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Comment by fareesh | Hacker News Reader

Despite the barrage of negative stories that would have ended nearly every other Presidential campaign - ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it, tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump.

I cannot imagine how utterly frustrating it must be for them to watch the media bounce from story after story in some convoluted attempt to explain why they voted the way they did - from Russian hacking to white supremacy to Facebook ads to Facebook data. This is just one more in a long line of justifications when the most likely reasonable explanation is that he is beloved by millions, not just in the USA but around the world.

The same goes for Brexit.

"Your side won because the Russians and this data company and Facebook made you vote that way. We're going to make sure this never happens again!"

It's unfortunate that in the aftermath of polarizing and controversial decisions like these, this kind of rhetoric will now drive people further apart, because one side refuses to accept the reality of the other's opinions, and dismisses them with conspiracy theories.

Today people are pretending to be shocked that Facebook shares data with apps through the developer API. Most of the permissions being talked about were removed a long time ago. What is happening now is basically vindictive hatred for Facebook from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.

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> from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.

Are you not doing as exactly as you are highlighting?

If there were underlying forces at work that were foreign would that not mean it wasn't fair and square?

Citizens United vs FEC[1] unfortunate decision in 2011 led to infusions of foreign funds[2] that outnumber what US citizens are legally allowed to contribute. Too much money and now foreign money that is the real problem, it reared it's ugly head in 2016 no matter who won.

We have to backtrack on Citizens United vs the FEC decision or else foreign countries and oligarchs will be deciding every election. If that becomes the norm, it was a good run for the United States but it will be ending.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

[2] https://theintercept.com/2016/08/03/citizens-united-foreign-...

The winning candidate spent significantly less money in this instance.

Also I tend to agree with Citizens United. Unions and Corporations should be allowed to express their views on a candidate.

If there is someone running for office and making a BS claim about steel workers, I would want steelworkers unions to have the right to advertise and inform me that it is BS.

Also if you get into issue based stuff, it becomes extremely overzealous to prevent unions and Corporations from being able to speak up during an election. Planned parenthood, for example, has a lot of misconceptions about it, they should have the right to do something about that.

I also understand the scope for abuse with citizens united, but I don't think curtailing first amendment rights is ever a good idea.

Probably worth noting that I'm not American, my opinion of this case is shaped by my listening to SCOTUS oral arguments of the case on YouTube many years ago.

The winning candidate won by something like negative three million votes. What other country would consider that a democratic outcome?

In Canada the Government is occasionally elected without the majority of votes. It is also where the Prime Minister is simply the "first among the caucus" and not elected in a separate election.

These are referred to as "minority" Governments.

Any other country where the election isn't based on the nationwide popular vote.

Because it was not a popular vote. And people voting were aware it was not a popular vote.

You cannot divine now how many would-be Trump voters in blue states stayed home versus would-be Clinton voters in red states.

AFAIK basically all other democracies function this way - using voting districts - never using direct representation to elect representatives [1].

One similar example of this is the recent German election - I believe AFD had like ~10% of the popular vote, but only won 5% of seats in the parliament.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_representation

Germany (and NZ) use MMP - everyone gets 2 votes one to select someone for their local voting district - that provides half the seats in parliament, the other vote is for a party, these votes are used to choose the other half of the seats which, taking into consideration the parties of the local representatives who have already been elected, are used to pad out the party representatives to match the country wide party vote.

In both countries there is a threshold (5% party votes) that a party must get to get party seats ... looking online in 2013 AFD (spit) got less than 5%, below the threshold, and got no seats, in the recent election they got above the threshold and were awarded 92 seats (14%) - seems to me that the system is working as designed.

But just because they got seats it doesn't mean that the other parties are required to stoop to form a government with them.

MMP is a far better system than the FPP system used in many other places, most people end up with someone they voted for representing them, unless they are in an extreme minority (<5%), and it's pretty immune to gerrymandering. Personally I'd argue for reducing the 5% threshold to the size of one seat so even more people are represented.

