Facebook, Twitter Shutter Pro-Trump Network That Used AI To Create Fake People and Push Conspiracies (theverge.com) 136
On Friday, Facebook and Twitter shut down a network of fake accounts that pushed pro-Trump messages all while "masquerading" as Americans with AI-generated faces as profile photos. The Verge reports: In a blog post, Facebook said that it connected the accounts to a US-based media company called The BL that, it claims, has ties to Epoch Media Group. In August, NBC News first reported that Epoch Media Group was pushing messages in support of President Donald Trump across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Epoch has extensive connections to Falun Gong, an eccentric Chinese spiritual community that has faced significant persecution from the country's central government. In a statement provided to The Verge, the Epoch Times denied any connection to The BL.
Facebook noted that many of the fake accounts used in the latest campaign employed false profile photos that appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence. Those accounts would post BL content in other Facebook groups while pretending to be Americans. Pro-Trump messages were often posted "at very high frequencies" and linked to off-platform sites belonging to the BL and The Epoch Times. The accounts and pages were managed by individuals in the US and Vietnam. Facebook said that it removed 610 accounts, 89 Facebook pages, 156 groups, and 72 Instagram accounts that were connected to the organization. Around 55 million accounts followed one of these Facebook pages and 92,000 followed at least one of the Instagram accounts. The organization spent nearly $9.5 million in advertisements, according to Facebook.
Facebook noted that many of the fake accounts used in the latest campaign employed false profile photos that appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence. Those accounts would post BL content in other Facebook groups while pretending to be Americans. Pro-Trump messages were often posted "at very high frequencies" and linked to off-platform sites belonging to the BL and The Epoch Times. The accounts and pages were managed by individuals in the US and Vietnam. Facebook said that it removed 610 accounts, 89 Facebook pages, 156 groups, and 72 Instagram accounts that were connected to the organization. Around 55 million accounts followed one of these Facebook pages and 92,000 followed at least one of the Instagram accounts. The organization spent nearly $9.5 million in advertisements, according to Facebook.
The real question (Score:3, Insightful)
How does Peter Thiel feel about this [marketwatch.com]? Or is he all for allowing known fake stories remain up because they support the con artist?
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Why pay for AI to do this? (Score:3)
Facebook, Twitter Shutter Pro-Trump Network That Used AI To Create Fake People and Push Conspiracies
Why pay good money for AI systems to do this? You'd think there is a superabundance of humans willing to do push conspiracy Trump related theories for free?
Trump voters kind of keep their heads down (Score:5, Interesting)
And not for the reason you think. Lefties don't have a lot of power in this country and we sure as heck ain't beating anyone up with our spindly little vegan arms.
Trump keeps doing bad. He insults vets and the disabled. He used his office to attack a political rival. He's sitting on 10 counts of obstruction of justice. He's a failure as a businessman, only surviving because of his father's connections and inheritance. He's a serial sexual harasser and it is very likely he's committed at least statutory rape and possibly actual rape.
But Trump voters aren't as dumb as late night TV hosts would have you believe. It's almost comforting to think they are, because the alternative is so much worse.
They know how awful Trump is, but they love him. Not what he does. Not what he is. Him.
They're also smart enough to know what they're doing is wrong.
So no, you're probably not going to get a lot of Trump supporters to come out in droves to flood social media for him. Because they know supporting him is just plain the wrong thing to do. Morally and Economically.
A YouTuber named Beau of the Fifth Column had a video on how Trump voters feel when they're out in the open wearing a MAGA hat outside a Trump rally. They feel like everyone's staring at them. Judging them. The hilarious thing Beau pointed out was that they were feeling Microagressions. Those things they like to crack jokes about PC Babies cringing in fear.
And that's why you won't see a lot of Trumpers out of their element.
Re:Trump voters kind of keep their heads down (Score:5, Funny)
Russian bot right there, folks.
This is the third or fouth time (Score:2, Informative)
If I'm a Russian Bot then the Russians are playing one _hell_ of a long game.
My Google-fu isn't all that good (Score:2)
With a little more effort I could probably find something older, assuming
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Re: Trump voters kind of keep their heads down (Score:1)
Can you share some of whatever you're smoking? It's obviously some good shit!
