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Comment by f055 | Hacker News Reader

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?

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> 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.

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.

> 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...

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.

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