Plus the two million eligible voters who were denied their right to vote.

But who’s counting?

It’s more fun to argue about facebook, benghazi, email servers, value voters, likeability...

> The winning candidate spent significantly less money in this instance.

Possibly, or political systems are ripe for misdirecting where funds originate now.

> Unions and Corporations should be allowed to express their views on a candidate.

Totally agree, the problem becomes when those are shell corporations or money funneled via foreign entities.

I am sure any sovereign nation would not want the majority of the money influencing their own people's choices from external sources to the country.

It just wouldn't be best for quality of life and making sure what is done is right for the country if the actual citizens have less say in the direction of it. So much money is in now that targeting and manipulation of votes from foreign wealth is the absolute norm, that is poisoning democracy and freedom, the very thing we want to protect and are sworn to uphold.

Trump received billions in free advertising in the form of “earned media”.

I don’t know if one could even account for all the third party spending.

Money is not speech, corporations are not people.

Any one who cares about free speech would advocate for restoring the Fairness Doctrine, so we know that angle is just rhetoric.

> Money is not speech

What does this even mean? It costs money to put advertisements in mass media. Either you believe everybody should be able to do that, or you believe that only some people should be able to address the public at large.

Why do you assume public political discourse should cost money?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

The fairness doctrine enforces two sides of view, aligning nicely with two parties. But, most issues don't have two sides. Some have three, four, or five and some have just one side. The fairness doctrine is gone because it wasn't good, not because of some conspiracy around money and speech.

How did you make the leap from pay-to-play to conspiracies?

Sure Unions and Corporations should be allowed to express their views on a candidate. But np more than any other individual - that's the real problem, money amplifies people's (or corporation's) voices and corporations have a lot more money to spend on elections than the median voter

How do you frame that kind of thinking today though? Pewdiepie can reach 3.2 million people with a YouTube video. As can hundreds of podcasters. That's more effective than any ad. If Joe Rogan does 50 podcasts with folks pushing one narrative, and the corporations and unions who support that narrative donate to his patreon page as a result, how do you enforce this?

If The Young Turks do 3000 hours of pro Hillary content, which is watched and shared by millions, how do you propose they be regulated? If unions simply give them money instead, rather than buying ads on TV, is that now illegal?

If I am a billionaire and my fellow billionaires and I want to start a TV channel where we do 24 hour marathons promoting clean energy and encouraging voters to vote for candidates who will bring us clean energy, my right to do this is taken away?

> Pewdiepie can reach 3.2 million people with a YouTube video

Yeah, but how many of them are old enough to vote? :-P

> The winning candidate spent significantly less money in this instance.

Citizens United likely isn't the only fix that's needed, but it never should have been reversed regardless. That said, perhaps if CU was still around this analytics company would have never got off the ground to begin with.

We have to backtrack on Citizens United vs the FEC decision or else foreign countries and oligarchs will be deciding every election.

You are saying that the dollar amount spent decides every election. Do you really believe that democracy is nothing more than rule by whoever spends the most money?

You are saying that the dollar amount spent decides every election. Do you really believe that democracy is nothing more than rule by whoever spends the most money?

Not entirely but is has a very big impact, are you saying that money spent in an election doesn't have an impact? We don't even know the true dollars spent anymore...

Follow up, do you want MORE foreign funds deciding elections for your nation over what citizens and national companies contribute?

This isn't just for elections either, this is for legislation after election... I don't believe anyone would want foreign money deciding their leaders, best interests and laws.

foreign money deciding their leaders

Again you assume that money directly decides who our leaders are. The best evidence says it works at least partially the other way around: the leaders most likely to win attract the most money. And as was pointed out already in this thread: the winning candidate in this election was the one with less financial backing.

Furthermore to the extent it is true that money influences elections, we need to solve that problem first - rather than suggesting, as you do, that our leaders ought to be "bought and paid for" by our own home-grown evil corporations and special-interest groups. What kind of improvement is that?

