Twitter’s multi-million dollar US election pitch to RT | Hacker News Reader

Twitter’s multi-million dollar US election pitch to RT

rt.com

229 pointsrobin_reala228 comments

I know RT is not very trustworthy, but let me get this straight - Twitter was inviting RT to spend advertising budget during the US elections, like any other ad sales team would do (Facebook, Google etc.). Twitter got the budget, and RT started making ads on Twitter. Probably controversial, since you want to maximise CTRs etc. Then Trump won. Then everyone started wondering. Then they pinpointed Russian media for making social media ads during the elections. And now Twitter banned RT ads to get the "problem" off their shoulders. Isn't this hysteria? Aren't we putting too much trust that social media ads can really sway the election that much? Because it seems, as other commenters here pointed out, ads weren't as big of a problem as bots and fake accounts spreading propaganda tweets. Even more, how much respondents say that their voting decision was made because of social media ads or social media posts?

> And now Twitter banned RT ads to get the "problem" off their shoulders. Isn't this hysteria?

I can’t help but feel everyone in Silicon Valley is desperate to believe every narrative about the election except the version where Trump wins because he was the only one promising prosperity to people not located in major cities.

Your comment ties directly to the Democrat election strategy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClytGvP_Qe4

"For every blue collar democrat we will lose in Western PA, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia." ~Chuck Schumer

Philadelphia is quickly gentrifying and this has caused massive lines in voting districts in the recently gentrified neighborhoods. Where voting lines used to be 15 minutes long they are now 2+ hours. We've been trying to get them to split the voting district into two here in Northern Liberties for a while but apparently it's falling on deaf ears. These are by the way "well-to-do" young professionals so it's in the interest of both Republicans and Democrats to fix this.

Meanwhile 10 minutes away at Temple University you have 2 hour lines at polling close. If the dems want to win PA they need to get their voting district shit together in the city.

It would not have made much off a difference. The spread in the entire state was about 90k but when I saw the lines at the universities it made me wonder about the entire state.

I used to live in the suburbs of Philadelphia in a new "rich" neighborhood and the lines there are usually 15-30 minutes. Granted the population there doesn't fluctuate much.

This is the most common form of voter suppression in the US and we're doing absolutely nothing about it.

As someone who is literally that background (from a moderate Republican family in the suburbs of Philadelphia) I can say the Democrats definitely picked up my vote...

Actually no, it's more accurate to say the Republicans lost it.

(I don't know how my family members voted--we're far too WASPy to do anything but keep it private), but I suspect my parents stayed with the GOP while my siblings and I went to the Dems (I voted Hillary for President and GOP everything else. Turned out to be a miscalculation)

At any rate, it seems there weren't enough of us to outweigh Pennsylvanians who continued to vote Republican or who converted to voting Republican.

s/Democrat/Democratic/

If you choose to ignore proper naming, you're just exposing your bias.

What bias, exactly, do you think I'm exposing?

I don't think your comment makes enough sense. Can you elaborate?

The parts of The United States not locates in a major metropolis have been on an economic decline for a very long time. A candidate comes along and promises changes to policies that may help reverse that economic slide and they win.

> A candidate comes along and promises changes to policies that may help reverse that economic slide and they win.

Hasn't that already been a conversation since way before 2008 ie: "Joe the Plumber"'s candidate?

There is something more going on here. My own opinion is that the current potus is an appeal to nationalist authoritarianism where other more conventional republicans were not.

He's been doing so much to weaken the federal government (ending health care subsidies, weakening EPA, etc etc, pro gun laws) that I'm surprised you believe he's appealing to national authoritarianism. If anything he's given a rise to state's rights advocates.

I think it depends on how you define "nation". I believe for many in the USA, "nation" is far more personal, and aligned with community, than merely the "nation state" presided by the federal government.

I think many people struggle to believe voters took these promises seriously. Most of his promises w/r/t rural prosperity did not match the anemic policy he put forward: repealing Obamacare hurts the rural poor significantly more than well-to-do urbanites, ending the estate tax benefits the rich exclusively, lowering the top marginal tax rate benefits the rich, etc. Either people not located in major cities are the most gullible voters ever, or they were swayed by some other means (targeted advertising?), or some combo thereof.

"People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it."

More people believed that Trump was doing things because he had their best interests in mind.

> the most gullible voters ever, or they were swayed by some other means (targeted advertising)

They were either gullible or gullible?

Or maybe it was a reaction against the "elites". In Michigan 90,000 democrats left president blank on the ballot (Trump won by 10,000).

I think you're right. It seems like most people who voted for Trump did so with the goal of disrupting the existing system. I'm not sure they really care about what he does, so long as he annoys 'the system'.

>Either people not located in major cities are the most gullible voters ever, or they were swayed by some other means (targeted advertising?), or some combo thereof.

Or, your assumptions are incorrect. - "I think many people struggle to believe voters took these promises seriously."

"Most of his promises w/r/t rural prosperity did not match the anemic policy he put forward"

He constantly railed on about jobs going overseas, imposing tariffs on imports and protecting local industry, spending on infrastructure, reducing illegal immigration (which people rightly or wrongly, believed to be one of the factors, contributing to their situation), etc, etc.

Yes, he railed about those things in bombastic and often factually incorrect ways. But that wasn't accompanied by actual policy proposals. (In my view, yelling "mexico will pay for it" is not a policy proposal.)

But that applies to most politicians, and is a common factor in all elections. I was disputing the assumptions which concluded that external factors are the primary explanation for the election results.

Then you haven't been paying attention. For better or worse, there have been a number of example since he was elected.

One recent one was putting a 300% tax on imported Bombardier regional passenger jets. The result? Bombardier teamed up with Airbus to form a new division that will manufacture the same jets in the United States.

I know it's not popular out on the left coast, but that sounds like promises made, promises kept.

See also: China building a factory in Chicago to build subway cars. The local pols played it as a big negotiating victory for the mayor, but it was actually the Chinese dodging the tariffs before they could be imposed.

I agree and its an entirely human character flaw. Its far easier to black/white an issue than examine your own assumptions. Whenever things get polarized people get irrational.

Or I believe that he won because of that, AND because of Russian interference? This is a false dichotomy.

Maybe the gentle people of Twitter had expected RT to work towards a Clinton victory.

I think a savory commission check to a sales team was more of a factor than who would win the elections.

> Aren't we putting too much trust that social media ads can really sway the election that much?

In anticipation of many using Cambridge Analytica hype as a response, a search on HN of previous articles about Cambridge Analytica should be be examined:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22cambridge%20analytica%22&so...

This entire focus on FB and Twitter ads is completely ridiculous. They are open platforms that you can use in whatever way doesn't conflict with their ToS. You can spread false information, or information that is dressed up or disguised. And politicians have been buying up negative ads on each other for quite some time which could be considered just about as harmful as the ads on twitter and FB, if not more so.

This isn't the story.

The story here is Jack's lack of transparency and trying to make something that his company did in a negative light, deliberately, and knowingly, and covering that up.

It's fundamentally different from your example. Negative ads that politicians buy on each other are run of the mill in the US, however Russian ads are straight up propaganda.

Advertising for me, propaganda for thee..

The definition of propaganda: "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view."

Negative ads by politicians are completely propaganda.

Except there's this little problem of federal election law that prohibits foreign nationals from buying political ads. If Twitter, Facebook, or Google knowingly accepted political ad buys from the media propaganda arm of the Russian government, that could lead to legal trouble.

One can make the argument that it doesn't matter who buys a political ad but that is not the current legal posture in the United States.

