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As an outsider I don't follow much USA politics, so apologies if I got the gist wrong and I'd appreciate corrections. For my bias, I mainly read left wing publi

As an outsider I don't follow much USA politics, so apologies if I got the gist wrong and I'd appreciate corrections. For my bias, I mainly read left wing publications, listen to right wing YouTubers and I'm an anarcho-capitalist. The claim sold by the media was that Russia "hacked" the elections, making Trump win. (that was before this year's message that election meddling is highly unlikely) What was found out was contact with Russia to dig dirt on Trump's opponents. Sure, it may be illegal, but that's hardly interesting.

maxerickson 6y ago
There were not mainstream US media claims that the Russians hacked the 2016 elections. On the other hand, there were lots of stories about Russian influence operations.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Did you watch basically any cable news in 2016? They literally started the Russian collusion special counsel investigations from allegations Russia hacked the DNC and released the emails to help Trump. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-the-russians-hacked-the-dnc-and-passed-its-emails-to-wikileaks/2018/07/13/af19a828-86c3-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-t...
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    The phrase 'Russia "hacked" the elections, making Trump win' implies tampering with the voting and vote counting. You've linked an influence operation that may have involved computer hacking. It's also, you know, pretty clear that Russia was running influence operations, not a media delusion.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1344319775464415239 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1344319775464415239
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        What's your point? People got there because they have trouble interpreting information, not because the information in mainstream media was particularly ambiguous. What people believed 2 years later is not at all a meaningful survey of what the media was saying at the time!
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        They were regularly running stories like this: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/13/15791744/russia-election-39-states-hack-putin-trump-sessions https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/13/15791744/russia-election... "Russia hacked voting systems in 39 states before the 2016 Presidential election" They would stick in a disclaimer like this: > So, despite assurances from the Obama administration that the election’s integrity was not compromised, there was still a very large-scale Russian effort to mess with it. That means future elections, including ones next year, run the risk of being tainted. But then proceed with an article like this: > Apparently, the cyber intruders aimed to delete or alter voter data they got a hold of. Last line of the article: > But in the meantime, collusion with Trump or not, we now know that Russia has struck deeper into the heart of America’s democracy: its elections. The whole thing is structured in the form of "nobody proved they did it but they sure tried so maybe they did/will" and leaves the reader to infer the result based on their political leanings. The polling after two years of that sort of coverage measures the extent to which those insinuations misled the public.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        Like I said, people are bad at processing information, the article there isn't ambiguous, it talks about voter data and never about votes. It's sensationalized, but it's not hard to understand what it actually says either. Voter rolls and campaign contributions aren't even maintained as sensitive information, the latter is published by the FEC, and most states more or less publish voter rolls. The Bloomberg article makes it sound like they tried to access/control the underlying storage, which would actually be problematic...
triceratops 6y ago
> The claim sold by the media was that Russia "hacked" the elections I didn't see that. Most of the claims were about Russian social media campaigns. We'll never know if those campaigns made a significant difference, but they certainly did happen. The other big thing was the DNC hack, also probably orchestrated by Russia. > What was found out was contact with Russia to dig dirt on Trump's opponents. I'd call that highly illegal, highly interesting, and even more worrisome than the prospect of a few hacked Diebold machines. A President who conspired with a foreign power to win election? Can you imagine the leverage that foreign power would have over such a President? With machine hacking, the President can claim ignorance. No such chance here. The last guy who did that was named Richard Nixon.[1][2] 1. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vie... 2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notes-indicate-nixon-interfered-1968-peace-talks-180961627/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notes-indicate-nix...

maxerickson 6y ago

There were not mainstream US media claims that the Russians hacked the 2016 elections. On the other hand, there were lots of stories about Russian influence operations.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Did you watch basically any cable news in 2016? They literally started the Russian collusion special counsel investigations from allegations Russia hacked the DNC and released the emails to help Trump. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-the-russians-hacked-the-dnc-and-passed-its-emails-to-wikileaks/2018/07/13/af19a828-86c3-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-t...
- maxerickson 6y ago
  The phrase 'Russia "hacked" the elections, making Trump win' implies tampering with the voting and vote counting. You've linked an influence operation that may have involved computer hacking. It's also, you know, pretty clear that Russia was running influence operations, not a media delusion.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1344319775464415239 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1344319775464415239
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      What's your point? People got there because they have trouble interpreting information, not because the information in mainstream media was particularly ambiguous. What people believed 2 years later is not at all a meaningful survey of what the media was saying at the time!
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        They were regularly running stories like this: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/13/15791744/russia-election-39-states-hack-putin-trump-sessions https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/13/15791744/russia-election... "Russia hacked voting systems in 39 states before the 2016 Presidential election" They would stick in a disclaimer like this: > So, despite assurances from the Obama administration that the election’s integrity was not compromised, there was still a very large-scale Russian effort to mess with it. That means future elections, including ones next year, run the risk of being tainted. But then proceed with an article like this: > Apparently, the cyber intruders aimed to delete or alter voter data they got a hold of. Last line of the article: > But in the meantime, collusion with Trump or not, we now know that Russia has struck deeper into the heart of America’s democracy: its elections. The whole thing is structured in the form of "nobody proved they did it but they sure tried so maybe they did/will" and leaves the reader to infer the result based on their political leanings. The polling after two years of that sort of coverage measures the extent to which those insinuations misled the public.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        Like I said, people are bad at processing information, the article there isn't ambiguous, it talks about voter data and never about votes. It's sensationalized, but it's not hard to understand what it actually says either. Voter rolls and campaign contributions aren't even maintained as sensitive information, the latter is published by the FEC, and most states more or less publish voter rolls. The Bloomberg article makes it sound like they tried to access/control the underlying storage, which would actually be problematic...

triceratops 6y ago

> The claim sold by the media was that Russia "hacked" the elections I didn't see that. Most of the claims were about Russian social media campaigns. We'll never know if those campaigns made a significant difference, but they certainly did happen. The other big thing was the DNC hack, also probably orchestrated by Russia. > What was found out was contact with Russia to dig dirt on Trump's opponents. I'd call that highly illegal, highly interesting, and even more worrisome than the prospect of a few hacked Diebold machines. A President who conspired with a foreign power to win election? Can you imagine the leverage that foreign power would have over such a President? With machine hacking, the President can claim ignorance. No such chance here. The last guy who did that was named Richard Nixon.[1][2] 1. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vie... 2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notes-indicate-nixon-interfered-1968-peace-talks-180961627/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notes-indicate-nix...