> What is happening now is basically vindictive hatred for Facebook from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.

I'm not saying that's not part of it, but it's only part of it. There's plenty of other bad stuff about Facebook that people don't like: children experiencing isolation and depression; cyberbullying; addiction; shallow, empty interactions; clickbait mental junk food replacing content from actual friends... It goes on.

> tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump.

People voted for Trump, but that is hardly an indication of love. Consider that this prior election was between two of the most despised (and possibly incompetent) candidates in US presidential history.

If you don't want to repeat this fiasco stop supporting a divisive two party system. Yes, it was the internal mechanics of each party that picked candidates from the primaries opposed to actual voters. This has been proven with evidence for the Democrats and is likely true for the Republicans as well.

> stop supporting a divisive two party system.

I wish we could move to a constitutional republic with a dose of direct democracy a bit like Switzerland.

Otherwise even with more parties we would see parties forming coalitions and continuing to sideline a significant minority of the population. See the anti-immigration parties being ignored in Western Europe for a good example.

> stop supporting a divisive two party system

among other things, the voting system itself ("first past the post") tends to encourage a duopoly.

>What is happening now is basically vindictive hatred for Facebook from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.

I'd say that a lot of the articles are driven by the news medias hatred of facebook.

It used to be that facebook would drive upto 80% of the traffic on some news sites from shared articles between 2012-2017. Then when they started to tweak the news feed a lot of news sites found their traffic dying.

There are definite reasons to hate facebook, but news sites hate them for controlling their very existence, and lately pushing them into irrelevance.

Between facebook and google the views news sites receive from other sources are/were a rounding error, before we even start talking about advertising.

That everyone is attacking facebook now is good. From a purely tactical point of view killing it or strangling it with so much regulation they need to ask you 5 times if they can access your data for every picture you upload will be a huge net positive for humanity. I only wish the same happens to google asap.

I wonder if the news media's reaction to Facebook explains Google's $300m effort to save online news.

$300m buys a lot of good will, and maybe some favirbale coverage.

That's a huge part of it. Seems to me every NY media story about SV the last few years has been a hit piece.

#deletefacebook is not about "conspiracy theories". It's because their personal data was exploited to aid the election of someone they hate.

Whether it actually moved the needle enough to elect Trump is open to debate, but that's not a "conspiracy theory". Even the very idea that their personal data can be exploited this way, against their will, via friends who were tricked, is unsettling. That's more than just being mad about the election. They do not want a service that can exploit them that way in their life.

Maybe Facebook has locked down the API, or maybe there's some other way to exploit it next round. People are realizing that trusting Facebook with their personal data was a bad idea to begin with and not in their best interests.

Which is my point I guess - Facebook apps have had much more intrusive access to user data in the past. The only reason people care now is political.

Well no, you said more than that.

> "Your side won because... Facebook made you vote that way"

#deletefacebook doesn't mean that people think Facebook made people vote a certain way. It's about Facebook being a poor custodian of personal data and allowing it to be exploited to guide adversarial campaign efforts.

Guiding where to invest efforts and dollars in an election campaign is extremely strategically valuable intelligence. That's different from just changing people's minds.. it's where to push for more voter turnout, for example. So at a minimum Facebook helped identify the psychological profiles and locations of people who were prime targets -- thanks to just a handful of friends who were exploited.

My comment is about the coverage of this story, not the story. The story is being covered in the way that I've described.

Facebook privacy stories never get this kind of coverage. This story is everywhere right now, for political reasons.

People want to delete Facebook because of trust and that reasoning is perfectly sane. As far as the coverage is concerned, this is the same story with a Facebook flavour today.

For some reason whenever negative stories come out about Trump or about Facebook or about some political figurehead in today's environment, people drag themselves out of the woodwork to pull out the tired argument that people are just 'jealous' that Trump won.