The saving grace for the SV companies involved in this scandal may be that the ad buys were from the US arm of RT so would not have technically run afoul of any laws. But judging from how shady and evasive Facebook and Twitter have been about the whole issue, it seems likely that they knew there was something wrong with these ad buys.

The "liberal hysteria" narrative, like the "Russian brainwash" narrative, is a "thought-terminating cliche".

Perhaps Twitter, in a non-hysterical manner, decided that due to the strong evidence of a Russian influence campaign carried out through their service, they didn't want to be running ads for Russian-government-owned media anymore.

I was surprised when Jack said they'd be returning ad money from RT/Sputnik, because that's not really the election influence problem they have.

Political discussions on Twitter are flooded by obvious bot/content farm accounts like "BaldEagleFreedom983428" shitposting memes how Hillary bought CNN to take away your gunflags. Ban this crap.

We really don't need more interference from Twitter, Facebook, et al to moderate political discussions. Time and time again they blunder it.

I'm of the view that we need more powerful users, not moderation. Would be hard to enforce I suppose, given voting rings and whatnot, but I'd like to see a community like that one day.

I'm not sure what you are imagining but isn't a hive mind effect a challenge?

At least hive mind is real people being stupid.

Bots exactly misrepresent the will of the public.

I think algorithmic detection of agenda pushing is where the gold lies. I mean let's add to profiles "detected agendas: Russian state policy/US state policy/Vote for Democrats/Vote for Republicans/Buy bitcoin/whatever". There are probably some (a lot of?) caveats, but still.

If only someone would hear you and just do it...

Yes, lets suppress actual popular movements because they deviate from the norm and therefore could be suspicious.

Non sequiter. Interest and promotion in a movement != pushing an agenda. In the same way, interest in topics on reddit != spamming upvotes. It's literally the exact same process of looking for suspicious behavior and then moderating it.

Of course, reddit doesn't do that either nowadays. But the point stands: Blocking bot behavior does not necessarily mean blocking real users.

I would like to see an automated system that correctly knows the difference between interest/promotion of a movement and pushing an agenda. My level of interest may be different than your level of interest; one of which may be considered suddenly pushing an agenda.

Also, what's wrong with pushing an agenda exactly? Are we to ban politicians and opinion writers?

How is that suppression? I propose to show publicly the result of an algorithmic process which for now could be done by a human with enough time on their hands.

Yeah, just look how Google's Youtube extremist detection algorithm works.

Yeah but Reddit and Twitter both have realized their financial well-being depends on Monthly Active Users, and bots look like active users. They simply threw ethics away and gun straight for the capital.

The only reason Twitter did this was to make it look like they were doing something to improve the platform. Twitter won't notice $2M from their balance sheets if it bumps their stock price a few cents, but they will notice the dollars off their stock price when they decide to stop lying about how much traffic from human beings they're actually servicing vs the massive bot infestation.

Bots cost them money for zero direct benefit so they do hurt profitability.

Bots create an illusion of activity and relevance. They fill an important niche in the twitter ecosystem as without them it’d look like the sad and empty dive bar it truly is.

It's a snowball effect. Bigger numbers and more activity help indirectly, eg by attracting celebrities. In turn they attract more real people.

Twitter is under immense pressure to show a growing user base. Getting rid of the bots would likely cause month-on-month figures to actually fall, which would presumably be a problem.

They recently had a recalculation of MAU due to a misreporting -- users that used to have organic posts, but were now only sending out pre-scheduled messages, like ghosts in the machine.

How they handled that was to back-date all the reporting. Presumably bot traffic does not generate any additional advertising value, so re-fitting the number of MAU would increase the average ad reach/user value proposition. The importance is the trend, not necessarily the overall level.

I'm going to guess whatever salesperson got the commission on 2 million dollars noticed.

Maybe a better metric is number of monthly users from consumer ISP IPs?

They could just as easily be real people under alt accounts. It's not that obvious.

Many of my real-life contacts push meme-like propaganda all the time on facebook. I don't think they're paid to do it. Banning that stuff through automation is likely prone to error.

No, these are bots. Anyone that's ever replied to one of the 'legit' accounts these bots are designed to amplify can watch as the posts are retweeted and liked on a regular schedule over the course of a month. Nothing at all for a week and then suddenly hundreds of retweets/likes Saturday night after midnight NY time on a 3 week old tweet. All from the exact same network of 'users'.

Here's a dashboard someone created monitoring a small portion of the Russian Twitter network:

http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/

The velocity, timing, and similarity among links in these tweets are not organic at all.

From that site's methodology page re: the users sampled:

> Accounts likely controlled by Russian government influence operations.

> Accounts for “patriotic” pro-Russia users that are loosely connected or unconnected to the Russian government, but which amplify themes promoted by Russian government media.

> Accounts for users who have been influenced by the first two groups and who are extremely active in amplifying Russian media themes. These users may or may not understand themselves to be part of a pro-Russian social network.

So, not bots? Maybe organic right wingers?

Looking at the advisory council of that group and seeing Bill Kristol along with a bunch of Obama staffers and hawkish neolibs/neocons is setting off my "disinfo via appeal to dataviz" alarm.

The trump and white house Facebook pages are full of bots writing stuff like below constantly, these aren't genuine human supporters:

President Trump is the greatest president of all time. In the future, the U.S. will be so great that our history will be taught as 'before Trump' and 'after Trump'.

Thank you, President Trump, for fighting for all that is right and good for America. I'm so sorry the liberals and media can't see the truth. Millions of us support and respect you. We are praying daily for your safety and health.

I mean, it's possible that they're just sincere crazy people.

I've thought about that but they're too quick and grammar is good. The bots should throw in misspellings.

If people are too dumb to believe what BaldEagleFreedom983428 says, democracy has more fundamental problems than Twitter.

I've also got news for you: most conservatives had strong aversions to Hillary Clinton to begin with. As far as I can tell, most of the surprise in the vote turnouts came from senior citizens who were hardly part of polls and open political discourse in the run-up. These people aren't glued to Twitter all day. Yes, Donald Trump was an unrealistic, silly choice and I too thought there was no chance he was going to win: but that's exactly what I thought when I saw how much the DNC was backing Hillary.

Honestly I crack up when I think about twitter influencing the election. No conservative person I’ve ever met used Twitter. Twitters demographic is so far and away from the Trump demographic. The only people being “influenced” on twitter were other bots, the primary users of that service.

> Honestly I crack up when I think about twitter influencing the election.

What about physical rallies organized by Russia on Facebook? [0]. Or the failed "Miners for Trump" in Philly [1]

I guess it cracks you up when its your guy in the house :)

[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/20/russian_fa...

[1] http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/will_bunch/the-crazy...

Let's not be polarized here. Just because I think this narrative is absurd doesn't prove by deduction that I'm a supporter and voter of the current administration.

That does crack me up, though. "(the rallies) brought dozens of supporters together in real life"

Dozens!

I think you're mistaken here. I know countless conservatives on Twitter, and they're real human beings.

That's all true. And it happens on both sides; we have tweets like this [1].

People aren't smart. They grasp to whatever narrative already enforces the beliefs they hold. If you believe RT hacked the elections, then the ad is an admission of guilt. If you believe they didn't, then its satire. There's no truth anywhere here; its just dumb discourse for likes and views.

Social media is pure garbage. Its supposed to break down walls, but it just creates echo chambers. Its supposed to connect humanity, but it just spreads fear and disinformation. All of these platforms should be shut down; humanity is not better off for them. Jack and Mark should be ashamed of what they created, but they probably sleep well at night knowing that if they hadn't, someone else would have, in the same way a drug dealer knows that if they don't deal, someone else will.

[1] https://twitter.com/MManningIEI/status/920542851515240448

>> I've also got news for you: most conservatives had strong aversions to Hillary Clinton to begin with.

