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Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

It seems to have taken about a year for basic information about last year's misinformation campaign to come out. 3 years from now there'll be another election and presumably another misinformation campaign. Should we be optimistic that someone will be on top of it before the election?

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>3 years from now there'll be another election and presumably another misinformation campaign. Should we be optimistic that someone will be on top of it before the election?

I'd hope for a mildly more competent, less compromised candidate who can't be "defeated" by Russians with an $80k ad budget.

Of course, if the Russians are really serious about fixing the election they'll arrange for Hillary to run again.

Yes, accepting bets for how much money Thiel will be paying. He's already on "5 times russian bogeyman":

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/technology/peter-thiel-do...

I guess he gets a sweet rate at Facebook, too.

Since it's more widely accepted to be a significant part of the threat model, there should be more attention and effort focussed on identifying and revealing information about it.

OTOH, there will be misinformation directed to confuse the public about that, too, and that may be challenging to sort out.

> OTOH, there will be misinformation directed to confuse the public about that, too, and that may be challenging to sort out.

This is what scares me. We saw in the last few days that a prominent 'antifa' Twitter account pretending to based out of Boston tweeted from Vladivostok, presumably in error.

Accounts like these provide the fuel that empowers elements of the alt right, and they're still active in these efforts.

If Twitter and Facebook fail to become more proactive on countering these baiters, what does that mean for our future? This doesn't seem like a problem we can easily retroactively assess our way out of.

It's also possible to talk about it without sounding crazy.

Of course, some people will still try and make it seem like it's a crazy idea, but they do the same with AGW.

Having media sources most people respect on board with the basic notion should help.

>a significant part of the threat model

Right, but for who?

> basic information about last year's misinformation campaign

You mean when all of the U.S. press spent the year beating up on Trump?

It was pretty obvious, just from looking at the front pages. That was the Russians? Wily buggers.

'beating on Trump' is their prerogative as media. stay on topic. this is about hacking and twitter and russia

How about US involvement in elections all over the world? You don't see outcry for that, in fact you see it on the cover of Time magazine as a boast.

What about my Aunt Sue? What does one have to do with the other?

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