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The upcoming US elections may prove to be a watershed moment for modern democracies in general. There is a widely held belief in academic cycles that mass voter

The upcoming US elections may prove to be a watershed moment for modern democracies in general. There is a widely held belief in academic cycles that mass voter manipulation through social media has managed to trump all other kinds of propaganda, causing people to become electoral zombies. This belief is based on flimsy evidence and on a mountain of bias. I hope facebook and the other media do everything by the book and according to the mandates of their favorite party politics. This will be an easy way to finally dissolve these mass delusions and make it obvious that societal change is real.

yourbandsucks 8y ago
The academics are wrong, the problem is tribalism. Facts don't matter, thought doesn't matter, even ideology doesn't matter. It's just about tribes at this point for a decent chunk of the population. Now, social media is an excellent platform for whipping up further tribalism. But it's not so straightforward as "a few cambridge analytica ad buys -> electoral zombies".
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  Wait a sec! There is nothing wrong with tribalism per se. The problem is that fake news are convincing people that my tribe is wrong, which is obviously nonsense! /s
narrator 8y ago
Instead of mass voter manipulation of voters through the establishment media? Nobody would be in a panic at all if Hillary had won.
- thefounder 8y ago
  The issue with Facebook is that it's too easy for someone from Russia for example to place ads. I believe the established media doesn't run thousands of ads paid by thousands of unknown individuals.
  - chmln 8y ago
    I think it was just recently that China placed ads in the Des Moines Register, with reports of similar activity on the Times etc. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2018/09/24/china-daily-watch-advertisement-tries-sway-iowa-farm-support-trump-trade-war-tariffs/1412954002/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/20...
    - thefounder 8y ago
      At least in that case Des Moines knew who paid for the ad. On FB there is no identity check(unless you consider credit/debit cards identity proof). Not to mention that you compare one ad with thousands on facebook. Facebook can't stop them even if it wants. The main reason is that the ads are too cheap to investigate properly. A bad actor can use multiple accounts. And when I say multiple I mean as many it wants. Times/Des Mines would not publish 100000 ads of 1$ each, each about Trump's policy(more or less) but facebook would do it.
- pchristensen 8y ago
  lolololololololololololol - people have been panicking for 26 years at the thought of Hillary Clinton being president.
- vkou 8y ago
  Just like nobody was in a panic when Obama won? Have we forgotten what 2008-2017 was like, or do we just pretend that the republican fringe collectively losing its mind over a black man in the white house didn't happen?
  - buboard 8y ago
    Looking from the other side of the Atlantic, the difference is stark. Obama's were the first campaigns widely lauded for their aggressive use of social media. Nobody made a fuss about it, facebook didn't change a single rule because of somebody complaining or anything. The lunatics waving birth certificates were seen by us as some typical American oddity. This time it is different. Our facebook accounts have to be verified, our pages and apps vetted, comments are blocked or filtered, the words "fake news", "russian trolls", russian propaganda etc have become national issues even in countries which never face such a thing. There have been countless elections and referenda throughout the world during the social media age, but the "election phobia" and the idea that all elections are inherently tainted because people can't keep themselves from voting the wrong person/thing was born after the US election.
- philliphaydon 8y ago
  America had to pick between an idiot, a criminal, and a socialist. They literally had no one to vote for. The country would be upset regardless of who won.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
misterprime 8y ago
They spent over $100,000 on ads during the 2016 campaign. You can't deny that the voters were manipulated! /s
- acdha 8y ago
  Plus hundreds of people working full-time with a budget of at least $1.25M/month (which goes further in a country where the average income is around a sixth of the US). https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4380504/The-Special-Counsel-s-Indictment-of-the-Internet.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4380504/The-Speci... The big boost, of course, was the email hacking and successful use of their media outlets like RT & Wikileaks to successfully spin nothing into the impression of a scandal, which people are still credulously recirculating. You can still argue that this was not significant compared to campaign spending or the larger PAC/media battle, but you don’t need to be donating your PR services to a foreign intelligence operation.
- fossuser 8y ago
  The scale of people affected went beyond ads - there was a lot of group creation and stirring controversy. They also got Americans to organize protests, I think the full reach was around 126 million people. "When Facebook first acknowledged last year the Russian intrusion on its platform, it seemed modest in scale. The $100,000 spent on ads was a trivial sum compared with the tens of millions spent on Facebook by both the Trump and Clinton campaigns. But it quickly became clear that the Russians had used a different model for their influence campaign: posting inflammatory messages and relying on free, viral spread. Even by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone. That was not far short of the 137 million people who would vote in the 2016 presidential election." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/russia-interference-election-trump-clinton.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/r...
  - masonic 8y ago
    the full reach was around 126 million Wow, controlling 1,260 people per dollar spent is quite the ROI.
tdeck 8y ago
I'm not sure what this comment has to do with the article. This is about targeted ads telling people they could vote by text message or that their polling place isn't safe. What does that have to do with "mass delusions" and "academic cycles"?
- jMyles 8y ago
  The connection seems reasonable enough to me: the social media platforms take it upon themselves to arbitrate truth - and fine, that's their prerogative. The falsehoods at issue for this very moment are about election day logistics, but the longer term narrative of "fake news fools mindless voters into making bad decisions" has also repeatedly been on these same radars in the same efforts of these same companies.
- buboard 8y ago
  it is a bit meta, because i didnt have anything to comment on facebook's move, it seems rather obvious, (although it would probably be easier for them as company to ban political advertising altogether this time).
bilbo0s 8y ago
>This belief is based on flimsy evidence and on a mountain of bias... Isn't that pretty much all political beliefs? Facebook is not so different from any other individual or organization in this regard.
- buboard 8y ago
  i mean the academics, and i dont mean their political belief, but their conviction that the "fake news/russia/misinformation" complex is solely responsible for the trump election.
apatheticonion 8y ago
It seems that Trump being in power has been a negative force for Facebook. I wonder if there is a legitimate business incentive for the company to manipulate the distributed information to provide an anti-conservative bias
- x220 8y ago
  are you implying that a social media company known to manipulate the mental state of its users might want to influence the people who vote for the politicians that talk about Facebook like a monopoly and want to break it up? that's unbelievable
tomp 8y ago
> This will be an easy way to finally dissolve these mass delusions and make it obvious that societal change is real. How so? If the democrats win, the republicans will be able to claim that Silicon Valley is manipulating the voters by deplatforming conservatives. If the republicans win, the democrats will be able to claim more Russian bot/fake news manipulation.
- buboard 8y ago
  my assumption is that you can fool people one time. The republicans may get a chance to blame 'deplatforming' . But democrats blaming again the russians when facebook is vigilant and the whole world is watching closely .... hard to be convincing.
specialist 8y ago
[deleted]
- buboard 8y ago
  neither of these sources are peer-reviewed.

