[eugenekolo2]

There's a difference between having strong opinions, and actually conspiring to have somebody elected. One is posting news, the other is creating news (see entire Facebook groups from Russia posting fake news).

There is still the question though: have other nations participated in this creation of news? Probably so, so perhaps the spot light shouldn't be on Russia only, but more generalized into this problem. But, the problem exists nonetheless and taking action is reasonable.

[fortythirteen]

Like when the CIA infiltrated the 2012 French election? https://wikileaks.org/cia-france-elections-2012/

[SEJeff]

People still actually trust wikileaks? Assange just admitted that the Trump campaign approached him for the Hillary emails, yet that wasn't reported. Their unbiased release all of the information narrative fell over years ago. Now they're more or less tools used by Russia to sow dissent amongst the US and western / NATO nations.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/julian-assange-wikileak...

So why didn't wikileaks mention that?

[pizzetta]

Hasn't Assange said that the campaign reached out to them? Opposition research is not extraordinary. Wasn't it revealed the Trump Dossier was paid ofr by Podesta/DNC?

They all do the same stuff.

That said, what has WikiLeaks published that has turned out untrue?

[fixed Pedestal/Podesta autocomplete]

[tyleraldrich]

> Wasn't it revealed the Trump Dossier was paid ofr by Pedestal/DNC?

http://www.newsweek.com/republicans-trump-russia-dossier-cli...

Allegedly also partially "funded by an unknown Republican during the GOP primary."

> That said, what has WikiLeaks published that has turned out untrue?

I don't think anybody is arguing that WikiLeaks is posting fake news or untrue information - the argument is that WikiLeaks is curating the information it releases in order to send a specific message.

[crummy]

I agree that Assange acts very untrustworthy, but has anything (in terms of documents) they've released ever been shown to be false?

[_b8r0]

Yes. Their entire Erdogan files release was a tragedy from start to finish

They released a bunch of info claimed to be mails from the inner echelons of the AKP (ruling Islamist party) that turned out to be an archive of a public Yahoo group used by random Turks to bitch about things including politics.

If they'd have hired a basic Turkish speaker to look at the leak, they'd have avoided being burned. Instead, they decided to get into a spat with an actual journalist and researcher who's been working against Erdogan for years and tried to paint them as Erdogan shills.

[SEJeff]

If you only release half of a narrative to fit your view, are you being truthful? It is debatable as it allows people to potentially infer untruths.

[kej]

Not just that, but they timed releases to benefit one side. The Podesta emails dropped an hour after the Access Hollywood video. That's not a coincidence.

[grandalf]

Not sure why this matters. Due to both publications I decided not to vote for either of the two candidates. It would not have mattered when either piece of information was released, both were enough to convince me that the third party candidates needed more love.

[indubitable]

What is your logic for thinking this is even possibly the case?

Consider something. Let's use Trump as an example, since the discussion of 'why aren't they releasing stuff on [the other side]' is generally connected to him. Imagine somebody had a treasure trove of leaked and compromising information on Trump. And they then submitted this information to Wikileaks. As the weeks and months passed by, it became clear to them that Wikileaks was not going to publish this information. Do you think they would not submit this to other media outlets? US media outlets would do absolutely anything for this sort of information.

I'm curious to see where my logic may be failing me.

[FilterSweep]

> Do you think they would not submit this to other media outlets?

Other outlets are accepted [by general public] to have already been compromised wrt bias.

Up until the Trump campaign - Wikileaks was considered to be an unbiased leak of private and/or confidential information.

The name "Wiki" even intentionally evokes the name Wikipedia, the (slightly biased) generalist source of information that appears at the top of many of our search results.

In many cases, Wikileaks is actually worse. Seeing MSNBC or Fox News flash on the screen, we know the bias put forth by the company. We don't know Assange's bias. Correction, we do now.

To be honest, I'm curious to see how your logic even equated Wikileaks to other media outlets in the first place.

[pizzetta]

Are you saying they are withholding information or that they only get one side of the information?

They can't publish what they don't receive.

[hackinthebochs]

Assange actually admitted that they have stuff on Trump that they didn't release.

[FilterSweep]

This should be the disclaimer every single time Wikileaks comes up in a discussion.

[nl]

Like when the CIA infiltrated the 2012 French election?

No, not like that at all.

The claim there is: All major French political parties were targeted for infiltration by the CIA's human ("HUMINT") and electronic ("SIGINT") spies in the seven months leading up to France's 2012 presidential election.

That's dramatically different to actively trying to (a) make US citizens lose faith in the US election system and, (b) influence the election outcome.

Reading the CIA leak, it seems like pretty sensible questions. The ethics of spying during an election could be argued, but I think it is entirely reasonable for every country to be trying to understand similar things listed in that document ("What policies do they promote to help boost France's economic growth prospects?", "What are their opinions on the German model of export-led growth?" etc).

[1001101]

I'd like to see some evidence as well. An adversarial media is a sign of a healthy democracy, and RT definitely filled that role with zeal. Their correspondents were often the only ones asking the "tough" questions at press briefings.

[tertius]

If the action is taken because of political pressure then it's not about being reasonable.

If they were being reasonable they would be listing a lot more organizations that spread propaganda than just RT.

This looks completely reactionary.

[pizzetta]

Has a conspiracy to have someone elected been confirmed? IFAIK, Russian ops was to sow distrust in the electorate not so much to favor one candidate over the other.

The ultimate goal would be to have the elections questioned by the losers (whoever the winner was) in order to diminish US influence abroad as the winner would be busy with internal affairs. It was probably a bet against Hillary winning since she had a more hawkish international vision.

[awinder]

Clinton's involvement with the Magnitsky Act gave Putin a lot to be specifically angry about, versus Trump who has a lot of existing ties to Russia (not to mention the campaign being filled with people who also had their own positive ties to Russia). It's possible that they did not have the specific goal of influencing for one candidate, but they had a ton more to gain from one specific candidate winning over the other. I think it takes some naiveté to assume they didn't have a focused effort on behalf of one candidate over the other.

[pizzetta]

That would make sense if the odds had been plus or minus 5 pts but by all accounts the odds were something like 93:7 in Hillary's favor. I don't think Russian intelligence had better understanding of our electorate than the DNC itself --they can't have been that out of touch with the people they were looking to represent.

[hackinthebochs]

Don't make the same mistake that Clinton did in buying into the media narrative of a landslide. Their stats were bad, hands down. 538 had the odds much closer.