The article says that the deleted accounts were telling Democratic men not to vote because they would “drown out the voice of women.”
The idea is to cast a large net so that maybe, just maybe, a small number of Democratic males would abstain. Especially in swing states, every single vote is extremely valuable to both parties.
You would surprised by how easy people are "influenced"... Just heard some conspiracy theories from people I though were "sane" and I can tell you that people believe anything you tell them if that aligns somehow with their belief system.
I also don't live in the US, but in my country we are encouraged to not vote or "vote blank" if we don't agree with any of the parties. It's a way of expressing your displeasure with all of the parties up for election.
In the USA, there are serious proposals for adding "none of the above" to each contest. Some even suggest if "none of the above" wins, there's a do-over with all new candidates.
Years ago, we had a local race for judge where both candidates were revealed to be despicable (during their campaign). A do-over would have been great.
< The idea is to cast a large net so that maybe, just maybe, a small number of Democratic males would abstain.
I sincerely doubt that's the point.
It's a false flag.
It strengthens the Republicans vote.
It encourages Republicans to fight back strongly against the nonsense and weakens possible Democratic support.
The right isn't getting stronger, the left is getting weaker, these accounts just seem to be rolling with it.
[edit] On these tweets James Woods got kicked from twitter for talking about it, he even states it's fake, ironically the banning strengthening the tweet more -
Well, one example would be threatening people either directly or through violent public messaging. These are antisocial behaviors. Of the 10,000 words any human reads on any day, removing unnecessary negativity is an absolute virtue. This is the same reason we have spam filters. Would you consider Google to be censoring your email inbox? Wanting to force every human to see every other human's toxic dialogue is an invocation of Hanlon's Razor.
Not an American issue by the way, if your country happens to vote this is happening in your elections too.
If people were being threatened with violence, I'm sure that would be the focus of this article. And I'm also sure they would've taken it up with the authorities.
You asked how to discourage someone from voting, not what the focus of the article was. I guess you meant that rhetorically and had a different narrative in mind.
Just think about it for a few moments, it's easy to come up with some ideas that would work on some people some of the time:
Democrats certain to win "we don't really need any more votes"
Polling both lines expected to reach record '4 hour' lengths!
"No hope" for democrats come polling day
DEA planning "surprise" drug-test sting at polling booths
ICE planning "polling-day round-up!"
Georgia electoral system "hopelessly rigged" — why your vote won't even be counted
Now imagine that you were getting paid to work full-time at reducing turnout on social media and that it was something you believed-in — it wouldn't be hard to have some decent effect at the margins.
I'm wondering if flagging those accounts would be more effective. Make the problem obvious instead of sweeping 'em under the run. Might help average users to be more discerning.
Like the warning I get when my web browser visits a suspected malware site.
It's flagged because readers chose to flag it. We can't assume their intentions.
I flagged it because I don't want Reddit-style discussion (which inevitably happens on submissions like this) on Hacker News. There are many other outlets where content like this can be posted and discussed.
20 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 54.6 ms ] threadAnd why would something like that need to be censored?
(I am not American)
The idea is to cast a large net so that maybe, just maybe, a small number of Democratic males would abstain. Especially in swing states, every single vote is extremely valuable to both parties.
I also don't live in the US, but in my country we are encouraged to not vote or "vote blank" if we don't agree with any of the parties. It's a way of expressing your displeasure with all of the parties up for election.
Years ago, we had a local race for judge where both candidates were revealed to be despicable (during their campaign). A do-over would have been great.
I sincerely doubt that's the point.
It's a false flag.
It strengthens the Republicans vote.
It encourages Republicans to fight back strongly against the nonsense and weakens possible Democratic support.
The right isn't getting stronger, the left is getting weaker, these accounts just seem to be rolling with it.
[edit] On these tweets James Woods got kicked from twitter for talking about it, he even states it's fake, ironically the banning strengthening the tweet more -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/2...
Not an American issue by the way, if your country happens to vote this is happening in your elections too.
Like the warning I get when my web browser visits a suspected malware site.
One can hope...
This is not a falsehood, such as telling people they need three forms of ID to vote. This is an idea that Twitter is censoring.
I flagged it because I don't want Reddit-style discussion (which inevitably happens on submissions like this) on Hacker News. There are many other outlets where content like this can be posted and discussed.