Absolutely.

>> As far as I can tell, most of the surprise in the vote turnouts came from senior citizens who were hardly part of polls and open political discourse in the run-up.

That's part of it, but a large part of the surprise is that voter turnout in key states had some big swings. A lot of people didn't show up for various reasons, and additional showed up that didn't normally.

From what some of the reporting has turned up, some of the Russian propaganda effort was aimed at voter suppression of democratic voters. How effective were those efforts on social media is unknown at this point but there is a decent chance that at least some people involved in that effort committed crimes.

This is the first I've heard of Russia trying to suppress voting. All the research I've seen has been about bot networks sharing fake news and radicalized viewpoints in an attempt to normalize them. Where have you seen attempts to suppress a liberal votes?

I'm starting to think all those Twitter accounts I believe are bots might actually just be another part of the US demographics that I've never been exposed. I thought Sean Hannity (what a weird name to begin with) was a bot, turns out, he is an actual guy on TV.

This is where the danger occurs. When sinister people conflate a hoard of bots as their "silent majority."

Bots did not vote. People did. And they trounced democrat machine, including the democrat digital operation ( staffed by people who worked/used to work for Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, etc ).

All talks about "Hillary got more in popular vote" is akin to talking that the fat slob should have won against the MMA fighter quarter of his weight had the rules been about weight competition and not about dropping the opponent.

We don't know if bots did take part in US elections or not. Electronic machines can be hacked. [0][1]

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-activ...

[1] http://www.npr.org/2017/06/14/532824432/if-voting-machines-w...

Occam's razor makes it much more likely that the basket of deplorables gave a middle finger to the clueless elites.

There is a reason The Donald is/was calling for paper ballots, Voter ID and no-electronic voting

Smartmatic manufactures the voting machines used in 16 states last November.

The Chairman of Smartmatic, Mark Malloch-Brown, is on the board of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

It is not hacking by Russians that is the threat.

Think what you like about Soros but having major Democrat donors running the electronic voting system is asking for trouble, be it real or manufactured.

Before Trump won, the idea that the voting machines could be hacked was - if you were to believe the media - a Trumpian conspiracy theory, one of his "alternative facts" that were really just lies made up to deceive clueless rubes. It's amazing how fast that changed last November and how little evidence this required.

> Before Trump won, the idea that the voting machines could be hacked was - if you were to believe the media - a Trumpian conspiracy theory

No, it was well-documented fact long before Trump was even considered a candidate aside from his abortive 2000 Reform Party effort, that came to light particularly around the 2004 election and has been intermittently in the news since.

What was (correctly) viewed as a Trump camp conspiracy theory was that there was a massive conspiracy to illegally deny him an election win, including by hacking voting machines, not the idea that it was possible to hack voting machines.

The key word there is that it was well documented before Trump ran. After he did run and the idea that voting machines could be hacked became associated with Trump and his supporters, the media tried to convince people that actually it was basically impossible to do so through articles like https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rig...

(Also, you might want to think about which party won the 2004 presidential election in which voting machine hacking became seen as a major issue, and why it's the same party whose victory in the 2016 presidential election caused it to again be seen as a major issue.)

> I was surprised when Jack said they'd be returning ad money from RT/Sputnik,

Twitter was playing into the "Russians" PR story. Basically explaining the results of the elections as reversed by the Russian influence. Everyone talked about it for months on end. After months of investigating, it turns out Russians bought ads on Facebook and I guess were approached by Twitter to promote their version of "truth" as well for some extra cash. So now Twitter feels a bit guilty, because even though it knows the narrative is bogus, they have to go along with it.

That's the danger of the conspiracy theory mindset. Once they go down that path, it's hard to really get back out, because it would mean realizing everything that has been said or repeated so far is mostly bogus. It's really hard to fight against cognitive dissonance, both at the personal and organizational level.

However, I think it's good in general they are trying to reduce subversive influence and bring light to it. Hopefully they apply the same effort and zeal to expose and reduce the influence of other governments, corporations, political organizations and so on.

I don't think it is a conspiracy theory to say Russia influenced them as well (at a $$$$ level):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...

> I don't think it is a conspiracy theory to say Russia influenced them as well (at a $$$$ level):

Exactly. It went from Russians hacked or elections in Wisconsin. As in they logged in and changed vote counts. To piss dossier. To secret coded gestured at an official dinner between Putin and Trump. And now we are down to Milner considered "Russian influence". In this case we are in deep trouble. It means Alibaba, AirBnB, WhatsApp, Facebook, Flipkart, Zynga, Spotify are all their "pocket".

By that token Google is a "Russian" company with a Russian born founder who is now creating robots, knows everyone's search history, and spies on everyone via Android phones. Everything is lost, nowhere to run.

That's exactly how conspiracy theory works, it at the same level as contrails and lizard people.

Lizard people are real! At least if you consider pepe the frog related to them.

I mean, the Department of Homeland Security under Trump has publicly stated that Russia attempted to hack voter rolls in at least 21 states, no?[1] Trump did fire the head of the FBI who was leading the investigation into his campaigns ties with Russia, and then admitted that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he did it.[2] There is even a special counsel investigating Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. Mueller has been investigating the dossier so we will see if any parts of it were accurate.

My point is there is a lot of reasons to be suspicious about what is going on with Russia and Trump, and it’s wrong to compare this with contrail conspiracy theories.

That said, the constant state of outrage is annoying and I agree that this Twitter ad thing is probbly overblown. The bots on twitter are a much bigger problem. One thing the adds do show though is that Russia was actively looking to influence the election.

1. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/us/politics/us-tells-2... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/11/donald-trump...

> Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems.

Right, that's exactly the type of news I meant. It is worded to sound like there was kind of a major breach or votes were almost altered. Only further down in the article we see:

"Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems."

Anyone running or maintaining production systems connected to the public internet is scanned and pinged all the time by everyone from Russia, China, Europe, etc. I was running a relatively unknown service for a few clients and ended up blacklisting whole countries' IP ranges and moving ssh to non-default ports just to avoid all the log noise, from constant pinging attempted logins.

If that scanning + the Russians buying Facebook ads, and then got pitched by Twitter to advertise there as well is all there is, it's just not enough compared to the amount of money and time spent talking about for months on end.

> Trump did fire the head of the FBI who was leading the investigation into his campaigns ties with Russia, and then admitted that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he did it.[2]

Indeed. So I was on /r/politics and we were discussing how finally Comey was testifying on Thursday and we should all watch. It was finally the end of Trump. Comey will lay the cards on the table and tell us all about the Russian interference. I never bought into the "Russians" story as is, I always thought it was clever PR trick and all, but I was excited about Comey's testimony. Except nothing happened. He said that Trump was mean to him basically.

> There is even a special counsel investigating Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. Mueller has been investigating the dossier so we will see if any parts of it were accurate.

I don't believe they have anything substantial to justify the hysteria so far. At this point with the amount of talk and time spent on this, it would have to be something like a blackmail file or literally Russian hackers in the bushes in Wisconsin twiddling vote counts on the machines. If any of those things had happened, I have no doubt it would have leaked to the press by now and media and everyone would be talking about. People involved are invested enough in getting rid of Trump that they wouldn't be waiting for a year if there was anything juicy there.

One dangerous thing that I see happening is that there is an opportunity cost. Every minute or time spend on this Russia thing, is a minute not spent on seeing how to organize better politically, maybe clean up the DNC, form a new party. Just yelling "Trump is stupid" and "Russia" and having protests over and over will ensure another re-election for him.

> It is worded to sound like there was kind of a major breach or votes were almost altered.

