ruling and you pair that with the implications of the 17th amendment you see there is a huge possibility to influence elections.

trgv 9y ago

I agree with you generally...the uproar over twitter bots and fake news stories has struck me as a little silly. At the same time, some Russian activities seem to have risen to the level of espionage. According to the article, Russian agents traveled around the US, posing as Americans, gathering information. The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies. Making a big deal over that stuff is hypocritical given US actions abroad over the past hundred years, but that's a separate issue. Maybe the US shouldn't be interfering in the elections of other countries, but every country probably has rules like these: https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ and every country seeks to minimize foreign influence on internal politics.

pdx 9y ago
> The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies. I remember the one after the election in NYC that was supposedly set up by BLM against Trump, but turned out to be organized by Russians on Facebook
- toxican 9y ago
  Which only goes to show that nobody is "safe". Their goal is to sow chaos and there's no better way to do that than to play both sides at every opportunity.
smsm42 9y ago
> At the same time, some Russian activities seem to have risen to the level of espionage There has always been Russian espionage. Not only that - there has been Russian (or Soviet, same difference) agents in Manhattan project, high positions in State Department (see Alger Hiss) and so on. Recent kerfuffle has nothing on that. Russia sees itself as a geopolitical foe of the US, of course they are spying on the US. In fact, US spied on Germany, Britain and Israel (and Israel spied back on US as we know, others probably too but were not caught) - and those are close allies! Of course Russians would do the same. It's not something new that "have risen" recently. > The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies. So? US and US-related organizations funded and organized political and quasi-political activities in many countries. So do many other countries - EU finances a wide variety of NGOs that do all kinds of political campaigns, so does the US. All this fainting about "oh, Russians dare to have opinion about US politics and tell us about it using Facebook! Oh horrors! Our democracy is dead!" just sounds bizarre. Yeah, we live in a global world, Russians can have opinion about US politics, and Americans can have opinion about Russian politics, and both can publish real opinions or any crap they like on Facebook. Making a conspiracy of the century out of it is insane.

Thriptic 9y ago

I am inclined to agree with you. If this is limited to Russia waging a propaganda campaign, even if it involved selectively hacking a political organization and data dumping, then it speaks volumes as to how poorly educated and insulated from reality our citizens are. That is a deep structural problem which is our fault, and it can't be fixed simply by firewalling off the country from propaganda or demanding that Facebook filter content for validity. That being said, if Russia is able to interfere with voter registration, voting equipment, or state election boards, that is a very different problem which needs to be addressed aggressively.

Glyptodon 9y ago
100% agree with you.

raverbashing 9y ago

Your post shows a very idealistic position. It assumes that all ideas come from a legitimate point and are worth discussing. But guess what, the person that came up with the anti-vaxxer BS just wanted more money, and fuck whoever dies because of it. It's not an issue with lack of education. BS is easier to produce than it is to refute. That's the fundamental problem All democracies are subject to propaganda (be either external OR internal) > were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population Both parties are responsible for that, (though I'd say R makes it worse usually) but even then, populations love to shoot themselves in the foot

jdoliner 9y ago

The other, more immediate, problem with this type of thinking is that it's unlikely to change anyone's mind. I doubt that very many Trump voters will read this news and think: "I was influenced by Russia when I voted for Trump." They, like anyone casting a vote, felt they were voting for someone for their own reasons based on their own research. The most common reason I've heard for people voting for Trump is that they felt it was the only way to make their voices heard. Saying that no, actually the only voices that's being heard here is Russia's and thus it's illegitimate seems likely to make people feel the same way in 2020.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago
While Russians had a part, Trump was not completely propped up by Russian propaganda support. It's not unreasonable that many Trump voters had no or little contact with fake profiles run by Russians, and were not significantly influenced by it. But we can't really know that without tracking down all of their activity. I abhor Trump, but he had plenty of organic and authentic support here in America. I don't think we'll ever find a smoking gun that says "Trump wouldn't have been president or won the primary if it weren't for this one Russian effort" (but stranger things have happened).
- pdx 9y ago
  It seems that the goal was to promote discontent in general. There were anti-Trump activities as well, such as the post-election NYC protest set up on Facebook.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    They switched to that after they won, but before the election, they only supported Trump and discredited Hillary it seems. It would be weird if they had supported Hillary in any significant way before the election.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  As close as modern elections have been in the US, you don’t need to prop, just nudge.

Zigurd 9y ago

Even stipulating all that, which I would not do, the purpose of this indictment is not to bring these Russians to justice, nor to criminalize "fake news." The purpose is to keep them out of the US, out of US and allies' banks accounts, and, quite possibly, to set up other parties to be "unindicted co-conspirators."

narrator 9y ago

The litmus test for whether someone is controlled by Russian trolls is whether they supported Hillary for president last election. She spent more on her election and got more endorsements from the mainstream patriotic media. She should have won and Russian trolls successfully remote controlled almost half the country to defeat her! You see the American people don't control their own minds. They only believe what they see and hear. Thus they should only see snd hear patriotic messages from the patriotic Hillary backing media or they will become confused. They are all little children and cannot tell what's fake and what's real. They must learn about the outside world from approved sources to prevent... confusion... Geez... Why do we even have elections? We should just have a panel of anonymous leakers to the Washington Post choose who gets into office.