Re:Trump voters kind of keep their heads down (Score:5, Interesting)
Trump keeps doing bad. He insults vets and the disabled. He used his office to attack a political rival. He's sitting on 10 counts of obstruction of justice. He's a failure as a businessman, only surviving because of his father's connections and inheritance. He's a serial sexual harasser and it is very likely he's committed at least statutory rape and possibly actual rape.
Let me flip this on you and it might give you some further insight as to why some people still support Trump.
Imagine instead, that we're in an alternate reality where all of Trump's awful personality traits are intact, but he never made the jump over to whatever the hell passes for being a "conservative" these days. This alternate Trump is a full-on New York liberal. He's fighting like hell for single-payer healthcare, just got two liberal justices appointed to the SCOTUS (who are most likely going to finally provide equal rights to LGBT Americans), we never lost net neutrality, and social safety net programs have never been stronger. I'd probably still think alternate reality Trump is an awful human, but damn it - my political wishes are getting granted, so I'd be willing to overlook his numerous personality flaws, on election day.
Now, imagine someone comes along and says you need to vote for a hardcore conservative in 2020, because alternate reality Trump is a morally reprehensible sack of crap. I don't know about you, but I'd probably tell 'em to fuck off.
Trump isn't granting any political wishes (Score:2)
Apart from that, he's ballooned the deficit, kept us in the middle east, reneged on his promise of Universal Healthcare (yes, go back and check, he ran on Universal Heathcare) passed all the major provisions of the TPP, threw the coal minors under the bus, etc, etc.
He hasn't done any good to the economy either. 44% of Americans make under $18k/yr. 60-70% live paycheck to paycheck (depending on if you consider $1000 in the bank as "not paycheck to paycheck). 33% of Ameri
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I'd vote for a different Democrat in a primary. Then I'd vote for the next most likely candidate in the general election, even if it was Mitt Romney.
Because the flip side is precisely what I, a registered Republican since I could vote, did in 2016. Then I voted for a Democrat re
Ok... so what you're saying is you don't have (Score:2)
Look, we're way, way, _way_ past bipartisanship. You're kidding yourself if you think the GOP is anything more than the party of Corporate Oligarchy. Give me an issue that matters to you and I can explain why the GOP ignores it and does the opposite in service of the oligarchy.
As for the Democrats, well you've got the Third Way Clintonian Democrats. When I meet somebody who says "I vote Democrat sometimes and Republican other, I'm an independent" that's who I find they vote for.
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I could debate this with you, but why bother. You've made universal judgments that demonstrate that you can't be taken seriously, and I'll vote the way that I want to whether you approve or not. Welcome to democracy.
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The network of fake accounts and fake news sites gives the bullshit a little credibility that helps it spread. People see it being shared by other people and see it is sourced and are more likely to believe it.
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Thats what freedom looks like in a nation that has freedom of the press and the freedom to publish.
No need for censorship. No need for the good censor. No need to remove content thats sinful...
Re "likely to believe it".. thats what freedom is all about...
No gov, faith, mil, theocracy, monarchy, NGO, think tank... with the political mission to remove sinful content...
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Are you arguing that Facebook refusing to help foreign actors lie to Americans on a massive, unprecedented scale is undemocratic?
Are Chinese people even allowed to vote in US elections? Do US rights apply to them?
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Re: Why pay for AI to do this? (Score:1)
It's only a "conspiracy theory" when it goes against the reactionary Corporate Progressive Narrative.
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It's not a clickbait farm, it's an attempt to keep Trump in power because he is causing trouble for the Chinese government. These guys are being oppressed by the CCP so they support anyone who opposes their common enemy.
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re "People see it being shared by other people and see it is sourced and are more likely to believe it." Thats what freedom looks like in a nation....
No, that's what Propaganda looks like
I invite you to look up "Bandwagon effect"
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Facebook, Twitter Shutter Pro-Trump Network That Used AI To Create Fake People and Push Conspiracies
Why pay good money for AI systems to do this? You'd think there is a superabundance of humans willing to do push conspiracy Trump related theories for free?
Where do you think they get the conspiracies?
So what if the photos are fake? (Score:3)
So they say that the photos are generated by AI, managed by people in the US and Vietnam, and claim to be US citizens. Where is the contradiction? Is it against the rules to not use real photos of yourself on facebook and twitter?
