I've heard the number $100,000 thrown around [1] as possibly Russian ad-spend on Facebook for "political" ads. I've read a story about a pretty corny Facebook group [2] promoting Texas succession and possibly also links to CA succession rallies as well.
What I haven't heard is a reasonable argument on whether this mattered in the slightest. This is an election where over a billion dollars was spent by the major parties. The amount of hand-wringing over some astroturf seems over the top.
Both campaigns spent heavily to influence social media. I remember reading specifically about Clinton PAC Correct the Record spending $1 million [3] to basically troll for her on social media.
There is absolutely no reason, absent extraordinary evidence, to believe any of this influenced the election. It's not enough to just not want to believe people freely voted the way they did because the "wrong" candidate won.
Take for example the "hacking" of 21 states election systems. Washington Post reports [4] that actually this was basically port scanning. Some states said the attack amounted to about one minute of scanning in an environment where they are being probed millions of times per day. It just seems rather breathless to me to single out "Russia" (actually Russian IPs) when scans are coming from IPs all over the world.
"Correct the record" should go down in infamy but I'm afraid it will instead become the norm. Where you simply cannot hold a meaningful political conversation over public channels in the lead-up to a presidential election.
> I've heard the number $100,000 thrown around ...
The truth is that we don't know the total spend.
FTFA:
Congressional investigators say the disclosure only scratches the surface. One called Facebook’s discoveries thus far "the tip of the iceberg."
If the $100k really is the "tip of the iceberg", and 90% of icebergs are under water, it could be $1M paid ads for Facebook.
And that doesn't count the well documented fake news campaign for organic social sharing, which could easily be a multiple of this in spend and impact.
Since the election was decided by less than 100,000 votes, it seems plausible that this could have flipped it.
It's not a specific problem as it is--aside from propaganda in general. But if the ads purchased by Russians are linked to a direct promise of aid to the Trump campaign then that is solid evidence in court of collusion.
My understanding of the law is the Facebook ad buy would only be illegal if requested or overseen by a campaign, or if they were overtly political.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine. “If they had ads that just were making statements about immigration and gay marriage and there was no mention of a candidate,” they would not meet the FEC's definition of an independent expenditure, he said.
I agree that the $100,000 is very small for election ad spend. However, I think Cambridge Analytica's alleged ability to target voters should not be discounted: it's possible that they've optimized for specific enough characteristics that effectively make Facebook's ad cost algorithm(s) think that certain campaigns are not as valuable as Cambridge Analytica does.
I don't think that one ad campaign on Facebook swung the election, but I also know that there is a difference between dumb money and smart money in a lot of domains, and ads could just very well be one of those things.
> What I haven't heard is a reasonable argument on whether this mattered in the slightest.
Read the linked article. If you have some specific arguments to address, that's helpful. Blanket, aggressive denials are just a way to raise unsubstantiated doubts.
> Washington Post reports [4] that actually this was basically port scanning.
Not at all. First, the article says that not much is known. Second, here is an excerpt about what is known:
Illinois:
a contractor who works two or three days a week at the state board of elections detected unauthorized data leaving the network, according to Ken Menzel, general counsel for the Illinois board of elections. The hackers had gained access to the state's voter database, which contained information such as names, dates of birth, genders, driver's licenses and partial Social Security numbers on 15 million people, half of whom were active voters. As many as 90,000 records were ultimately compromised.
Finally, while many state election officials insist their security stopped the attacks, the truth of security is that they don't know what they are missing, especially with highly resourced attackers attacking poorly resourced, generally insecure systems. Could the Russians bypass the security of the state of Ohio's election systems? I don't have much doubt ...
The title (which is the Post's title) is terrible. This article is about much more than Obama's warning; it's an extensive history of how Facebook learned of the threat and what they tried to do.
10 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 32.6 ms ] threadFYI, apparently in 2009, they were so broke that they couldn't find funding and relied heavily on a few Russian oligarchs to help fund their growth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/technology/internet/27face...
Zuckerberg even met with the Russian president Medvedev too around the time of the IPO:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-usmanov/facebook...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjN_1IydBIA
What I haven't heard is a reasonable argument on whether this mattered in the slightest. This is an election where over a billion dollars was spent by the major parties. The amount of hand-wringing over some astroturf seems over the top.
Both campaigns spent heavily to influence social media. I remember reading specifically about Clinton PAC Correct the Record spending $1 million [3] to basically troll for her on social media.
There is absolutely no reason, absent extraordinary evidence, to believe any of this influenced the election. It's not enough to just not want to believe people freely voted the way they did because the "wrong" candidate won.
Take for example the "hacking" of 21 states election systems. Washington Post reports [4] that actually this was basically port scanning. Some states said the attack amounted to about one minute of scanning in an environment where they are being probed millions of times per day. It just seems rather breathless to me to single out "Russia" (actually Russian IPs) when scans are coming from IPs all over the world.
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/07/a-...
[2] - http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-facebook-group-ads-tex...
[3] - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/correct...
[4] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/23/wh...
The truth is that we don't know the total spend.
FTFA:
Congressional investigators say the disclosure only scratches the surface. One called Facebook’s discoveries thus far "the tip of the iceberg."
If the $100k really is the "tip of the iceberg", and 90% of icebergs are under water, it could be $1M paid ads for Facebook.
And that doesn't count the well documented fake news campaign for organic social sharing, which could easily be a multiple of this in spend and impact.
Since the election was decided by less than 100,000 votes, it seems plausible that this could have flipped it.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine. “If they had ads that just were making statements about immigration and gay marriage and there was no mention of a candidate,” they would not meet the FEC's definition of an independent expenditure, he said.
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/09...
I'm linking a few general things about Cambridge Analytica here, but nothing specific to my hypothesis: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica [1] https://cambridgeanalytica.org/ [2] https://twitter.com/CamAnalytica [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/cambridge-ana... [4] http://www.techrepublic.com/article/cambridge-analytica-the-... [5] https://holidata.cambridgeanalytica.org/
I don't think that one ad campaign on Facebook swung the election, but I also know that there is a difference between dumb money and smart money in a lot of domains, and ads could just very well be one of those things.
Read the linked article. If you have some specific arguments to address, that's helpful. Blanket, aggressive denials are just a way to raise unsubstantiated doubts.
> Washington Post reports [4] that actually this was basically port scanning.
Not at all. First, the article says that not much is known. Second, here is an excerpt about what is known:
Illinois:
a contractor who works two or three days a week at the state board of elections detected unauthorized data leaving the network, according to Ken Menzel, general counsel for the Illinois board of elections. The hackers had gained access to the state's voter database, which contained information such as names, dates of birth, genders, driver's licenses and partial Social Security numbers on 15 million people, half of whom were active voters. As many as 90,000 records were ultimately compromised.
Finally, while many state election officials insist their security stopped the attacks, the truth of security is that they don't know what they are missing, especially with highly resourced attackers attacking poorly resourced, generally insecure systems. Could the Russians bypass the security of the state of Ohio's election systems? I don't have much doubt ...
EDIT: A bit more on Russia's influence campaign:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/russian-o...