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So why can't a candidate in a Romanian election hire TikTok to promote his candidacy? If "running focus groups" is legal, why is "showing people videos" illega

So why can't a candidate in a Romanian election hire TikTok to promote his candidacy? If "running focus groups" is legal, why is "showing people videos" illegal? TikTok just happens to work faster than old school influence methods, but that's technology. If we agree that showing people videos online is legal, then the only problem would be if the candidate secretly used foreign (let's say, Russian) funds to finance his campaign. OK, so prove that in court. Isn't there such a thing as presumption of innocence? Ah, too slow you say. The evil candidate will have taken over by then. OK, so require candidates to submit complete documentation of their campaign financing. Banks do KYC on their customers at scale and routinely ask for sources of funds. Why is it impossible to have the same standard for candidates? P.S. In case you actually believe the "running focus groups" part: you should have seen what was on Russian TV in the 1990s. I assure you, this influence went way, way, way beyond focus groups. These "cute little mom and pop lobbyist shops" had complete control of all media. And they were famously bribing media executives with boxes full of cash that said "Xerox Copy Paper" on the outside. Yeah, totally different story.

lern_too_spel 2y ago
> In case you actually believe the "running focus groups" part.... These "cute little mom and pop lobbyist shops" had complete control of all media. You had something to say about that: > OK, so prove that in court Instead, you gave us an article about a firm providing polling and focus group services to a campaign for a fee and implied that it was the same thing that Russia does to Western governments.
- riehwvfbk 2y ago
  Apologies for starting from far away. In my defense: when one's starting point is "your opponent thinks you are a paid troll", one has to tread lightly. I was trying to provide context. You saw an article in Time Magazine. Try as you might, you can't just dismiss it as a work of a Russian troll. You have to actually read it, engage with it, and discuss the content instead of dismissing it out of hand and moving on. Notice that we are not debating whether US lobbying consultants were involved. We are discussing the magnitude of their involvement, and whether or not their participation was paid for appropriately. You have to agree that this is higher quality discussion. OK, so we agreed that these firms were involved. How involved were they? I'll leave another link in this trail of breadcrumbs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_affair. Predicting your next rebuttal ("but there's no link to the US"): yeah, there's more. In conclusion: it is absolutely true that other countries have done to Russia exactly what they are outraged about now. You can choose to be OK with that.

lern_too_spel 2y ago

> In case you actually believe the "running focus groups" part.... These "cute little mom and pop lobbyist shops" had complete control of all media. You had something to say about that: > OK, so prove that in court Instead, you gave us an article about a firm providing polling and focus group services to a campaign for a fee and implied that it was the same thing that Russia does to Western governments.

riehwvfbk 2y ago
Apologies for starting from far away. In my defense: when one's starting point is "your opponent thinks you are a paid troll", one has to tread lightly. I was trying to provide context. You saw an article in Time Magazine. Try as you might, you can't just dismiss it as a work of a Russian troll. You have to actually read it, engage with it, and discuss the content instead of dismissing it out of hand and moving on. Notice that we are not debating whether US lobbying consultants were involved. We are discussing the magnitude of their involvement, and whether or not their participation was paid for appropriately. You have to agree that this is higher quality discussion. OK, so we agreed that these firms were involved. How involved were they? I'll leave another link in this trail of breadcrumbs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_affair. Predicting your next rebuttal ("but there's no link to the US"): yeah, there's more. In conclusion: it is absolutely true that other countries have done to Russia exactly what they are outraged about now. You can choose to be OK with that.