[0xfeba]

I'm just saying I based my judgement on the content before, but having seen others dig through other posters' comment history to find pro-Russia patterns gives me pause now.

And even if it is still just about content, it's a lot easier to spread BS than it is to refute it.

> This idea that the Russian government spends its time/money trying to influence US politics by posting to Hacker News of all places should fail any basic test of common sense and logic. But it's so tempting to believe in this conspiracy theory, because then difficult questions like "why did Trump win" and "why do people hate Hillary so much" and "are there Trump supporters in my own circle of friends and family" can all be ignored. It's not really America, it's actually some vast subtle manipulation by a foreign government! And if anyone questions the unreliability of US intelligence, that's just more proof that it's really happening!

I am not totally disconnected from people who support Trump, unlike the stereotypical liberal coastal megalopolis dweller. But it seems pretty clear at this point that Russia has, and is continuing to, sow dissent in America. Not by hacking election machines or anything clearly aggressive, but by thousands of twitter, disquss, and facebook troll accounts. I do not ignore any "difficult" questions because of it.

[peoplewindow]

but by thousands of twitter, disquss, and facebook troll accounts.

Actually no, that's not pretty clear.

For one, where's the evidence that spamming Twitter can affect anything politically at all, in any country? The entire belief that elections are decided by robo-Twitter accounts revolves around the idea that a lifetime of experiences, beliefs, news consumption and discussions with friends/family goes out the window the moment someone opens Twitter and reads 140 characters.

I don't think this is a real phenomenon. I don't believe in it because it's such an obvious and minor riff on a more general theme that is always so pervasive in politics; the idea that people who disagree with you politically aren't "really" disagreeing, they're just brainwashed and not thinking for themselves.

If you look at European politics, before the current wave of Russia hysteria the EU and its fans liked to explain Euroscepticism as something driven by tabloid newspapers. To quote Martin Schulz (head of the EU Parliament), "UK tabloids have performed mass brainwashing" which "force fed their readers with intolerance". In other words, stupid people read simplistic messages and automatically start to agree with them - that's why they don't vote for things the educated elites like.

That's an almost identical rationale to the idea that people didn't vote the right way in the USA because there was "mass brainwashing" that "force fed them intolerance", except now it's Twitter instead of newspapers and the evil Russians instead of tabloid journalists. But the premise is the same: bad people are brainwashing the ignorant masses.