This talk (Rage against the weaponized AI propaganda machine) at DEF CON I attended showed research indicating that it doesn't take much to sway an election one way or the other -
just a couple percentage points and that tactics which are now being widely reported on do work towards that goal.
Sounds like a surprisingly detailed scenario they've been able to reconstruct based on just $100k of ad spend.
It's funny the Russians didn't funnel the money through US based organizations to cover their tracks, it's almost like whoever did this wanted to be discovered. But gosh, why would that be?
Perhaps the $100k was just the Russian government experimenting, and the real dollar values were funneled through shell organizations, or more sinister--with full knowledge and support of the Trump campaign.
I wonder if the United States under the Obama admin (with Secretary Clinton) tried to influence Russian elections. Maybe this is some personal score settling between HRC and Putin.
That said, I support better relations with Russia.
I'm all for better relations with Russia too, but only if they give Crimea back. This isn't the 1600s, you can't simply invade a country and make it part of yours.
First, the $100,000 may not be the full spend, it's just the minimum based on what has been identified as false-flag accounts linked to Russia. There may well have been orders of magnitude more spending that has not been identified as false flag accounts (further, it's not even the total expenditure of resources on the false flag accounts, just the part actually spent buying placement—when comparing to campaign spending numbers, when all the resources spent on content development, etc., and not just placement are counted.)
Second, people may discount messages that are official campaign messages (which have required disclosures to prevent falsifying origin), so there may be a significant influence multiplier for false-flag “astroturf” spending of the kind Russia engaged in.
But I can't see any reason to think that Russia would be the main actor in the "false-flag/astroturf space". I mean, it's hard not to think everyone with an interest in the outcome would be pushing here to get their interests served.
Certainly, the DNC emails seemed to demonstrate an interest in underhanded approaches (not that I'd discount a similar interest from the Trump campaign). And PACs that are actually independent would be jumping in the action, etc.
The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down. We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.
> The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down
The outrage isn't about the amount spent, so why should it be kept down absent evidence of greater amount spent.
> We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.
I see no evidence of the former (at least not on this subject, though I think there are structural reasons to think that that's unlikely to be a useful reference point more generally), and don't see avoiding polarization at all costs as a goal.
No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.
This line of questioning comes up a lot as the ultimate gotcha, but the people upset about Russian meddling today are also the ones most likely to be upset about American meddling in the past.
I'm curious about your opinion here. I haven't seen this idea that countries shouldn't try to influence each other's politics until last Fall. Not saying the idea wasn't out there, just never encountered it. I've seen plenty of dissatisfaction with things like American or Russian propaganda, but never anyone saying that it shouldn't be allowed at all.
So what would a world in which countries don't influence each other look like? When people have common interests, it's natural for them to try to push each other one way or the other. So there would have to be strict trade restrictions between countries to isolate their interests. We would probably have to get rid of the UN or any other global entity like the World Bank. We would have to severely restrict immigration so people didn't come to a country and try to influence its politics from the outside. Also we would probably have to end the whole idea of a multinational corporation and ensure that every business inside a country was local. Basically reverse the entire process of globalization that has led to this point.
But most of the people upset about Russian influence are also pro-globalization, so I don't quite get it. They're not complaining about the lack of disclosure but rather the whole idea of foreign influence on politics. How can you move forward with globalization and also stop every country from influencing another's politics?
I think it's not so much the fact of influence, as it was the nature of it.
If, say, RT runs propaganda pieces in favor of candidate X, and against candidate Y, that's fine, because everybody knows that it is Russian propaganda. They can factor that knowledge into their decision making accordingly (and it doesn't need to be negative - e.g. someone who is interested in warmer relations with Russia, for whatever reasons, might actually support the candidates they endorse).
Coincidentally, this is also the kind of involvement that US and other Western countries normally practice overseas. E.g. looking back at the Ukrainian revolution in 2014, it was very obvious and transparent which side was backed by the US government.
In contrast, what we've seen in this past election is covert foreign propaganda, that tries to actively conceal and misrepresent its identity (many of those fake FB accounts and groups pretended to be American). Not only there are obvious ethical issues aside, but - in US, at least - it also runs afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is a law that has been around for almost 80 years now. So you can hardly say that it's some new thing.
Then there's also the orthogonal aspect where a lot of that propaganda is blatantly false to an unusual degree. We're not talking about spin here, but actually manufacturing entire news stories around events that never happened, and facts that were never true.
But why is it that when Russia engages in covert foreign propaganda, it's bad, but when the US does it it's normal or expected and no one complains? Are you suggesting the US and other countries don't use blatantly, knowingly false propaganda as well?
Of course, from a political standpoint Russia's government needs to be penalized by the US's government. And of course, if there's any evidence of collusion between US politicians and the Russian government, that needs to be investigated.
But why should Russia's government be viewed as particularly monstrous for doing what the US and probably dozens of other nations do?
The actual monstrous stuff is the allegations of Putin murdering journalists and oppressing political enemies, though of course there's no smoking gun for many of those allegations (or at least the murder ones).
