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The election was won by a very slim margin. The core of Trump's support may have been with him regardless but they weren't enough to win. It's the actions on th

The election was won by a very slim margin. The core of Trump's support may have been with him regardless but they weren't enough to win. It's the actions on the margin that matter here. Also, as other's have pointed out, there are a lot of other problems with social media in general and Facebook in particular. Russian meddling in the election is the spark that is lighting the fire but the fuel was already there. (That last sentence optimistic to an extent that might not be warranted).

foxh0und 9y ago
Exactly, he won the election thanks to 80000 votes in three states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/?utm_term=.827af77a0a2d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...
- freejulian 9y ago
  Sure, the margin was slim, but Hillary has no one to blame but herself. Scapegoating Facebook keeps all of Hillary’s misdeeds out of the limelight. Perhaps if she was a better candidate I wouldn’t have wrote in Bernie. I, for one, am happy to have Trump over her. Edit: ah yes, let me feel the downvotes hackernews. We can’t have anyone disliking Hillary here!
  - grumdan 9y ago
    Your comment doesn't actually add anything to this conversation, so regardless of one's position on Trump vs. Hillary, the downvotes are justified. All you said was a vague commonplace sentiment that has very little to do with the topic at hand.
    - stochastic_monk 9y ago
      Additionally, “at least it’s not Hillary” is a pretty baseless reason without supporting arguments. The majority of Americans would vastly prefer her, so please explain your point if you aim to be taken seriously. This isn’t reddit.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - drharby 9y ago
    Why edit tag when you are not even annotating what you edit? Your original post was nothing as it is now. You are being grossly deceptive, and this is coming from a guy who loves to play devils advocate on hn
- nilkn 9y ago
  Even applying such retroactive analysis to determine the smallest set of people who could change their votes so as to alter the election result, that doesn't imply anything about why Trump voters voted for Trump. That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc.
  - heartbreak 9y ago
    > That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc. At the risk of engaging in a debate I don’t want to participate in, is this not building a strawman? When I purchase a product after viewing a targeted advertisement for that product, no reasonable person would claim I’d been brainwashed. One might, however, claim I’d been influenced by the advertisement.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - nilkn 9y ago
      This should probably be a response to fareesh's top-level post. My comment was just to say that Trump's margin of victory -- however you want to analyze it or state it -- doesn't have any bearing on what motivated Trump voters and isn't even relevant in the context of fareesh's comment.
- lulmerchant 9y ago
  Actually, he won thanks to ~63,000,000 votes. You’re also trying to make it sound like there was something uniquely nefarious about his campaign. He used the same marketing tactics that all recent campaigns have used. The same tactics that Obama was widely praised for in 2012. He won because voters liked him more.
  - lgregg 9y ago
    * he won thanks to 304 electoral votes and ~3,000,000 less popular votes.
    - lulmerchant 9y ago
      Neither candidate was campaigning for a popular vote, they were both campaigning to win the electoral college. Which Trump did because ~63,000,000 Americans decided, purely of their own free will, that he was the better candidate. No matter how much you try to retroactively gerrymander the outcome, both candidates were playing on a level playing field, one of them won and one of them lost. It’s really a testament to democracy that an outsider candidate can prevail over the amount of establishment support Hillary had.
  - wisdomsf 9y ago
    There's so much wrong with this comment. Correct, he received ~63m votes. Hillary received 65.85m votes. He won because our presidential election system is based on an electoral college (which may be debated as a plus or minus). But that also means certain states have a disproportionate amount of representation with respect to their population. Please don't delude yourself or at least attempt to be honest. Races at the county and state level matter a lot. It matters that outside of a couple of states, the winner take all electoral system can have a significant impact on elections. Yes, those are the rules that have been established, that both parties are privy to when developing their campaign strategy. But let's not reduce that to "oh, one person won because people liked them more."
    - lulmerchant 9y ago
freejulian 9y ago
There was no “Russian meddling” in the election. Stop parroting nonsense without evidence. Hillary did cheat though. Her campaign directly collaborated with correct the record - last time I checked coordinating with a super pac was illegal. She also directly worked with the media to spread progaganda. Thank god Trump won. Hillary would have been more of the same. Also, it’s hilarious that we’ve all stopped caring about Citzens United now. Corporations influencing our elections is A-OK!
- tree_of_item 9y ago
  We've established beyond a doubt by now that there was, in fact, "Russian meddling" in the election. It's incredible that someone could still deny this.
  - freejulian 9y ago
    Really? Cool! I’m sure you won’t have any troubles pointing me to some evidence then! Let’s see it... Also, I’m not alone in this, notable journalists such as Glenn Greenwald are also asking for evidence.
    - tree_of_item 9y ago
      Are you just not paying attention to the Mueller investigation? There's like five guilty pleas by now. Is that just a nothing burger? Seriously, what do you think that's all about? If you want a timeline of events you can go here[0] or here[1], but something tells me you won't accept these... [0]: https://www.politico.com/trump-russia-ties-scandal-guide/timeline-of-events https://www.politico.com/trump-russia-ties-scandal-guide/tim... [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/05/a-so-far-complete-timeline-of-the-investigation-into-trump-and-russia/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/05/a...
      - dingo_bat 9y ago
        Can you spell it out? How did Russia "hack" the election? Please try to be specific. If I wanted random news stories, I'd google them.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
It's the actions on the margin that matter here. Just think of what this whole story (Foreign meddling) says about these marginal voters in that case: That they were so easily swayed, that they decided to vote ostensibly against their own better judgement simply by being shown a series of ads to influence their emotions. Something is very wrong with voter education if it's that easy to sway a certain influential population of voters.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Or they really disliked both candidates, so a small push could send them in either direction. Just as an example. It's pretty difficult to make meaningful wide-ranging inferences about the voter populations this way.
  - ventonMoore 9y ago
    ...or it's not that voters were swayed by anything at all, and lots of people voted for an unproductive celebrity for their own reasons. In the months and weeks approaching election day, I was struck numerous times by the reality that each political faction was profoundly disconnected from the other, in media consumption silos so different that if you happened to drift from one conversation to another, it felt like crossing an ocean and entering a distant country. And to me, it was obvious that this social rift had calcified during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Somehow, amid the victory of the Obama presidency, left wing democrats simply felt as though their job was done, they could die happy, and anything else they imagined as natural was a foregone conclusion of the retirement they were set to sail into. I don't think the media silos I noticed are the root of the problem. You cannot blame cartoons, talk radio and memes. I strongly believe that complacency, assumption and tone deaf, willful blindness among democratic party consituents led to the results we have watched unfold. I don't think it was New Media manipulation, and I don't think "fixing social media" will solve for the chaos we now see.
    - dwaltrip 9y ago
      Ah yeah, totally. I feel similarly to you. I was talking about a smaller contingent of voters who might have been caught in the middle. I should have made that more clear.