Could you explain your justification for trotting such an irrelevant point? We can argue all day that everyone knows that Facebook does all this scary stuff (and the nearly tech-illiterate people I interact with have no clue about this sort of thing while being barely able to use Facebook) but I'm more curious as to where your main point comes from.

1) What makes you think I am from the woodwork?

2) Can you recall a time when a Facebook privacy story ever received so much media and government interest?

There was a time when apps would blindly request a bunch of permissions. Users would blindly accept them. Devs would store tokens in the database. One shoddy exploit later on the application and an attacker had all their photos, friends' photos, and could post and comment on various things impersonating the user.

I can't imagine how much harvesting was done by popular Facebook apps and games in those days.

Because I've noticed in many of these threads about Facebook there is constant whataboutism relating to Obama and a constant attempt to deflect discussion away from the actual contents of the article.

You've been making the unsubstantiated argument that the only reason people care about Facebook nowadays is because they're sore losers. If you're going to make a wide-reaching claim like that, I would love some citations.

I'm really torn in how to respond to claims of whataboutism.

On one hand, if something is simply business as usual, despite any misconceptions otherwise, then cries of whataboutism can be a bit misplaced.

On the other hand, if some sort of tide has shifted, and business as usual can become business of the past, then I think dismissing similar past offenses from others could make sense.

I have hard time attempting to evaluate this, to say the least...

One note: fair and square by your interpretation of "fair", maybe. But the country as a whole uses its laws to interpret fair, and the important allegations are that the Trump campaign broke those laws by directly communicating with this agency.

"In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends." [0]

The only real difference between what was done here and then was how it was represented to the users.

[0]: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

In terms of law, I think they key is that (presumably) the Obama campaign didn't have direct access to that data. Not a lawyer, but saw enough of the Jon Oliver / Jon Stewart SuperPAC skit to get the general idea that communicating directly with your funding source is a no-no.

In terms of ethics, the key difference is mentioned in your article:

The only difference, as far as we can discern, between the two campaigns' use of Facebook, is that in the case of Obama the users themselves agreed to share their data with the Obama campaign, as well as that of their friends. The users that downloaded the Cambridge app, meanwhile, were only told that the information would be used for academic purposes.

This is big. If a university researcher asks me a few questions and tells me that my answers will be used purely for research purposes, I am much more likely to engage than if a campaigner did the same. It would be unethical for a campaigner to present themselves as an academic in order to get more information.

> The only real difference between what was done here and then was how it was represented to the users.

That is an incredibly important distinction. There is a vast gulf between "these people asked for my data and I consented to its use" and "these people surreptitiously collected my data for purposes other than those which they disclosed."

A couple issues with that statement:

(1) The issue is not getting the data of the people who used the app, it's the millions of their friends who were included. This is what's being implied should be thought of as a "breach" (with the media trying its darndest to make it look like Trump himself downloaded all the data into a big CSV file while laughing)

(2) Regardless of the reason for the permission being asked, the resulting dataset was collected in both instances. So I equate the outcome in my mind.

> Regardless of the reason for the permission being asked,

This seems...insane.

Informed consent makes all the difference in cases like this. How can you feel that it's irrelevant whether data was obtained under fraudulent premises, versus with explicit consent?

It would be like saying 'It doesn't matter that company A had a real product with real traction and raised $10Mm, while company B lied to investors about the amount of user activity and raised $10Mm. The resulting funds raised was the same in both instances. So I equate the outcome in my mind'.

Now, I don't mean to imply that you believe the quote above, but what you said sounds _exactly_ that outlandish to me.

> How can you feel that it's irrelevant whether data was obtained under fraudulent premises, versus with explicit consent?

Very simply: None of the millions of friends were asked for their consent in either case. There was no consent requested or premise given, the data was simply "obtained" in both cases, by the same means.

> but what you said sounds _exactly_ that outlandish to me.

