Reddit Dragged into Russian Propaganda Row
bbc.com
bbc.com
It's like trying to influence NRA members trying to make them think that guns are cool.
Also, while the extremists might not be able to vote in numbers to turn an election, they can definitely make the internet a sufficiently unpleasant place for discussion that they have a chilling effect on support for everyone else.
Many Clinton enthusiasts were hounded into "secret" or private subreddits and Facebook groups because of the intensity of abuse they received. Most of the more leftist and Bernie Sanders supporting spaces were, likewise, spammed with so much FUD content that it was impossible to have a productive conversation about anything else. They were a seriously disruptive influence on the capacity for anyone else to organize.
And if you kept posting it long enough, and participating in that community long enough, it's very likely there would stop being a meaningful difference between what you posted ironically and sincerely.
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
However, I'm still waiting for Russia to massively benefit from the Trump administration.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-used-reddit-and-tumbl...
That said, I don't really see how Reddit was "dragged" into this whole mess. Out of all the social media sites, Reddit is the least protected and filled with most of the opinionated folks, if not outright trolls. But it seems not being a "mainstream" social media site has helped.
It's also basically responsible for the death of BBSes and community forums all around the internet. It's eaten up tons of niche online subcultures.
In favor of much higher discoverability (I'd argue); having a common UI and platform helps. Similar to how in a previous age, having vBulletin like a lot of the other online communities helps with familiarity. Reddit adds that you don't need a separate account to interact with a community.
That is the trade-off isn't it? The downside, though, is that Reddit's interaction design privileges low-effort, easily digestible, and sharable content at the expense of everything else. Especially the kind of off-topic personal discussion that builds durable "communities" that go deeper than just sharing content about a particular topic.
Along those lines, Reddit's format (and indeed, HN's format, because it's nearly identical) makes holding conversations very cumbersome. It's like the difference between a directory holding a bunch of files, and directory holding a single file & another directory, which holds the next file & another directory, etc, etc.
The old conversational style on Usenet/IRC/BBS felt like a group of people talking together. Possibly having parallel conversations with multiple groups of people at a time.
The social media model feels more like having a bunch of individual one-on-one conversations in parallel. It's good for broadcasting a thought or idea, but terrible for actually having a discussion.
There are pros and cons to both, but the latter is a lot more cognitively intensive and makes it really hard to have the kind of conversation/discussion where you learn something new. If you have a controversial opinion it feels like you get dogpiled by 1,000 people all saying the same thing. It's hard to even know where to start and it doesn't feel like people are giving you feedback on your point, it just feels like everyone is trying to attack you. When you're speaking with a group people usually let one or two people make the points and just add on as they feel is needed.
It's a way more manageable conversational flow, and one that's more likely to encourage people to actually talk to each other rather than talking to the caricature of whatever they imagine someone who would say something like that to be. Instead you just get long discussion threads that inevitably devolve into 2 people slinging downvotes and variations on "You're a doodyhead" at each other. In an IRC chat, even if the moderator doesn't shut that down, the rest of the group will tell you to STFU and move on.
It's like we're running around in circles with this conversation, neither side seems to be getting to the other side.
Instead I'll take a more pragmatic approach. Could you please share one of these RT.com links which you say have a pro-Russian tilt? I want to see if I agree with you. Then I'll share a washingtonpost.com link which I think has a pro-American tilt; I want to see if you agree with me.
In the early 2010s RT invested heavily in advertising to people who can be vaguely classified as "political contrarians", somewhat dissatisfied with how the American government uses its power, but also sufficiently aligned with mainstream politics.
Similar efforts have been undertaken by Qatar (Al Jazeera - AJ+). China (CGTN) is a new entrant, but I haven't watched it closely to say if they're taking the same approach.
For "world news" they have virtually no links to media outside the US/Europe.
I guess they did something to stop what you describe anyway.
Is that illegal now?
> The purpose of FARA is to insure that the U.S. Government and the people of the United States are informed of the source of information (propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws. In 1938, FARA was Congress' response to the large number of German propaganda agents in the pre-WWII U.S.
"Charging" them is a pantomime; Russia won't, and AFAIK legally can't, extradite them anyway.
(I'm assuming they were and are in Russia, not the US.)
https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download
Charges 1.Conspiracy to defraud (being unregistered foreign agents acting in politics and stealing SSNs to bring money in), 2. Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud and Bank Fraud (laundering money to pay for ads and using stolen SSNs) 3. Identity theft (SSNs)
So the answer is yes it's illegal to be a state actor propagandizing if you aren't registered under the Foreign Agent Restriction Act (which I'll have to read and chuckle over) and based on a quick scan of the primary document the indictments are for the way they tried to work around it.
EDIT: Not sure if the downvotes are because you feel I support Trump (I'm a Brit, I have no allegiances) or something else. But you can't deny that /r/politics and the other subreddits like esist etc cause just as much drama. There's no nuanced debate anymore. Just pick a a team and fight to the death.
Most people actually do want basically the same things. Polarizing them helps nobody.
Modern American politics are not complicated.