vthallam 9y ago
People lost on traditional media outlets since sometime and they now only rely on social media to get their news. So it is easy to attempt to influence the public with fake news and a question mark at the end. Buzzfeed ran a profile of a news website which used to write border line fake news and made a ton of money.
- narrator 9y ago
  What about all the Washington Post and New York times articles with anonymous sources? How do you know that isn't all fake? Are we now only to blindly trust specifically whitelisted authorities that relies on unknown sources? Why keep playing around? Just put these unknown sources in charge of everything. Maybe the public should directly elect the people behind "anonymous sources say" since they largely determine the news these days and thus what people believe and who they vote for anyway.

cryptoz 9y ago

Have you seen the recent NRA videos? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGOQFf9VCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGOQFf9VCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wk4F3_qtf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wk4F3_qtf8 The FBI is investigating Russia for funnelling money to NRA for purposes of inciting violence and hatred in the USA. These are Russian efforts to hurt Americans. Do you really consider this okay behaviour by another country and our own? This is absolutely akin to hacking the brains of Americans. This is election hacking and it is a real physical threat to American Democracy.

Asdfbla 9y ago

I don't disagree with you in principle and I don't think it's at all clear that the Russian boogeyman had the significant influence on election results in the west that many media outlets pretend, but at the same time the idea that a hypothetical "true" democracy should be able to take all misinformation campaigns thrown at it seems to be heavily idealistic. I don't think we really have any historical basis to make that claim since there was never such a tool for spreading global misinformation as the internet before. Maybe democracies won't be able to take it? Maybe they can, who knows. (I am somewhat optimistic though since the radical election results in the west can plausibly be explained even without foreign meddling.)

craftyguy 9y ago
Radical election results are not a recent problem suddenly brought about by the internet. Hitler didn't rely on foreign meddling on the internet to get elected. This is not a new problem, and we (the US) would be wise to look at historical breakdowns of the democratic process to understand how they happened and take active actions to prevent it from happening again. (I'm somewhat pessimistic that we won't, and it'll happen again. I just hope it's not within my lifetime)
TAForObvReasons 9y ago
The part that was wholly unexpected was that the leadership of a political party would embrace rather than reject illegal foreign intervention when they had the chance. And for those that think GOP leadership didn't know about it, there was leaked audio that certainly suggests Paul Ryan was aware: > “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia. > Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.” > Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/house-majority-leader-to-colleagues-in-2016-i-think-putin-pays-trump/2017/05/17/515f6f8a-3aff-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/house...

anigbrowl 9y ago

The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well. Then you need to have some sort of standards for how that is conducted or how truth is established. If people are fed a constant barrage of lies of lise then some portion of them will believe in those, and history furnishes us with numerous examples of foolish collective behavior when a sufficient portion of the population becomes enamoured of a bad idea. A friend of mine observed last year that it's easier to weaponize fiction than to monetize truth in a market economy, because the truth includes things that many people don't want to hear.

disease 9y ago

>If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective. A well-educated population capable of critical thinking is a threat to a ruling class that aims to take as much as they can from the world while pawning off all of society's problems on whatever boogeyman they see fit.

jacob019 9y ago

It should be dealt with quietly, but we can't have foreign governments paying agents to undermine our interests on our soil regardless of whether it is working or not.

galieos_ghost 9y ago

Russia is a meme, the only legit threat to the US is China. The fact nobody talks about them shows how deeply they have infiltrated our media and government. Also interesting that Steele wasn't indicted, the guy is a foreign actor who took money to create a dossier with intent to influence our election. Why not Soros as well? He's a foreigner who donated 10s of millions not only for ads but for astroturfing online communities via Shareblue and Correct the Record and stoking violence and destruction by busing in agitators to protests.

jstewartmobile 9y ago
Isn't their economy like 70% of Italy's? Just wait until the Italians want to influence our elections! Meanwhile, all of the studios are tripping over themselves to keep the Chinese market happy and unoffended.

marshray 9y ago

> I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" You realize you're on a site named "Hacker News", using the term to refer to influence operations, right? > If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective. And this is exactly what classic Soviet/Russian propaganda wants you to conclude: "So in practice I guess the 'Democracy' system is no better than the Soviet Communist/Putinist system after all."

8note 9y ago
thats a big leap you're making from "we need better a better engaged and more knowledgeable populace with a higher standard of living" to "we should scrap democracy and become Soviets"
- moorhosj 9y ago
  Almost as big of a leap as putting something that was never said in quotes.

siidooloo 9y ago

In a free society you can’t stop influence and propaganda. But, the allegations in the indictment include things like stealing real people’s identities and using them to fay for political advertisements. These are things we should be able to stop.

pjc50 9y ago

> The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed Unfortunately this is as obsolete as medieval ideas of chivalry and trial by combat in the age of nuclear weapons and poison gas. In a two-party democracy, there might be some stable equilibrium where the parties agree not to wreck civic trust and institutions because they have to live there. This won't survive a third party coming in and releasing the informational equivalent of toxic gas, because they don't care if it makes peaceful democratic government impossible.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government (or the American people). It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3 of the indictment [1]) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90). [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Research-Agency-Indictment.html#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a] [a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-for-conspiracy-2498f173-ad1a-4609-b233-c40ea0c041dc.html https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...

dragonwriter 9y ago

> I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" or "interfering with the election." The campaign was not limited to propaganda, it included (that has been identified so far) hacking voter records in a majority of states and at least attempting to alter them in some. It was absolutely both hacking and attempting to interfere with the election.