Maybe because it has nothing to do with what I wrote? Allow me to make up a statement that does. "Hey, Bob, can I have access to your account so I can understand you better to advance the Obama campaign? Ok, good. Oh, and Tom's your friend, so I get his information also. ....... Hey, Bob, can I have access to your account so I can understand you better to create a personality profile? Ok, good. Oh, and Tom's your friend, so I get his information also."

Now, you are Tom. You were not contacted in any way whatsoever. You were not presented with a reason for accessing your account in any way whatsoever. Your data was simply pulled, and that is why I equate the two. I am indeed quite sane.

From the perspective of the friend (Tom), I better understand your point.

I was looking at the situation from Bob's perspective, where I think we can agree that there is a significant difference in the two formats of collection.

> (2) Regardless of the reason for the permission being asked, the resulting dataset was collected in both instances. So I equate the outcome in my mind.

this just seems like being reductive for convenience - stripping away context in the pursuit of finding some broad way to describe two things and propose some false equivalence.

> "these people surreptitiously collected my data for purposes other than those which they disclosed."

They didn't collect it surreptitiously. They collected it openly, for purposes other than those which they disclosed. Which is an unethical but not uncommon, unfortunately.

The other major difference (and reason for the uproar) the data was potentially given as a campaign contribution which would have violated Federal election laws. That's the issue. That wasn't the case with the Obama campaigns app.

Nah, it's just hypocrisy.

All candidates take such data from social media, and have done for the last 2 elections at least, but, Trump being not that popular with the Republican establishment/deep state either (him coming from outside to steal the party's favorites thunder and not 100% controllable by the party bureaucracy) only one side has enough media stronghold to hammer the other side 24/7. The other can at best spew its own BS on FOX.

Please include citations and an explanation of a bold claim like that. How did the campaign break the law here? Otherwise you're just stoking partisan fires.

You'll note he used the word 'allegations', not proven facts.

Are you asking for evidence that the law was broken, or are you asking for the evidence that leads to the allegations? There's a significant difference in standard between the two.

The allegations revolve around campaign finance. If this data was shared with the Trump campaign, it was a campaign contribution, which has real value, which is limited to $2700 iirc. The data on 50 million Americans is worth well more than $2700. It really depends on if that data was shared, and if it should have been shared.

There is also the question of whether foreigners were working on behalf of the campaign.

There are a number of allegations that should be explored. Do a search, and you'll find these reports fairly easily.

Well said. No matter the influence of Russians nor widespread manipulation by Cambridge Analytica, the reality is that people chose to believe these things without their own personal endeavor into critical inquiry. And I'm not talking about that white working class "base" that people like to attribute as Trump's secret weapon.

I know plenty of people, truly well meaning individuals, who are not the dumb animals most outlets like to paint the Trump supporters as. They were just conned into it all, and I'm sure shady Facebook ads had a hand in it, but ultimately it was just trusting people suckered in by a television personality (or character, even).

If this election is the spark that eventually instills a sense of proper analytical reasoning skills in the United States at large, then I'll be satisified. And I say this as a person who, if I could vote in this country, would certainly have not have entertained the idea of Donald Trump at all.

Who the hell are you to talk about Trump voters being conned or voting without critical thinking? You have no idea why people voted for him.

I believe you missed my point. Those that cry foul over those targeted Facebook ads also fail to realize that people were still willing to drink the Kool-Aid.

Of course, it would be asinine to paint with broad strokes. But one can't disregard that it takes two to tango in exchanges of ideas and information.

Edit: my horrendous spelling

You're implying that we all were conned, yet I'm still a happy supporter of Trump and will continue to be, yet here I am not a redneck, extremely tolerant, not a racist, incredibly kind, etc. Maybe you've been conned on who a Trump supporter is.

Perhaps I should have been more explicit. I was intending to refer to those who regret their choice after having realized that not all of what they read or heard was true and so made their decision on effectively just an emotional impulse.

Thank you for enlightening me on why the previous user was so aggressive in his rebuke. I can see how, if somebody is happy with their choice, they may have felt slighted and assumed I implied that they, too, were conned.

