On Russia, Facebook Sends a Message It Wishes It Hadn’t | Hacker News Reader

On Russia, Facebook Sends a Message It Wishes It Hadn’t

nytimes.com

42 pointsuptown44 comments

NYT has their head in the sand and is in full on damage control over the Mueller indictment of a dozen internet trolls. The so-called “troll factory” is pretty old news, reported widely in Russia last year. [1]

They just keep writing these articles trying to “fact check” or otherwise disassemble a qualified primary source inside FB which goes against their narrative.

NYT talks about the “millions of dollars” that Russia spent on the troll factory (how many millions? I’ve read that would be $2) to “influence the election”. The majority of which was spent after the election. The great Russian stolen election comes down to this?

Either the Russians are exponentially better at advertising than the best minds in the DNC, or maybe the Russian boogeyman story is losing its shine.

The NYT (and MSM media in general) is doing Russia’s job for them, which I have to assume is more than Moscow could have ever dreamed of. This is why Trump tweets they are laughing their asses off.

People are desperate to see Trump’s election as illegitimate rather than confront the much scarier reality of why he won. Personally I rather hope the DNC figures this out sooner than later, and finds a candidate and a platform that is electable by 2024.

[1] - https://www.rbc.ru/magazine/2017/11/59e0c17d9a79470e05a9e6c1

> The so-called “troll factory” is pretty old news

Why it's old news if they're still trolling?

> Either the Russians are exponentially better at advertising than the best minds in the DNC

No, just their labour is exponentially cheaper.

The Internet, and social media in general, is just a trolls playground. Why do I care about a few dozen trolls in particular? Spending a few hundred thousand dollars promoting stories into news feeds. This is like worrying about my camp fire contributing to global warming.

I can understand the desire to want to blame some great evil force for corrupting democracy, when it’s so much harder to look in the mirror. Personally I think the overall vitriol against Trump is the single biggest reason he won. Telling someone they’re a shitstain for their political beliefs is the surest-fire way to get them out to vote against you.

Wow. Looks like you're actively try to downplay this fact.

In an election when the two parties combined spent almost $2 billion, I'm not particularly concerned with an alleged ad buy of "thousands of dollars per month" [1] The same group, by the way, which was promoting "Not My President" stories after the election. [2] This is a story of Russia sowing discord, but since the MSM played directly into their hands in that regard, they don't want to report it accurately.

Even 538 [3] can't get it right. In their analysis of whether IRA had any impact on the election ("Who Can Say?") they claim the IRA had a monthly operating budget the equivalent of $1.25 million USD. In fact what the indictment actually claims is;

"By in or around September 2016, the ORGANIZATION’s monthly budget for Project Lakhta submitted to CONCORD exceeded 73 million Russian rubles (over 1,250,000 U.S. dollars), including approximately one million rubles in bonus payments" [4]

But in the paragraph immediately above;

"CONCORD funded the [IRA] as part of a larger CONCORD-funded interference operation that it referred to as “Project Lakhta.” Project Lakhta had multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation and others targeting foreign audiences in various countries, including the United States."

So when 538 writes "The indictment alleges that an organization called the Internet Research Agency had a monthly budget of approximately $1.25 million toward interference efforts by September 2016" this is simply false. In a story attempting to assess the reach and impact of Russian interference in the election, IMO this is a fatal flaw in their reporting.

Now that the "collusion" narrative is dead, the new buzzword is "interference". But personally I'm not convinced "thousands of dollars of ad spend" are convincing evidence of interference. No doubt Russia loves sowing discord in the US and has done so for decades. The story simply hasn't lived up to the narrative, and it's playing into Russia's hand to try to make it bigger than it really was.

I guess maybe we're just about ready to move on from anger to bargaining. Really, this has gone on long enough.

[1] - https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4380504/The-Speci... -- Paragraph #35 on Pg 14

[2] - Indictment, Paragraph #57

[3] - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-did-russian-in...

[4] - Indictment, Paragraph #11(b)

> So when 538 writes "The indictment alleges that an organization called the Internet Research Agency had a monthly budget of approximately $1.25 million toward interference efforts by September 2016" this is simply false

Why? You're basically confirmed their assessment.

Besides, why did you said "only $2 millions" before, if there was $1.5 millions _monthly_?

Read carefully... The indictment claims that Project Lakhta had a monthly budget of $1.25m USD.

"Project Lakhta had multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation and others targeting foreign audiences in various countries, including the United States."

One component of Project Jakhta was the Internet Research Agency - the troll factory. Even IRA itself has a purview much larger than just sowing discord in the US around the election -- see, e.g. the Wikipedia article. [1]

The $2m (total, not monthly) figure was reported last year.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

So, what's the difference with "the ORGANIZATION’s monthly budget for Project Lakhta submitted to CONCORD exceeded 73 million Russian rubles (over 1,250,000 U.S. dollars)" ?

Why is that statement false?

