Social media over-amplifies outrage and pushes the most reactive stories to the top of the feed. That’s a big problem, with or without foreign government involvement. At the same time, news controlled through a handful of TV networks wasn’t a good state of affairs either.
It will be interesting to see how the media evolves.
In fact, we are seeing:
1. HRC spent more
2. HRC had total support from media (every major newspaper)
3. HRC even had social media employees manipulating their algos and data to her advantage
And now, after HRC lost, we are still using the same mechanism, and lenses, to form conclusions about why she lost.
That’s the definition of insanity.
As for 1), she clearly spent too much on old-media. You don't win the presidential election by setting fire to 4 billion USD, even if you technically "spend" the most.
That’s the definition of insanity.
Would you be able to explain why a foreign government felt the need to expend enormous resources on trolling operations in support of Trump when Hillary was going to lose anyway?
This is definitely true.
If those autocompletes weren't biased then I must be blind.
There are many other reasons not to vote Clinton but you get systematically harassed if you even mention the huge failures of the previous administration.
So there is a little bit of hidden irony there.
Congrats for being on the side of the undereducated, underskilled, and xenophobic.
The FACT that the vote of some in rural America, by design, is worth more than the vote of someone living in a city (for the race of the US presidency) is literal fact.
Back when the system was designed the difference in representation strength would surely have been far less; cities were far smaller and their density within a state arguably balanced by the likelihood of someone way out in the far flung reaches to actually turn out to vote.
Leave the topic of who ran last time, and also the other topic of what views some voters you might not have even met, have any due time elsewhere... (maybe a different sub-thread in this discussion).
We all know about the growth of online shaming culture and we all need to contribute to avoiding it on this site. If you'd read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and abide by it when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.
Whether Trump won because of fake news or because of Clinton's weaknesses as a candidate, or because of his own agenda, surely it must be interesting to ponder why Russia felt the need to expend so much effort in creating a sophisticated fake news operation to attempt to sway the election. They certainly thought they'd accomplish something by doing so, right?
For the same reason the side with the most money doesn't always win legal cases. Money is a help, but not a guarantee. Money applied in just the right way, at just the right times, is extremely effective. The better-funded campaign in 2016 did a worse job of manipulating social media, and that certainly had an effect on the outcome.
She did win the popular vote. It is only because of the electoral college that the loser of the popular vote sits in the White House.