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by nooron 2023 days ago
I worked in Dem political tech. The Russian Troll Farm/Cambridge Analytica/social ads scandal is mostly noise and no signal. But you’re missing something important: Russian state sponsored hackers spearfished and stole data from the RNC, DNC, and the Clinton circle. They deliberately released the latter two and withheld the first. Those releases don’t define the entire election, but they had a demonstrable and empirically validated impact on voters. Those deliberate and asymmetric releases probably changed the outcome of the election.

Russia really did interfere in that election and you’ve ignored this crucial fact.
2 comments
blueblisters 2023 days ago
> Those deliberate and asymmetric releases probably changed the outcome of the election.

How is it possible to draw a causation from the releases to the election outcome? I am curious if there are academic studies to support this claim.

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lawnchair_larry 2023 days ago
That’s not very accurate and makes a lot of unproven assumptions. They found that an old, disused RNC domain from years prior was compromised. There’s no reason to believe they withheld anything material, and even if they did, it’s not really relevant. All they did was show the public authentic emails. If anyone actually changed their vote based on having additional facts, which I doubt happened in any significant way, then it was for the right reasons.

If your wife-to-be was having an affair and this was dumped before the wedding day, would you be mad at the hacker, or at your partner? Blaming Russia for showing truth never made any sense to me. Are we to believe that the process has more integrity when we cast our votes with less information?

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