I agree with you here, the headline is over the top. I do think there is too much hype about anything Russian-related. However, I think you are misrepresenting what the article actually says. This preparatory activity seems like more than just scanning port 22. A few sentences later:

"Officials said there were some attempts to compromise networks, but most were unsuccessful. Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems." And "The Wisconsin Election Commission, for example, said the state’s systems were targeted by “Russian government cyber actors.”

So the Russian government was trying to break into US election infrastructure. Does this justify the breathless coverage of the "Russia Scandal" on the news? Maybe not (but 24/7 news is always outraged about something). But does this mean the Russia thing is on the level of crop-dusting conspiracies? No, and it's wrong to suggest that.

> He said that Trump was mean to him basically.

This sentence seems a bit dishonest. Sure, Trump may have been mean to Comey. But we are talking about the President of the United States firing the head of the investigative body of the Department of Justice, not some playground bully. Comey detailed several instances where he felt Trump was pressuring him to end an investigation into members of his campaign. Trump then fired Comey when he didn't stop the investigations, and said that he was thinking about the Russian investigation when he fired him. Maybe this is mean, but there is clearly something here that should be investigated.

> Every minute or time spend on this Russia thing, is a minute not spent on seeing how to organize better politically, maybe clean up the DNC, form a new party.

These would all be good things. The biggest impact of the Russia coverage, IMO, is that it insures the Mueller investigation is carried out to its completion and Trump can't silently make it go away. We already know Trump would try to fire the leader of the investigation, he's done it once. I'm not convinced that the investigation will find anything, but there is enough evidence to justify a full investigation into the Trump campaign's Russian connections.

Good news! Mueller did get Manafort. So that's good progress.

There is very little about Russia in it though. It was mostly when he represented Ukraine and all the corruption and payments he received from that.

> Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems. [...] So the Russian government was trying to break into US election infrastructure.

They stole 200k registration records. Was it the Russian government though? Russia and whole Eastern Europe is the origin of a lot of such attacks. Did they alter any votes? I imagine if the system was not secured, the Chinese, and anyone else out the would have eventually found and got the records. If they contain SSNs it would be useful for identify theft.

If that's the only evidence of "collusion", it's pretty flimsy and certainly doesn't warrant all the time and effort put into it. The OPM hack which lead a lot of intimate details about the lives of millions of US govt workers which hold clearances, was many orders of magnitude worse. Yet, the media and everyone else seems to have largely forgotten about. Nobody talks about Chinese running our government or blackmail dossiers. Even though it would be a lot more plausible given the successful attack there.

> Comey detailed several instances where he felt Trump was pressuring him to end an investigation into members of his campaign. Trump then fired Comey when he didn't stop the investigations

What if Trump didn't collude with Russia. We have to consider that possibility. Yes he was constantly being accused of it. It would get got annoying after a while. Imagine you're the CEO and one of your subordinates is investigating you for something you didn't do. You might let them do it for a while, so they convince themselves there is nothing there. But after some time enough and enough and if they just seem to waste their time, they'd be let go.

They why wouldn't Comey come clean and say exactly what the collusion was and lay everyone on the table so speak. He had nothing to lose, here he was fired for it it was his chance to prove to the world where the collusion was.

> Mueller investigation is carried out to its completion and Trump can't silently make it go away.

It does go on. So that's good news, and there are nice results already. Another corrupt lobbyist and Republican campaign manager behind bars is a good thing in book.

Let's put it this way, if Russia had helped Hillary win, that is they peddled stories in her support and she ended up winning, whether it was materially important or not, this would have soon be forgotten, had it even gotten off the ground.

They're only sorry because they think this helped someone they don't like ascend to the presidency. Nothing else.

I'm not sure I see what RT is attempting to say about Twitter here. That they offered them promoted content, ad-buy discounts, custom emojis, etc, in exchange for an ad-buy of a certain amount. This doesn't seem like anything other than a partnership of some kind.

It doesn't say anything that RT should favour one candidate over another, in fact the presentation specifically promotes unbiased content and news.

The presentation may promote unbiased content, but it would be naïve to suggest that Twitter had no idea who RT would support.

Even if that's true, so what? It was pretty clear who Fox News or MSNBC would support but I doubt anyone would be up in arms if Twitter took advertising money from them.

that they are lying hypocrites seems to be the general drift :)

complaining that RT was influencing the election after attempting to sell them a platform to influence the election does seem to fit the bill.

But that's the point: There's nothing in this presentation suggesting they were even implying that it's a way to change the outcome of the election.

In fact, I'd be quite surprised if it were: If you're doing marketing at Twitter in summer 2016, you'd be a genius if you though of RT's motives as anything else than getting clicks for their content.

There is nothing anywhere suggesting that RT did or could change the outcome of the elections because it has always been far beyond their reach.

Clinton's campaign outspent Trump's so badly that a few million this or that way did not matter. It may have been illegal or unethical for US outlets to take the money but it did not make a lick of difference in the outcome.

The whole point of buying advertising is to influence an outcome and the US Presidential Election is the clear topic or 'case study' for the slide deck. Twitter is listing discounts for advertising to a foreign news agency while bragging about how its platform allows advertisers to engage with their audience. It wouldn't surprise me if nobody at Twitter considered RT's motives, but then... ignorance is not an excuse.

Very well put.

> The whole point of buying advertising is to influence an outcome

That's sort of a truism, right?

> It wouldn't surprise me if nobody at Twitter considered RT's motives

Oh, sorry. I thought you were disagreeing.

The 'unbiased' bit in the Twitter presentation is bullshit, how can they determine how an organisation is going to use this system? It's wishful thinking at best.

Otherwise, to be honest I'm with you. Suppose it was revealed Twitter had offered the same deal to Fox News, CNN, PBS, the BBC, etc. In fact they probably did.

Is it now illegal or immoral for US businesses to deal with RT? Should US advertisers be banned from working with RT? US media organizations? US telecoms companies? Maybe they should be, but it certainly wasn't back then. We all know RT is a Kremlin propaganda tool, if we want to penalise RT then lets do that directly and explicitly and not blame Twitter for just being Twitter.

Now if subsequently Twitter has decided that RT violated Twitter's terms of service, that's a different issues, but you can't expect Twitter to know they're going to do that beforehand, or in general pre-emptively decide who they will or won't accept on the platform like that.

Edit: See emodenrockt's reply below. Couldn't agree more. RT are toxic, but we can't afford to twist our deomocratic and press freedoms in knots over them.

Personally I think we probably shouldn't throw out our fundamental protections of the press because we don't like RT's angle, especially when you consider that even if you're a liberal who hates RT you can be sure they'll turn around and use whatever precedent is set against left-leaning sources too. We're already seeing this with the hysteria about fake news being taken out on sources like Naked Capitalism and Truthout.

being a liberal doesn't have anything to do with it. RT is state propaganda of a dictatorship, not some legitimate news source with a left or right bias.

It is a legitimate news source though. If you're sorting news sources into all-good and all-bad buckets and uncritically believing or disbelieving everything they print then you're going to end up with a distorted view.

"going" to end up with

Or more likely no news sources at all besides bloggers who totally aren't pushing agendas...

I've read a few good articles on RT and used it for news on a number of occasions. I'd never look to it for any balanced view about the Ukraine conflict, but I also wouldn't look to WaPo/NYT for a balanced view on US geopolitics either.

I have grown up in a communist totalitarian state and possibly as a result of that always consumed media with a critical attitude. There are no sources in the all-good bucket. The all-bad bucket is full of RT, Breitbart and other sources, because they have only one purpose. And that purpose is to further the agenda of their masters, not to inform their audience. That is the reason why it is not a legitimate news source.

Who decides what's legitimate? Twitter? Trump? There's nothing more anti-communistic than thinking for yourself.