foxh0und 9y ago

Exactly, he won the election thanks to 80000 votes in three states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/?utm_term=.827af77a0a2d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...

freejulian 9y ago
Sure, the margin was slim, but Hillary has no one to blame but herself. Scapegoating Facebook keeps all of Hillary’s misdeeds out of the limelight. Perhaps if she was a better candidate I wouldn’t have wrote in Bernie. I, for one, am happy to have Trump over her. Edit: ah yes, let me feel the downvotes hackernews. We can’t have anyone disliking Hillary here!
- grumdan 9y ago
  Your comment doesn't actually add anything to this conversation, so regardless of one's position on Trump vs. Hillary, the downvotes are justified. All you said was a vague commonplace sentiment that has very little to do with the topic at hand.
  - stochastic_monk 9y ago
    Additionally, “at least it’s not Hillary” is a pretty baseless reason without supporting arguments. The majority of Americans would vastly prefer her, so please explain your point if you aim to be taken seriously. This isn’t reddit.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- drharby 9y ago
  Why edit tag when you are not even annotating what you edit? Your original post was nothing as it is now. You are being grossly deceptive, and this is coming from a guy who loves to play devils advocate on hn
nilkn 9y ago
Even applying such retroactive analysis to determine the smallest set of people who could change their votes so as to alter the election result, that doesn't imply anything about why Trump voters voted for Trump. That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc.
- heartbreak 9y ago
  > That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc. At the risk of engaging in a debate I don’t want to participate in, is this not building a strawman? When I purchase a product after viewing a targeted advertisement for that product, no reasonable person would claim I’d been brainwashed. One might, however, claim I’d been influenced by the advertisement.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nilkn 9y ago
    This should probably be a response to fareesh's top-level post. My comment was just to say that Trump's margin of victory -- however you want to analyze it or state it -- doesn't have any bearing on what motivated Trump voters and isn't even relevant in the context of fareesh's comment.
lulmerchant 9y ago
Actually, he won thanks to ~63,000,000 votes. You’re also trying to make it sound like there was something uniquely nefarious about his campaign. He used the same marketing tactics that all recent campaigns have used. The same tactics that Obama was widely praised for in 2012. He won because voters liked him more.
- lgregg 9y ago
  * he won thanks to 304 electoral votes and ~3,000,000 less popular votes.
  - lulmerchant 9y ago
    Neither candidate was campaigning for a popular vote, they were both campaigning to win the electoral college. Which Trump did because ~63,000,000 Americans decided, purely of their own free will, that he was the better candidate. No matter how much you try to retroactively gerrymander the outcome, both candidates were playing on a level playing field, one of them won and one of them lost. It’s really a testament to democracy that an outsider candidate can prevail over the amount of establishment support Hillary had.
- wisdomsf 9y ago
  There's so much wrong with this comment. Correct, he received ~63m votes. Hillary received 65.85m votes. He won because our presidential election system is based on an electoral college (which may be debated as a plus or minus). But that also means certain states have a disproportionate amount of representation with respect to their population. Please don't delude yourself or at least attempt to be honest. Races at the county and state level matter a lot. It matters that outside of a couple of states, the winner take all electoral system can have a significant impact on elections. Yes, those are the rules that have been established, that both parties are privy to when developing their campaign strategy. But let's not reduce that to "oh, one person won because people liked them more."
  - lulmerchant 9y ago

