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What blatant BS. We know from Facebook that the Internet Research Agency and other Russian backed organizations bought political ads with the clear intent to s

by gph 8y ago

What blatant BS. We know from Facebook that the Internet Research Agency and other Russian backed organizations bought political ads with the clear intent to spread misinformation and inflame both sides in order to sow unrest and distrust in our political system. To say it wasn't successful is just being obtuse.

XaoDaoCaoCao 8y ago
>order to sow unrest and distrust in our political system. Intent =/= Actual Effectiveness The current debt regime is doing a fantastic job at alienating a generation from the status quo. If Russia paid to piss in a Great Lake of piss, that doesn't mean the Great Lake of piss was created or even substantially altered by Russia.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
chlvsl 8y ago
What conclusive proof do they have? Is that proof really indicative or is it something like "someone using cyrillic keyset edited this so it was russia 100% guaranteed". I am very curious to see what they determined is proof.
aksss 8y ago
Well, there were studies showing the impact was minimal to zero - that it reached very few people, constituted a fraction of a percentage of total political content on social media, and those it did reach were already likely to be hyper-partisan. https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/27/14266228/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-fake-news-media-2016-election https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/27/14266228/donald-... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/health/fake-news-conservative-liberal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/health/fake-news-conserva... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/fake-news-and-bots-may-be-worrisome-but-their-political-power-is-overblown.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/fake-news-and-bots... And then there's the DNI report, which if you actually read, paints a pretty lame picture of what actually happened, and in no way supports the idea that the election was impacted.
- gph 8y ago
  I hadn't seen these sources, thanks. Guess I'll have to update my priors a bit.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  It's not the fake news reports that were the effective tactic. That was one of many they used in the attack (if you will). This article is from within days of the one you posted: https://www.wired.com/story/did-russia-affect-the-2016-election-its-now-undeniable/ https://www.wired.com/story/did-russia-affect-the-2016-elect... It covers the other tactics used and how they were successful—namely false identities. The US intelligence community saw it as enough of a threat going forward they acted for the 2018 midterm elections: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/disrupted-russian-trolls-day-november-election-report-190226175659275.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/disrupted-russian-tro... The identities used were things like sockpuppet accounts and fake communities set up to look as if there was more virulent discord already organically occurring and dragging legitimate online communities and identities into the same discord. Here in Canada CSIS has put out warnings for Canadians leading up to the federal election later this year about that very thing. They said it would happen, and now Canadian online communities are devolving into trolling and anger and vitriol like there never was. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/twitter-troll-pipeline-immigrant-russia-iran-1.5014750 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/twitter-troll-pipeline-immigr... https://globalnews.ca/news/4518563/canada-target-russian-troll-warns-vigilant/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4518563/canada-target-russian-tro... edit: Formatting
  - aksss 8y ago
    We need to be careful of reading too much into the wired article. First, the article makes statements like this, "So anyone trying to tell you there was little impact on political views from the tools the Russians used doesn't know. Because none of us knows." Well, actually the aforementioned studies shed some good light on the impact of fake news stories, and soundly debunk the idea that they were influential in the election. I'll take studies from universities over an opining Wired article any day. The main thrust of the Wired article is that there were different tactics, but they had different goals. The article is saying almost explicitly that these other tactics didn't (and weren't designed to) change people's minds (e.g. sway an election). They were designed to foment conflict between groups already opposed, e.g. orchestrating protests for two opposing groups at the same street corner, turning opposing thought into violent action. To what degree this was organic after 2016 vs catalyzed by Russia is a great question to dig into, but it shouldn't be conflated with tipping a vote. Being that I'm rather condemnatory of any of these protest movements as futile and counter-productive shit-stirring or worse, I'm not terribly surprised about or sympathetic towards the "victims". Edit: quoted some silliness from Wired article
AndrewUnmuted 8y ago
If you think that Russia is: a) the only one doing this and b) the most effective actor doing this, then you're the one being obtuse. What Russia supposedly "did" to us did not even register as a blip. Russia's biggest crime in this case was coming from a place that Americans are remarkably naive and ignorant about.
- gph 8y ago
  I never said Russia was the only one or the most effective. I wasn't trying to get into a WhatAboutThem debate, just that saying Russia did nothing effective was wrong. But seeing the sources above I might have been wrong about that. Still they certainly tried to be effective.
cheeseomlit 8y ago
They've been doing that sort of thing for a long long time. And so have we, and so does China, every state or corporation with the capability will do things like that. If your democracy can be subverted by some Facebook ads and twitter bots you have far more fundamental problems. I'd be more concerned about actual election tampering, for example a news media corporation giving debate questions to a candidate before the debate.