Not necessarily. They are doing so on my behalf. I would be outraged if somebody punched me with what I perceive as poor reason, but I would not be outraged if I punched somebody with good reason.
There are times when the US has meddled in other countries' affairs that I don't agree with, but there are others, like covertly slowing nuclear proliferation, that I do agree with.
I'm outraged that the Russian's attempted to influence the election, but I'm not outraged that the Russians 'stole' the election for Trump because there's no proof of that yet. Many of the articles I've read on this topic just today (from CNN,BI and WaPo) seem to take it as a forgone conclusion that this paltry amount of money means that the Russians interfered with the election in a way that amounts to a political crisis.
Bush and Obama both had bogus crisis whipped up in an attempt to delegitimize their elections. This is an incredibly dangerous pattern in a democracy and one that I'm not really excited to see repeated again.
This happens for just about every election. Obama spent money attempting to influence elections in Israel, France, all sorts of places. Look at what Clinton did to interfere in Russia's elections as lampooned in the Jeff Goldblum film Spinning Boris. Clinton just about ran Boris Yeltsin's campaign. You're on course for permanent outrage if you deeply research any particular election happening currently on this planet, I feel.
Quite a few people seem hellbent on being permanently outraged. They will even go so far as to invent reasons to be outraged. Outrage is currency in our post-modern society.
Sometimes, the outrage is legitimate. It isn't isolated to one side of the political spectrum. The right was outraged by everything Obama did. The left will be outraged by anything Trump does. Some people are outraged at the idea of transfolk being in their bathroom, some folks are outraged that people are outraged about it. Some people are outraged about speech, some are outraged that they are held accountable for speech.
The media cycles on it, the people thrive on it, and it escalates with each showing more umbrage than the last.
My conclusion is that if you seek umbrage, you will find it.
You need to step back for a minute. Think about a scenario where Russia actually did influence our elections. Do you think the response would be this passive?
All of this Russia talk is a farce. If Russia actually interfered with US elections, the US response would be awe inspiring.
A scenario where Russia actually did influence our elections looks exactly like a scenario where Russia is merely accused of influencing our elections, barring irrefutable evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
So what you're saying is: we shouldn't react to this news, because Russia didn't actually influence our election... and we know Russia didn't actually influence our election, because we didn't react?
Hm, now I think about it, what exactly are you outraging about? It's not like buying ads on Facebook or influencing people by showing them texts or pictures is illegal.
Hacking attempts, yes, are a big problem. Facebook ads - not a problem at all.
We are already in an era of yellow journalism, every angle, every sentence, every clip is contorted to reflect a narrative approved by corporate elites for publishing. All of this drama merely drives profits.
US Law (specifically the Federal Election Campaign Act) generally tries to prohibit foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns.
It seems like that act has some pretty broad restrictions: "The Act prohibits knowingly soliciting, accepting or receiving contributions or donations from foreign nationals. In this context, "knowingly" means that a person:
...
Is aware of facts that would lead a reasonable person to inquire whether the source of the funds solicited, accepted or received is a foreign national."
So a candidate could be taking a legal risk if he took a large donation from a foreigner and his excuse was that he didn't realize who the donation was from and wasn't interested enough to find out who was making the donation.
But I don't really think the US has decent enough disclosure laws for political donations or enforcement of current laws to adequately prevent or prosecute foreigners donating to political campaigns.
well to get around that one well known campaign simply made sure the donations from "unknown" sources were sufficiently small and diversified in identifying data so they would not be reported/flagged.
the current political parties set up the donation game so they could work it to their advantage and eliminate possibility of a 3rd or more parties.
Is it actually illegal for the actual Russian government to buy advertising on Facebook/Google linking to influential material? Not being condescending but actually asking this. Facebook can easily terminate the ads but does the US gov’t have this as illegal?
Targeting ads to play on deep seated racial issues using the fruits of an unprecedented data mining operation, combined with targeting to swing states can have a very high ROI considering the rust belt and some midwest states were going to be razor close regardless.
I believe the number of voters in key districts needed to swing the electoral college to Clinton was in the tens of thousands. If it was targeted perfectly (which of course is impossible), that's almost two dollars a person that needed to be influenced. How many Facebook ads impressions does that buy per person? While I think it's unlikely that anyone could have accurately targeted to that degree, it does put into perspective just how important targeted advertising might be to something like this.
Additionally (and I think more likely), the advertising might have been been used more as an agitation device, and to reduce the trust in traditional information through highly effective misinformation. If you can start viral memes, it doesn't matter how many impressions you paid for, what's important is how far the meme spreads in the end. A single shared article can lead to tens of millions of views and re-shares. In this case, money is purely a way to help get critical mass for your specially crafted meme, so it doesn't necessarily compare to candidate spending directly, which needs to both educate and counteract opponent messaging. Targeted disinformation can just ignore failed meme campaigns and counteractions to them and move onto the next meme, since it's effectively anonymous.
Did you change your vote based on memes or fake news?
So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles.
