6 ms·

What happens if the party that is attacking our democracy by spreading disinformation in the last few weeks of the election gets into power?

0xy 6y ago
Just curious why you say this is disinformation given the lack of proof. Is this your opinion or are you attacking the article based on the source?
- bosswipe 6y ago
  I don't believe the source because they're known liars. I definitely don't believe the story that a laptop with Ukrainian emails was left in a DC repair shop and then given to Trump's personal propagandist lawyer Rudy Guliani. Also they're not publishing the emails headers as explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24780927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24780927
  - wdn 6y ago
    But you believe Clinton can just delete the email and gone forever?
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Even if Guliani got the source from Russian intelligence, that does not mean the emails are automatically not authentic. Does it mean the Russians are interfering? Probably. Does it mean their evidence of corruption is void? Not really. If this is the Russians (unproven speculation on your part), it does not mean the emails are not authentic.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      Two organizations have these supposed emails, Fox and NYPost. They could mathematically prove their legitimacy by simply posting the entire raw messages, with headers. DKIM was active at the time these messages were supposedly sent, so if the signatures match up, authenticity is confirmed. The fact that this hasn't been done is concerning, unless it's being sat on for future impact.. the "drip drip drip" method of political bombshell news isn't a new tactic. If we're still here in a week with nothing other than screenshots, we can probably write the messages off as frauds. I'm withholding my judgement for a few days.
      - 0xy 6y ago
        You're assuming they have the emails in the raw form. It's possible they just have PDFs and not the full content. You're also assuming Fox and NY Post have journalists on staff who know what DKIM is, let alone how to verify it's genuine. They're journalists, not CompSci majors. The "drip drip" is an intentional strategy, of course. This smells like a setup to me. They leak the lukewarm email, get a denial from Biden, then leak a smoking gun that cannot be denied (speculation).
        koolba 6y ago
        Care to place a bet on whether anybody at tomorrow's Biden townhall on ABC will be allowed to^W^W^W ask about any of this?
      - rlanday 6y ago
        I think you might be overestimating the level of technical sophistication at play here—if you asked me “how can we verify that these emails are real,” I might’ve been able to come up with this idea, but it certainly wasn’t the first thing that jumped into my head reading the article, and I doubt NYPost has anyone on staff who thought to do this either (unless perhaps verifying leaked emails is something they do regularly?).
        Karunamon 6y ago
        I wouldn't trust NYPost to have that knowledge, fair. Fox, though.. Really though, even if DKIM wasn't a thing, there's little-to-no reason to only post screenshots if the actual raw files are available.
        millstone 6y ago
        There is no indication of ANY attempt (technical or not) to verify that the emails were real. They did not even perform the basic due diligence of asking the Biden campaign to comment prior to publication.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- iaw 6y ago
  There is one source of information, Rudy Giuliani. Someone with known ties to Russian intelligence claiming that his lawyer received a surprise hard drive from a computer repairman who has an utterly implausible explanation for his acquisition of said drive. Someone who has been known to spread false allegations and conspiracy theories including the claim that Joe Biden is suffering from dementia. The Biden campaign has records to that time indicating no such meeting took place. So far, without further corroboration, it's an allegation with no basis. Especially given justice department investigations into the purported impropriety that the supposed emails revolve around did not reveal any evidence of involvement of Joe Biden in his son's dealings.