When one side regularly crosses major red lines, people shouldn't cry foul to both sides when the debate rapidly becomes polarized.
r/politics is just as tilted left and used by propaganda groups as r/donald is tilted right. If you think either side has a monopoly on rationality and pure intentions, you are deceiving yourself.
ShareBlue is not a propaganda arm of a foreign enemy, it is a US-based partisan blog, and additionally the accusation here is that they commented without disclosure of their affiliation. that is nothing like the coordinated propaganda, false/stolen US identities, wire fraud, and other scam operations sponsored by the Russian government. There is no criminal indictment against ShareBlue.
yes but not within anything generally viewable on /r/politics
Fake News is is deliberate misinformation and hoaxes published with the intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically.
I hope you understand the difference. You didn't see the nuance.
First, it's a low-effort post.
Second, it's off-base. The article is about Russian propaganda influencing and dividing Americans. But your comment implies it's about something else, like anti-Trump groups being just as bad as pro-Trump groups.
Not to mention, after that low-effort, off-base comment, it's awfully cheeky to call for nuanced debate.
What I really don't understand about the "Russia wants to divide us!" talk is, if this is such a grave concern, why do we give a free pass to identical speech originating from domestic actors? Isn't that also dividing us as a country? BLM, #NotMyPresident, pro/anti-gun rhetoric, etc. -- we have plenty of this kind of stuff floating around already, and in the case of BLM, "the resistance", etc. it's all seen as a good thing, or at worst, "starting a dialogue on X." If spreading these kind of messages online is sowing discord in our country, why aren't we going after domestic organizations as well?
But again, if we're concerned about a divided United States, why is there no concern over divisive speech generated within the United States? I mean one of the things the Russians did was organize a resistance march. So... Russian-organized resistance march = bad. American-organized resistance march = good (we had one of those too, unless those dastardly Russians were behind it as well). Huh? How does a resisting a legitimately-elected president do anything good for this country? How does that NOT sow discord? That was the whole point! And yet, we don't see a problem with the domestic actors taking these actions.
The Russian case was deliberate stoking of issues until their advocates could no longer talk civilly and rationally. They played up caricatures of each side to destroy any common ground. It's the deliberate stoking of discord to our people, which bleeds into our politics, and hampers our nation's actions globally. A disrupted US politic gives Russia more room to maneuver globally without rousing our attention. None of these things serve to advance the original issues raised by the people that were targeted.
Even if the discord didn't emerge, the taint of Russian influence diminishes legitimacy and trust in an issue and its advocates by sowing doubt in the movement's motivations. This undermines all kinds of debates and freezes movement on all sorts of issues.
Lets put concrete into an abstract idea.
Putting aside everything else about Trump, during the campaign Trump insisted "Wouldn't it be nice if we got along with Russia?" Was this a legitimate call for undoing decades of demonization that is a product of the Cold War? Or does he want to score lucrative quid-pro-quo deals and access to Putin? The campaign meetings with Russian contacts doesn't inspire benefit of the doubt.
Finally all other things being equal, the protesters here have skin in the game. Foreign influencers, outside of what they want to influence, do not. Foreign powers can cause all kinds of harm while spared the consequences. Us locals have to live with those consequences.
Feel free to downvote/remove this comment.
Oh sure, totally fake news:
>A leak of internal data from the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency discovered by The Daily Beast serves as the first confirmation that the Russian troll farm deployed its online agitators on Reddit as part of its campaign to interfere in American politics.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-used-reddit-and-tumbl...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/27/trump-rus...
My problem with this Russian thing is that they have failed to actually connect Trump to it in any convincing way but certain media outlets keep making the case that Trump is for the Russians, So, some are under the impression that Trump colluded with the Russians while the real story appears to be that Russia wasn’t colluding with Trump but simply trying to create chaos over the election process. There is evidence to this because some of this Russian stuff dates back to 2014 — long before Trump was even thinking about running and far before anyone took him to be a contender. There will be the argument that Trump’s campaign met with Russian officials during the campaign. However, if that’s suspicious, then we must question the Hillary campaign meeting with Chinese officials during the campaign as well (among many other countries.)
This Russia thing is real; that Trump was part of it is not. Honestly, Trump wasn't sophisticated enough to run a multinational spy/propaganda operation with the Russians. If he were, then that would necessarily discredit arguments that he isn’t smart or sophisticated enough to be president.
That doesn't matter. The Russian government interfered, that's a fact. Also a fact, the president is illegally refusing to enact sanctions against Russia passed overwhelmingly by congress in retaliation for this interference. You should be extremely concerned that the president is actively breaking the law every day by refusing to defend the country against a foreign enemy.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/high-ranking-gop-congressma...
> However, if that’s suspicious, then we must question the Hillary campaign meeting with Chinese officials during the campaign as well (among many other countries.)
it is not illegal to speak to foreign governments during a political campaign. You should read up on the difference between accepting stolen materials from foreign governments, allowing foreign governments to spend money on a US poltiical campaign, vs. merely speaking to foreign governments.