I'm sure a few people did have their views changed by them, but I suspect the number was vanishingly small. It's nice to find an easy reason and shuffle the blame elsewhere, but I think the election results can be squarely blamed on America.
Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts.
No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. A good portion of the country still feels this is a good thing. If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate.
Well someone changed their vote based on news, right? From a source they trusted. But it wasn't fake news, it was real. Fake news is what they used to read back before they were enlightened.
> Did you change your vote based on memes or fake news?
No, but I'm not in a swing state, nor was I close to undecided.
> So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles.
That's not surprising. Do you know which stories you saw were fake? Are you sure you know them all? Does it matter that you intellectually know now that some might have been fake, or is the emotional response to them originally still present? How many people that were influenced are unconsciously using self self justification[1] to think they were unaffected (I'm sure we all want to think our news sources were unaffected)?
> Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts.
I think all you can say from that is that you were self-selecting for people that think they were targeted and influenced by fake news, and by people self reporting, which is known to be a horrible way to get accurate data from people.[2] Additionally, unless you travel quite a bit and attempt to ask this question of a wide subset of people, you might find that your area is not a targeted population. Even if oyu did travel a lot to get an accurate subset of the population, and even if you get get perfectly accurate self reported answers, you would have to ask 70 people in a perfectly representative sample of those that voted to have a better than even chance of finding someone answering affirmative if it change the voted of 1 million people, and that's far more than actually needed to be influenced. Thus, I'm not entirely convinced be some ad-hoc surveying unless you put some real time and effort into it and are significantly underplaying that.
> No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. ... If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate.
I'm not making some case that this did change anything. I'm just trying to express that there's a lot of ways it could have, and it's not very simple to tease out the how or the affects that resulted. This isn't a Democrat/Republican or Trump/Anti-Trump thing to me, this is about the future of democracy, free-will, and how to navigate in a future where trustworthy information so much harder to come by (not that it was perfect before).
At this point, I look to CNN for the general politics headlines (which I'm under the impression is (was?) one of the less biased organizations, but I pull up Fox News' website occasionally to see the other take on the news (and what is and isn't being considered a story on each). I tried Breitbart the same way. Once. The extreme pandering and fear-mongering was hard to stomach. I'm disheartened by what I see as cheap shots at and purposefully disingenuous interpretations of Trump, and this comes as someone who is definitely not a fan of that man. I just think it's slowly eroding my trust to see the bias exposed occasionally (and in obvious and petty ways). Put simply, I recognize that pandering as well, and am left wondering if this is the best we've got right now?
To revisit your first question, no, I didn't change my vote, but maybe it did nudge my opinion of people, or of their personalities. At this point, I don't even remember everything I read during election season. I'm sure it affected my emotional base response as I took in more input though, so who's to say how much I was affected?
Oh, it's hardly scientific and only useful for speculation. I'm well aware of the inherent biases, though I have tried to ask people from every persuasion.
I don't think many changed their vote based on the propaganda. I strongly suspect that the dishonest media increased the resolve of those already going to vote Ina certain direction.
It wasn't exclusive to one side, though we're discussing the external influence. I saw quotes taken out of context and wild, untrue, accusations made by the internal media as well.
Now, as for me?
I can tell you that I'm 100% certain I was not influenced by the media - at all.
Really...
I voted Green. I didn't want Stein to win, no. No, she's insane. I voted for her because the Green Party needed a certain number of votes to remain on the ballot, as opposed to write-in, and to get matching funding. I voted Green because I want to encourage third party candidates to run in my State. I've held this position for years. In fact, I'm nearly sixty and I've only voted for one major party presidential candidate, ever.
It was also mathematically impossible for my vote to change the outcome. If every single third party voter had voted, in my entire Statem had voted for one candidate or the other, it would have not changed the outcome one iota.
On the other hand, Green is automatically eligible, assuming enough signatures, to be on the next ballot and to get some matching funding - though that applies only to local candidates.
So, the narrative and rhetoric changed my vote exactly zero. It's unlikely to change any of my future votes.
Either way, I'm still not sure that it had any meaningful effect. I do wish there were a way to find this out scientifically, but I'm not sure how we can rid the system of bias.
I get to claim some imperviousness to it all. I've never had anyone who represented my ideals as a serious candidate or elected at the national level. I default to third party, even if just to give encouragement. If third party isn't in the ballot, I research to see who is the write-in candidate. Man, I have voted for some lunatics over the years. I mean that, too. I've voted for people who probably shouldn't even be the dog catcher. But, at least I'm voting for something,
I was only noting that perfect targeting was impossible. By perfect targeting I meant that it was only shown to those that would need to be flipped to change the result, so some 50k people in specific districts, and only those that would actually flip. That's of course impossible, but was just meant to establish a bound.
Are the media still going on about this? WaPo and the media did far more to exploit the divisions over BLM and muslims than anything russia could have done.
Seems right out of Foundations of Geopolitics [1].
> Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."
> use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism...