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The point is that now, thanks to advances in neural networks, these guys can generate real looking pictures of fake people instead of stealing pictures from internet, which make it harder to prove the account is fake as a reverse search of the picture won't find anything.
Next step: spreading AI-generated conspiracy theories.
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Even if the photo is fake, how does that in any way prove it's a fake account?
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Alone it doesn't, it's just an interesting thing to note. Instead of stolen profile pics they just generate them now. Used to be easy to do a reverse image search to spot fake accounts, not any more.
Doubtless Facebook and Twitter use things like common IP addresses, common email domains, only operating during office hours and the like to find accounts that are part of this scheme.
Everything is fake (Score:2)
The fake photos alone are probably not the only reason Facebook knows they are fake. FB probably subscribes to every commercial customer database in existence in addition to having their own massive database. I bet FB can be pretty darn sure they can figure out who is real when they want to.
Re: Everything is fake (Score:1)
Indeed. The Machine is always watching.
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Because the photo is fake, ipso facto the account's identity is fake. Use your own photo. If you object to using your own photo, don't use a photo. There is no legitimate purpose to using a fake photo, instead you use a fake photo to assume a false mantle of added legitimacy.
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We've established that the photos are not real, so they're not impersonating anyone, and they never mentioned anything about one person claiming to be multiple people.
Re: So what if the photos are fake? (Score:1)
I personally am Julius Caesar, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Madonna, General Patton, Eminem, and Arthur, King of England.
^^^ Was that "fraudulent" my friend?
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It's against the ToS to misrepresent who you are in order to mislead people.
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Do you regard the cops arresting fraudsters as an assault on free speech? Are they censors?
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You do understand that you are attributing a single motive, when its not the only one, or even the most likely one, right?
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So it's not the principal that not all speech is protected that you have an issue with, it's that some cops are corrupt. Well, at least we agree there.
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When are you going to say something that isnt a fallacy?
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From the "discussion" so far (Score:1)
/. is dead for real. Only bots left
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Meh.../. holds its own. Always has.
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Yes yes - when someone says something you don’t like it’s a bot - we get it.
Dude, with a 4-digit UID I am well acquainted with people disagreeing with me on here. The high-quality disagreements made it as great as it was. It's different when just a bunch of either imbeciles or bots post low-quality canned trumpian talking points
high frequencies are delicious! (Score:3)
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This hunger for high frequencies could form part of a Turing test.
Those folks driving around with duff-duff music coming out of their
cars might be signalling their humanity. (Heaven help us.)
So that is why he vetoed Ukraine funding on Friday (Score:3)
He's upset that NATO is rolling up his Russian and Saudi botnets.
Psst ... we're also doing it with the Chinese ones, IMPOTUS.
All your base are belong to US.
I'm curious (Score:4, Interesting)
As to why conspiracies and actual fake news is so prevelent among conservative-leaning publications and social media. Is this true, or just my perception vis a vis media reporting? Are there any academic publications/research that has studies this as a growing trend? I'd like to know the facts (or at least well-reasoned theories), not just some half-baked opinions on the matter.
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Are you so naive as to not understand that "Fake News" is spread abundantly equally among the population, but that Facebook is the arbitrator of what gets pulled down and they are notoriously biased against conservatives?
Re: I'm curious (Score:3)
I see you missed the part where I asked for facts or a well-reasoned theory rather than half-baked opinions. You show nothing but bias.
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I’d have to hunt for it but back in 2016 they interviewed a guy who ran several such sites. He tried creating both right and left conspiracy stories. He was finding the right leaning stories would gain traction swiftly and he’d get money but the left leaning ones wouldn’t and little pay (I think it was all an ad scheme).
[John]
Re:I'm curious (Score:5, Informative)
Responding to t4eXanadu and supporting Bigbutt post:
During (what is now early) research into the original ideas of fake news being so successfully weaponized, NPR searched for and found a guy who was doing it for side income and just because he could:
https://www.npr.org/sections/a... [npr.org]
That article describes the fake news guy's observations about his side business. Quoting from the article, the third question/answer in the interview transcript:
When did you notice that fake news does best with Trump supporters?