> No, just their labour is exponentially cheaper.

The DNC's labor is primarily volunteers, so I find that hard to believe.

also NYT, basically saying Rob Goldman's (ads VP) tweets defending FB were bupkis

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/technology/facebook-execu...

Marcy Wheeler, who's been doing a lot of good writing on Trump, Russia and Mueller lately, wrote a rather scathing - and in my view fairly convincing - article criticising this claimed fact check: https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/02/19/in-two-so-called-fact-... (Not that it matters. The New York Times can convince the world that black is white and white is black, and everyone will believe them. Won't be the first time.)

>According to figures published by Facebook last October, 44 percent of the Russian-bought ads were displayed before the 2016 election, while 56 percent were shown afterward.

Why would they increase their investment on a failed ad campaign?

He indirectly said the media is running a biased campaign. Even if he personally means so, alienating all mainstream media who is already mad about facebook for various reasons at best could be termed as not clever.

Also, there's a ongoing investigation and some indictments which say Russia ran a campaign, commenting about that, I don't know what he was thinking. I am thinking this will only add more focus to "FB as a tool to influence elections" narrative.

> "Why is educating citizens about digital literacy the solution to misinformation, as Mr. Goldman suggested, rather than fixing the tech platforms that make misinformation hard to distinguish from truth?"

Literally, "why educate people when you can just restrict speech?"

"Facebook accidentally tells the truth, even though it's not helpful for Facebook politically. Facebook regrets the error."

Did you even read the article? The tweets are egregiously misleading and bring absolutely zero to facebook’s case for playing the victim.

From the article:

> Some of Mr. Goldman’s claims may have been narrowly true, but they were a prime example of misdirection

> Why should it reassure us that most of Russia’s Facebook advertising was purchased after the election, rather than telling us that Facebook continued to drop the ball even after it knew it had a Russia problem?

The Times is admitting the tweets weren't wrong. The Times is criticizing Facebook's actions because they disrupted their preferred narrative of the election.

I haven’t read anything that would lead me to believe the tweets are misleading in the slightest. The clumsy NYT “Fact Check” least of all.

In November CNN reported the IRA spent $100,000 on promoting content of FB. That’s compared to $81 million spent by the campaigns.

Anyone who has actually used FB as an ad platform knows exactly how relevant the IRA was to Trump winning the election. But when the facts don’t fit the narrative, what are they to do?

> He continued: “The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election. We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn’t align with the main media narrative of Tump [sic] and the election.”

Not a fan of Facebook, but that I can believe.

This seems like a very relevant piece of information. Why should anyone wish he didn’t say this if it is true? This seems to indicate that the election wasn’t compromised to the degree we thought.

See my comment above.

In the article the reporter indicates that Mueller's investigation states that advertising wasn't the most damaging part of Russia's FB efforts but rather posts shared through users walls.

It seems much more problematic for a platform to control personal posts than to control abuse of advertising and promotion mechanisms. The narrative of NYT and much of the media has been that Russia manipulated the pre election by abusing advertising and promotion mechanisms, and debunking that seemingly false narrative is the point of his post. Am I missing something?

Or it indicates that after better than expected results the Russian government drastically increased the budget for Facebook ads.

There is no conspiracy to keep this information hidden, it's just a story that can be framed 2 ways.

"Russia spent the majority of money on Facebook ads after the election."

"Russia spent money on social media to influence the election. Then after analyzing the performance of their ad buys, they decided to ramp up spending on Facebook ads."

I would agree with you if the conversation topic wasn’t specifically how Russia meddled with the pre election result. People discredit the vote of half of the US people in the belief they were partially fooled by Russia, and if that is not true then discrediting their voice in such a way makes it hard for us to listen to each other’s different values and problems through discourse.

None of what you're saying is a logical argument against any part of my comment.

I showed how this comment "The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election." doesn't say anything about the extent Russia was interfering before the election. The only thing that statement supports is that they were interfering even more after the election.

You never refuted that.

>People discredit the vote of half of the US people in the belief they were partially fooled by Russia, and if that is not true

Again a completely invalid counter argument. I said that it likely is true. A valid counterargument would involve "no it's not true because...", not "if it's not true then I'm right".

I think you are missing the point of my comment; the burden of proof is on the entity claiming election meddling, and this indicated that core parts of the evidence need closer scrutiny and that the case is not as straightforward as NYT etal has claimed.

I am saying this as a libertarian that was upset about the election result. I personally thought something smelled fishy earlier given how the evidence was presented and believed what I read in NYT etal.

No you're failing to engage in a discussion.

"the burden of proof is on the entity claiming election meddling"

How does that have anything to do with my assertion that this "The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election." doesn't make it any less likely that Russia interfered in the election?

You still haven't showed why "The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election." decreases the likelihood that Russia successfully interfered in the election.

You don't seem to be actually reading what I'm writing.

If you want to continue debating please respond with why Russia spending even more money after a successful ad campaign is evidence that they didn't impact the election. If you'd rather not then good day.