And therein lies the sad reality for us all. Given how brilliant Russians truly are, had they directed their tremendous cultural wealth instead toward stabilizing and strengthening this world, perhaps they would have already achieved their goals of leading it long ago. Of course, that might entail in some ways to not follow in the footsteps of its current leaders.
> had(Russian) they directed their tremendous cultural wealth instead toward stabilizing and strengthening this world, perhaps they would have already achieved their goals of leading it long ago.
Do you have any examples from the current roster of leading nations that have used their resources to contribute to stability of the world?
The sad reality is USA does all it can to retain power. All other are trying everything they can to obtain it.
Somewhat tangential, but does anyone know why Russia likes the word "geopolitics" so much? Does it mirror a Russian word with a similar meaning?
In my experience, it's used so much by Russian propaganda sources and so rarely elsewhere that it serves as a good fingerprint of the Kremlin's influence. If someone uses it, I know there's a good chance that either they're Russian (and read Russian news) or that they read/watch RT.
The interest in geopolitics is deeply imprinted in the Russian mindset from the Soviet era. Since the dawn of the USSR the Communists always thought in terms of geopolitics and influence expansion. It constantly translated through the state propaganda to the masses. Therefore, an average Soviet person would be more interested in the progress on "helping our friends / fighting our enemies abroad" rather than in having good schools and roads in his/her local community. The vast majority of the country were in ruins yet its people were immensely proud of advances in Korea/Afghanistan/Vietnam/Egypt and whatever other warzone the USSR was involved at that time. This mindset has successfully survived the collapse of the USSR and is now widespread in Putin's Russia. Only this time it's about Georgia/Ukraine/Syria as warzones in a traditional sense, and US/Europe as cyber-warzones.
This started as "Russia hacked the election" and now we are talking about Russia taking out ads in support of BLM claiming its a psyop? At what point do people just accept the fact that Trump won a democratic election, racists voting or not.
The actual campaigns took out billions of $ in ads and campaign ads are never honest, accurate or logical. Who cares about $100k in Russian ads?
> At what point do people just accept the fact that Trump won a democratic election,
Even if everything was above board, at best Trump won exactly because of anti-democratic features of the US Presidential election system. So, in no case did Trump “win a democratic election”.
That's not fair. If Trump didn't win a democratic election, then neither did Obama, Bush, Clinton or Washington. He apparently won according to the rules that are established. The only question is, did he really win according to the established rules, or did he take advantage of foreign power?
If an electoral college upset is undemocratic, then there probably aren't any democracies around at all. For instance, there's the Bill of Rights which allows dead people to collude with about a dozen people appointed to lifelong roles to decide what laws you can't bring about. If we continue in this way, we reach the conclusion that "democracy" is a word with no useful significance. So do you propose some other way to describe countries like the US and Canada, and to distinguish them from countries like China and Saudi Arabia?
It's a simple fact that Trump won directly and solely due to anti-democratic features of the US Presidential election system.
> If Trump didn't win a democratic election, then neither did Obama, Bush, Clinton or Washington.
Three of those did not win solely and directly due to anti-democratic features of the then-current system, so while, yes, you could construct standards by which none of them won a “democratic” election, those aren't the standards at issue.
> He apparently won according to the rules that are established.
And, if so, he won a legal election. “Legal” and “democratic” are not the same thing. There are plenty of leaders who have won election under the rules established at the time who no one would argue won a democratic election (for a current and fairly non-controversial example, Pope Francis.)
> The only question is, did he really win according to the established rules, or did he take advantage of foreign power?
That's not only not the only question, but it's not even a question. Whether Trump (potentially illegally) collided with foreign actors in regard to the election is one of the questions that exists, but even if he did, he was unmistakably legally elected: there is no question that he was a Constitutionally-qualified candidate, that the majority of the state-level electors cast ballots for him, and that the Congress accepted, counted, and ratified that result, which is the entirety of what it takes to win by the established rules.
While there are legal questions around Trump and his campaign and administration, the Constitutional validity of his election is not among them.
The questions that concern legitimacy and potential impeachment, while they may be informed by investigation of the legal issues, are ultimately more nuanced and less prior-rule-bound issues of what people are willing to accept.
No, there hasn't been any hard evidence that records were manipulated (AFAIK). But I don't see how our response should be substantively different knowing they altered records vs. just having had access to the databases.
Those are not the same things. There is an unfolding story about employment of paid and farmed action on social platforms by Russia to influence the election, but also an unfolding story about attempts to infiltrate state voting systems and voter rolls. The nexus of the two is in how users were targeted for the former using data potentially taken from the latter.
It was pretty clear, even for the sensationalized media and sensationalizable public, that Russia did not "hack" the election and that no votes were altered, etc. But now it turns out, hey, there were actually successful penetrations of state voting systems, and at present we are not sure of the extent.
So while the initial "Russia hacked the US election" line was quickly redrawn to be precise about what we knew, it turns out now that there's a reasonable possibility that Russia actually did hack our election. To what extent or effect? Yet unknown.
> At what point do people just accept the fact that Trump won a democratic election, racists voting or not.