yourbandsucks 8y ago

The academics are wrong, the problem is tribalism. Facts don't matter, thought doesn't matter, even ideology doesn't matter. It's just about tribes at this point for a decent chunk of the population. Now, social media is an excellent platform for whipping up further tribalism. But it's not so straightforward as "a few cambridge analytica ad buys -> electoral zombies".

aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
Wait a sec! There is nothing wrong with tribalism per se. The problem is that fake news are convincing people that my tribe is wrong, which is obviously nonsense! /s

narrator 8y ago

Instead of mass voter manipulation of voters through the establishment media? Nobody would be in a panic at all if Hillary had won.

thefounder 8y ago
The issue with Facebook is that it's too easy for someone from Russia for example to place ads. I believe the established media doesn't run thousands of ads paid by thousands of unknown individuals.
- chmln 8y ago
  I think it was just recently that China placed ads in the Des Moines Register, with reports of similar activity on the Times etc. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2018/09/24/china-daily-watch-advertisement-tries-sway-iowa-farm-support-trump-trade-war-tariffs/1412954002/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/20...
  - thefounder 8y ago
    At least in that case Des Moines knew who paid for the ad. On FB there is no identity check(unless you consider credit/debit cards identity proof). Not to mention that you compare one ad with thousands on facebook. Facebook can't stop them even if it wants. The main reason is that the ads are too cheap to investigate properly. A bad actor can use multiple accounts. And when I say multiple I mean as many it wants. Times/Des Mines would not publish 100000 ads of 1$ each, each about Trump's policy(more or less) but facebook would do it.
pchristensen 8y ago
lolololololololololololol - people have been panicking for 26 years at the thought of Hillary Clinton being president.
vkou 8y ago
Just like nobody was in a panic when Obama won? Have we forgotten what 2008-2017 was like, or do we just pretend that the republican fringe collectively losing its mind over a black man in the white house didn't happen?
- buboard 8y ago
  Looking from the other side of the Atlantic, the difference is stark. Obama's were the first campaigns widely lauded for their aggressive use of social media. Nobody made a fuss about it, facebook didn't change a single rule because of somebody complaining or anything. The lunatics waving birth certificates were seen by us as some typical American oddity. This time it is different. Our facebook accounts have to be verified, our pages and apps vetted, comments are blocked or filtered, the words "fake news", "russian trolls", russian propaganda etc have become national issues even in countries which never face such a thing. There have been countless elections and referenda throughout the world during the social media age, but the "election phobia" and the idea that all elections are inherently tainted because people can't keep themselves from voting the wrong person/thing was born after the US election.
philliphaydon 8y ago
America had to pick between an idiot, a criminal, and a socialist. They literally had no one to vote for. The country would be upset regardless of who won.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

