[kbenson]

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.

1: https://medium.com/@hoffa/hillary-only-needed-to-switch-53-6...

[KGIII]

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.

[cassowary]

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.

[kbenson]

> 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?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-justification

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_study#Disadvantage...

[KGIII]

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,

[heartbreak]

Not impossible if the voter registration data from 21 states was used for targeting.

https://www.apnews.com/cb8a753a9b0948589cc372a3c037a567

[kbenson]

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.