I don't see that as the issue here.
If there's a plane crash in the US, there is an exhaustive effort to identify the failures and improve policies and technology so it doesn't get repeated. Trump sees any audit or investigation into the election as a personal attack on him. I see any feet-dragging as a personal attack on US sovereignty, which is what he was elected to protect.
I get that lots of the 5/6 of America who didn't vote for Trump want some way to nullify the vote. I don't think it's healthy for the country (just like Gore in 2000 decided not to file additional lawsuits to extend the inevitable) to pretend like there is a viable path to overturning the election results.
I want and audit (of the election systems, election financing, and election-season media buys) and accountability for the failures of our overfunded and underperforming intelligence community + military cyber command. And I want some recommendations for policy changes and ideas about how to make sure the plebs are more media literate in the future.
> At what point do people just accept the fact that Trump won a democratic election, racists voting or not.
The more this is investigated, the less like a democratic election this looks. So tell me: at what point will you accept that fact that the election Trump won was not a democratic election?
Oh look, more anonymous and unnamed sources, what a surprise. Yes, 100k in ad buys somehow did more damage than literally every single news/media organization that were pro-Clinton. Give me a fucking break
I find it hard to believe anyone susceptible to having opinions on BLM or Muslims would be measurably influenced by an ad on facebook.
Maybe that's why they only spent 100K. A similar op by Western intelligence services would cost what... maybe 10 million? 100K in ads, 9.9 million for contractors and mid level management bureaucrats.
No, no they weren't. Which make the whole drama even more objectively silly.
For the record I have no doubt the Russians do engage in covert activities not in the best interests of the U.S. But these straw grasping dramas have gotten tiresome.
I'm not sure. I honestly don't know if the assessment in the article is correct, but it seems to me the objective of a project like this isn't to change any minds but harden existing postions and prevent compromise. The impression I got was that the writer argues the Russian's goal in this operation was encourage more extreme political views in order to divide the American people and weaken national unity.
I think it's less about swaying their minds and more about making them more active and vocal about the topic, which spreads their opinion to people who otherwise would stand no ground either way. The people they would directly affect are their family members and established friends, who have an inherent trust for people they know and have opened up their lives to.
In essence, it created pseudobots that serve as outlets for the kinds of messages (read: divisions) they wanted to sow.
It's not about changing anyone's opinion. It's about feeding the outrage, pushing all the right buttons, to make the person as heavily engaged as possible - to show up at rallies, for example, and ultimately, to turn up at the voting booth.
So, one country foisting this unholy mother-monster of all tracking and social control machines on as much of the world as doesn't actively block it, and then going all hissy when parts of the world make a bit of competent use.
This is how they operate, in fact this is the MO of modern propaganda techniques: divide and conquer.
If we keep the fracas alive by distrusting our neighbors (loudly and proudly!), this lowers our ability to face threats from outside head-on. We need trust in our compatriots to do a good job doing whatever it is we want to do as a collective.
State actors with intent to harm a citizens' coalition only need to sow distrust and more than a few wrenches will be thrown in the cogs by people who feel they're doing the right thing protecting their country.
110 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2025/DEF%20CON%2025%20pre...
It's funny the Russians didn't funnel the money through US based organizations to cover their tracks, it's almost like whoever did this wanted to be discovered. But gosh, why would that be?
That said, I support better relations with Russia.
With Clinton spending $141.7 million and Trump spending $58.8 million on advertising, does that miniscule amount even matter?
What was even the CTR with those advertisements?
Is there even anything wrong with any country or person(s) doing that or trying to do that since we already have Super PACs and lobbyists?
I have more thoughts that aren’t worth writing about (its impact on a person’s view), but is this Facebook advertising issue blown out of proportion?
Second, people may discount messages that are official campaign messages (which have required disclosures to prevent falsifying origin), so there may be a significant influence multiplier for false-flag “astroturf” spending of the kind Russia engaged in.
Certainly, the DNC emails seemed to demonstrate an interest in underhanded approaches (not that I'd discount a similar interest from the Trump campaign). And PACs that are actually independent would be jumping in the action, etc.
The outrage isn't about the amount spent, so why should it be kept down absent evidence of greater amount spent.
> We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.
I see no evidence of the former (at least not on this subject, though I think there are structural reasons to think that that's unlikely to be a useful reference point more generally), and don't see avoiding polarization at all costs as a goal.
No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.
This line of questioning comes up a lot as the ultimate gotcha, but the people upset about Russian meddling today are also the ones most likely to be upset about American meddling in the past.
So what would a world in which countries don't influence each other look like? When people have common interests, it's natural for them to try to push each other one way or the other. So there would have to be strict trade restrictions between countries to isolate their interests. We would probably have to get rid of the UN or any other global entity like the World Bank. We would have to severely restrict immigration so people didn't come to a country and try to influence its politics from the outside. Also we would probably have to end the whole idea of a multinational corporation and ensure that every business inside a country was local. Basically reverse the entire process of globalization that has led to this point.