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Most news articles based on leaks are uncorroborated allegations. Even if the source was Putin himself, shouldn't the question be "are the emails authentic" rather than "who leaked the emails"? Wikileaks has had questionable sources in the past, but they've generally been authentic leaks (for example the DNC email leaks had authentic and signed email headers). I'm not saying the emails are authentic, I'm saying the question of whether they are authentic is unanswered and that should be your primary concern over who the source is. Theoretically, if Russia had proof of corruption would you not want to see it on the basis that it's Russia and it's close to an election?
    - iaw 6y ago
      My primary concern is about whether the information I'm looking at is factual or not. If Russia had proof of corruption on the candidate they did not excessively favor then I would be interested. When historic propagandists have "proof" I need corroboration otherwise I'm being controlled by the propaganda as it was intended. Remember Benghazi? How confident everyone was, for years? Nothing came from it because nothing was there. The people that were talking about Benghazi were only people that benefited from it politically. Remember Al Franken? Remember when people that didn't benefit from it politically agreed he should step down after his behavior?
      - 6y ago
beaner 6y ago
Ask Twitter, they're participating in disinformation by falsely claiming - without evidence - that these emails were hacked.
remarkEon 6y ago
This comment is indicative of the absolute sea change that has happened over the last four years with how we treat speech and journalism. Gone are the days when if you read a story and thought it was BS, you ignored it and moved on. Or when a politician says something dumb, that's obviously untrue or a distortion, you just laughed and said "what an idiot". Today, these things are "disinformation" and are "an attack on our democracy". This is a severe escalation, and I think what it's priming us all to do is reject Free Speech as a principle wholesale and replace it with an "official" narrative that is approved ahead of time (approved by who exactly, that remains to be seen). All politicians spread "disinformation". That's the nature of politics: framing the facts of a story, or distorting them, to support your preferred narrative to get elected. Same goes for all partisan journalism, and the same goes for "mainstream" outlets that still have their own narrative they like to push for their own reasons. Somehow we're still so shell-shocked from 2016 that we've escalated every little bit of political tomfoolery to be a literal attack on the democratic institution itself. It's just bizarre.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  There's a difference between framing events vs fabricating them from whole cloth. The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    I'm not sure there's a sufficient difference between those things to make the point you're trying to make stick. There's a non-trivial amount of people in this country (and on this website, it seems) who think Trump is, literally not metaphorically, an agent of the Kremlin. Are those people a threat to democracy? I certainly don't think so. I think they're idiots, but I don't think they're literally threatening democracy. >Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy. The line you are drawing here is very very close to accusing people who share false information of treason. Are we sure we want to walk up to that line? I'm not. I think it's frankly pretty silly. It's also interesting that you assume there is some neutral arbiter that can decide what is "real" and what is "true" and what is "fact" (all different things, btw). >The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. It's also interesting that you think this was ever the state of democracy, and not the status quo.
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into partisan flamewar. It's predictable and nasty. We want curious conversation about unpredictable things, which is kind of the total opposite of that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