I come from same background and have opposite opinion to yours. So you can see this is all personal biases and saying RT is not legitimate news is comparable to me saying CNN is state propaganda of US. Propaganda, by the way, is a tool used by all governments, not just Russia and North Korea but also US, China and so on. All have their own propaganda they are trying to push which favors their interests.

"I come from same background and have opposite opinion to yours. So you can see this is all personal biases" This is a nice example of a non sequitur.

"saying RT is not legitimate news is comparable to me saying CNN is state propaganda of US" It is comparable, so let's compare - both are statements, one of them is true and one of them is false. RT is not legitimate news, because made up stories are not news. CNN is not state propaganda of the US, because - as far as I know, please do correct me if I am wrong - it is not a state-owned, state-run, state-financed news channel. There is no US institution that sets the agenda of the CNN. Also, my impression from the American media landscape is that the media do shovel loads of (well deserved) abuse on president Trump - state propaganda would not allow that.

"Propaganda, by the way, is a tool used by all governments" Yes, but not all governments have the same legitimacy and the same aims. If you are looking for an American equivalent of RT, you won't find one; the closest you get is probably Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, which were instrumental for Eastern European dissent during the Cold War, but are not very relevant anymore.

I think the biggest gripe that the US establishment has is that sources like RT and Al Jazeera don't kowtow to them. The USG wants to control the message inside (through various subtle means, not really overt means), but can't with these outfits.

Is the VoA a fair and biased news source? What about Fox News? Or the BBC? What makes RT especially egregious?

I remember when, post 9/11, Al Jazeera wanted to broadcast in the US. It was denied permission, which I found strange, as ... isn't the US all about free speech and free flow of ideas? And the best part is: Al Jazeera used to be the BBC's Middle East service, but spun off. So: it was OK when these folks were under the BBC banner, but suddenly became biased and unreliable when they spun off on their own?

    > It is a legitimate
    > news source though

On what basis? Because a certain percentage of their stories aren’t propaganda? What % does that have to be? Is Uriminzokkiri a legitimate news source because some of their stories are factual? Was Pravda?

To what end would you make that distinction though? Who should officially decide which organisations are legitimate news sources and which are not? In an open democracy any voice (that e.g. avoids criminal incitement) must be tolerated, even RT.

There is no "must" in tolerance. Tolerance is a peace treaty, if it is broken by one side of the deal, then the other side is no longer bound by it. Since Russia is activaly trying to destabilise "the West" (including central and eastern europe, including countries against which it literally wages war), we don't really have to tolerate Russian propaganda outlets.

Well we do if we don't want to shred a right enshrined in the Constitution which is, at least in my opinion, one of our best ideas.

Well I'm not American and also not a lawyer. But RT is not an American citizen either, so I doubt it has rights enshrined in the American Constitution. In fact as an agent openly financed and run by a foreign government, there are probably special rules for such organizations.

Ok, then I'm skipping too many steps. But the First Amendment specifically forbids "the abridging of the press."

> Since Russia is activaly trying to destabilise "the West"

This is what happens when we allow CNN to broadcast. They radicalize the population and turn them into fanatics.

It's funny how Russia became an existential threat immediately after the elections.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/...

Not sure what are you talking about and also what the article has to do with that. Russia is actively interfering with politics in many European countries, including the one I live in. It's pretty well documented too. It's sad the Americans have woken up to that threat only after it was too late, but I can assure it is very real.

I can't blame anyone for skepticism because the press has taken leave of their senses and begun blaming Russia for everything from Black Lives Matter to the Standing Rock protests to the Catalonian Independent Movement, as though there were no local grievances involved in any of these matters until the Russians stepped in. And the stories about Russians swaying the US election with $100K in Facebook ads just seem completely beyond belief given the mind-melting amount of money spent on the election.

Yes, some people are panicking. But also the fact that local grievances did exist before the Russians tried to use them does not tell us a lot.

On the other hand, there is stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_Montenegrin_cr...

OK, but Montenegro is a small, relatively poor country in the former Soviet bloc. It's a bit more of a lift to create essentially every protest movement in the United States of the past decade. And accusing every protest movement of being unwitting dupes of the Russians also has the effect of delegitimizing all of them.

And a twist of irony is that the Russians are doing exactly the same - every protest movement, from ecology to lgbt rights to mothers of soldiers killed in wars that officially do not exist, is accused of being an agent of outside forces.

Yes, Montenegro is a small country that was about to join NATO at that time. Then you see the Russians befriending and supporting with finances, media coverage, bot and troll farms basically every far-right and/or independence movement across Europe, from Le Pen in France, FPO in Austria, AfD in Germany - again, this is well documented - to recent Catalonia independence events, where e.g. Assange was very vocal - and it's not always easy to stay cool.

It really must have taken a lot of foresight for Vladimir Putin to establish a distinct language and culture in Catalonia a thousand years ago, all in a bid to destabilize Spain.

Now you are distorting my words and that is not a way to have a good conversation.

Russia is actively interfering in politics so we should resort to burning books. Yeah what could go wrong. Next we'll start accusing people of being communists..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare

Yes, we really are seeing a kind of new Red Scare, and I feel like it's going to blow up in Democrats' faces.

Yes, Russia is actively interfering with internal politics of many Eastern European countries (I'm from one). But I have a surprise for you, US is interfering as much if not a lot more.

>Since Russia is activaly trying to destabilise "the West" (including central and eastern europe, including countries against which it literally wages war), we don't really have to tolerate Russian propaganda outlets.

We don't have to tolerate anything. However, it is no sin to tolerate it.

Many see and have seen the US as a major destabiliser (invading a country on false pretenses, military outposts everywhere, including in countries that don't welcome them). By your logic, the world should minimize all American news establishments.

>RT is state propaganda of a dictatorship, not some legitimate news source with a left or right bias

And yet the quality of its content exceeds quite a few "legitimate" news sources.

By that logic every news organization is a propaganda tool for the country which it is based in. What happens if every country decides to take action against CNN and BBC and any non local news org? What happens to free press?

We can't then launch global campaigns moaning about free press. This is too self serving.

> I'm not sure I see what RT is attempting to say about Twitter here.

Here's my reading.

Twitter: "RT has bought advertising to influence elections."

RT: "Twitter pitched to us that we could buy advertising to reach politically active users."

Was what RT did so much of a change in nature to them that Twitter can claim to be surprised by what they did?

Or did they make a deal with RT because they wanted the money, knowing RT would be biased towards its interests and use the tools given for to push those, and are now embarrassed it got attention?

I think then the message is "we aren't someone that bought ads under the radar, Twitter explicitly worked with us on a deal knowing who we are"

> It doesn't say anything that RT should favour one candidate over another, in fact the presentation specifically promotes unbiased content and news.

All but two papers endorsed one candidate over the other. The NYT released an op-ed after the election admitting bias and promising some soul-searching. The media is biased, jaw-droppingly so.

Also, we can't see the Twitter ads so can't judge on the content. As a corollary, we do know that the Facebook ads didn't even mention a candidate and simply took a moral stance on social issues. Taking a moral stance on social issues is the bread and butter of the media. Go visit any news website right now and you'll see at least one example of this without even having to scroll.

It's both bizarre and fascinating to witness the anti-Russia hysteria reach fever pitch. I feel sorry for the USA in a way. It's as if you lost the ability to think about issues and instead all you do is feel about them.

Part of me thinks that deep inside many people know the Russia thing is nonsense but they need some kind of grand narrative to give their life meaning now that Trump is President. A distraction that reads like a Tom Clancy novel to satiate them - and allow them to rationalize their bewilderment at being so wrong - in between seasons of Game of Thrones. I'm not kidding.

