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How do you know what goes on outside of your direct perception anyway? It used to be conventional media channels and they would print what was arguably propaganda, but there wouldn't be any Russian trolls to poke holes in it.

Imagine if the Iraq WMD story broke now. All those Russian trolls spamming Facebook running around saying it was bullshit. That would be total chaos! Why don't people trust the mainstream?

The reality is that propaganda works. You think you know what fake news is and what's reality, but we never did and most people follow the time-honored tradition of letting our chosen authority figures tell us who is conspiring with the bad guys. This frees us from the cognitive pain of considering their arguments and evidence because they are puppets of some nebulous evil forces and therefore safe to ignore.

When the Iraq WMD situation unfolded, it was met with plenty of skepticism. “MSM” gave it air time, but it was overcome by the deception of the administration at the time, e.g., Sec. Powell’s statements and the cherry-picked CIA assessment.

Your example actually undermines your argument.

If anything, we need honest actors around to poke holes in narratives produced by authorities, not ones with the goal of weakening society.

This goes for nations that experience interference from the US as well. It makes sense that Iranian society should protect itself from covert US attempts at influence.

It was "overcome" because the reporting had little backbone to begin with. Most of the rest of the world was demanding proof but the MSM did little to make the American public aware of that. Powell, the IC statements, etc. were just part of the theatre, part of the spin.

The bottom line was, the MSM was on board and played a key roll in the WMDs snow job.

But no-one believed it. At the time there was a protest of well over 1M people in London against the war. Which is huge, between 1.5% and 3.3% of the entire population of Britain. My work actually gave us the day off to go to it.

Yes, basically that's what I said. That is, the USA MSM "under-reported" the lack of belief internationally. The American people were sold fiction and they gladly bought it.

That’s simply not true. There was a huge anti-war response in the U.S. too. The country was very divided on the subject.

Wrong issue. The issue here is the validity of the WMDs. There would be no war debate is that lie was exposed for what it was (i.e., a lie).

Mmm, there was definitely enough reports in US media that reported on the criticism if you listened hard enough. Linkregister's account was what I remembered. The polling history shows a distinctive minority that opposed the war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_opinion_in_the_United_...).

I will buy the criticism that some media definitely did stick too obediently to the administration line, the question is how much did media influence opinion? Post-9/11 "feelings" were involved after all. From my viewpoint, Abu Ghraib and the "Mission Accomplished" statement that wasn't, among other things, were needed to change many people's minds.

> if you listened hard enough

_that_ is the key. If The Fourth Estate is doing their job you shouldn't have to turn down the MSM noise to hear The Truth. Facts should be the majority not some passing fringe moment.

And don't forget Bush's follow up lie "Mission Accomplished" wasn't scrutinized as it should have been.

Yes and not everybody bought what msm sold

True. But those who didn't believe were marginalized as unpatriotic.

I think his point was, if it happened now, any skepticism would be immediately dismissed as Russian trolls, as it is not consistent with the "correct" mainstream narrative.

I see this happening frequently even where there is zero motive for Russians to be involved, but it is no less effective as we've let the authorities do our thinking for us for so long.

Things are different the closer to Russia a country is (like Romania, from where I'm from). The thing with the fake FB accounts only showing "nice girls" as profile photos is all too real, I think I've reported 2 or 3 of them directly to FB, nothing happened, at which point I started calling them out as shill accounts directly. It's interesting seeing Russian propaganda in action. For Romania they have a website called sputnik.md which apparently is centered on Republic of Moldova's domestic issues, but every couple of days or so they have an article on Romania whose exact ideas then get regurgitated by some of the Romanian corrupt politicians or by the local corrupt media supporting them another couple of days later.

> I see this happening frequently even where there is zero motive for Russians to be involved, but it is no less effective as we've let the authorities do our thinking for us for so long.

Everybody gets involved, everybody, because it's so easy and relatively cheap and because the stakes are so high (controlling the public discourse, world-wide). It's just that at the moment the Russians are better at this internet-influencing game compared to the Americans and their allies (imho the Israelis are the best, but they only get involved when there's talk about Gaza and the West Bank). I guess this is payback for Radio Free Europe and Radio Voice of America, when the US used to have the upper hand.

I agree, Russia has invested the most capital toward this tactic, and it has paid off. It also has had more historical success with this “sowing discord” tactic than the US, which preferred to spend money on puppet revolutionaries and coups during the cold war.

I would rather that instead of the US government responding in kind with sockpuppets, it would do the much harder work of coming up with an enormous transparency initiative that would nullify the effectiveness of foreign and domestic attempts at sowing discord and propagating falsehoods.

The best Soviet propaganda successes used instances that were genuine weaknesses for the US, such as civil rights and suspicion over US intelligence agencies’ abuses.

"You think you know what fake news is and what's reality, but we never did..."

I think this may be one of the most simple and insightful comments I have read recently. Thank you.

My only thought is how do you find bedrock to base ideas when you can't trust any of it?

Ehm, the WMD story was universally understood as being a load of horseshit from day one. But on the other hand lying in public and not caring about it, counting your clients proclaiming their belief in your fabrications is an exercise of power. “With us of against us”, same old monkey speak

Persona Management software is a real thing.

This link is from 6 years ago. In the past 5 years, I'm sure it's been refined and weaponized.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...

Russian propaganda offices have been documented to be doing this for years as well. We know they've "weaponized" Facebook per the recent US presidential election.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/05/europe-vladimi...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/rus...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/11/i...