Well, this isn't just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a right-wing issue. Sarah Palin's famous blasting of the lamestream media is kind of record and testament to the rise of these kinds of people. The post-fact era is what I would refer to it as. This isn't something that started with Trump. This is something that's been in the works for a while. His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters. When we were coming up with headlines it's always kind of about the red meat. Trump really got into the red meat. He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat.
We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.
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Thanks, I recall reading about this when it first came out. Their comment about trying it with liberals and failing is interesting, and supports my own hunches, but is unforunately anedcotal. Based on a cursory review of articles on google scholar pertaining to the dissemination of fake news, I'm not finding much that looks at the disparity of fake news between different polar political positions.
In graduate school, I studied order parameter equations. These are equations where changes in some parameter, th
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Here is a link copied from one of my comments below, produced by a google search of "Bob Altemeyer The Authoritarians". As far as I can tell he does a credible job of explaining how some of our observations (informally, right wing conformity versus left wing chaos), which are for us anecdotal, connect with measurable phenomena.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=... [google.com]
A summary of what prof Altemeyer gets from his research is that the extent to which people value group membership and acceptance is highly variable. A
Re: I'm curious (Score:2)
Thanks for this, looks very interesting. I'll give it a read. Besides, I can never turn down a good free book.
wow (Score:1)
Let's see, so it's Russians, Ukrainians, and now Falun Gong who are supposedly in favor of Trump? What's your scenario for that last one?
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My belief is that information warfare is a great way to weaken a society that stands in the way of dictators, autocrats or other shitheads wanting to take that which is not offered and generally behave like the criminals that they tend to be.
Based on a ton of reading (and admittedly having a nearly pathological hatred of authority), I believe there are "state" actors as well as criminal gangs who would like nothing as much as weakening societies that had a record of at least hesitantly and often inconsisten
OK so Facebook cracks down (Score:1)
Guess that means all the AI used To Create Anti-Trump "Fake People and Push Conspiracies" is OK!
Remember, it is not Fake if it is Anti Trump!
Yup Got It!
Just my 2 cents
You mean like ... (Score:1)
... the conspiracy theory that President Trump was involved in collusion with the Russions?? Or Epstein didn't kill himself?? Or Hillary had a secret email server?? Or JFK was assassinated by the CIA or Castro?
Who gets to decide when it's no longer a theory and becomes a fact??
It's only a conspiracy or fake news if it doesn't fit into your ideology.
At one time, Watergate was only a theory. Monica and Bill was only a theory. It wasn't until those that believed they were true and dug deeper were the facts r
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Had these accounts been pushing anti-trump propaganda, you would have praised to move from Facebook, or at best, remained silent.
And don't you even try to convice us otherwise. Nobody with enough brain power to keep their heart beating would believe you.
Trumptards are in the image of their god they worship: hypocrits, without morals or principles.
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As always, what were those comments actually pointing to, they always have links. So was the content promoting Trump or was the content targeted at Trump supporters to get them to a for profit advertisment.
Again with this bullshit, hundreds of millions of users, billions of comments, ohh look, 0.000001% affect the entire internet, what a crock of shit. The only noise you hear back from percentages like that, is when they are trumpeted by corporate main stream media, so push some corporate propaganda point
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In one of the last stories people were going on about youtube channels with artificial voices that were "pretending to be news" as trying to spin an "election interference" onto it.
meanwhile, I have seen youtube. There is a LOT of artificial voice content. Any place on the internet with a lot of text is being made into youtube videos in an automated fashion. Lots of subreddits, such as r/maliciouscompliance [youtube.com], are the unwitting source of the textual content.
The fact is that its always about the
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Since these were coordinated with the tRump campaign, and we have the convictions to prove it....
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It's all in support of Trump because they like that he is taking a tough stance with China.
Obviously your economy is not a concern for them, they only want to hurt the Chinese government.
By the way 50 million people is significant.
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Just ask Kim Jong Un
Re: More censorship (Score:1)
How much does it pay to work as a Democrat party troll? Asking for a friend...
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No?
Then no kettle
Re:As opposed to... (Score:5, Insightful)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Whataboutism, the pathetic, and only, argumentative weapon of trumptards.
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Whataboutism, the pathetic, and only, argumentative weapon of trumptards.