Twitter's response (kind of):

>Asked to respond, a Twitter spokesperson said via email that the company would not comment “on our private conversations with any advertiser, even a former advertiser.” A source familiar with the company’s dealings with RT said: “These kinds of conversations are industry standard pitching for any potential advertiser. It’s the job of any ad sales team to aggressively recruit and retain clients, and sometimes they use strong language in order to do so.” The spokesperson also noted that only “a very small slice” of Twitter’s communications with RT was being shown, adding that the Russian network’s “motivations may not be full transparency of our advertising relationship.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-cracks-ads-russian-news-s...

RT know how to troll.

Anyone who's visited, or is a resident of London recently might have noticed these ads on the tube or in the stations

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/rt-adverts-london-mout...

Propaganda has got a lot more interesting with the growth of the private sector.

RT isn't really private; it's a non-profit funded by the Russian state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Foundation

Am I mistaken in understanding that BBC is similarly tied to the UK government?

The BBC is funded by a government-mandated tax, but has editorial independence. RT is explicitly a propaganda organ; its editor in chief has said as much. It's also aimed at foreign markets. It's more similar to VOA than the BBC.

Indeed, the BBC are of course totally editorially independent of the people who decide whether they continue to exist and at what scale. Also, I have a bridge in Westminster to sell you. (It's fairly well known here that they tend to be a mouthpiece of the Establishment and whichever party's currently in power.)

No it isn't. They are arguably currently at odds with the Conservative government over a range of issues. Do you know how strict the BBC's editorial guidelines are and the procedures they have in place to try and ensure impartiality?

BBC is independent from entity which gives it money to pay salaries and rent. Do you seriously believe that? Of course you are totally dependent on whoever is funding you.

RT specifically, but this type of media package was sold to a large number of media outlets, public and private.

Twitter itself is public and has become 'the medium' for much information.

The Kremlin is nothing if not reliably vindictive to those that it believes has crossed it.

Twitter better hope it has its story straight (and the paper shredders working overtime) because this looks to me like Putin's minions have been ordered to go right for Twitter's jugular.

I do hate to say this too, but maybe the Kremlin mouthpiece has a point here: many media organisations use ad spending to try to crowbar themselves into election narratives. The difference in the US is the sheer scale of it compared to most western nations that have strict limits on election spending, both domestic and especially foreign.

The US has limits of a sort but they're so huge and so porous this sort of thing was practically inevitable.

I can see Vladislav Surkov's fingerprints all over this.

I was pondering this too. In a general sense, the ol’ Kremlins digital savvy, often attributed to Mr Surkov, seems very impressive, horribly insidious as it is.

Troll army operations: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/th... Initiatives around cryptocurrencies, https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-is-the-kremlin-suddenly-ob... Reappropriating and leveraging web vernacular https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-kremlin-crafted-takeaknee-...

How does the West counter it? How do we, humble internet users sucked into the melee, keep our heads and distinguish fact from fiction? It’s a profoundly deflating landscape out there at times but equally utterly fascinating.

> How does the West counter it? How do we, humble internet users sucked into the melee, keep our heads and distinguish fact from fiction? It’s a profoundly deflating landscape out there at times but equally utterly fascinating.

How does the west counter a massive media campaign designed to discredit foreign news sources by making broad sweeping accusations and slanted reporting to mobilize large scale media and popular reaction in the online space?

Hmm, let me read the several articles from your media campaign designed to discredit foreign news sources by making broad sweeping accusations and slanted reporting to mobilize large scale media and popular reaction in the online space to find out...

perhaps by not thinking in us-vs-them terms but viewing all such organizations as somewhat suspect and determining a personal ethical/philosophical position and developing the ability to discern lies from truth based on the net-sum of available facts and historical understanding of reporting bias and self-interest of the various news sources involved, and using this discernment to evaluate such situations against the aforementioned ethical/philosophical position..

I’m not sure I completely follow the implications in your reply tbh, it seems a little reductionist. Are you disputing that RT is a propaganda arm of the Kremlin? As stated above the Kremlin are quite explicit that this is indeed the case. Your point about us vs them… yes, indeed, thinking like this is indeed unhelpful and perilous, and one would be prudent to avoid it. However, the framing of geopolitics as ‘us vs them’ is concept that people like Mr Putin and his ilk fully leverage, propagate and exploit, it’s a core part of his strategy for the retention of power; Putin very much thinks in terms of “us and them”. The ‘West’ is far far far from a perfect entity/system whatever you want to call it, but the autocratic systems in place in countries like Russia are really incomparable with the freedoms enjoyed in the west.

I don’t quite follow your last sentence, can you elaborate? How could this approach be practically adopted? What check and balances for example?

“perhaps by not thinking in us-vs-them terms but viewing all such organizations as somewhat suspect and determining a personal ethical/philosophical position and developing the ability to discern lies from truth based on the net-sum of available facts and historical understanding of reporting bias and self-interest of the various news sources involved, and using this discernment to evaluate such situations against the aforementioned ethical/philosophical position..”

> Twitter better hope it has its story straight (and the paper shredders working overtime) because this looks to me like Putin's minions have been ordered to go right for Twitter's jugular.

But for what purpose/to what end?

Bringing Twitter down would remove Trump's favourite method of communication.

Or is this retribution for Trump not being the Manchurian candidate/lap dog Putin wanted? If that were the case, I would expect Russia to expose whatever they're holding over Trump (peepee tape?) to get him ousted.

Trump already won the election, so taking out Twitter would only serve to reduce their ability to influence future elections.

I'm not denying this looks fantastically bad for Twitter, but the aim of taking down Twitter isn't clear to me. There has to be a net positive to taking down Twitter, but what is it?

But for what purpose/to what end?

Putin primarily wants to sow chaos in the American political class. It's not that he necessarily expected Trump to do his bidding -- the embarrassment and distraction created in Washington by a Trump presidency has been reward enough.

China and Russia have been telling their citizens for a decade that democracy is fickle and easily manipulated. With Trump, they have a textbook case in favor of their argument. Exposing Twitter fits in that narrative.

They don't want to take it out -- they just want to show it that they can. Just like piggate.

> Or is this retribution for Trump not being the Manchurian candidate/lap dog Putin wanted? If that were the case, I would expect Russia to expose whatever they're holding over Trump (peepee tape?) to get him ousted

seriously?

if anyone is taking that level of master/puppet game seriously they probably need to watch as many non-us media sources as they can..

news flash:

not everyone agrees with US global neoliberal policy! you don't necissarily need to have some shadowy organization behind those people deciding for themselves to express themselves, organize, etc.

> seriously?

Well, no, the peepee tape part is tongue and cheek.

However I doubt it would be difficult to dig up dirt on Trump. I don't think it's beyond Russia's ability to dig up incriminating financials on Trump/Trump Org. We are talking about a candidate who has steadfastly refused to release his tax returns.

Does this not make Twitter AND RT look bad? They've just proven something they and Trump have been denying.

I don't get it, please explain what do you mean.

All the Trump supporters etc have been screaming for months that there is nothing to see here. Russia has been claiming there was nothing to see.

Yet here is Russia's state owned propaganda station a admitting twitter pitched the idea of them targeting the the US elections with their adverts.

The presentation specifically promotes unbiased political reporting. In addition, many media organisations promote themselves as the go-to place for political reporting.

They proposed a partnership with an organisation they hoped would buy ads promoting political reporting. I don't see why this casts Twitter in a negative light.

It shows a Twitter desperate for profitability willing to work with known hostile foreign propagandists to target the US elections.

That kind of sounds like traitorous behavior to me, but I'm also a bit judgmental.

It sounds like Twitter is unbiased about who to work with to me.

