Hacker News Reader

Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

I’m sorry but show me even 10 voters nationwide who were going to vote for Hillary, and then saw a Russian-created fake news post on Facebook and changed their vote to Trump. This Security Chief was clearly upset that his candidate lost, but blaming Facebook or the Russians is ludicrous. It seems that they attempted to influence the election, but there is zero evidence that they were successful in changing the outcome.

I admire his devotion to his candidate, and for trying to find an explanation for her defeat. But sometimes the correct explanation is the simplest one: she was just unpalatable to many voters. Deal with it, and spend your energy finding a better candidate next time, rather than trying to blame Russia or Facebook for influencing even a single vote, which likely did not happen.

View on HN

You don’t need to flip the voters, just get them to not show up, and get more republicans to show up. This isn’t about politics, this is about buisiness interests, and professional reputation.

Some examples of ads using this technique:

http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/11/03/text-vote-hillary-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-e...

Does propaganda work or doesn't it? The idea being pushed that since it does, only approved propaganda should be let through. Trump winning is proof that there's a need for regulation of propaganda.

Propaganda works, which is why we have laws that require the source of messages in other mediums be identified, and why we regulate it in a variety of other ways.

IANAL but these ads are not covered by the regulation because they were not written in the internet era, and the law likely needs a refresh or at least some case law examples to figure out how to apply it.

Hillary Clinton had a $1.2 billion campaign budget, along with the vast majority of active social media users, the whole of Silicon Valley, and most of the press on her side. If Democrats didn’t show up to vote for her, the root cause wasn’t less than $1 million worth of ads for fake news stories.

That’s the thing though, it wasn’t just these ads: a sizable contingent of Silicon Valley was bitter over the Bernie thing, stoked by emails from hacked Russians for example. Not saying the campaign didn’t screw it up, it’s still an achievement to fumble with all those advantages, but also this was one part of a much larger effort than a particular rash of $1 million dollar ad spends.

In any case, CA thinks they are influencing elections, and are selling as much to clients. It’s like arguing over whether or not someone is helping a drug kingpin because they don’t actually sell a lot of drugs.

The current investigation into the Russian meddling of the U.S. presidential election is still underway. It's still too soon to assume that the interference was "less than $1 million worth of ads".

For example, the Russians have been funnelling money to Trump's family for a decade. Trump sold a FL mansion for 240% of it's value ($100M) to a Russian oligarch:

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-sold-40-million-estate-russian...

Those ads read like parodies of a Russian attempting to write English. Nearly every one has a grammatical error or a factual inaccuracy that is obvious after 2 seconds of thought. I particularly like "dynastic succession of the Clinton family in American politics breaches the core democratic principles laid out by our founding fathers", especially given that the son of one of our presidential founding fathers himself became president, and the presidencies of George HW Bush / George W Bush occurred during the lifetime of nearly everyone eligible to vote.

If those ads truly had any influence whatsoever, it suggests that the problem of democracy is far deeper than Russian interference.

I don’t disagree

> Nearly every one has a grammatical error or a factual inaccuracy that is obvious after 2 seconds of thought.

You'll find plenty of that in good old home-grown American propaganda, on both far-left and far-right.

This is the elephant in the room. U.S. based interests spent billions to influence public opinion here and abroad.

But less than $1 million spent by a Russia media organization (to maybe attract viewers?) and some trolls tossed the election? I’m more than skeptical.

This is a distraction campaign if here ever was one.

Isn't the low amount of money a key part of the allegation? That foreign actors were able to have such (alleged) influence so cheaply and without disclosure is a problem. If it had cost them billions to have that kind of influence, then it would have been an unfeasible or at least inefficient strategy.

i360 Themis have been far more invasive for far longer in influencing US elections. Why aren't they being investigated and outed by a pitchfork and flaming pikes mob?

Good question, as they are equally undemocratic (they hew to the goals of the billionaires that control the GOP - which is to destroy the gov't to cut taxes on the rich.) To be fair, Obama's team also used data. But right now the threats come from billionaires or foreign powers. i360 should be the next subject of scrutiny. And they as well as think tanks and 'nonprofits' like Jud Watch should disclose who donated each and every dollar.

trump spent tens if not hundreds of millions on this company to discourage voter turnout, per their own guy:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cHYYHF...

The underreported fact is that the vast majority of activity traced to the Internet Research Agency (Russian Federation) was in the free portion of Facebook and Twitter with automated and manually-curated accounts, not through ad spending.

There is a situation where enterprising researchers planned a protest via Facebook Events and also the counter-protest for an event in Texas. Altogether an impressive feat.

Facebook underplays this fact in Congress, in the hopes of evading regulation.

None of this should invalidate a lawfully-conducted election. There is no evidence ballots were tampered with whatsoever. Democratic leaders should do their best to allow Republicans to save face to their constituents by emphasizing the election is final and that all Americans are victims in this matter.

Well, that's what makes Cambridge Analytica so good, they have the data, and they're cheap. They just needed to target undecided voters in swing states, and through trawling Facebook data, they knew which voters to influence, and how to influence them, because they also have their psychological profiles. And how do you target them? By posting Facebook ads where you define your "target market" so narrowly that it basically hits individuals.

Actually, I suspect what makes Cambridge Analytica "so good" is that (big data aside) it was revealed just today: they use bribes and sex workers to entrap politicians, amongst other illegal techniques...

https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-t...

I don't think the argument was that Clinton voters switched to Trump. More that Clinton voters were persuaded to stay home. Which is a perfectly valid campaign strategy -- e.g. why campaign funds are so vital to a successful campaign. But political advertising is required to have disclosures. That foreign actors were allowed to push propaganda with the aim of influencing the election with the unknowing assistance of Facebook can still be considered a problem, no matter which candidate it was for.

Frankly speaking, if someone should took the blame for Clinton voters staying home, it's traditional media. They were constantly talking how her victory is predicated, how she is supposed "to take Ohio, to take Florida, to take Wisconsin", NYT and HuffPost showing election calculators with "95% probability of Hillary winning" (Nate Silver was the only one who said that Trump has 30% chance, and he was laughed out of the room for that!).

Is it really a mystery that democratic voter turnout was low? Why they should be bothered if the victory in their pocket? And Trump voters were energized beyond belief by the exactly same message from traditional media.

Of course traditional media is primarily to blame for this outcome, but legislators have no business addressing the 1st Amendment-protected activities of the New York Times et al.

Lawmakers have a duty to mitigate foreign interference in U.S. elections. Foreign campaign political campaigns, through traditional and social media, need to be monitored and regulated. The regulation is there. The enforcement is still catching up.

You’re laying out a false dichotomy here. The outcome of the election can be divorced from the fact that these companies are a cancer on society.

Not sure where you got most of that from the article, but I think we’re going to find that the data does support the theory that voters were intensely profiled and targeted with stories to make one candidate seem “unpalatable” or another one more attractive.

We’re fortunately deep enough in this story that we may get a concrete answer as to what the extent of the efficacy of this operation was.

It's not necessary to change the votes of those who have already made up their minds. If one can nudge fence-sitters and undecided votes to a particular side, that can contribute to a win. Likewise if a certain subset of voters can be persuaded not to vote, and/or people who planned to sit out the election can be convinced to go out and participate.

From the CEO of Crambidge Analytica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=164&v=mpbeOCKZFf...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com