I can appreciate that somebody's personal calculus is different from my own. However, those whom I have encountered that regret their decision articulate it in such terms that "con" really is the proper descriptor.

> Maybe you've been conned on who a Trump supporter is.

given trump's nature, it's unlikely one who isn't a fan will give much credence to such self-attestations.

for example a trump supporter may say they are "not a racist", but many see that trump supporters simply do not talk about race in the same way, so the expression doesn't mean much.

> They were just conned into it all

Were they conned?

The truth is if the US doesn't fix illegal immigration and put a general slowdown on legal immigration then conservatives are done for and their way of life is going to be slowly destroyed.

All indicators show first and second gen migrants overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

Yes, the conservatives are done for. That is, the party itself will fail to stay relevant.

This doesn't matter to voters. They ought to pick whoever will best serve them. So in that sense, I would argue that yes, they were conned in some respects.

> Yes, the conservatives are done for. That is, the party itself will fail to stay relevant.

I think it's the opposite - the people are done for. The party will just shift its stances. In many respects it already has - Trump faces almost as much opposition within his own party as from the Democrats.

If Trump doesn't sort out immigration expect the US to shift closer in laws and accepted practices to the UK.

Ah, I see. That's certainly an interesting hypothesis. Makes me wonder who the Republican party would target if their typical base evaporates. What would incline center-leaning individuals to continue to support the party after the shitshow that was the 2016 election?

Now you've got me looking forward to how this all turns out even more! :)

It could go a couple of ways - Trump could fix immigration - if "they" can remove the anti-Trump Repubs in the house or pick up a few extra seats then he has a good chance.

If he doesn't then I see a shift to socially conservative (in the religious sense) but pro-welfare.

New immigrants in general are socially conservative. As are a big chunk of current Dem voters - my extended family are all catholic and vote Dems.

some of this is the hostility immigrants feel from republicans and republican voters. as such, the gop and it's constituents contribute to (or perhaps even principally cause) this.

the premise that all/most immigrants "are liberals" (by apparent virtue of their immigrant-ness) is almost hilariously a stereotypical position to hold. i wonder what a gop explanation for why that is true would look like.

> some of this is the hostility immigrants feel from republicans and republican voters.

A little. But it's not one of the big three drivers -

The first is social welfare.

The second comes down to ideology - American conservatives have a unique brand of beliefs.

For example the value placed on:

- Freedom of speech - Firearms - Individual liberty over collective safety/feelings/effective policy

These traits are not shared by conservatives in the rest of the world. In the U.K. for example the majority of conservatives are happy with strict firearm control.

The third is personality - American conservatives are loud, proud, straight talking, and rough-edged - this rubs conservatives from other countries the wrong way.

"It's unfortunate that in the aftermath of polarizing and controversial decisions like these, this kind of rhetoric will now drive people further apart, because one side refuses to accept the reality of the other's opinions, and dismisses them with conspiracy theories."

That's the rub. The side that doesnt go with the trumpers keeps looking for justifications that dont boil down to "Those people innately agree with those policies after a reasoned and thoughtful approach to the problem."

That's because the beliefs they espouse are an anathema to their core understanding of a civil society, and the only way they can continue to humanize them is to pretend they were tricked or stupid.

Honestly, I pretty much feel the same way myself. If you earnestly understand the consequences of America's current president and you are still gung-ho, I find you to be lacking in about every important moral and ethical measure.

I mean, I know why people love him too — he is entertaining as fuck and if you’re too poor or too rich to be affected by government policy, who gives a shit about the president?

So again, you attempt to hand-wave reasons why people would vote for Donald Trump.

Not really, I think that for a certain subset of the electorate, voting Trump was highly rational from a game theoretic perspective, and the worse Trump is, the better he serves this purpose. So I don’t need to hand Wave the emotional reasons.