> known hostile foreign propagandists

If you believe this statement is true, then how do you know the post we’re commenting on is not propaganda?

How many similar pitches did Twitter make to the BBC, Al Jazeera, and a bunch of other foreign media organisations?

Where are the cries of UK and Qatari collusion and interference?

And how is Putin responsible for Twitter pitching this to RT?

And how does this have anything to do with Trump?

You have to jump through some pretty impressive mental hoops to view this as sign of Trump-Russia collusion.

Eh, it's absolutely not yet Twitter doing something. It's only RT saying that Twitter was doing something. Please, if I say you did something, does this already mean you really did it? Wow, or maybe I wanted to damage your reputation by saying a lie?

If that was happening I'd expect Twitter to be issuing denials and saying that this was disinformation from RT.

And yet there is silence.

> Where are the cries of UK and Qatari collusion and interference?

^^ my point exactly.. does anyone honestly believe that russia is the only state actor that attempted to influence the elections, and further, the only one that broke the law to do so? or is it only those countries who agree with status quo policies are allowed to interfere to maintain the status quo?

The extent of Trump's relationship with Putin is unknown at this time, but Russian election interference was largely about promoting one favored candidate (Trump) over another (Clinton).

This report from RT (which in my opinion doesn't say a lot except "Twitter advertised targeted marketing", a non-story in my mind) is simply RT's reaction to Twitter refusing advertisements from them. And Twitter's advertisement withdrawal appears to be their response to getting the "spotlight" in the election interference probe last month.

The US government does not seem very concerned with Al Jazeera despite being a Qatar mouthpiece in essence. If it was just RT and Sputnik alone, I speculate there wouldn't be too much concern. (The UK is a strong political ally so bringing up the BBC is a non-starter. :) )

The key here IMHO is that that Russia also used bot networks, "troll armies", and "fake news" to promote their candidate. They also engaged in hacking computers of a certain political party. I speculate that all of this combined, as far as US intelligence is concerned, stepped over the line.

What is pretty clear at this point that fairly decent sized portions of the United States government are not very happy about this -- new sanctions were applied largely over this issue, there are several high-level intelligence reports focused on the above election interference issue, etc.

As far as cries of Qatari collusion and interference goes, actually, that has happened. Qatar is undergoing a blockade by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt at the moment. A large part of that is due to Qatar's role in financing Al Jazeera, and much of the problem these nations have with that channel began with Al Jazeera's role in the Arab Spring. ( https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/217243... ).

So, where Al Jazeera / Qatar most directly influenced politics, there most definitely was an outcry and a government response.

I mean they're a cable news station. What's nefarious about them advertising?

Twitter wants to appear to be responding to the election 'scandal'. Stopping thousands of people from using normal looking accounts to push propaganda is hard, if not impossible, so they went after the one organization that is overtly pushing Russian propaganda.

Not sure what effect it will actually have in practice. Pushing propaganda on well-known propaganda sites is hardly the best way to go about it.

Instead of taking the "we're just a platform" position Twitter is only further digging themselves into this hole. They are further making themselves the arbitrators of what content is allowed on the site. So when anything happens in the future they can't say they don't have a role, as they happily demonstrated their willingness here.

So I expect to see plenty more of this going forward.

They are talking about promoting their own coverage of the election. They're a news media organization, that's what they all do... this has nothing specifically to do with them admitting to 'influencing the election' any differently than any other news organization.

There is zero admission of guilt here... unless you're looking for very weak correlations that fit your worldview.

Even if they were only promoting their coverage (I don't necessarily disagree with that), they can still push an agenda of destabilization by being cheeky about it. Gravely denying something you did not do is an effective way to play those who don't trust you in the first place.

PS: This "leak" or whatever we want to call it looks pretty much as if someone with that agenda (might be just a fraction of RT, I consider them much more a freewheeling agent of chaos than a micromanaged propaganda machine) identified a situation were they could not lose and decided to stoke the fire.

Trump has been denying his campaign colluded with Russia.

This doesn't contradict that, rather it shows that Twitter was the one 'colluding'.

No, it shows Twitter partnering with a media organisation. I'm willing to bet Twitter offered similar deals to many other media outlets, both US and abroad.

Twitter does nothing to promote biased reporting in this, merely that RT should use their platform for political reporting.

I agree hence the reason I put 'colluding' in quotes.

This is grasping at straws.

Multiple parties can collude with Russia. The fact that Twitter was and Trump extensively uses Twitter for his own propaganda might underline that fact.

> Trump extensively uses Twitter for his own propaganda might underline that fact.

Him and how many other hundreds of millions of other users, using Twitter for its primary purpose.

If 'Twitter sold ads to Russia and <candidate> used Twitter to promote their own propaganda' is the baseline for collusion with Russia to influence the election then that would make every single presidential candidate guilty of collusion also.

Only one candidate colluded with Russia though.

Good and bad are obsolete, there is only confusion. RT don't care about being trusted, they don't care about credibility, they only want to undermine the credibility of everyone else. If nobody is credible, if no information can be trusted, then there is no truth and no lies, only gut feeling.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/putins-raspu...

Let's not get carried away

If I assume that RT is a propaganda tube (which I do), there's nothing to be carried away by here.

For people living in communist countries, there was an important mental exercise: if Russian media claim something, let's start by assuming, that most probably something exactly opposite happened!!!

RT obviously has an angle but it isn't Pravda.

WaPo/NYTimes has a very obvious agenda as well and thinks nothing of citing anonymous government sources in puffy articles.

I'm struggling to see the difference here, other than Jack/Twitter doesn't care that it has an agenda or is influenced by a government, but they disagree with the particular agenda...

Yes RT is worse, but it's also more overt, this divide will always be full of shades of gray not black/white. It's a very dangerous road to travel down, letting Twitter be the arbiter of news orgs, and if this is going to be limited to simply Russia and not hundreds of other news orgs then it's quite obvious it has it's own agenda as well.

Yes, that's kind of how I feel too.

nonono, you have it all wrong, my aganda is 'objective truth from an unbiased source' but your agenda is propaganda

All sources have an agenda beyond objective truth. Influence is a lot more subtle than just the obvious maneuver of publishing outright falsehoods. Through emphasis and omission you can easily mislead people without ever saying anything untrue. Assuming the reporter hasn't been lied to by his sources in the first place.

Pravda was a complete failure in terms of influencing an international audience. RT is not repeating mistakes.

What is someone supposed to say to this, really? Yes, RT has much more credibility in the US and Europe than Pravda, but that is probably because, while hewing to an alternate viewpoint, they're doing actual reporting, and not just operating as a mindless propaganda outlet.

Are you saying that being a mindless propaganda outlet was not the reason Pravda never succeeded in influencing anybody in the west? The entire point of learning from that is that you have to build credibility.

I think you are reading far more into my post than I wrote.

No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that to be taken seriously they have to be serious, and they are serious enough that it doesn't make sense to talk about them like they're InfoWars.

“they only want to undermine the credibility of everyone else”

It’s reasonable to assume this is indeed one of the objectives behind RT, undermining western news media. In 2008 the Kremlin had TV-Novosti (RT is a brand of TV-Novosti) on its list of core list of "core organizations of strategic importance of Russia" for example. Just look at the guests they have on there to perpetrate narratives against governments and cultures they see as adversary.

From Liz Wahl who resigned from RT on air, blaming it for propaganda:

“They get these extreme voices on that have this kind of hostile toward the West viewpoints towards the world, very extremist. These are the people that they have on. And when I was on the anchor desk, they would instruct you to egg on these guests and try to get them, you know, rallied up, to really fire off their anti-American talking points. Listen, I'm all about exposing government corruption. I'm all about being critical of the government. But this is different. This is promoting the foreign policy of somebody that has just invaded a country, has invaded the country and is then lying about it, is using the media as a tool to fulfill his foreign policy interests. And RT is part of Putin's propaganda network and it's very, very troubling in the wake of what is going on in Ukraine today.”

