[moosey]

A US company took money from a foreign government and used it to spread foreign propaganda, while calling it advertising.

Money is pooled into massive organizations called 'PACs' that are used to fund campaigns that get folks into government, then offer them sweet high paying jobs afterwards as long as they do their bidding while they work there. It's not corruption, that's lobbying.

It gets tiresome calling things what they are when there are dozens of definitions that the corrupt use to alter the nature of what they do with language. Corruption and propaganda are rampant, but once they can all be called 'marketing', or whatever the people with the power to influence via the media want to call them, that's the language that we use, and truly harmful things become easy to defend.

[m0zg]

Disclaimer: I'm Russian-American. I do not believe Russian "siloviki" are competent enough to pull off anything like what you're implying.

Russia spent $100k on FB in total, and they ran ads on controversial issues from both sides, not just Trump (and also organized "resist" protests after Trump won). For comparison, Trump's campaign alone spent $100 _million_. I don't know off the top of my head how much the Clinton campaign spent, but it did have 2x the money advantage, so it probably spent twice as much. If we assume the total FB spend of $300M for both campaigns, Russian money represented 0.033% of ad spend, and they likely used far less sophisticated targeting than the campaigns, and riled up both sides.

Tell me again how this could have altered the outcome.

Their goal seemed to be to sow discord, not to elect a particular candidate. I believe that's still their goal, and you, HN poster, is a great help to that end. They could not imagine a better outcome than Trump (or Clinton) getting mired in controversy and partisan gridlock, and unable to do anything about anything.

If you're going to talk about foreign influence, there are countries that are much more influential in US politics than Russia. No US president can even win a primary without pledging allegiance to Israel, for example. Clinton Global Initiative accepted millions from all over the world (donations dropped massively once Hillary lost, suggesting influence peddling). When it comes to hacking, China hacks the US far more than Russia ever will.

I don't quite get this raging hard-on for Russia that the mainstream media has manufactured. If it's outrage you want, there are far better targets.

[moosey]

With FB, propaganda campaigns are cheap, and the advertising, while small scale, doesn't really deal with the entire issue. Modern social tooling allows for broad propaganda with minimal interruption, and companies are happy to allow it because it brings additional advertising dollars. This can be seen in the various groups created by Russia and internal groups during the campaign, and the reach of them, many spreading falsehoods and propaganda... and yes, to both sides. The goal is to divide, not necessarily a full take over.

I admit that these groups pushed both Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, Anti-Vaxx and Pro-Vaxx groups, etc., etc. I'm suggesting that the problem is that we have corporations that are apparently 'US' corporations that make money from the process and have a perverse incentive to push it, as it creates increased activity from certain users. It's this 'sharing' economy in propaganda that groups during the election took advantage of, and once set up it's almost free and self-expanding.

I agree: Israel, China, SA, Europe, and other groups and nations have a lot more impact here. My anger is not towards them for what they are doing here in this country. My anger is directed towards the regulatory and corporate structures in the United States that make propagandizing the populace possible in the first place, while also being legal and producing profit.

[m0zg]

Sure, but campaigns also engage in "grass roots" propaganda efforts. For instance, _the entirety of US mainstream media_ aired propaganda in favor of Hillary Clinton campaign for a year and a half. Bad news were suppressed, good news were circulated, angles and crops were picked for the rallies to show crowds that weren't really there, Trump (American icon just months before his run) was smeared head to toe, including allegations of rape (which disappeared immediately after the election) and pee-pee "dossier" which turned out to be completely bogus and paid for by the Clinton campaign. That's not even considering the official "social media" propaganda efforts like Shareblue etc, on which millions were spent.

Are you going to tell me that given all these blatant propaganda forces at play Russia still had any effect on the election? I understand this meme looms large in US liberal psyche, but I'm struggling to understand why anyone would rationally believe this.

[aldous]

Some fair points, though I don’t agree with all of them. What are your thoughts on the DNC hack and subsequent leaks btw? It seems reasonable to credit the disclosure and the way the Trump campaign encouraged it and then capitalised on it as significant. 12 alleged Russian intelligence officials have been charged as part of Mueller’s investigation. Also there was the the Internet Research Agency "troll farm", based in Saint Petersburg and the alleged intrusions into state voter-registration systems. It’s a combination of all of these events that I believe is making it ‘loom large’ and it’s fair to say this transcends the categorisation of ‘meme’ doesn’t it? What do you think?

[m0zg]

It's not proven (as in, no verifiable evidence was presented) that it was a "hack" rather than a leak in the first place. The emails could have been leaked by an insider. There is some evidence (albeit very weak: file timestamps) that the leaked data was collected locally before it was sent over. I also find it extremely suspicious that the DNC did not allow the FBI to investigate the "hack", but rather chose a private firm to do so, and not just any firm, but Crowdstrike, one of the founders of which, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank with openly anti-Russian sentiments that is funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who also happened to donate at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.

As to the Mueller investigation: no US person has been charged with _anything whatsoever_ related to collusion thus far. It's all "tax evasion" or process crimes. And he can charge anybody he wants in absentia: it's no secret that governments spy on each other and wage psy-ops campaigns all the time. Heck, Obama even listened in on Merkel's phone calls. Russia is not unique in that regard. In fact it's somewhat unique in how _little_ it interferes in affairs of other countries it has no common borders with.

For a bit of a historical aside to give some color to my perspective, consider that the US helped to re-elect Yeltsin in broad daylight in 1996 (he would have lost to a communist if it wasn't for the US), and was heavily involved in getting Poroshenko elected in Ukraine, also in broad daylight just a few years ago. US influence in Ukraine predates Poroshenko, though: see e.g. Manafort.

So to sum up: I do believe that there was "interference" to the extent proven by concrete evidence such as Facebook spend. I do also believe that such interference is part and parcel of international affairs: the US itself interferes all the time, often in a rather heavy-handed way. I have seen no evidence thus far that the DNC hack was indeed a hack, and not a leak. I believe about 0% of what Crowdstrike says, given its affiliations. I don't really believe in "alleged intrusions in voter registration systems" in absence of independent evidence. As far as I can tell it's fake news.

[aldous]

My point was that dismissing the ongoing investigation and its emerging findings as a “meme” implies it is un-substantive and trivial when this appears not to be the case. Conflating all the multiple stands of a complex and far reaching investigation as “fake news” is, I believe, dangerous and reductionist. For example, Muller’s 37 page indictment against the Kremlin’s Internet Research Agency and its leadership and affiliates is detailed and has been widely reported on. Mounting evidence suggests we are talking about something significantly larger in scale than the $100,000 advertising campaign. Is the US not right to investigate it and the press to report on it? Isn’t this in our, the publics, interest? Using terms like “fake news” and “meme” in such a context is unhelpful and I believe dangerous. I increasingly see the term being used to shut down debate, undermine opposing viewpoints and sow doubt. It is myopic and doesn’t help discourse and I think we'd all do best to drop the term. I’m assuming we both want to know the truth right? I know some argue that the concept of absolute truth itself is a fallacy but I don’t subscribe to that, do you?

[onlydeadheroes]

Hillary lost, in spite of the immense effort to support her that you described. If there isn't an all powerful boogie man in the picture hindering their efforts, like Fantasy-Putin, then the only inescapable conclusion left is that the democrats lost because at least some of their ideas suck even more than Trump. And that is not something they are able to face.