They learned from the best. Progressives and democrats have been doing that for 20 years, maybe you should have been lambasting them way back then when they decided to start being stupid.
More whataboutism (Score:5, Insightful)
Whataboutism, the pathetic, and only, argumentative weapon of trumptards.
They learned from the best. Progressives and democrats have been doing that for 20 years, ...
More whataboutism in response to an post pointing out whataboutism. Ha!
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More whataboutism in response to an post pointing out whataboutism. Ha!
That wasn't whataboutism, it was historical context.
I've noticed something though, whenever progressives or democrats are suddenly faced with people using their own tactics, their first response is to screech 'whataboutsim' as if that absolves their own actions or the actions of those they support.
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Don't stop now, you're really on a roll!
Fact has a tendency of doing that. I wonder though, how many people fail to see their own hypocrisy when they start screeching "whataboutism." Going people I see who are far more 'progressive' then american progressives, the answer is close to zero.
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You do understand that if a hypocrite calls someone else a hypocrite it does not make their claims or arguments suddenly untrue. Also, calling out whataboutism is tantamount to admission of guilt for being a hypocrite yourself while also being a flaccid excuse to say, they are doing it so I should be able to as well.
In the end you are just as evil as they are, while acting like you have the moral high ground. You both are mirror opposites of each other.
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In the end you are just as evil as they are, while acting like you have the moral high ground.
That is quite possibly the best definition I've heard for those who love to cry 'racist'.
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Whataboutism is not and never has been a real argument, it's a bad faith silencing tactic and nothing more.
Re: As opposed to... (Score:1)
Please stop implying that Democrat partisans are liberal. They are not. Some of them are reactionary Progressives. Some are corporate stooges. The rest are just straight up crooks.
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Half the world's in darkness all the time.
Re:MAGA (Score:4, Insightful)
Presuming the repeal of the 22nd amendment...
and given current polling trends...
that you mean 8 more years of Obama.
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I hope you know that joke was meant for mocking progressives and democrats, because wanting to repeal the 22nd was floated very heavily during Obama's last term.
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y'know, everyone on fox news.
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Huh?
By who, exactly?
You can start your journey down that rabbit hole right here. [bustle.com] You can continue your journey down the rabbit hole here. [vox.com]
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My
Attorney
Got
Arrested
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My
Attorney
Got
Arrested
Not at good as #IMPOTUS from Conway's husband. I think it's actually her idea to drive Trump nuts.
Interesting how many Trump trolls this story is attracting. I noticed some of them trying to run around the same technique being used over on YouTube. It actually works better there, since they can get subscribers by pushing cat videos until the election approaches, at which time they can count on the google to push the fake news for them.
Re:Strange! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's how you can tell how things stand. Since a corrupt politician will always lie when backed into a corner, when they fall back on "there's no difference between the parties" that means that their party is at least marginally worse. Otherwise they'd claim to be better.
When something comes up about Trump's behavior and a Republican tries to change the subject to Hillary, what relevance does that have to Trump's actions? None. That means they literally have no defense of the president's actions, otherwise they'd use *that*.
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so we were under the impression that Russian bribery was acceptable.
Really? And you're calling other people stupid?
Re:Strange! (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet when Trump's daughter gets caught with a private e-mail server the President stopped the investigation in its tracks. There was no going through her server to see what the e-mails were. No collecting of evidence. Nothing. Ivanka was cleared by her father and no one else.
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It's weird that so far, most Trump supporters posting in this thread did so anonymously. Why ? So they can use their mod-points to downmod to hell anyone who dares critisize their orange god ?
And the irony is that they're doing this on a topic that is precisely about free speech and censorship.
But of course, in their mixed-up, convoluted little minds, they'll see no contradiction whatsoever in this...
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Have you also noticed the normal trolls doing the text swastikas aren't around? Because they're upvoting all the pro-Trump chatter.
Re:Strange! (Score:4, Interesting)
Obama's use databases was soliciting low-figure campaign contributions. How were those efforts remotely similar to creating sockpuppet FB accounts?
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Details and context are unimportant (and/or ignored by necessity) by these false equivalence nitwits.
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Yes and remember, the purpose of being a member of a political party is to reduce your cognitive load by letting others do the thinking for you. It's comforting to be told what to believe and how to vote on every issue.
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