Facebook Says 126 Million Americans May Have Seen Russia-Linked Political Posts (reuters.com) 370
Facebook said on Monday that Russia-based operatives published about 80,000 posts on the social network over a two-year period in an effort to sway U.S. politics and that about 126 million Americans may have seen the posts during that time. Reuters reports: Facebook's latest data on the Russia-linked posts - possibly reaching around half of the U.S. population of voting age - far exceeds the company's previous disclosures. It was included in written testimony provided to U.S. lawmakers, and seen by Reuters, ahead of key hearings with social media and technology companies about Russian meddling in elections on Capitol Hill this week. Twitter separately has found 2,752 accounts linked to Russian operatives, a source familiar with the company's written testimony said. That estimate is up from a tally of 201 accounts that Twitter reported in September. Google, owned by Alphabet, said in a statement on Monday it had found $4,700 in Russia-linked ad spending during the 2016 U.S. election cycle, and that it would build a database of election ads. Facebook's general counsel, Colin Stretch, said in the written testimony that the 80,000 posts from Russia's Internet Research Agency were a tiny fraction of content on Facebook, equal to one out of 23,000 posts.
Enough with the Russia spin (Score:2, Insightful)
I am beyond sick and tired of Slashdot trying to push the "Russians influenced the election!" BS that the left has been pushing. It's fake. It never happened.
Who cares if they bought ads on Facebook? Does it matter? Does anyone seriously think people voted for Trump because they saw ads from Russians?!
The thing that caused Hillary to lose more than anything else is likely her shady dealings involving her email server and the FBI "investigation" into it. An investigation that could still be restarted as it's
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With the many millions of dollars spent by both parties on ads that are basically in our faces 24/7 for over a year prior to the election, Anyone thinks a few facebook ads would actually change someone's vote is a complete moron.
Even with that, nobody has been able to demonstrate that any specific ads would influence a voter one way or the other. The fact that the media won't show us these ads tells me that the content of the ads doesn't support the spin.
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Apologies in advance for any offense you or anyone else takes from reading this.
I don't want to hear "The Russians influenced the election" and I don't want to hear "The Russians didn't influence the election." Nor do I want to hear about how many people, potentially, figuratively, or exaggeratedly could have might possibly seen a snippet of an ad or post by a "Russian operative."
I don't want to hear your commentary, Zuckerberg's inane prattling, any political pundit's repackaging of this bullshit, and cer
Re:Enough with the Russia spin (Score:5, Informative)
> Really. Is it that hard?
No, it's not. There are some examples out there. So if you're asking for information, here you go:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1... [nytimes.com]
http://www.philly.com/philly/n... [philly.com]
What is that hard though, is to understand why your comment got modded insightful.
If you're demanding no less than the full set of ads involved: it's natural to expect the tech firms involved would hold back, because the whole thing is very embarrassing for them.
> and certainly not any journalist's outright lies about this
Aha, herein lies a big part of the problem. Trump has convinced you that "the media" is the enemy, it's all fake news. That is one of the steps that autocrats take, to discredit a free and open press, to remove one of the points of accountability on them.
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I am beyond sick and tired of Slashdot trying to push the "Russians influenced the election!" BS that the left has been pushing. It's fake. It never happened.
I on the other hand look forward to reading these stories. Specifically the comments and heated thoughtless debates about them. Thankyou.
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Obviously not, but I think it's amusing how they desperately try to infer that while also tossing around the oddly specific notion that only $50k was spent in total.
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Do you really think this is the first time they've tried to influence an election? How do we know they were trying the same thing when Clinton, Bush, Obama, Bush 1, Reagan,etc were running for president?
This seems like standard cold war tactics. And do you suppose America wasn't trying to do the same to them? Reading most posts these days, sounds like they've completely taken over the conversation at many places.
Try going to reddit and say something bad about communism or socialism.
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So did the Russians do better by spending $50K on Facebook, or getting their cut on the $12M that Hillary and the DNC spent on the Trumped-up Dossier?
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[...] push globalism and human extinction.
Wot?
I've seen lots of exaggeration on /., I've seen hysterical exaggeration, I've seen must-be-a-drool-proof-keyboard exaggeration, but now slashdot pushes human extinction?