But most of the people upset about Russian influence are also pro-globalization, so I don't quite get it. They're not complaining about the lack of disclosure but rather the whole idea of foreign influence on politics. How can you move forward with globalization and also stop every country from influencing another's politics?
If, say, RT runs propaganda pieces in favor of candidate X, and against candidate Y, that's fine, because everybody knows that it is Russian propaganda. They can factor that knowledge into their decision making accordingly (and it doesn't need to be negative - e.g. someone who is interested in warmer relations with Russia, for whatever reasons, might actually support the candidates they endorse).
Coincidentally, this is also the kind of involvement that US and other Western countries normally practice overseas. E.g. looking back at the Ukrainian revolution in 2014, it was very obvious and transparent which side was backed by the US government.
In contrast, what we've seen in this past election is covert foreign propaganda, that tries to actively conceal and misrepresent its identity (many of those fake FB accounts and groups pretended to be American). Not only there are obvious ethical issues aside, but - in US, at least - it also runs afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is a law that has been around for almost 80 years now. So you can hardly say that it's some new thing.
Then there's also the orthogonal aspect where a lot of that propaganda is blatantly false to an unusual degree. We're not talking about spin here, but actually manufacturing entire news stories around events that never happened, and facts that were never true.
Of course, from a political standpoint Russia's government needs to be penalized by the US's government. And of course, if there's any evidence of collusion between US politicians and the Russian government, that needs to be investigated.
But why should Russia's government be viewed as particularly monstrous for doing what the US and probably dozens of other nations do?
The actual monstrous stuff is the allegations of Putin murdering journalists and oppressing political enemies, though of course there's no smoking gun for many of those allegations (or at least the murder ones).
Example: Country A caught doing something bad. "...but what about Country B?"
Whataboutism is quite popular in discussions WRT Russia.
There are times when the US has meddled in other countries' affairs that I don't agree with, but there are others, like covertly slowing nuclear proliferation, that I do agree with.
Bush and Obama both had bogus crisis whipped up in an attempt to delegitimize their elections. This is an incredibly dangerous pattern in a democracy and one that I'm not really excited to see repeated again.
Sometimes, the outrage is legitimate. It isn't isolated to one side of the political spectrum. The right was outraged by everything Obama did. The left will be outraged by anything Trump does. Some people are outraged at the idea of transfolk being in their bathroom, some folks are outraged that people are outraged about it. Some people are outraged about speech, some are outraged that they are held accountable for speech.
The media cycles on it, the people thrive on it, and it escalates with each showing more umbrage than the last.
My conclusion is that if you seek umbrage, you will find it.
All of this Russia talk is a farce. If Russia actually interfered with US elections, the US response would be awe inspiring.
That's... impressively circular.
Hacking attempts, yes, are a big problem. Facebook ads - not a problem at all.
It's illegal?
But you ask good questions.
It seems like that act has some pretty broad restrictions: "The Act prohibits knowingly soliciting, accepting or receiving contributions or donations from foreign nationals. In this context, "knowingly" means that a person: ... Is aware of facts that would lead a reasonable person to inquire whether the source of the funds solicited, accepted or received is a foreign national."
So a candidate could be taking a legal risk if he took a large donation from a foreigner and his excuse was that he didn't realize who the donation was from and wasn't interested enough to find out who was making the donation.
But I don't really think the US has decent enough disclosure laws for political donations or enforcement of current laws to adequately prevent or prosecute foreigners donating to political campaigns.
https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/
the current political parties set up the donation game so they could work it to their advantage and eliminate possibility of a 3rd or more parties.
Additionally (and I think more likely), the advertising might have been been used more as an agitation device, and to reduce the trust in traditional information through highly effective misinformation. If you can start viral memes, it doesn't matter how many impressions you paid for, what's important is how far the meme spreads in the end. A single shared article can lead to tens of millions of views and re-shares. In this case, money is purely a way to help get critical mass for your specially crafted meme, so it doesn't necessarily compare to candidate spending directly, which needs to both educate and counteract opponent messaging. Targeted disinformation can just ignore failed meme campaigns and counteractions to them and move onto the next meme, since it's effectively anonymous.
1: https://medium.com/@hoffa/hillary-only-needed-to-switch-53-6...
So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles.
I'm sure a few people did have their views changed by them, but I suspect the number was vanishingly small. It's nice to find an easy reason and shuffle the blame elsewhere, but I think the election results can be squarely blamed on America.
Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts.
No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. A good portion of the country still feels this is a good thing. If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate.
No, but I'm not in a swing state, nor was I close to undecided.
> So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles.
That's not surprising. Do you know which stories you saw were fake? Are you sure you know them all? Does it matter that you intellectually know now that some might have been fake, or is the emotional response to them originally still present? How many people that were influenced are unconsciously using self self justification[1] to think they were unaffected (I'm sure we all want to think our news sources were unaffected)?
> Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts.
