Hacker News Reader

Comment by TallGuyShort | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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

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.

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

> 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'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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com