I, err, ..... I give up.
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It’s not known how many people saw the Instagram ads, though Facebook has confirmed that the collection of 3,000 ads might have been seen by as many as 10 million people. The ads promoted both sides of sensitive political and social issues like gun control and Black Lives Matter in an effort to create political discord.
This seems to have worked on influencing liberals the most, as they are the ones up in arms and trying to make it out to be one sided.
https://www.recode.net/2017/10/6/16439368/instagram-russia-ads-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-election-donald-trump
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You sound like those assholes that say taking a knee during the national anthem is really about ass raping a wounded soldier, or whatever stupid shit they make up instead of listening to what the protest is actually about.
And, just like when people defend the right of rich, entitled, and incredibly privileged people to protest the national anthem on a nationally broadcast stage, so you should defend to the death the right of other people to identify a problem in their community and protest against it. If yo
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What made facebook work so great (Score:2)
Re:What made facebook work so great (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who gets their information from the Bookface, or sucking at the media's (left or right) teat, deserves what they get. People need to take personal responsibility for educating themselves with diverse viewpoints, and using that to create a worldview based on knowledge and belief informed by root principles. If you can't filter disinformation from your inputs, you're doing it wrong.
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That handy 'both sides' arguments once again proves its usefulness.
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Anyone who gets their information from the Bookface, or sucking at the media's (left or right) teat, deserves what they get.
What would you suggest as an alternative? If you rule out the media and social media, how do you get your news?
I can agree with you on social media, but what is a better source than professional journalists?
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Youtube.
I'm not saying that's what the GP is suggesting, but most times these days when someone says 'do your own research' what they mean is 'watch the same poor quality Youtube videos as me'. That's certainly where my friend found the conclusive evidence that the earth is flat.
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Good point, how could I forget the home of the Rationals.
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Anyone who gets their information from the Bookface, or sucking at the media's (left or right) teat, deserves what they get.
What would you suggest as an alternative? If you rule out the media and social media, how do you get your news?
I can agree with you on social media, but what is a better source than professional journalists?
I dunno. I get my news from ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, BBC and Breitbart. I can see some folks getting twitchy about the first 5 sources, and others freaking about the last one.
Fox News is a comedy channel, so not on my source list. I get no news from Facebook at all ever. Of course I'm only there because I have to be on the FB dungheap. Guess that's my cross to bear.
Some people ask why such an eclectic mix of news sources?
There is a lot of news happening in the world. No one group can cover it all. Just
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They sound fine, although the GP would dismiss them as "media" I guess, except for Breitbart. While the others at least attempt to be fair and publish corrections, Brietbart is just pure fake news. Not an alternative point of view or coverage of stuff that the others miss, just pure made up bullshit.
I managed to ween my friends off Facebook and on to WattsApp. Lesser of two evils perhaps, but I don't use Facebook any more.
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Well, it's a basic assumption of both liberalism and democracy that people are "wise and good" enough to run their own affairs, decide who to vote for, and to make their own decisions about the truth of other people's speech. Unfortunately, large parts of the American left don't believe this to be true.
Re: What made facebook work so great (Score:2)
You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Re:What made facebook work so great (Score:5, Funny)
So folks could pour money into it with impunity.
Indeed. If we let people go around speaking with impunity, we will lose our freedom.
Re: What made facebook work so great (Score:2)
Only if your citizens have had their critical thinking skills neutered via reduced education, constant advertising, organized religion and leaders that scream "Think of the children!"
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If you listen to Facebook long enough, you'll find that they claim to have over 8 billion members... 126 million "views" sounds like another number they feed their paying advertisers.
Oh no (Score:4, Funny)
My virgin eyes!!!! Why Facebook why didn't you protect me from the interwebs. I so was going to vote for Hillary until those adds showed me that Trump was a kind hearted, attractive, beautiful haired, honest, intelligent, and amazing guy. I was duped.
Re: Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
You can always tell old guard Slashdot folks from new Slashdot folks as to whether they believe FUD is a real force at play in people's minds. It wasn't positive ads for Trump. It was FUD.