I think all you can say from that is that you were self-selecting for people that think they were targeted and influenced by fake news, and by people self reporting, which is known to be a horrible way to get accurate data from people.[2] Additionally, unless you travel quite a bit and attempt to ask this question of a wide subset of people, you might find that your area is not a targeted population. Even if oyu did travel a lot to get an accurate subset of the population, and even if you get get perfectly accurate self reported answers, you would have to ask 70 people in a perfectly representative sample of those that voted to have a better than even chance of finding someone answering affirmative if it change the voted of 1 million people, and that's far more than actually needed to be influenced. Thus, I'm not entirely convinced be some ad-hoc surveying unless you put some real time and effort into it and are significantly underplaying that.
> No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. ... If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate.
I'm not making some case that this did change anything. I'm just trying to express that there's a lot of ways it could have, and it's not very simple to tease out the how or the affects that resulted. This isn't a Democrat/Republican or Trump/Anti-Trump thing to me, this is about the future of democracy, free-will, and how to navigate in a future where trustworthy information so much harder to come by (not that it was perfect before).
At this point, I look to CNN for the general politics headlines (which I'm under the impression is (was?) one of the less biased organizations, but I pull up Fox News' website occasionally to see the other take on the news (and what is and isn't being considered a story on each). I tried Breitbart the same way. Once. The extreme pandering and fear-mongering was hard to stomach. I'm disheartened by what I see as cheap shots at and purposefully disingenuous interpretations of Trump, and this comes as someone who is definitely not a fan of that man. I just think it's slowly eroding my trust to see the bias exposed occasionally (and in obvious and petty ways). Put simply, I recognize that pandering as well, and am left wondering if this is the best we've got right now?
To revisit your first question, no, I didn't change my vote, but maybe it did nudge my opinion of people, or of their personalities. At this point, I don't even remember everything I read during election season. I'm sure it affected my emotional base response as I took in more input though, so who's to say how much I was affected?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-justification
2: https:...
I don't think many changed their vote based on the propaganda. I strongly suspect that the dishonest media increased the resolve of those already going to vote Ina certain direction.
It wasn't exclusive to one side, though we're discussing the external influence. I saw quotes taken out of context and wild, untrue, accusations made by the internal media as well.
Now, as for me?
I can tell you that I'm 100% certain I was not influenced by the media - at all.
Really...
I voted Green. I didn't want Stein to win, no. No, she's insane. I voted for her because the Green Party needed a certain number of votes to remain on the ballot, as opposed to write-in, and to get matching funding. I voted Green because I want to encourage third party candidates to run in my State. I've held this position for years. In fact, I'm nearly sixty and I've only voted for one major party presidential candidate, ever.
It was also mathematically impossible for my vote to change the outcome. If every single third party voter had voted, in my entire Statem had voted for one candidate or the other, it would have not changed the outcome one iota.
On the other hand, Green is automatically eligible, assuming enough signatures, to be on the next ballot and to get some matching funding - though that applies only to local candidates.
So, the narrative and rhetoric changed my vote exactly zero. It's unlikely to change any of my future votes.
Either way, I'm still not sure that it had any meaningful effect. I do wish there were a way to find this out scientifically, but I'm not sure how we can rid the system of bias.
I get to claim some imperviousness to it all. I've never had anyone who represented my ideals as a serious candidate or elected at the national level. I default to third party, even if just to give encouragement. If third party isn't in the ballot, I research to see who is the write-in candidate. Man, I have voted for some lunatics over the years. I mean that, too. I've voted for people who probably shouldn't even be the dog catcher. But, at least I'm voting for something,
https://www.apnews.com/cb8a753a9b0948589cc372a3c037a567
> Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
And therein lies the sad reality for us all. Given how brilliant Russians truly are, had they directed their tremendous cultural wealth instead toward stabilizing and strengthening this world, perhaps they would have already achieved their goals of leading it long ago. Of course, that might entail in some ways to not follow in the footsteps of its current leaders.
Do you have any examples from the current roster of leading nations that have used their resources to contribute to stability of the world?
The sad reality is USA does all it can to retain power. All other are trying everything they can to obtain it.
Would you rather have:
USA
Russia
China
...be the top dog?
It is not perfect but USA being the lone superpower is probably the best choice.
In my experience, it's used so much by Russian propaganda sources and so rarely elsewhere that it serves as a good fingerprint of the Kremlin's influence. If someone uses it, I know there's a good chance that either they're Russian (and read Russian news) or that they read/watch RT.
The vast majority of USSR were in ruins? Reality check hello? I see you here from time to time, every one of them political load >> facts.
That makes you a Soviet person like the one you describe.
He's talking about WWII, probably the single biggest even to shape Soviet/Russian worldview.
Afghanistan was in late 1970-s, I mean come on. Egypt before that but pretty far from ruins period. One can probably only claim it about Korean War.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard
It does seem to have been popularized by Dugin and other modern Eurasianists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasianism
The United Kingdom should be cut off from Europe.
Ukraine should be annexed by Russia.
Russia needs to create "geopolitical shocks" within Turkey. These can be achieved by employing Kurds, Armenians and other minorities.