Who's gaming social media? EVERYONE, from every kid to every mom-and-pop store to every corporation on the planet. Why is it that people who are butt-hurt about the past election only want to talk about "the Russians," when (I'm betting) that a large chunk of users on this site are getting paid to do so as at least part of their job. If <insert Fortune 500> had the resources of a nation-state, do you think they would suddenly develop a case of ethics, and stop scaling up their efforts to play the same game that Russia did/does? Do you think China is ANY LESS involved in the same activity? Or Iran, or NK, or Israel, or the US?! I wish people would wake up and realize that the only winning move is not to play.

No, every kid and mom and pop store is not creating a network of false identities to sway public opinion and incite violence. Your hot take that kids trying to get Likes is the same thing, so we shouldn't care or do anything about it, is I'm sorry to say, insane.

Israel does.

http://www.newsweek.com/israels-fake-news-war-how-idf-uses-s...

China does. And we have documented proof of their MAJOR interference in US elections in 1996. They also have recently stolen nuclear secrets and billions worth of weapons research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_fi...

How come nobody is talking about them? Did China magically stop being the bad guys after their last controversy... in 2008?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/20/america-china-...

If we were really as critical thinking as we think we are, we'd be wondering why Russia is so important, and yet China is completely absent from the national discussion. You can learn more from what isn't covered in the news, than what is.

And I'm not saying Russia ISN'T important. I'm saying ALL nation-state actors are important and should be discussed. Anything and everything Russia has done, China is currently doing. So why aren't we trying to stop them just as much? Why aren't we digging up dirt on them, just as hard? Why aren't we probing our senators for connections to China? Could it be they own a significant fraction of US interests? Hmmm...

I don't know what you think I said, but yes, sure, investigate all of them, that sounds great? What is your point exactly? Nobody ever said Russia is unique in this regard. That doesn't make it a waste of time to investigate the extremely current and ongoing Russian interference. It's literally affecting people's everyday lives at this very moment. Priorities are a thing.

My literal point was that China _is_ affecting our elections RIGHT NOW. So any discussion of election interference should include ALL nations that are doing it.

NK and China both directly interfered in our 2016 election:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/north-korea-china-i...

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/09/china-just-won-the-u-s-e...

Did you know that already? Or are you enacting the entire flaw I'm talking about? That everyone is so focused on ONE country that they're forgetting the others that are doing the exact same thing.

And when China isn't apart of the discussion, my second point is this: Who has the most to gain by keeping the discussion on a DIFFERENT country (Russia) than themselves? China. I would not be surprised at all to know that the kings of nation-state hacking themselves, would also be fanning the "Russia is the threat (so don't look at any other threats!)" narrative to keep the heat off themselves.

I've got sources and logic on my side here. Are you really going to continue arguing that other nations don't matter, because "somehow" Russia is an even bigger threat--even when they do the same evil actions as Russia? At that the country with the largest military on the planet that is "at technological/effective parity" with US forces, doing the same evil actions, is somehow not a threat to us?

http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-military-near-parity-w...

So is this really about politics and logic, or is this simply a matter of projecting still bitter wounds about the Trump election, and you don't "know" that China got him elected so they don't matter? What if you found out China DID get him elected, will you suddenly care then? I just proved that China interfered in our elections. So is this really about elections, or, simply, a Russia hate bandwagon and sharing the limelight with China would dilute it?

Be honest. When was the last time you saw a major discussion on HN, or the news, about China's interference in our elections? Did you even know it happened? If you found out Uber/Dick Cheney/Facebook/whatever skewed the elections and wasn't reported anywhere, wouldn't you wonder why there's that omission?

You are now being completely dishonest.

First article:

> Priebus did not cite any evidence to back up his apparent bombshell.

> The White House said in a statement to the Daily News that Priebus "was addressing hacking generally, not election manipulation."

> But none of the intelligence reports have officially said China or North Korea played a part in that, calling into question where Priebus got his information.

The second article does not even mention election interference or even swaying public opinion AT ALL, even slightly. Did you read past the headline? Because by "China Just Won The U.S. Election" the article describes that Trump's policies would be "a win" for China. Not that they got Trump elected.

You are deliberately muddying the waters in bad faith. I'm not that stupid. Goodbye.

Sure, it's a sliding scale, but the question is where you THINK you draw the line. OK, kids pestering their friends to like their stuff is one end of the scale. Are you saying that large numbers of companies AREN'T creating fake accounts to sway Facebook opinion of their public persona, or Amazon reviews of their products? That's just business, right? Well what's the difference between that, and what governments may be doing, to sway public opinion on issues, or candidates? Facebook, THEMSELVES, playing with traffic for the benefit of their own agendas, are in the mix too.

To me, it's all just differences of degree, not kind. To suggest there's a magical barrier that gets crossed when this sort of thing suddenly becomes unethical is, in my view, the insane position. Either it's all fair game, or... well, it IS all fair game, and the only people who would say that it ISN'T are the suckers. If you disagree with the state of affairs, take it up with Facebook and Twitter, who have DESIGNED their systems to be gamed, not with the people who are using them as designed.

Hate the game, not the player.

> This link is from 6 years ago. In the past 5 years, I'm sure it's been refined and weaponized.

Well before then, it's greatest impact has been on the climate change "debate" which I think was the first major deployment of the conept and they've got it down to a fine art these days. They just sow the seeds of doubt by getting the sock puppet accounts to ask seemingly innocuous questions, if you follow through with answers it quickly becomes obvious that there was no genuine curiosity, there wasn't just "one thing they don't understand about climate change" but a whole hosting of common denier talking points.

> are getting their accounts disabled every couple of weeks and require photo ID proof to re-enable.

Sounds like hi tech version if voter ID and serving basically the same purpose.