[malvosenior]

All governments push propaganda. Russia's miniscule ad spend on FB had no measurable effect (please provide proof if you think this is wrong).

Clinton and Trump spent many order of magnitude more on political advertising than any foreign nation and even that didn't assure their win. People aren't mindless robots, they vote for who they want to vote for.

[peterhadlaw]

The funniest thing is, no one talks about this, but if the "goal" was to sew discord... My goodness someone "in the Kremlin" should be getting a promotion for their exceptionally well done job. I mean how many YEARS and millions of dollars has the US wasted chasing after this ghost of Russian interference? If you want to calculate the ROI from a few thousand dollars to how much hysteria followed suit, it's insane. The only question I have is, can anyone seriously take credit for it in Russia with a straight face. "No comrade, I only made meme of Hillary... The whole Mueller thing was the US all on its own."

[malvosenior]

Correct, this never had anything to do with Russia and it has everything to do with Trump. The political and media establishment couldn't handle an outsider winning the presidency so it was they that have gone full blast on propaganda for the past 3 years.

[willis936]

That is a naively optimistic statement. If marketing didn’t work then billions wouldn’t be spent on it.

[malvosenior]

Yet it was Clinton who spent far more than anyone on marketing and Russia spent pretty much nothing. Only here we are talking about the impact "Russia" had and ignoring that the tens of millions Clinton spent didn't accomplish her goal.

[willis936]

And this somehow isn’t evidence of the effectiveness of undisclosed campaigns based around lies presented as truth? All Clinton did wrong was not involve foreign governments to operate guerrilla smear campaigns.

Oh wait. That isn’t wrong. What are you arguing in favor of again?

[malvosenior]

Clinton not winning the election isn’t proof of Russian interference.

[willis936]

It isn’t not proof either. It seems rather strange to posit that dollars spent is the only factor dictating the effectiveness of marketing.

[repolfx]

Your position is unfalsifiable. If there had been Russian advertising at scale, it's proof of foreign interference. If there's basically no spend at all, that's still proof of foreign interference because dollar spend doesn't matter.

Look, the whole Russia angle is a hoax. When put under enormous external and internal political pressure (remember Twitter/FB are filled with Trump haters), all they could come up with was a tiny number of ads labelled "Russian" that appeared to support nobody in particular. Hardly anyone saw them, so they can't have had much impact. And was that some plot directed by Putin or just ads by people who happened to be Russian? It's never made clear.

Back when Obama was in power and there was Citizen's United, he said words to the effect of "we must consider changing the constitution to limit political spending" and the Clinton wing of politics was spitting bullets about how in future Republicans would just buy elections outright.

Then Trump came along and beat Clinton, despite being outspent 2:1. Clinton's campaign steamrollered Trump's financially yet still lost. The whole theory of elections that had been pushed until that point, that marketing spend determines victory, it was just completely invalidated overnight. Democrats who couldn't psychologically explain voter disagreement via policy arguments could no longer explain rejection as a function of ad spend either, so had to come up something new - hence, this spectre of "foreign interference", as if Putin has some kind of mind control rays.

[DuskStar]

Billions are spent on it, which makes it silly to say that the millions spent by Russia were a significant factor.

Either Russian ad spend is magically hundreds of times more effective than domestic, or it didn't matter.

[loceng]

"No measurable effect" is a weak argument - especially considering we're talking about it, and it massively influenced the narrative - amplified by the mainstream media, just like Trump used effectively.

"They vote for who they want to vote for" - you understand manipulation is a thing, right? And that people will believe lies, and that people are often irrational - and therefore when they "decide" who to vote for it might not be logical and based on whatever manipulative messaging, propaganda, they've heard over and over again?

[malvosenior]

If someone wants to claim that Russia made a measurable impact on the 2016 election with $100k ad spend, then they're going to have to provide proof.

[loceng]

I just pointed to proof - the fact that you're ignoring or dismissing it doesn't change that.

[malvosenior]

I must have missed your link to proof? I don't see it in your comment.

[loceng]

First how about you define what you mean by measurable, then we can see how you're gatekeeping the use of that term. Then define what you mean by impact to see how you're gatekeeping that quantification. Then maybe there can be a conversation.

[malvosenior]

It's actually on the people claiming that Russia had a measurable impact on the election to provide some sort of proof of that claim.

[repolfx]

you understand manipulation is a thing, right?

Of course. But you're arguing here that Trump won because of massive scale manipulation to the extent that millions of voters don't have free will at all, which is just conspiracy theory thinking.

By the way, what makes you think that Clinton voters weren't the manipulated ones? The press came out in full force for her, and they're the most obvious source of information manipulation. The press have been trying to stack the electoral deck since forever, and they worked overtime that year to get Clinton in power. Still lost. I'm not seeing any evidence that voters are so easily manipulated as you think.

[loceng]

Trump rallied people claiming immigrants were taking jobs, and that he was going to bring the manufacturing jobs back - as POTUS candidate Andrew Yang explains however it's automation that took the jobs - and those jobs lost aren't coming back. People believed Trump's words because he was rallying people emotionally yet didn't present any actual evidence or data.

Do you consider that manipulation or not? Maybe you'll argue "Trump just didn't know any better" - and that's not a form of manipulation, lying to people?

I didn't argue that it was one or the other set of voters who were manipulated. And yes, the two-party system has been very bad for democracy - why POTUS candidate Andrew Yang will implement Democracy Dollars among other policy to breakup the two-party system; https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/

[repolfx]

Do you think immigrants don't compete in the labour pool against American workers? I mean, you're very quick to label Andrew Yang's rhetoric as explanation and Trump's as manipulation, but if you think cheap immigrant and foreign labour had no effect on American workers at all I'm not sure what to say to you. Robots just aren't that powerful. Look at what happened when Tesla tried to use too much automation: Musk retreated licking his wounds.

Also, isn't Andrew Yang the man who is telling people "vote for me and everyone will get free money". This is economically illiterate in a way that makes Trumponomics look like the work of Greek philosophers; I'm not American and have no dog in that race but I think you'd have a hard time arguing that Trump is manipulative for talking about jobs but Yang isn't for promising voters free money.

At any rate the original comparison was Trump v Clinton, not Trump v Yang. Clinton certainly engaged in a lot of emotional and manipulative rhetoric herself. The part where she adopted a policy of starting a war with Russia over Syria, but obfuscated it by claiming it wouldn't be a war because Russia would immediately surrender? That's what I remember the most.