Why do people still joke as if the Russian hacks and russian social media war was fake. The republican led gop senate investigation concluded russian hackers were behind the dnc/podesta hacks and were working to boost trump on social media in ways never seen before in the states.
Edit: Adding relevant excerpts from the 5th, I think final, senate GOP led report's executive summary. This is the Republican led report. This was not led be democrats.
Hack and Leak
>"The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow's intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process. "
Social Media executive summary ("Influence for hire" section)
>"The Committee found that highly evolved tools used to shape popular sentiment were utilized in support of the Trump Campaign during the 2016 election season, and Russia has
made use of such tools in its influence operations, but a link between Russian efforts and the Campaign's use of these tools was not established. These commercially available services many of which are based overseas-rely on an array of personal information to build targeted messaging profiles. Russia applied these sam·technologies and methodologies to its influence· campaign during the 2016 election and, in doing so, conducted foreign influence operationsagainst the United States with a speed, precision, and scale not previously seen."
And from the intro of the actual section on Influence for hire.:
>"All three companies either aspired to apply micro-targeted social media messaging
techniques comparable to those employed by Russian information operatives with the Internet
Research Agency, or actively engaged in the application of these techniques. "
Why did he say hackers then? These ex-FB people aren't hacking anything. I don't agree with your interpretation one bit.
Not only are they not comparable in terms of hacking/espionage, there's a huge difference between a group of americans spending money to influence american elections compared to russian military and intelligences ops doing it.
And that's still true even if the russians weren't pushing both false/misleading propaganda and weaponizing the products of their targeted espionage.
Do you see a difference between citizens pooling small donations to run ads vs a foreign state running a misinformation campaign to affect an election?
I do see the difference, of course. But on the other hand, foreign or domestic, trickery is trickery. Check this:
"The data scientists found that showing certain Facebook ads to certain possible Trump voters lowered their approval of the president by 3.6%"
And:
"“We have found ways to find the right news to put in front of them, and we found ways to understand what works and doesn’t [..] And if you combine all those things together, you get a really effective approach, and that’s what we’re doing.”
This sounds like applying micro-targeted psychological tricks to damage one candidate or favour another. I'm sure the same was done on Trump's side, but it is scary nonetheless. This is pervasive and subtle high-tech manipulation, not political promotion and even less political information. You can be happy of the result today but it's hard to approve the methods.
Sadly this is what a polarized political system does:
if you believe that the opposing side is primarily motivated by racism and bigotry then you will not have any moral scruples about willfully manipulating human beings.
If you believe the other side wants to destroy America's founding principles you will be equally fine with doing the same thing for your side.
This is political advertising, which is different from political information. It has always had this purpose. As long as they're following the FEC rules, where ads are clearly marked as such along with who is paying for them, what's wrong?
Edit: Adding relevant excerpts from the 5th, I think final, senate GOP led report's executive summary. This is the Republican led report. This was not led be democrats.
Hack and Leak
>"The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow's intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process. "
Social Media executive summary ("Influence for hire" section)
>"The Committee found that highly evolved tools used to shape popular sentiment were utilized in support of the Trump Campaign during the 2016 election season, and Russia has made use of such tools in its influence operations, but a link between Russian efforts and the Campaign's use of these tools was not established. These commercially available services many of which are based overseas-rely on an array of personal information to build targeted messaging profiles. Russia applied these sam·technologies and methodologies to its influence· campaign during the 2016 election and, in doing so, conducted foreign influence operationsagainst the United States with a speed, precision, and scale not previously seen."
And from the intro of the actual section on Influence for hire.:
>"All three companies either aspired to apply micro-targeted social media messaging techniques comparable to those employed by Russian information operatives with the Internet Research Agency, or actively engaged in the application of these techniques. "