[pritambaral]

This is off-topic, and your idea of how Trump got elected is not the only — or even one of the popular — view.

Closer to the topic: what Facebook enabled was far more effective targeting, by agents not authorized by the targets, on a massive scale. That's a lot different than the "bunch of Russians locked away in some computer lab single-handedly elected" rhetoric.

[LowDog]

It's as on topic as the parent comment. I have to yet to see even a single fact to back up your claim. If someone is going to spread disinformation and not present any facts, then I am going to post a sourced rebuttal. Feel free to change my mind with actual facts instead of undermining the voters who disagreed with your political outlook and then blaming the results on some ludicrous notion of a bogeyman.

[pritambaral]

Yes, your parent comment introduced the topic of Trump's election, though still in the context of online tracking. Pardon my poor choice of words above.

> I have to yet to see even a single fact to back up your claim.

Here's the first result from a Google search I just did: https://www.wired.com/story/russian-facebook-ads-targeted-us...

> If someone is going to spread disinformation and not present any facts, then I am going to post a sourced rebuttal.

I don't see any sourced rebuttal.

> instead of undermining the voters

I didn't undermine any voters. I made no claims about any voters. I commented only on the targeting, and that the targets hadn't consented to their data being accessed.

> blaming the results on some ludicrous notion of a bogeyman.

A calmer rhetoric would be more productive to discourse. Targeted advertising is not a "bogeyman". Stolen data and privacy concerns are not bogeymen. That people put up lots of private info that can be used to accurately profile them is a fact. That ads can be effective has been proven from the time ads were invented, and that targeted ads can be even more effective — especially in a political context — has also been studied and concluded lots of times. See [1] and [2].

Frankly, now that you've brought up backing of claims, I'm a bit discouraged to have to defend stuff like this against clearly biased political rhetoric.

1: http://politics.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/978019022...

2: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/a...