freejulian 9y ago

There was no “Russian meddling” in the election. Stop parroting nonsense without evidence. Hillary did cheat though. Her campaign directly collaborated with correct the record - last time I checked coordinating with a super pac was illegal. She also directly worked with the media to spread progaganda. Thank god Trump won. Hillary would have been more of the same. Also, it’s hilarious that we’ve all stopped caring about Citzens United now. Corporations influencing our elections is A-OK!

tree_of_item 9y ago
We've established beyond a doubt by now that there was, in fact, "Russian meddling" in the election. It's incredible that someone could still deny this.
- freejulian 9y ago
  Really? Cool! I’m sure you won’t have any troubles pointing me to some evidence then! Let’s see it... Also, I’m not alone in this, notable journalists such as Glenn Greenwald are also asking for evidence.
  - tree_of_item 9y ago
    Are you just not paying attention to the Mueller investigation? There's like five guilty pleas by now. Is that just a nothing burger? Seriously, what do you think that's all about? If you want a timeline of events you can go here[0] or here[1], but something tells me you won't accept these... [0]: https://www.politico.com/trump-russia-ties-scandal-guide/timeline-of-events https://www.politico.com/trump-russia-ties-scandal-guide/tim... [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/05/a-so-far-complete-timeline-of-the-investigation-into-trump-and-russia/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/05/a...
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      Can you spell it out? How did Russia "hack" the election? Please try to be specific. If I wanted random news stories, I'd google them.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

It's the actions on the margin that matter here. Just think of what this whole story (Foreign meddling) says about these marginal voters in that case: That they were so easily swayed, that they decided to vote ostensibly against their own better judgement simply by being shown a series of ads to influence their emotions. Something is very wrong with voter education if it's that easy to sway a certain influential population of voters.

dwaltrip 9y ago
Or they really disliked both candidates, so a small push could send them in either direction. Just as an example. It's pretty difficult to make meaningful wide-ranging inferences about the voter populations this way.
- ventonMoore 9y ago
  ...or it's not that voters were swayed by anything at all, and lots of people voted for an unproductive celebrity for their own reasons. In the months and weeks approaching election day, I was struck numerous times by the reality that each political faction was profoundly disconnected from the other, in media consumption silos so different that if you happened to drift from one conversation to another, it felt like crossing an ocean and entering a distant country. And to me, it was obvious that this social rift had calcified during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Somehow, amid the victory of the Obama presidency, left wing democrats simply felt as though their job was done, they could die happy, and anything else they imagined as natural was a foregone conclusion of the retirement they were set to sail into. I don't think the media silos I noticed are the root of the problem. You cannot blame cartoons, talk radio and memes. I strongly believe that complacency, assumption and tone deaf, willful blindness among democratic party consituents led to the results we have watched unfold. I don't think it was New Media manipulation, and I don't think "fixing social media" will solve for the chaos we now see.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    Ah yeah, totally. I feel similarly to you. I was talking about a smaller contingent of voters who might have been caught in the middle. I should have made that more clear.