[emodendroket]

Certainly people on both sides were accused of that but the idea that Black Lives Matter was actually just a Russian plot is frankly pretty repellent, and that paper in the end just defers to Twitter's ideas of who's a Russian troll, and how did they decide? We've seen a lot of really shoddy work in this department.

[MBCook]

No, I’m not saying it was a Russian plot at all. It’s a real thing.

I’m saying they seized on it as something they could use to push division between people.

[mike_hearn]

I find that incredibly unlikely. I used to work in bot fighting on Google. Claims of Russian bots on Twitter and especially claims by academics are invariably riddled with methodological errors that render the "research" useless. I wrote about this problem here:

https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f...

These studies are seeing patterns in noise. That's why the narrative changed over time - it used to be "Russian twitter bots got Trump elected!" and now it's "they're supporting both sides .... to sow division!".

The former claim was extremely implausible but at least it had some sort of inner logic to it, in that Trump was more friendly to Russia than Clinton. The new spin doesn't even make logical sense. However it makes perfect sense if you're just picking random Twitter users and trying to explain their behaviour through the prism of some convoluted conspiracy.

[hackinthebochs]

>the new spin doesn't even make logical sense.

Sure it does. The appearance of a wide division in our political landscape leads to a wide division in our political landscape. People tend to "pick sides" in political fights and when something gives the appearance of a serious political dispute, people are motivated to pick sides and entrench their opinions. This is in keeping with getting Trump elected, as a large part of his support was due to the fear created by the appearance of growing civil unrest. None of this is particularly hard to understand.

[mike_hearn]

The logic makes no sense because it specifically fingers Russia, yet any adversary of the United States could conceivably benefit from "sowing division". Once you've left behind the specific support for Trump the underlying logic linking it to Russia collapses but the conclusion has been kept, which indicates motivated reasoning.

There's a deeper issue here too. It paints the posting of political talking points from both sides of a US election as generic "sowing division". That is a world view that is quite totalitarian. I could describe it equally as "invigorating the democratic process by increasing interest in the election" and be no less accurate.

a large part of his support was due to the fear created by the appearance of growing civil unrest

You haven't shown that, you haven't even laid the groundwork for that. It's actually the first time I've ever seen such a claim. Most analyses of why he won point to the weakness of Clinton, his policies in immigration and trade deals, his opposition to political correctness and so on. Not "the appearance of growing civil unrest".

[hackinthebochs]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/charlottesville-and-the...

This link goes into detail about the perspectives of some whites on the BLM movement and how Trump played on those fears and represented a solution to growing minority influence (presumably at the expense of whites) in the wider culture. This also needs to be understood in the context of disruptive BLM protests as well as the white nationalist protests in Charolettesville.

>yet any adversary of the United States could conceivably benefit from "sowing division"

This is just so obtuse on so many levels.

[emodendroket]

I'm not sure what's obtuse about the second bit. If the goal is just weakening the US Russia is not the only actor with the motive.

[emodendroket]

I mostly agree with your perspective, but Trump repeated "law and order" like a kind of mantra at the debates and I think a fear of lawlessness is a real motivator for his base.

[emodendroket]

Maybe it makes sense, but Vladimir Putin has superpowers if everything people blame on him is true. And Mr. Hearn's article nicely illustrates how shaky the foundation is for a lot of claims of Russian influence.

[hackinthebochs]

This is one of the most absurd talking points of this whole thing. It doesn't take "superpowers" to zero in on existing rifts in a society and magnify them. It has been well documented that Putin has a well-oiled disinformation machine that is adept at exploiting existing social issues.

[mike_hearn]

Please read my article. The sources you believe are "well documenting" these things are junk - see the paper that generated stories about 100,000+ Russian bots and how its analysis simply doesn't support their conclusions at all. Their definition of "bot" was equivalent to any human who happened to use Twitter slightly more than average, so not surprisingly they identified huge numbers of "bots".

I've looked into these stories about Russia repeatedly. They never survive basic fact checking, and I'm not a journalist with special sources or access.

[emodendroket]

Who doesn't? The US has those too and they don't just operate internationally.

But more to the point, there is a moral panic going on where the bar is drastically lowered for what information is considered credible of it involves "Russian collision," and it seems to mostly serve domestic political purposes. How else can you explain a raving crank like Louise Mensch appearing in mainstream news sources?

[emodendroket]

The article linked is excellent. Thanks.