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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

First, the $100,000 may not be the full spend, it's just the minimum based on what has been identified as false-flag accounts linked to Russia. There may well have been orders of magnitude more spending that has not been identified as false flag accounts (further, it's not even the total expenditure of resources on the false flag accounts, just the part actually spent buying placement—when comparing to campaign spending numbers, when all the resources spent on content development, etc., and not just placement are counted.)

Second, people may discount messages that are official campaign messages (which have required disclosures to prevent falsifying origin), so there may be a significant influence multiplier for false-flag “astroturf” spending of the kind Russia engaged in.

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The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down. We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.

> the outrage needs to be kept down

No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.

You're American (USA)? How often do you get outraged about your country's government interfering with OTHER country's elections?

...all the time?

This line of questioning comes up a lot as the ultimate gotcha, but the people upset about Russian meddling today are also the ones most likely to be upset about American meddling in the past.

I'm curious about your opinion here. I haven't seen this idea that countries shouldn't try to influence each other's politics until last Fall. Not saying the idea wasn't out there, just never encountered it. I've seen plenty of dissatisfaction with things like American or Russian propaganda, but never anyone saying that it shouldn't be allowed at all.

So what would a world in which countries don't influence each other look like? When people have common interests, it's natural for them to try to push each other one way or the other. So there would have to be strict trade restrictions between countries to isolate their interests. We would probably have to get rid of the UN or any other global entity like the World Bank. We would have to severely restrict immigration so people didn't come to a country and try to influence its politics from the outside. Also we would probably have to end the whole idea of a multinational corporation and ensure that every business inside a country was local. Basically reverse the entire process of globalization that has led to this point.

But most of the people upset about Russian influence are also pro-globalization, so I don't quite get it. They're not complaining about the lack of disclosure but rather the whole idea of foreign influence on politics. How can you move forward with globalization and also stop every country from influencing another's politics?

I think it's not so much the fact of influence, as it was the nature of it.

If, say, RT runs propaganda pieces in favor of candidate X, and against candidate Y, that's fine, because everybody knows that it is Russian propaganda. They can factor that knowledge into their decision making accordingly (and it doesn't need to be negative - e.g. someone who is interested in warmer relations with Russia, for whatever reasons, might actually support the candidates they endorse).

Coincidentally, this is also the kind of involvement that US and other Western countries normally practice overseas. E.g. looking back at the Ukrainian revolution in 2014, it was very obvious and transparent which side was backed by the US government.

In contrast, what we've seen in this past election is covert foreign propaganda, that tries to actively conceal and misrepresent its identity (many of those fake FB accounts and groups pretended to be American). Not only there are obvious ethical issues aside, but - in US, at least - it also runs afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is a law that has been around for almost 80 years now. So you can hardly say that it's some new thing.

Then there's also the orthogonal aspect where a lot of that propaganda is blatantly false to an unusual degree. We're not talking about spin here, but actually manufacturing entire news stories around events that never happened, and facts that were never true.

But why is it that when Russia engages in covert foreign propaganda, it's bad, but when the US does it it's normal or expected and no one complains? Are you suggesting the US and other countries don't use blatantly, knowingly false propaganda as well?

Of course, from a political standpoint Russia's government needs to be penalized by the US's government. And of course, if there's any evidence of collusion between US politicians and the Russian government, that needs to be investigated.

But why should Russia's government be viewed as particularly monstrous for doing what the US and probably dozens of other nations do?

The actual monstrous stuff is the allegations of Putin murdering journalists and oppressing political enemies, though of course there's no smoking gun for many of those allegations (or at least the murder ones).

I'll be perfectly fine with other countries cracking down on covert US propaganda abroad, just as we do with FARA.

Whataboutism.

Example: Country A caught doing something bad. "...but what about Country B?"

Whataboutism is quite popular in discussions WRT Russia.

Either argument can also be a thought-terminating cliche.

Good one

This happens for just about every election. Obama spent money attempting to influence elections in Israel, France, all sorts of places. Look at what Clinton did to interfere in Russia's elections as lampooned in the Jeff Goldblum film Spinning Boris. Clinton just about ran Boris Yeltsin's campaign. You're on course for permanent outrage if you deeply research any particular election happening currently on this planet, I feel.

Quite a few people seem hellbent on being permanently outraged. They will even go so far as to invent reasons to be outraged. Outrage is currency in our post-modern society.

Sometimes, the outrage is legitimate. It isn't isolated to one side of the political spectrum. The right was outraged by everything Obama did. The left will be outraged by anything Trump does. Some people are outraged at the idea of transfolk being in their bathroom, some folks are outraged that people are outraged about it. Some people are outraged about speech, some are outraged that they are held accountable for speech.

The media cycles on it, the people thrive on it, and it escalates with each showing more umbrage than the last.

My conclusion is that if you seek umbrage, you will find it.

I'm outraged that the Russian's attempted to influence the election, but I'm not outraged that the Russians 'stole' the election for Trump because there's no proof of that yet. Many of the articles I've read on this topic just today (from CNN,BI and WaPo) seem to take it as a forgone conclusion that this paltry amount of money means that the Russians interfered with the election in a way that amounts to a political crisis.

Bush and Obama both had bogus crisis whipped up in an attempt to delegitimize their elections. This is an incredibly dangerous pattern in a democracy and one that I'm not really excited to see repeated again.

Is the SCOTUS ruling blocking Florida's statewide recount the bogus crisis you're referring to regarding Bush?

Did you hold the same view when the PM of Canada urged Americans to vote for Obama and went on TV to endorse him?

How is that even remotely similar to a covert psyops campaign by an enemy nation? Totally ridiculous to make the comparison.

Did you read the post I responded to?

Hm, now I think about it, what exactly are you outraging about? It's not like buying ads on Facebook or influencing people by showing them texts or pictures is illegal.

Hacking attempts, yes, are a big problem. Facebook ads - not a problem at all.

You need to step back for a minute. Think about a scenario where Russia actually did influence our elections. Do you think the response would be this passive?

All of this Russia talk is a farce. If Russia actually interfered with US elections, the US response would be awe inspiring.

So what you're saying is: we shouldn't react to this news, because Russia didn't actually influence our election... and we know Russia didn't actually influence our election, because we didn't react?

That's... impressively circular.

A scenario where Russia actually did influence our elections looks exactly like a scenario where Russia is merely accused of influencing our elections, barring irrefutable evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Exactly.

Would you be equally outraged if your country interfered with someone else's elections?

Not necessarily. They are doing so on my behalf. I would be outraged if somebody punched me with what I perceive as poor reason, but I would not be outraged if I punched somebody with good reason.

There are times when the US has meddled in other countries' affairs that I don't agree with, but there are others, like covertly slowing nuclear proliferation, that I do agree with.

We are already in an era of yellow journalism, every angle, every sentence, every clip is contorted to reflect a narrative approved by corporate elites for publishing. All of this drama merely drives profits.

> The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down

The outrage isn't about the amount spent, so why should it be kept down absent evidence of greater amount spent.

> We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.

I see no evidence of the former (at least not on this subject, though I think there are structural reasons to think that that's unlikely to be a useful reference point more generally), and don't see avoiding polarization at all costs as a goal.

But I can't see any reason to think that Russia would be the main actor in the "false-flag/astroturf space". I mean, it's hard not to think everyone with an interest in the outcome would be pushing here to get their interests served.

Certainly, the DNC emails seemed to demonstrate an interest in underhanded approaches (not that I'd discount a similar interest from the Trump campaign). And PACs that are actually independent would be jumping in the action, etc.

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