Not to mention that the House Intelligence Committee would be all over a Clinton scandal in the election if they could find one. They tried to fabricate the notion that the Russians were actually working for Clinton. That was a better stream of inquiry, they felt, than whatever this "meeting with Chinese officials" that some right wing blog has told you is important (I can't even find any google results for it).
I have read that IRA spent about $500 each in ad buys in the 3 borderline blue/red 'purple' states that went to Trump in the Nov 2016 election.
Even if we assume the 100k they spent on ad buys went directly to the 3 purple states, and generated a million CPM... ads paid for by the RNC and DNC and the PACs generated several trillion impressions.
please cite this because that sounds like an extraordinary claim.
Rosenstein said there was no proof anything covered by the indictment affected the Nov 2016 election.
Here is C-SPAN video of Rosenstein announcing the indicment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoAf_I3ULwE
at 5m 28s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoAf_I3ULwE&t=5m28s
Rosenstein, reading from his prepared remarks, says:
"There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election."
I loathe linking to "real clear politics" but they put up a transcript:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/16/watch_liv...
I have carefully read the indictment. I also notice the indictment is mostly stuff from sources like the RBC IRA report. None of this is deep state deep secret stuff.
I just want proof the Russians affected the election! I'm willing to believe.
I can point to many documented cases of various US intelligence agency and non intelligence agency campaigns to affect elections in other countries. It's all there, in black and white, very clear.
The recent Mueller indictment doesn't convince me. Maybe there will be future indictments. I just don't think the IRA spending a few hundred dollars on targeted ads in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania got Trump elected. I think it was the billions of dollars spent by various conservative entities over the last 25 years, who have been plotting to take down the Clintons since the early 90s.
I realize this isn't math, but I've studied the ads that IRA paid for, I am pretty familiar with what the employees of IRA did, I've read about how much money was spent on Facebook ads (100k, and almost half of that was spent after the Nov 2016 election ), I've read about how many CPMs were generated vs how many ads American facebook viewers saw ( a few million vs 16 trillion), I'm pretty sure I know!
https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download
please illustrate the federal indictments that were produced to provide in depth evidence that Obama was in fact "born in Kenya".
Compared to amount of direct foreign investment into the left wing party. That spent the $1.2B of donations.
Everyone cared about Russian influence before Trump was elected but the New York Times put out a huge story effectively killing the debate in October of 2016, additionally Mitch McConnell refused to bless president Obama's wish to alert the public that Russian interference was ongoing.
not at all. birtherism is made up and borne of racism. Russian interference in the election is not and is borne of facts. While you are setting up a situation where these two things look the same, that only goes as far as them both being fantasies made up out of desire for them to be true. But that is not the nature of Russian election interference. There is no "parallel" between nonsense and reality. Democrats did not invent Russian election interference, it was observed in inconclusive, small ways before the election and tamped down by media reports, but then after the election it was shown to have been true and the government and media reversed its public-facing course. There would not be a federal prosecutor, the FBI, and multiple congressional committees involved over a period of months/years if this were a made up thing and you would not see Democrats talking about it. Democrats (Democrats, not fringe left-wing parties) do not engage in the type of made-up nonsense that was birtherism. The GOP should not either.
> are seeking to disqualify him with anything they can find.
The president cannot be "disqualified" from the election results, which are established history. Only impeached for his extreme conflicts of interest, ethical transgressions, conduct and unfitness for office, or preferably, removed of his partisan congressional protection in 2018 and voted out in 2020. Democrats are not calling for any kind of re-do of the election, feel free to provide a source for this of actual Democrats (not fringe left-wing parties) calling for this.
edited for tone
That's not true at all and you know it. Russian influence had been a point of discussion well before Trump's election. Heck, Hillary implied that Trump was a Russian puppet during the debates.
No, it is nothing like the “birther” idiocy. Nobody knows if it was enough to move the needle in this election. But there are simply some people who don’t want another trial to find out.
Note that they even asked for downvotes, in order to include Hacker News in the narrative of global propaganda and censorship, by way of appearing a martyr to the cause.
I'm surprised they didn't throw a reference to "sour grapes" or mention the DNC while they were at it.
I don’t think Russia had/has a specific goal I mind other than disruption. I don’t believe they necessarily wanted Trump because of some evil plan/agreement. The evil plan is to take advantage of gullible Americans and create instability. Of course it takes more than just a Facebook campaign and it helps that the US is already pretty devided as it stands and there seems to be a perfect political storm to take advantage of.
If you see how they talk on Russian TV about the “decline of the West” and how bad every politician is, pretty much 24/7 you’ll probably better understand where it’s coming from.
I have been down voted many times with different names, and had my posts removed.
Strange, I would argue it's the complete opposite. The commenters here are profoundly neo-liberal (not left wing at all).
I would argue that neo-liberals believe in equality for all, but aren't willing to push for the income redistribution policies that leftists believe in. They believe that the standard economic policies of most governments on earth, to take a hands off approach to banks, labor and trade, is fine. Sometimes this is labeled as "classically liberal".