I mean clearly they broadcast a lot of anti-American stuff and their coverage of any story with Russia is suspect at best. But they have lots of real reporting and they're not just making stuff up. And it's useful to have a counterbalance to American papers, which are highly influenced by American intelligence services.

I agree counter balance is indeed healthy and I think generally, in the west, we are served a wealth of different viewpoints on any given issue, so much so that we can take it for granted. My point above was that RT, in the Kremlins own words, plays a core role in their wider global strategy and it absolutely plays a part in undermining the west.

For my own reference, could you supply some links to support you assertion that the American press is highly influenced by American intelligence? My perception of the US press is that this type of manipulation is really not prevalent on a large coordinated scale.

The topic is a hobby horse of Mark Ames, whose work I really admire. It's not necessarily on a "large, coordinated scale," but it's a mistake to assume it has to be to be influential.

Thanks for replying. I was however hoping for something more substantive though.

Then take it from the multiple journalists who have quit and then apologized for enabling Putin’s propaganda. When the people who work their can’t stomach their employer that should tell you something.

Wow, that was a fascinating read. Thanks for posting.

I wonder why all the slides from this keynote show to be consisting of a single (or is it the first) page?

It's in window title, (1 страница)

File name is same, there's one page to be displayed, but content is different. Is it some feature of keynote where you have more than one screen's worth in one page, or is it shopped?

I’d take anything from RT with a grain of salt, considering the context. I’m not saying Twitter is in the clear, but it’s in RT’s best interest to make themselves look better.

TL/DR from one of the slides >>

   U.S. ELECTIONS PROPOSAL

   Limited offer for @RT_com.

   * Innovation: exclusive closed betas pending availability with Periscope, TweetDeck, and Moments.

   * Brand awareness and engagement: customized emoji, video, bespoke customized solutions (e.g. AutoResponse, ScratchReel, Conversational Video Ad).

   * Content strategy: strategic support with content management and best practices, vision and concept, tailor-made execution.

   * Dedicated team: Twitter experts to focus on LIVE (editorial and publishing), curate content and provide strategic and tactical support during the U.S. Elections.

   * Efficiency and measurement: customized research solutions (Nielsen // Milward Brown).

RT == Roasting Twitter

Jokes aside, it seems to me that Twitter has gone from bastion of free speech to global censor. This RT article is just another nail in the coffin of Twitter's credibility.

I think that if Twitter's leaders don't articulate a corporate morality and initiate a culture change at some point Twitter's investors are going to realise that they are betting against freedom. This will obviously impact share price and quite frankly a reason why I don't own any shares.

I've been using Twitter exclusively for IT and tech over the last two years. Never been following anything political there.

Today, for the first time, a political ad from @diraalwatan (official account for Saudi ministry of defence) promoting war in Yemen sneaked into my feed:

https://twitter.com/diraalwatan/status/924548374711463936

I do and did tolerate the way Twitter takes actions in political ways lately, blocking accounts they consider to be fake news, state propaganda, etc. although I find it somehow controversive and very subjective. But having ads promoting war in Yemen just shocked me badly!

How it this ad even entering my feed?

Those discounts feel really light for adland. Did RT get a lousy deal or a good one?

I think USA got a horrible deal, RT is a nation state, a million is nothing to them. Their GDP (Googled it) is 1.283 trillion USD (2016). https://www.google.com/search?q=russia+gdp

Kudos to them for exposing twitter though.

Sorry to be a bit pedantic, but ‘nation state’ is not just a technical sounding alternative for ‘major country’. It has a specific definition around national homogeneity, and in most people’s opinions Russia is not a nation-state.

whatever. Is the GDP of the "Russian Federation" still $1+ Trillion? Do people's opinions on what Russia is, change the fact that they spend billions upon billions to achieve their FP goals? Nope.

Thanks, this is a pretty interesting distinction I never realized. Now I want to go find a good modern political science book and learn more.

Other examples of things that aren't nation states (it's a matter of opinion but most agree) include the United Kingdom, and possibly the United States.

It looks like this is just a standard deck from a sales team, with a standard bulk pricing deal.

RT is just Putin's propaganda machine and will act accordingly.

"In marketing, there is war for attention. It's the only thing that matters. Attention, not impression" - @Garyvee

This should be expanded to - And the only way to grab attention is push the most atrocious stories. People are nothing if not curious about stuff. Specially the ones which align to their world view.

Ahh, bullshit. People also love fatty, salty, and sweet food. Yet there's still market for kale and cod.

Similarly, there has been tabloid journalism since the printing press was invented. But there has always been, and still is, plenty of high-quality journalism.

Americans are fatter than ever right now.

Sure, but it's been amazing how quickly some outlets have gone downhill, chasing the buzzfeeds and gawkers into clickbait and moral outrage land.

The Guardian comes to mind... Not too long ago they had Greenwald releasing the Snowden leaks. Now they're mainly good for pushing an orthodox progressive viewpoint, with a staff of vapid columnists like Valenti and Penny.

Why does it matter if RT or Russia advertised for the US election? Doesn't the US notoriously have no restrictions on who and how much advertising can be done for elections? What's the difference between an American doing it vs a Russian?

>Doesn't the US notoriously have no restrictions on who and how much advertising can be done for elections?

I believe they have restrictions involving foreign ads for traditional media (newspapers, TV, etc). Just not for the Internet.

Otherwise, to be frank, I totally agree with you. Instead of owning up to the fact that most of the populace is really, really, easy to con, we seek blame elsewhere. Banning foreign entities from advertising in elections will not prevent a similar outcome in a future election.

This Twitter pitch deck looks suspiciously “off-brand Twitter.”

Why not release the PDF of the deck?

Barring the political implications, this is an interesting window into how much one can charge for advertising.

That's some serious market power.

I think the real takeaway here is that advertising on twitter doesn’t work for shit.

can HN ban RT.com please? I just flagged this story

Why? This is an interesting part of the twitter/US election story. This is the source of this part of the story, linking to another site would be against the HN "rule" of linking the original source.

Agree - but there's middle ground here.

I would prefer a "do not link" or archived post for certain domains to prevent clicks on their page.

Guess this helped Twitter get into the black for the first time.

The story about Twitter's black bottom line is about Q3 2017, so I doubt that it's connected to the 2016 election.

it all helps though, and I imagine that if they (RT) spent large for the election and got their chosen candidate elected they would keep on spending to support him, see the numerous russian bot accounts following Trump or those that are being used to comment on BLM/flag protestors etc

http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/

Twitter have said they're going to donate all the RT ad money to external research on use of Twitter for things like this. They said it's $1.9m. Also the profit report seems to be based on a claim for next quarter, and presumably they've either costed that donation in Q3 or factored it into their Q4 prediction.

RT and Sputnik are not the only way that Russian money is getting into Twitter, either way my point stands that they received income from this source, courted money from this source and have now become profitable in part as a result of the money they have received from russian organisations.

I notice some bot/troll activity in the discussions. Mostly new accounts

[citation needed]

I see this claim constantly on Reddit. I'd love to see examples of these 'bots' and paid trolls that everyone is so privy to...

it's pretty simple - if you agree with my position (which agrees with what I see on the TV), then you are a legitimate user- if you do not, then you must be a bot, and should be discredited

> I'd love to see examples of these 'bots' and paid trolls that everyone is so privy to...

Here is a study with some examples:

https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock...

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