Comment by indescions_2017 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by indescions_2017 | Hacker News Reader

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indescions_2017

No stretch of the imagination to parse "inadvertently deactivated due to human error" as equating to "internal sabotage for the cause of rebellion" ;)

I can recommend PBS Frontline's doc "Putin's Revenge" for deep background on how we got to where we are today. It's fascinating to see "unintended consequences" of a series of US foreign policy decisions: Libya, Sochi 2014 Ukraine protests, an "f-bomb" in a a random diplomatic cable. Lead to a compounding of grievances for Moscow. And how pushback was inevitable.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-revenge/

TBH I was decidedly underwhelmed by Twitter general counsel's testimony before the Senate judiciary. Just really unserious, lacking an appreciation of the gravity of the situation. Social media was weaponized by a foreign power to sow dissent, destabilize democracy and ultimately weaken American influence abroad.

Regardless of your personal politics, the narrative has morphed into a national security issue. An that means every startup or internet based company. Basically everyone. Needs to have a security policy in place to avoid persecution and or liability.

>Social media was weaponized by a foreign power to sow dissent, destabilize democracy...

We need to stop this nonsense. The Russians spent a few hundred thousand on social media ads in this election cycle, and frankly a lot of them explicitly supported Progressive causes. Meanwhile, Trump and Clinton spent $81 million. Scroll Facebook for 90 seconds and you'll probably see a dozen ads "impressed" on you. Can you remember a single one? Three?

>...and ultimately weaken American influence abroad.

Seems like we've been happily doing that ourselves for quite a while now.

The irony of American officials complaining about foreign interference really is amazingly delicious. STFU, hypocrites, and start looking in the mirror. There is half a century of global interference to look back on.

Given how e.g. reddit's news and political subs turned into a Hillary fort right as she was pumping millions into her own social media ops, I have zero sympathy for their crocodile tears. They don't hate the Russians for doing this, they hate them because their own attempts at it failed and backfired, and they need a scapegoat.

> Social media was weaponized by a foreign power to sow dissent,

Surely, there was no dissent sown on Twitter and other social media before Putin thought about using it.

Is that the point of what this person is saying?

Basically, yes. Twitter and other social media had a lot of disturbing, hateful and abusive content long before one of the parties in the US lost the elections and decided to blame Putin for that. And feeble efforts of a bunch of paid trolls change nothing in that. The only threat to the democracy is attempts to control online speech because otherwise scary Russian will ruin our democracy. I hope the democracy is a bit stronger than one that a bunch of trolls speaking bad English and 100k investment in ads could ruin it. And if anything is scary in Twitter GC testimony it is the admission that they already exercised political censorship, suppressing certain content (such as talk about Podesta emails) but apparently not enough.

> one of the parties in the US lost the elections and decided to blame Putin for that.

Russian involvement was widely reported and under investigation before voting began; it was not a post hoc rationalization for election defeat (in fact, the election defeat has, AFAICT, been blamed more frequently on Comey’s interference than Putin’s; the Russian intervention and apparent active collaboration has gotten more attention because it's viewed as more serious of an set of action s, not because the losing party painted it as decisive.)

> Russian involvement was widely reported

Sure. UFO sightings were widely reported to. Protip: not everything you read on the internet is true. There's a lot of bullshit out there, and a lot of people whose job depends on peddling bullshit and making people believe it. Some of them are Russians, but there are more than enough of them right in the US.

> it was not a post hoc rationalization for election defeat (in fact, the election defeat has, AFAICT, been blamed more frequently on Comey’s interference than Putin’s

It was blamed on anything except the actual performance of the candidates, as usual. Because taking responsibility is not something politicians do. Both Comey and Putin featured prominently.

> the Russian intervention and apparent active collaboration

Intervention in what? Collaboration with what? It is very symptomatic that object-less phrases are used to describe that - it creates nefarious aura without presenting a claim that can be verified. Russians "interfered" with what? They spent 100k or so on ads? It's peanuts, Hillary campaign spent 1bn+ overall - you are saying they couldn't beat Russian 100k with that? If that were true, that would be a sign on incompetence so gross that one has to wonder how they are putting on their shoes in the morning. However, it is baloney - Russian trolls had no traceable effect except show some stupid (and look it up, they are stupid) ads to a bunch of people.

Ah yes, there also is the question of stealing and publishing some emails (there were several cases) - some of which may or may not be obtained by Russians (public evidence so far is beyond shoddy and basically is "trust us, we know it's Russians" and can not be independently evaluated). But that part - and especially the part where Dems staunchly refused to give FBI access to their networks to investigate what exactly happened - somehow is not discussed that much. E.g. how comes their IT practices were so shoddy that they fell for a primitive phishing scam? What does it say about IT security of people who are supposed to handle the ultra-top-secret materials and still don't seem to give a damn about security? Etc. No, it's better to blame Putin and Twitter of course than discuss this.

> not because the losing party painted it as decisive.

Which they definitely did and continue to do so.

I'm really disheartened to hear this rhetoric on HN, but I'm not surprised given the affinity for contrarianism here. Russia has developed a track record of(trying to) interfere in elections over the last decade+, this isn't some new concept that was conjured out of thin air. They aren't some misunderstood good guy that's being scapegoated. Some examples:

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

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

It would be one thing if it were only the handful of goofy ads you've seen, but in actuality a lot of the far right's sound bites and "gotcha's" leading up to the election - even those parroted by the President himself - came from the sorts of fake news mills that spun up during that time, a number of which can be traced to Russia.

It's immature and doesn't rise beyond the maker's biases. Putin is certainly a Machiavellian figure and certainly not a good person but that is an incomplete picture which this "documentary" doesn't even attempt to uncover.

pbs video...“Not available in your region due to right restriction”. He-he, so much to the freedom of speech!

PBS is a non-profit non-governmental entity. It has no obligation to follow the bill of rights.

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