They say how many people but not how many uniques. (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is how many unique views were served for each ad and how many ads there were total. 126 million people seeing one silly racist political meme one random afternoon is nothing to panic about, and certainly they'll try to spin this revelation as nothing more than that. But 126 million people being immersed daily into an advertising environment that's completely saturated with unregulated foreign propaganda, rubber-stamped with approval by an ostensibly loyal, United States citizen-owned publicly traded corporation... now that my friends, that right there is how you sew destruction throughout the minds of an entire population. That is how you fundamentally pervert the perception of reality of an entire social class. That is how you sever friendships and turn families against each other. That is how you topple a government. That is how you start a civil war. That is something worth panicking about.
In Putin's Russian Federation . . . (Score:2)
Mark Zuckerberg trolls . . . you!
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Maybe you've never heard how effective propaganda can be.
Here is a hint. If it didn't work, no one would waste their time doing it...
Re:They say how many people but not how many uniqu (Score:5, Insightful)
Wtf?
First of all, who said the point of the ads is to get people to change their mind? This is what the Trump team itself was doing with ads/targeting before the elections [bloomberg.com]:
All you need to dö is get enough people in the key demographic of your opponent to stay home in key areas.
Second of all: many people don't recognize sponsored content/ads in social media, or elsewhere. You'll see a news article or a blog post that has above it something like '[Your friend name here] also liked [our site]' and that's in fact a paid ad targeted to you because someone you know has liked the page and they've targeted their promotion that way, but really people generally don't think of these as ads but just another part of their newsfeed which actually makes them more effective.
Third of all: ads (both direct and sponsored content) do affect people's decisions. That's why they exist and why companies are pouring money into them but you obviously will have a hard time finding anyone who says they bought any opinion/product/service because it was advertised to them, partly because people don't often recognize the impact ads have on them. Chances are high advertising has affected your behavior during your lifetime without you being directly aware of it. You see ads and at some later point when you're making the decision of what to buy, the ads play into your preconceptions and decision making process at a subconscious level. Hardly no-one is at the store like 'I'm going to buy this product because I saw that ad last week" but there is still is an increase in sales following a successful marketing campaign.
So no, if you poll people and ask them 'did you see any paid for articles in your news feed about either candidate and if so did they effect your decision on whether to vote or not and for which candidate?' you're likely going to get a 'no' on all 3 of those from most people but that doesn't mean there was no effect, it just means most people can't recognize well placed ads as ads anymore and that like always, people think they're immune to the psychological effects of ads/sponsored content when they provably are not.
Human beings on average are much more easy to influence than we tend to admit, and the marketing industry has been honing their skills for way over half a century at this point becoming more and more successful at it.
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Prove that it had zero influence on anyone. You can't, any more than I can prove that a specific ad influenced a specific person.
But it wasn't just ads of course. There was an army of fake accounts amplifying those messages and shitposting from 8 AM to 6 PM Moscow time every weekday.
Frankly the claim that it all had zero influence lacks any credibility. I don't think any reasonable person would contest that propaganda and fake news has zero influence on anyone.
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Re:They say how many people but not how many uniqu (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't think fake news changed the outcome of the election, it's because you're inside the bubble.
The outcome of the election was the result of two opposing forces: the repulsion for Trump that made a lot of people vote Hillary, even if they didn't like her, and the repulsion for Hillary that made a lot of people not vote her, even if they do not like Trump. Eventually the second force prevailed, and that was thanks to all the media that endorsed Hillary: the media fanfare made alot of people think that Hillary's victory was obvious and so they voted libertarian or something else and that was fatal in swing states.
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Which silly racist political meme? (Score:2)
The white-supremacist meme that the unarmed black men shot by the police deserved to be shot by the police?
Or the BLM meme that the unarmed black men were shot by racist cops?
But that the cops are racists may encourage the white supremacists because they want the cops to be racists who shoot black persons for no apparent reason?
Or the BLM view that the cops are indeed racists despite their denials because of the white supremacists wanting the cops to be racist?
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So, if Facebook ads effect non-US politics, it's all fine, because "USA, fuck yeah!"
Article misses so much information, on purpose? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, they tried to say the advertisements promoted Potus Trump, now "Divisive" ads. Divisive is code for Hillary and Bernie.