You never made a real connection as to why post ad spend means pre-election subterfuge, so your fact is not a fact.

What you are stating is a theory you haven't proven at all, and all your subsequent arguments and defenses don't hold or mean anything. You have no evidence to your claim.

All you have done is make a theory and expect the rest of us to accept it as fact. If you come back with actual proof instead of just a theory maybe we can consider further discourse.

>You never made a real connection as to why post ad spend means pre-election subterfuge, so your fact is not a fact

This shows me that you aren't actually reading what I'm writing.

>You have no evidence to your claim.

What is my claim? Based on the above you don't seem to have any idea.

> This shows me that you aren't actually reading what I'm writing.

> What is my claim? Based on the above you don't seem to have any idea.

After your comment on me not engaging in discussion and not understanding what you said I actually sent this thread to someone that is professionally trained in debating to gain better understanding. There is no point in being right on the internet, and a learning opportunity is always worthwhile.

The professional debater I sent this thread to got the same impression as me on what your line of argument was and suggested I respond in the way I did. If you mean something else then I am therefore not the only one at a loss, and like me I suggest that you introspect so that you can improve. Show this thread to someone you trust to be good at discourse and get feedback. We are all fumbling when formulating our thoughts and that is ok. What is not ok is to act rudely.

I've been debating on internet forums since the late mid 90s, and I'm going to be completely honest with you--this takes the cake for the most absurdly petty debate tactic I have ever seen. This isn't sarcasm I am actually pretty shocked by this.

Seriously? You're right because an unseen "professional debater" agrees with you?

I give up. How did you get that from what I said?

What I am talking about is process to bridge the problem of you saying your viewpoint is not getting across and how I’ve engaged in the same process. I am not saying I am right or you are wrong, I was making a constrictive suggestion on how to further the debate after I had exhausted my options for understanding what you mean by your claims being misunderstood. However, I believe the arguments I thought you made to be entirely unsupported by the facts provided although I have to trust you that your viewpoint is not getting across so commenting on that is irrelevant.

As part of showing you how far I’ve gone to introspect I explained to you the lengths to which I’ve gone. I think it’s unconstructive to take offense to someone telling you how they’ve tried to show empathy and respect your feedback.

Good luck with other debates and peace out.

>I think it’s unconstructive to take offense to someone telling you how they’ve tried to show empathy and respect your feedback.

I'll offer you some feedback. Your previous post came across as incredibly condescending at best and as a completely bonkers debate tactic at worst. If that was a sincere attempt at displaying empathy and respect, I would work on your communication skills--maybe with someone who isn't a "professional debater".

> I think you are missing the point of my comment; the burden of proof is on the entity claiming election meddling

Sure, and the initial evidence implicating specific Russian individuals and organizations in that has been presented to a grand jury which has found probable cause, hence the indictments which have been issued.

We also have at least one guilty plea of a Trump campaign staffer for lying to the feds specifically about attempting to coordinate with the Russians on the election. That's not just an indictment, it's a confession.

And the evidence keeps advancing.

Yes, I am watching that one as well with great interest. It will be interesting to see what evidence comes out of that around any pre-election efforts to manipulate the results.

Because it's misdirection to focus on the timing of ad spend, when the bulk of the Russian influence operation was organic social not paid ads.

The one entity in all of this who knows whether Russia's disinformation campaign is working is Russia itself.

So if Russia is investing even more in spreading disinformation on Facebook after the election, isn't that pretty good evidence that their campaigns are working?

I am not sure I understand. How does someone using a different mechanism to spread disinformation post election indicate success of their pre election mechanisms for spreading disinformation? Both are problems and need fixing, but only pre election disinformation is relevant to the election result.

Seems pretty clear why to me: "Mr. Goldman eventually walked back some of his statements, but it was too late. Mr. Goldman had just given Mr. Trump something that looked like a Facebook-stamped exoneration." The new standard of honest reporting has less to do with whether something is true or not, and is more about whether it fits into the correct anti-Trump narrative. (I even saw one of their well-known writers openly complaining on their popular verified Twitter account about the NYT veering from the narrative a few weeks back.) What's particularly interesting about this case is that the dangerous, divergent narrative which must not be spoken used to be the standard understanding of what Russian propaganda does: it stokes existing internal problems.

Of course, the Times in particular has apparently always seen its role as pushing a narrative; I seem to recall at least one one piece by an ex-NYT employee talking about this made it to HN before.

> we

This detail exonerates no one. After successfully subverting our election, Russia has continued their effort toward the 2018 mid-terms. It’s working so why stop?

I wish I could find it now, but by "majority" he means 56%. Yes true, but not exactly as narrative changing as the quote seems at first.

Here is a NYT article from back in October with exactly those numbers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/technology/facebook-russi...

The article specifically points out the main thrust of the Russian operation uncovered so far was influencing voters through posts by individuals and pages, not by ads.

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