The actual campaigns took out billions of $ in ads and campaign ads are never honest, accurate or logical. Who cares about $100k in Russian ads?
We'll see when Mueller's investigation is over.
Even if everything was above board, at best Trump won exactly because of anti-democratic features of the US Presidential election system. So, in no case did Trump “win a democratic election”.
If an electoral college upset is undemocratic, then there probably aren't any democracies around at all. For instance, there's the Bill of Rights which allows dead people to collude with about a dozen people appointed to lifelong roles to decide what laws you can't bring about. If we continue in this way, we reach the conclusion that "democracy" is a word with no useful significance. So do you propose some other way to describe countries like the US and Canada, and to distinguish them from countries like China and Saudi Arabia?
It's a simple fact that Trump won directly and solely due to anti-democratic features of the US Presidential election system.
> If Trump didn't win a democratic election, then neither did Obama, Bush, Clinton or Washington.
Three of those did not win solely and directly due to anti-democratic features of the then-current system, so while, yes, you could construct standards by which none of them won a “democratic” election, those aren't the standards at issue.
> He apparently won according to the rules that are established.
And, if so, he won a legal election. “Legal” and “democratic” are not the same thing. There are plenty of leaders who have won election under the rules established at the time who no one would argue won a democratic election (for a current and fairly non-controversial example, Pope Francis.)
> The only question is, did he really win according to the established rules, or did he take advantage of foreign power?
That's not only not the only question, but it's not even a question. Whether Trump (potentially illegally) collided with foreign actors in regard to the election is one of the questions that exists, but even if he did, he was unmistakably legally elected: there is no question that he was a Constitutionally-qualified candidate, that the majority of the state-level electors cast ballots for him, and that the Congress accepted, counted, and ratified that result, which is the entirety of what it takes to win by the established rules.
While there are legal questions around Trump and his campaign and administration, the Constitutional validity of his election is not among them.
The questions that concern legitimacy and potential impeachment, while they may be informed by investigation of the legal issues, are ultimately more nuanced and less prior-rule-bound issues of what people are willing to accept.
I guess you missed the news about their attempted and successful intrusions into state election databases?
I did miss the news where Russians successfully manipulated results in those databases. Can you provide me some links, please?
Well, you claimed that Russians hacked our elections, when there is no hard evidence they did. I'm not sure why you had to resort to lying.
>I guess you missed the news about their attempted and successful intrusions into state election databases?
which is borne out by the evidence.
It was pretty clear, even for the sensationalized media and sensationalizable public, that Russia did not "hack" the election and that no votes were altered, etc. But now it turns out, hey, there were actually successful penetrations of state voting systems, and at present we are not sure of the extent.
So while the initial "Russia hacked the US election" line was quickly redrawn to be precise about what we knew, it turns out now that there's a reasonable possibility that Russia actually did hack our election. To what extent or effect? Yet unknown.
I don't see that as the issue here.
If there's a plane crash in the US, there is an exhaustive effort to identify the failures and improve policies and technology so it doesn't get repeated. Trump sees any audit or investigation into the election as a personal attack on him. I see any feet-dragging as a personal attack on US sovereignty, which is what he was elected to protect.
I get that lots of the 5/6 of America who didn't vote for Trump want some way to nullify the vote. I don't think it's healthy for the country (just like Gore in 2000 decided not to file additional lawsuits to extend the inevitable) to pretend like there is a viable path to overturning the election results.
I want and audit (of the election systems, election financing, and election-season media buys) and accountability for the failures of our overfunded and underperforming intelligence community + military cyber command. And I want some recommendations for policy changes and ideas about how to make sure the plebs are more media literate in the future.
The more this is investigated, the less like a democratic election this looks. So tell me: at what point will you accept that fact that the election Trump won was not a democratic election?
Maybe that's why they only spent 100K. A similar op by Western intelligence services would cost what... maybe 10 million? 100K in ads, 9.9 million for contractors and mid level management bureaucrats.
For the record I have no doubt the Russians do engage in covert activities not in the best interests of the U.S. But these straw grasping dramas have gotten tiresome.
By the time the election was over they had bought into pizzagate.
They are the perfect demographic to target. No ad blockers, leaning towards Bernie but kind of didn't relate to Hillary.
You only needed to convince a fraction of the people to either not vote or vote for Trump.
The best part is you could target them by trying all sorts of ads until you found one that clicked then have it go viral.
I'm waiting for the Mueller probe but I fear the worst.
In essence, it created pseudobots that serve as outlets for the kinds of messages (read: divisions) they wanted to sow.
$100k is too small to seriously influence something, but to measure flamebait level of various topics via CTR etc, it should be enough.
Also explains why they didn't hide.
We are slightly amused.
If we keep the fracas alive by distrusting our neighbors (loudly and proudly!), this lowers our ability to face threats from outside head-on. We need trust in our compatriots to do a good job doing whatever it is we want to do as a collective.
State actors with intent to harm a citizens' coalition only need to sow distrust and more than a few wrenches will be thrown in the cogs by people who feel they're doing the right thing protecting their country.