And if we are only talking Divisive advertisements, what about ShareBlue or Correct the record? How many millions did these companies pay to change social media, 50 Million? 100 Million? How much did the DNC and related political pacs pay, 500 Million?
And 80k from Russians is a big issue vs a billion?
Wag the dog indeed. If you are still blaming Russia for Trumps win, you still haven't learned. Nobody liked Hillary and Bernie only ran as a Democrat to get on the stage.
This two party system is a problem with all the money is funneled into 2 people. WTF, All that money into 2 parties. When vary widely on so many issues, 2 parties don't cover everyone. I have no idea how, but wish we had a multiparty system to stop this "us vs them" tribal cultural war. We got Democrats voting Republican for financial issues, and Republicans voting democrat for social issues. Libertarians, Socialist, Communists, etc, its a clusterfuck.
Re:Article misses so much information, on purpose? (Score:4, Informative)
This two party system is a problem with all the money is funneled into 2 people. WTF, All that money into 2 parties. When vary widely on so many issues, 2 parties don't cover everyone. I have no idea how.
The answer is quite simple. The long term equilibrium configuration of an elected government where the winner takes all in a single round of voting, regardless of percentage, and winning is determined by the "first past the post" method. is a two party system. This can be proven mathematically and those interested in the details will find many fine sources with a few searches.
but wish we had a multiparty system to stop this "us vs them" tribal cultural war.
That will not be possible without major changes to the US constitution to implement proportional representation, where seats are allocated by votes and representatives of any party that gets enough votes for at least one seat will be granted that seat with more seats going proportionately to parties with more votes. Although it's still possible for a single party to win an outright majority in such a parliamentary system, in practice that rarely happens and it's not the equilibrium state in any case. The more typical situation is for the party with the most seats to "form a government" by making deals with other parties to secure votes for a prime minister from the majority party with other parties in the coalition receiving other benefits, typically ministerial level seats.
We got Democrats voting Republican for financial issues, and Republicans voting democrat for social issues. Libertarians, Socialist, Communists, etc, its a clusterfuck.
A parliamentary system would better harmonize and accommodate the various nuances of these positions. Unfortunately, that's not the system that we have here in the United States, mostly for historical reasons. You see, when the United States was founded there hadn't really been a democratic republic on any serious scale for thousands of years. Oh sure, you had city states here and there but nothing like a federal republic system. The most common form of government at the time was monarchy with varying degrees of absolutism and sometimes accompanied by an assembly of noblemen and (nominally) selected commoners but with much practical power remaining in the hands of the monarch. Many aristocratic people in Europe and elsewhere thought that democracy could not work on such a large scale and that United States was doomed to fail. Being that we were first nation to give Democracy a serious try on a large scale in a long while, basically since the early Republican period of the Romans, we were bound to get some things not quite right and those mistakes are now more or less baked into the system now 241 years on.
Re:Article misses so much information, on purpose? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem actually stems from our system of government electing representatives for a specific district (or state). It results in a bunch of winner-take-all elections. The founding fathers chose this method because they wanted elected representatives to have a direct connection to the people they were representing. The downside is that a vote for someone who has no chance of winning (a third party candidate) is a wasted vote.
In countries which use parliamentary elections, everyone casts their votes, and the members of parliament are allocated in proportion to the vote. So a vote for a third party is not "wasted" (as long as that party gets enough votes to obtain one seat). The downside of course is that no single member of parliament feels bound to a particular group of people or represents any particular region.
If you wish to retain the representative model while having fairer outcomes, you first have to realize that there is no such thing as a perfectly fair election system [wikipedia.org]. All of them can result in counter-intuitive results where the "winner" doesn't really enjoy as much support among the voters as the loser(s). People are upset about the Electoral College "stealing" the election from Clinton. But if you add up the votes for all the parties and independent candidates [wikipedia.org], the liberal parties (Democrat, Green, Independent, Socialism and Liberalism, Bernie Sanders) add up to 49.38% of the votes. Adding up the conservative parties (Republican, Libertarian, Constitution, Evan McMullin) gives 50.06%. So the correct winner of the 2016 election was in fact a conservative candidate even if you ignored the Electoral College and did a straight vote tally.