misterprime 8y ago

They spent over $100,000 on ads during the 2016 campaign. You can't deny that the voters were manipulated! /s

acdha 8y ago
Plus hundreds of people working full-time with a budget of at least $1.25M/month (which goes further in a country where the average income is around a sixth of the US). https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4380504/The-Special-Counsel-s-Indictment-of-the-Internet.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4380504/The-Speci... The big boost, of course, was the email hacking and successful use of their media outlets like RT & Wikileaks to successfully spin nothing into the impression of a scandal, which people are still credulously recirculating. You can still argue that this was not significant compared to campaign spending or the larger PAC/media battle, but you don’t need to be donating your PR services to a foreign intelligence operation.
fossuser 8y ago
The scale of people affected went beyond ads - there was a lot of group creation and stirring controversy. They also got Americans to organize protests, I think the full reach was around 126 million people. "When Facebook first acknowledged last year the Russian intrusion on its platform, it seemed modest in scale. The $100,000 spent on ads was a trivial sum compared with the tens of millions spent on Facebook by both the Trump and Clinton campaigns. But it quickly became clear that the Russians had used a different model for their influence campaign: posting inflammatory messages and relying on free, viral spread. Even by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone. That was not far short of the 137 million people who would vote in the 2016 presidential election." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/russia-interference-election-trump-clinton.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/r...
- masonic 8y ago
  the full reach was around 126 million Wow, controlling 1,260 people per dollar spent is quite the ROI.

tdeck 8y ago

I'm not sure what this comment has to do with the article. This is about targeted ads telling people they could vote by text message or that their polling place isn't safe. What does that have to do with "mass delusions" and "academic cycles"?

jMyles 8y ago
The connection seems reasonable enough to me: the social media platforms take it upon themselves to arbitrate truth - and fine, that's their prerogative. The falsehoods at issue for this very moment are about election day logistics, but the longer term narrative of "fake news fools mindless voters into making bad decisions" has also repeatedly been on these same radars in the same efforts of these same companies.
buboard 8y ago
it is a bit meta, because i didnt have anything to comment on facebook's move, it seems rather obvious, (although it would probably be easier for them as company to ban political advertising altogether this time).

bilbo0s 8y ago

>This belief is based on flimsy evidence and on a mountain of bias... Isn't that pretty much all political beliefs? Facebook is not so different from any other individual or organization in this regard.

buboard 8y ago
i mean the academics, and i dont mean their political belief, but their conviction that the "fake news/russia/misinformation" complex is solely responsible for the trump election.

apatheticonion 8y ago

It seems that Trump being in power has been a negative force for Facebook. I wonder if there is a legitimate business incentive for the company to manipulate the distributed information to provide an anti-conservative bias

x220 8y ago
are you implying that a social media company known to manipulate the mental state of its users might want to influence the people who vote for the politicians that talk about Facebook like a monopoly and want to break it up? that's unbelievable

tomp 8y ago

> This will be an easy way to finally dissolve these mass delusions and make it obvious that societal change is real. How so? If the democrats win, the republicans will be able to claim that Silicon Valley is manipulating the voters by deplatforming conservatives. If the republicans win, the democrats will be able to claim more Russian bot/fake news manipulation.

buboard 8y ago
my assumption is that you can fool people one time. The republicans may get a chance to blame 'deplatforming' . But democrats blaming again the russians when facebook is vigilant and the whole world is watching closely .... hard to be convincing.

specialist 8y ago

[deleted]

buboard 8y ago
neither of these sources are peer-reviewed.