5 ms·

> To what degree do they "influence" an election in our "reality"? - https://www.npr.org/2019/04/24/716374421/fact-check-russian-interference-went-far-beyond-f

• mistermann 2y ago
  In percentage terms please, and please explicitly acknowledge opinions as such. Sorry for ruining a good story (did you even notice you didn't answer the question, but instead posted a bunch of stories...how do you think these things work), but the topic and specific nature of the accusations (misinformation) demands it.
  • bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    the articles they posted had lots of explanations of how the writer of said articles thought things work, perhaps they (the poster) thinks that these things work as laid out in the articles and thus are not required to explain in extra detail how they think these things work. In relation to percentages, lots of the articles had numbers, you could also do the work of deriving percentages from the numbers if you were so inclined. >did you even notice you didn't answer the question, the way English and Internet communication work if you quote a question and then give a bunch of links it is reasonable to assume that is the way they are answering the question - in short they believe that the links they provide are a good faith explanation of 'what degree "they" "influence" an election in our "reality"'. >and please explicitly acknowledge opinions as such. You seem to want them to do an awful lot of work to answer your short one paragraph question!
    • mistermann 2y ago
      > the articles they posted had lots of explanations of how the writer of said articles thought things work, perhaps they (the poster) thinks that these things work as laid out in the articles and thus are not required to explain in extra detail how they think these things work. My question was whether the poster realized propaganda/misinformation ran on stories, since that (and only that) is what he was posting (with no accompanying assertion, a genuinely impressive technique, if intentional (no accusation, just sayin')). > In relation to percentages, lots of the articles had numbers, you could also do the work of deriving percentages from the numbers if you were so inclined. You could also get some percentages with a random number generator. Are you asserting that reasonably accurate quantitative (percentage) truth can be derived from these articles? If so, I'd like to see you explain how, and also how you would determine your theory is correct in fact. > the way English and Internet communication work if you quote a question and then give a bunch of links it is reasonable to assume.... Oh, I am aware. Heck, the "quote a question and then give a bunch of links" isn't even required, since what "is reasonable" varies widely depending on the topic. > ...that is the way they are answering the question... But they didn't even try to answer the question that was asked. This is the beauty of just posting links: no claim of them being an answer is made, readers can assume for themselves that they have answers the question, and confirmed the meme. > ...in short they believe that the links they provide are a good faith explanation of 'what degree "they" "influence" an election in our "reality"'. People are welcome to believe whatever they like, but I am under the impression that what is being discussed here is at least an attempt at the truth. Could I be mistaken? I will ask you point blank: do you care what the truth of the matter is here?
• mike_hearn 2y ago
  Please be aware that a lot of stories about bots on social media are themselves misinformation. If you trace them back to the sources you arrive at academic papers that are just intellectually fraudulent in various ways, like they misrepresent their data or they are identifying real westerners as Russian bots. I did some deep dives on this topic back in 2017-2018 or so: https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f08c014a https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f... https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-ii-bots-that-are-not-c66129e5e3f5 https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-ii-bots-that-are-n... Also, a lot of stories on Russia are or were plain old western misinformation, long predating Ukraine: https://blog.plan99.net/правда-6e24757a67ba https://blog.plan99.net/правда-6e24757a67ba So it's very important to be careful when making claims about "influencing elections" because there's such a long history of false claims from western sources, amplified by western media, of which the outlets you've cited are prime offenders unfortunately.
  • I_o_IllI__o_I 2y ago
    [dead]
  • montjoy 2y ago
    I want to believe you but now I have to trust your claims over what the NYT, etc are publishing. In order to do that I not only need to follow your sources but the original sources that NYT etc define to ensure they are the same. I also have to make my own conclusions about the data to see if I agree with anyone’s analysis. Frankly it’s too much to do when all I want is a few dopamine hits in the middle of the night before I can fall asleep again.
    • stevenAthompson 2y ago
      > In order to do that I not only need to follow your sources but the original sources that NYT etc define to ensure they are the same. To put an even finer point in it, they're asking us to believe their blog posts over numerous large media outlets, and even above (presumably) peer reviewed research. Anyone capable of understanding the issue of misinformation should see why that's a terrible idea, and why we shouldn't be encouraging that kind of behavior.