But different systems result in a different frequency of counter-intuitive results. Unfortunately the plurality wins system the U.S. uses is one of the worst. The frequency of "bad" results can be minimized by use of an instant-runoff voting system [wikipedia.org]. Where each voter ranks all the candidates in order of preference. You then successively eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of #1 votes. Voters who voted for that candidate have their vote reallocated to their next highest choice of the remaining candidates. And so on. Until just two candidates are left, and the more popular of them among all the voters is the winner.
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Domestic institutions are governed by US law. It's illegal for foreign institutions to interfere in US elections.
More importantly, the Russian interference is carefully planned trolling. It's created huge divisions that won't easily be healed. Your country has been split multiple ways, with extremists coming to the forefront. You have literal Nazis marching in the streets and murdering people in broad daylight, you have a POTUS under criminal investigation and tweeting every day about locking up his politic
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First, they tried to say the advertisements promoted Potus Trump,
[citation needed]
now "Divisive" ads.
No, that's what the claim has always been. Either you're a moron who missed it, or a disingenuous douchebag who's making shit up now.
Divisive is code for Hillary and Bernie.
It's not code for hillary and bernie, it's code for showing made-up ads about hillary and bernie that made them look more reactionary than they actually are to people who would never support their policies, in an effort to whip those people into a froth. Targeted advertising normally displays ads about things to people who will be receptive, in order to sell t
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now "Divisive" ads. Divisive is code for Hillary and Bernie
Divisive just means divisive. That can include driving Bernie supporters away from the polls or away from the democrat establishment. It can also include dividing the country by race, for those who are into that kind of thing.
> And 80k from Russians is a big issue vs a billion?
Not sure if you are trying to say that the 80,000 posts that facebook says were created or promoted by Russia-linked accounts cost a dollar each to create/promote/whatever, or if you're intentionally or accidentally conflating
Re:Article misses so much information, on purpose? (Score:5, Informative)
.the US Constitution supports only two.
Where does it say this in the constitution? There are over 20 parties listed on national elections and a few people in the federal government who belong to neither of the two major parties.
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.the US Constitution supports only two.
Where does it say this in the constitution?
It doesn't address parties at all, and that is either a horrible failure of the founders, or a deliberate decision which they made (like others) to keep themselves and their ilk in control of the nation. You know, like initially giving the vote only to landed white males like themselves, or the interstate commerce clause...
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If you want a multi party system then you need to design a system that supports it...the US Constitution supports only two.
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Well, I saw that, but I failed to address it. See, by not putting limitations on political parties, the constitution left room for the two dominant political parties of the English of the day to spawn two political parties here in 'merica. And they sucked all the air out of the room. If the constitution actually said anything about political parties, it might well say some things that put enough limitations on them that some other parties might be able to get a leg up.
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by not putting limitations on political parties, the constitution left room for the two dominant political parties of the English of the day to spawn two political parties here in 'merica
I don't think that's it at all. I think the two-party system is propped up by the majority election system [democracy-building.info] and the first past the post [wikipedia.org] vote counting method. Switching to a proportional representation system, with 1 of the many ranked voting [wikipedia.org] methods would allow third (fourth, fifth) parties to become viable. In addition, problems such as gerrymandering, tactical voting, and "wasted votes" would be less of an issue, likely increasing voter participation.
Proportional representation at the federal and mo
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Re: Article misses so much information, on purpose (Score:2)
My neighbor's dead dog voted for Gary Johnson. Just sayin'...
Smart russians (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: Smart russians (Score:3)
Following the rules is easy when you write the rules.
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Americans have to follow the rules. If I was going by the places they supposedly spam I'd guess the country is composed entirely of Nazis and SJWs.
All I had to do to get that impression of the US was watch Fox news, the liberal media and snippets from a number of popular political YouTube channels from both sides of the US political spectrum.
Re:Smart russians (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe they are not that smart. How do they know the ads were effective? For all we know they poured $100K into a campaign that didn't change a single vote.
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Maybe Clinton should have paid the Russians to run her Facebook campaign, then she'd be in the White House.
Re:Smart russians (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has done this all over the world. Talk with Iran. Talk with Grenada. Talk with Guatemala. The list goes on.
Russia won't allow any of this in their country. They've banned this stuff on Facebook internally because of this.