by gph 8y ago

XaoDaoCaoCao 8y ago

>order to sow unrest and distrust in our political system. Intent =/= Actual Effectiveness The current debt regime is doing a fantastic job at alienating a generation from the status quo. If Russia paid to piss in a Great Lake of piss, that doesn't mean the Great Lake of piss was created or even substantially altered by Russia.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

chlvsl 8y ago

What conclusive proof do they have? Is that proof really indicative or is it something like "someone using cyrillic keyset edited this so it was russia 100% guaranteed". I am very curious to see what they determined is proof.

aksss 8y ago

Well, there were studies showing the impact was minimal to zero - that it reached very few people, constituted a fraction of a percentage of total political content on social media, and those it did reach were already likely to be hyper-partisan. https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/27/14266228/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-fake-news-media-2016-election https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/27/14266228/donald-... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/health/fake-news-conservative-liberal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/health/fake-news-conserva... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/fake-news-and-bots-may-be-worrisome-but-their-political-power-is-overblown.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/fake-news-and-bots... And then there's the DNI report, which if you actually read, paints a pretty lame picture of what actually happened, and in no way supports the idea that the election was impacted.

gph 8y ago
I hadn't seen these sources, thanks. Guess I'll have to update my priors a bit.
52-6F-62 8y ago
It's not the fake news reports that were the effective tactic. That was one of many they used in the attack (if you will). This article is from within days of the one you posted: https://www.wired.com/story/did-russia-affect-the-2016-election-its-now-undeniable/ https://www.wired.com/story/did-russia-affect-the-2016-elect... It covers the other tactics used and how they were successful—namely false identities. The US intelligence community saw it as enough of a threat going forward they acted for the 2018 midterm elections: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/disrupted-russian-trolls-day-november-election-report-190226175659275.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/disrupted-russian-tro... The identities used were things like sockpuppet accounts and fake communities set up to look as if there was more virulent discord already organically occurring and dragging legitimate online communities and identities into the same discord. Here in Canada CSIS has put out warnings for Canadians leading up to the federal election later this year about that very thing. They said it would happen, and now Canadian online communities are devolving into trolling and anger and vitriol like there never was. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/twitter-troll-pipeline-immigrant-russia-iran-1.5014750 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/twitter-troll-pipeline-immigr... https://globalnews.ca/news/4518563/canada-target-russian-troll-warns-vigilant/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4518563/canada-target-russian-tro... edit: Formatting
- aksss 8y ago
  We need to be careful of reading too much into the wired article. First, the article makes statements like this, "So anyone trying to tell you there was little impact on political views from the tools the Russians used doesn't know. Because none of us knows." Well, actually the aforementioned studies shed some good light on the impact of fake news stories, and soundly debunk the idea that they were influential in the election. I'll take studies from universities over an opining Wired article any day. The main thrust of the Wired article is that there were different tactics, but they had different goals. The article is saying almost explicitly that these other tactics didn't (and weren't designed to) change people's minds (e.g. sway an election). They were designed to foment conflict between groups already opposed, e.g. orchestrating protests for two opposing groups at the same street corner, turning opposing thought into violent action. To what degree this was organic after 2016 vs catalyzed by Russia is a great question to dig into, but it shouldn't be conflated with tipping a vote. Being that I'm rather condemnatory of any of these protest movements as futile and counter-productive shit-stirring or worse, I'm not terribly surprised about or sympathetic towards the "victims". Edit: quoted some silliness from Wired article

AndrewUnmuted 8y ago

If you think that Russia is: a) the only one doing this and b) the most effective actor doing this, then you're the one being obtuse. What Russia supposedly "did" to us did not even register as a blip. Russia's biggest crime in this case was coming from a place that Americans are remarkably naive and ignorant about.

gph 8y ago
I never said Russia was the only one or the most effective. I wasn't trying to get into a WhatAboutThem debate, just that saying Russia did nothing effective was wrong. But seeing the sources above I might have been wrong about that. Still they certainly tried to be effective.

cheeseomlit 8y ago

They've been doing that sort of thing for a long long time. And so have we, and so does China, every state or corporation with the capability will do things like that. If your democracy can be subverted by some Facebook ads and twitter bots you have far more fundamental problems. I'd be more concerned about actual election tampering, for example a news media corporation giving debate questions to a candidate before the debate.