0xy 6y ago

Just curious why you say this is disinformation given the lack of proof. Is this your opinion or are you attacking the article based on the source?

bosswipe 6y ago
I don't believe the source because they're known liars. I definitely don't believe the story that a laptop with Ukrainian emails was left in a DC repair shop and then given to Trump's personal propagandist lawyer Rudy Guliani. Also they're not publishing the emails headers as explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24780927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24780927
- wdn 6y ago
  But you believe Clinton can just delete the email and gone forever?
- 0xy 6y ago
  Even if Guliani got the source from Russian intelligence, that does not mean the emails are automatically not authentic. Does it mean the Russians are interfering? Probably. Does it mean their evidence of corruption is void? Not really. If this is the Russians (unproven speculation on your part), it does not mean the emails are not authentic.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    Two organizations have these supposed emails, Fox and NYPost. They could mathematically prove their legitimacy by simply posting the entire raw messages, with headers. DKIM was active at the time these messages were supposedly sent, so if the signatures match up, authenticity is confirmed. The fact that this hasn't been done is concerning, unless it's being sat on for future impact.. the "drip drip drip" method of political bombshell news isn't a new tactic. If we're still here in a week with nothing other than screenshots, we can probably write the messages off as frauds. I'm withholding my judgement for a few days.
    - 0xy 6y ago
      You're assuming they have the emails in the raw form. It's possible they just have PDFs and not the full content. You're also assuming Fox and NY Post have journalists on staff who know what DKIM is, let alone how to verify it's genuine. They're journalists, not CompSci majors. The "drip drip" is an intentional strategy, of course. This smells like a setup to me. They leak the lukewarm email, get a denial from Biden, then leak a smoking gun that cannot be denied (speculation).
      - koolba 6y ago
        Care to place a bet on whether anybody at tomorrow's Biden townhall on ABC will be allowed to^W^W^W ask about any of this?
    - rlanday 6y ago
      I think you might be overestimating the level of technical sophistication at play here—if you asked me “how can we verify that these emails are real,” I might’ve been able to come up with this idea, but it certainly wasn’t the first thing that jumped into my head reading the article, and I doubt NYPost has anyone on staff who thought to do this either (unless perhaps verifying leaked emails is something they do regularly?).
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        I wouldn't trust NYPost to have that knowledge, fair. Fox, though.. Really though, even if DKIM wasn't a thing, there's little-to-no reason to only post screenshots if the actual raw files are available.
      - millstone 6y ago
        There is no indication of ANY attempt (technical or not) to verify that the emails were real. They did not even perform the basic due diligence of asking the Biden campaign to comment prior to publication.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
iaw 6y ago
There is one source of information, Rudy Giuliani. Someone with known ties to Russian intelligence claiming that his lawyer received a surprise hard drive from a computer repairman who has an utterly implausible explanation for his acquisition of said drive. Someone who has been known to spread false allegations and conspiracy theories including the claim that Joe Biden is suffering from dementia. The Biden campaign has records to that time indicating no such meeting took place. So far, without further corroboration, it's an allegation with no basis. Especially given justice department investigations into the purported impropriety that the supposed emails revolve around did not reveal any evidence of involvement of Joe Biden in his son's dealings.
- 0xy 6y ago
  Most news articles based on leaks are uncorroborated allegations. Even if the source was Putin himself, shouldn't the question be "are the emails authentic" rather than "who leaked the emails"? Wikileaks has had questionable sources in the past, but they've generally been authentic leaks (for example the DNC email leaks had authentic and signed email headers). I'm not saying the emails are authentic, I'm saying the question of whether they are authentic is unanswered and that should be your primary concern over who the source is. Theoretically, if Russia had proof of corruption would you not want to see it on the basis that it's Russia and it's close to an election?
  - iaw 6y ago
    My primary concern is about whether the information I'm looking at is factual or not. If Russia had proof of corruption on the candidate they did not excessively favor then I would be interested. When historic propagandists have "proof" I need corroboration otherwise I'm being controlled by the propaganda as it was intended. Remember Benghazi? How confident everyone was, for years? Nothing came from it because nothing was there. The people that were talking about Benghazi were only people that benefited from it politically. Remember Al Franken? Remember when people that didn't benefit from it politically agreed he should step down after his behavior?
    - 6y ago

beaner 6y ago

Ask Twitter, they're participating in disinformation by falsely claiming - without evidence - that these emails were hacked.

remarkEon 6y ago

This comment is indicative of the absolute sea change that has happened over the last four years with how we treat speech and journalism. Gone are the days when if you read a story and thought it was BS, you ignored it and moved on. Or when a politician says something dumb, that's obviously untrue or a distortion, you just laughed and said "what an idiot". Today, these things are "disinformation" and are "an attack on our democracy". This is a severe escalation, and I think what it's priming us all to do is reject Free Speech as a principle wholesale and replace it with an "official" narrative that is approved ahead of time (approved by who exactly, that remains to be seen). All politicians spread "disinformation". That's the nature of politics: framing the facts of a story, or distorting them, to support your preferred narrative to get elected. Same goes for all partisan journalism, and the same goes for "mainstream" outlets that still have their own narrative they like to push for their own reasons. Somehow we're still so shell-shocked from 2016 that we've escalated every little bit of political tomfoolery to be a literal attack on the democratic institution itself. It's just bizarre.

bosswipe 6y ago
There's a difference between framing events vs fabricating them from whole cloth. The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  I'm not sure there's a sufficient difference between those things to make the point you're trying to make stick. There's a non-trivial amount of people in this country (and on this website, it seems) who think Trump is, literally not metaphorically, an agent of the Kremlin. Are those people a threat to democracy? I certainly don't think so. I think they're idiots, but I don't think they're literally threatening democracy. >Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy. The line you are drawing here is very very close to accusing people who share false information of treason. Are we sure we want to walk up to that line? I'm not. I think it's frankly pretty silly. It's also interesting that you assume there is some neutral arbiter that can decide what is "real" and what is "true" and what is "fact" (all different things, btw). >The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. It's also interesting that you think this was ever the state of democracy, and not the status quo.

dang 6y ago

Please don't take HN threads further into partisan flamewar. It's predictable and nasty. We want curious conversation about unpredictable things, which is kind of the total opposite of that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html