This is one of the main reasons the Chinese have "The Chinese Firewall."
Do we get to see the posts? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or do we just have to take their word that they've fortuitously found exactly what they set out to look for, from people who are supposedly foreign operatives but apparently are too dumb to cover their tracks?
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Yes sometimes we're able to figure out who they are.
There's no "we" here, which was my whole point. The article is about Facebook, a private corporation with accountability to no one, chock full of employees who live for stuff like this to be true, and who as far as I can tell is just asking us to take its word that it is true.
That's fine for topics like the percentage of subscribers who post cat videos in a typical month. That's not at all fine for a topic like this.
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See the "meddling" posts? And learn that their alleged "interference" is indistinguishable from speaking freely?
The next thing you're going to ask for is candidates taking sole responsibility for their campaigns, win or lose! Or to see and hear what "Voice of America" does in other countries.
Can't get sucked in by Russian Facebook ads... (Score:2)
if you don't use Facebook.
Or anyplace else if you have an adblocker.
Facebook is advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
This is FB advertising the cost effectiveness of placing inexpensive ads on their service. And they're doing it "for free" by "revealing" the information to a willing press.
"SEE HOW MANY IMPRESSIONS RUSSIA GOT FOR ONLY $[insert current estimate here]. YOUR AD COULD DO AS WELL!"
These ads are getting more play now than they got before, most likely.
What Makes the American Public... (Score:3)
what? (Score:2)
Set Up the Camps! (Score:2)
Universal Code of Conduct UN agreement? (Score:2)
Otherwise the attempts to destabilize each other would only keep intensifying.
Sure glad I wasn't one of them! (Score:2)
Beyond fantastic for Facebook (Score:3)
Also extremely biased.
So 100,000 dollars nets you 120 million influnces. Facebook is going to sell a lot more ads in the near future. I didn't see the ads as I dumped Facebook during the primaries due to what I perceived as inherent bias on the part of Facebook itself.
I had no likes, entered no work or education history, rarely followed anyone but tech pages, and I was being inundated with pro Hillary and anti-Trump rhetoric.
What about other countries? (Score:2)
Russians? I am mad at the Germans too! They are all strange-talkin' ferriners.
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It either shows how incompetent and her campaign was or how horrible of a message she actually had. Either way, she had no place being elected as President. A decent candidate with a coherent message would have wiped the floor with Trump.
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Would someone who inherited a billion-dollar fortune count as one of the elites?
Re: Divide and conquer (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever you do, don't blame the (heinously unpopular for years & years before the election) losing candidate for losing the election. Blame Canada instead!
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Whatever you do, don't blame the (heinously unpopular for years & years before the election) losing candidate for losing the election. Blame Canada instead!
To be precise, Crooked Hillary lost the electoral college.
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I see Fox and Russians have converged on "blame Hillary Clinton" as the deflection
Wait. How is identifying the fact that she was a terrible candidate who lost the election a "deflection?" The people trying to deflect are the ones implying that it was the RUSSIANS that made her call half the country deplorable people. That it was the RUSSIANS who somehow made her forget to even set foot in states like Wisconsin even once. That it was the RUSSIANS who somehow made her look her supporters in the eye and lie to them for a year straight about her conduct as Secretary of State. You're confusi
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And this couldn't have had any influence at all on the historically low voter turnout?
Re: Non equivalence (Score:2)
Certainly the tone of divisive recrimination, minus any actual significant policy differences, is likely to have lowered voter turnout. But I think it would be pretty optimistic to blame that on any one actor.
It seems cultural. I don't have any solid answer for why it's happening. I suspect it had something to do with common people's access to information expanding at an astronomical rate, while at the same time most other traditional measures of freedom are rapidly declining.
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Low voter turnout, you say? It couldn't have anything to do with the parties putting up the most flawed, offensive, and polarizing candidates in the history of foreverness, could it?
Naaaaaahhhhh.....
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Not to mention that Russia-linked does not automatically mean false (if a post is "Russia-linked", whatever that means, and true, where's the problem?).
