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I don't think anyone is really disputing that there was an attempt, just saying that it's unlikely that $100000 in ad spend in an election with more than a bill

by from 3y ago

I don't think anyone is really disputing that there was an attempt, just saying that it's unlikely that $100000 in ad spend in an election with more than a billion in total spending made a difference. You can say "well 100 million people saw the ads" but as far as I can tell no one has ever even attempted to quantify if any of that influenced the results.

hackinthebochs 3y ago
No one except the very two people I was responding to in this thread? Also, not to get into a debate on the stale issue, but hypertargetted ad buys (Cambridge Analytica) in key districts can swing elections when they are decided by tens of thousands of votes in those districts. I find it endlessly fascinating that Putin et al understood our election system better than us. I guess he didn't have the luxury of motivated reasoning and reality distortion fields.
- zaroth 3y ago
  > I find it endlessly fascinating that Putin et al understood our election system better than us. I think you’ve been brainwashed on this one. Local campaigns spend orders of magnitude more money and are run by extremely capable social media strategists. The IRA struggled with proper English grammar and mis-targeted their ads to staunch Republicans. It was by all actual evidence an extremely shoddy effort run on a shoestring budget that made no difference at all. Which when you look at the general competency level of Russia these days, I guess it’s par for the course. For me the big takeaway isn’t arguing about political bygones. It’s that by and large, these boogeymen are entirely incompetent at what they purport to do, and don’t deserve a fraction of the hand-wringing that they seem to elicit. They are hyped up boogeymen for political purposes. The reality is that they are poorly trained, underfunded, and entirely corrupt, and so the results of their efforts are predictably lame.

by from 3y ago

hackinthebochs 3y ago

No one except the very two people I was responding to in this thread? Also, not to get into a debate on the stale issue, but hypertargetted ad buys (Cambridge Analytica) in key districts can swing elections when they are decided by tens of thousands of votes in those districts. I find it endlessly fascinating that Putin et al understood our election system better than us. I guess he didn't have the luxury of motivated reasoning and reality distortion fields.

zaroth 3y ago
> I find it endlessly fascinating that Putin et al understood our election system better than us. I think you’ve been brainwashed on this one. Local campaigns spend orders of magnitude more money and are run by extremely capable social media strategists. The IRA struggled with proper English grammar and mis-targeted their ads to staunch Republicans. It was by all actual evidence an extremely shoddy effort run on a shoestring budget that made no difference at all. Which when you look at the general competency level of Russia these days, I guess it’s par for the course. For me the big takeaway isn’t arguing about political bygones. It’s that by and large, these boogeymen are entirely incompetent at what they purport to do, and don’t deserve a fraction of the hand-wringing that they seem to elicit. They are hyped up boogeymen for political purposes. The reality is that they are poorly trained, underfunded, and entirely corrupt, and so the results of their efforts are predictably lame.