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May - Weasel word [wikipedia.org]: A weasel word, or anonymous authority, is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that a specific or meaningful statement has been made, when instead only a vague or ambiguous claim has actually been communicated. This can enable the speaker to later deny the specific meaning if the statement is challenged. Where this is the intention, use of weasel words is a form of tergiversation.
Weasel words can be used in advertising and in political statements, where i
Re: Non equivalence (Score:2)
Proposal: the word "lawyer" be replaced by the more aptly descriptive word "tergiversator".
Re: Non equivalence (Score:2)
You spend a _lot_ of time making baseless accusations and otherwise lowering the tone of the debate.
So who exactly pays you for your quite diligent astroturfing & trolling work? You have nothing interesting to say, so I just don't believe you're doing it for fun.
Is it a Democrat party affiliated PR firm? Some minor fiefdom of the US military industrial complex? Neoliberal international capitalists as symbolized by Soros (who may or may not have any actual involvement)? Russian military/intelligence
Re: Non equivalence (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is it's being framed as a partisan issue, because the Democrats desperately want to find something or someone to blame for Trump winning besides themselves. Russian interference in US elections is a problem, and that's something everyone should agree on, red or blue. It should be looked into, and it should be stopped.
Did it have anything to do with Hillary losing the election? Almost certainly not. 80,000 posts sounds like a lot, but over a two year period on a site like Facebook? It's tiny. Facebook probably had well over 80 billion posts over that timeframe (and it may be even closer to a trillion, if Facebook's daily active users are to be believed), many of them political from both sides. The whole thing is being cast as a red herring to distract from the real reason Hillary lost, which was Hillary.
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Go suck Hittler's petrified cock you Putin cum hole.
I remember learning about slab allocation on slashdot. Who let you in? I bet you are proud of yourself.
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I remember learning about slab allocation on slashdot. Who let you in? I bet you are proud of yourself.
I remember learning about cows and the GNAA on Slashdot.
Super saiyans? (Score:2)
What an incredible moron you are. You post those links trying to mock the right wing sites that posted it, but THEY'RE NOT THE ONES WHO SAID IT! It's Michael Moore and your team of Social Justice Ninjas who think the best way to combat speech they don't like is to burn down your local college. Your own deranged brethren are the joke!
Still, super saiyins are pretty tough. If they have even *one* of those it could wreck the entire planet.
It's worth getting worried about.
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Sewing?
It's fairly telling that you can look at a post that so accurately and straightforwardly nails Ratzo as the spiteful, bitter little man he's become in direct contrast to the flowery story in his profile, and the only real response you can manage is to point out a single spelling gaffe.
Re: NOTHING BURGER (Score:2)
Personally I think it's a-okay that B. Clinton got lots of blowjobs in the White House. Go him!
The reason I don't like Bill Clinton is that he did his very best to dismantle what little industry remained in America, and mostly succeeded at that despicable endeavor.
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The reason I don't like Bill Clinton is that he did his very best to dismantle what little industry remained in America, and mostly succeeded at that despicable endeavor.
Don't forget his role in media consolidation. Faux news and the so-called "Fake News" alike derive their power from being able to own every media outlet they can get the grubby hands of dead presidents upon.
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Or a lying evil person.
Hmm... :-)
That doesn't sounds very good in english.
Maybe you wanted to actually say: lzhivyy, zloy chelovek
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If you think a single post here was posted by a russian troll/bot etc you are delusional. Or very very stupid. Or a lying evil person. Those are the three options.
If you think russian trolls/bots are above posting on Slashdot, you are probably all of those things. Forum posts are very inexpensive, especially if being made by a bot. How many HTTP requests does it take to equal one porn download? They might as well be free.
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I clearly said Russian troll talking point. It appears you are saying /. posters are spewing the propaganda. Hmm... It appears you are thinking now, just slightly. Good Morning America!
--
"No Branch" - Poppi, Trolls
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It's impossible to be pro-Trump without supporting corruption, racism, theft and fraud.
That sounds like something a Russian troll would say, trying to sow divisiveness.
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Save some face before all these indictments drag you in, too, you complicit via negligence fucks.
That will never, ever happen, as Facebook has been grafted onto the NSA spying apparatus. Zuckerfuck could end up in a ditch one day, though, and it could be attached even more securely. TPTB do not respect the rule of law.
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