I'd like you to elaborate more on the game theory aspect. My personal opinion along those lines is that people looked to Trump as a bull in a china shop. The "system" was so corrupt that the only solution was to send someone in who would wreck it from the inside. It would be disingenuous to be upset now that he's broken some plates. While I don't think this is the majority of Trump voters it anecdotally appears to be a significant portion of the avid/vocal supporters. I still think most of his votes came from the people who show up and vote R no matter what. But there was definitely a shade of, "FUCK YOU" from the voters to the government this election.

Imagine you live in a room with an investment banker. Every day, $100 appears in the room and the investment banker decides how much you get to keep. Every year, you get to decide whether or not to push a button that sprays rancid feces on both of you.

On Day 1, the banker lets you keep $30. He keeps this $30 for another 10 years. Then, he starts cutting your share by 2 pennies per week ($1 per year). It’s annoying but not too bad, but you don’t want to be covered in feces so you don’t push the button.

A decade later, you’ve only got $20. A decade after that, $10. Five years later, only $5 out of every $100.

At some point, it becomes strategic to push the button. Sure, your life sucks and having your tattered clothes covered in feces doesn’t help. But the banker in the bespoke suit is harmed more, and might rethink his allocation tomorrow.

And when you do push that button, the stinkier the feces, the better.

Not "FUCK YOU," but as a vote of no-confidence and of optimism for a reset button.

Source: that was my vote.

He basically ran a campaign of "People in Washington suck and I'm going to ruin their day" and that is the one campaign promise he's knocked out of the park. Every time the media gets bent out of shape about something he does, his base feels vindicated.

Exactly, but it’s not just people in Washington. It’s anyone who gets to sit at an air conditioned desk for 8 hours a day and make twice as much as a coal miner with black lung.

To answer your question. Me, as a European, I like a POTUS who doesn't drag us into a war with Russia, thank you.

I thought the narrative was that Trump was on Russia’s side?

I don't talk about US-partisanship in the media, but of reality. I am not a DC insider, all I know is that at this very moment I am living in peace.

During the debates candidate Clinton suggested enforcing a no fly zone in Syria which prompted the moderator to ask her whether she would shoot down a Russian plane while she armed "moderate" rebels.

Meanwhile Candidate Trump said he thought they could get along and co-operate to defeat ISIS.

Personally, sitting thousands of miles away from the USA, candidate Clinton said everything that I'd never want to hear. Also Russia has been a great ally to my country for many years so culturally the russophobic impulse has never been there.

I'm not sure and I might be mistaken, but I think you also advocate a little about this "people have rights to their feelings" line of argumentation. But people's feelings can be manipulated with things that aren't true.

Say somebody told you that your coworker of similar skill level was earning twice as much as you, because they cheated somehow. You would get angry at them. If it then was revealed that no such thing happened, they have the same salary as you, would you still stay angry?

In the case of this election there were so many genuine incidents where wrongdoing was committed by both candidates so I'd be less inclined to buy into the theory that fake incidents were what caused the anger.

One candidate stole a primary, was under FBI investigation for most of the campaign, was chastised by the director but then given a pass, had a trove of emails leaked wherein she was called incompetent by her own team, and cheated in debates due to a highly inappropriate relationship with the media.

The other candidate was crucified in the press almost daily with a slew of controversial and crass, lewd statements, each of which was dissected, repeated and debated during the 24 hour news cycle as well as the late night talk shows.

I'm not sure that's true. I think its just people realizing the power and reach of internet media giants like facebook.

Nobody wants Russia to spam American news. Nobody wants to filter through media coverage and wonder which one is fake or not.

People I think are looking for a bit more liability. Show me content truthfully, validate its source, don't change the order of my news feed, don't purposely remove some content and add others because you've learned my ad click habits.

Trump is trump, I don't think he's the reason for the outcry. He's mentioned in it, because it can be seen as an example, but people on all side of the political spectrum I think have issue with propaganda, and the power that lies to whom control the internet mass media. So Facebook is scary to all party, and I think only now do a majority of people have woken up to its potential destructive influence. It's not known to what extent that potential is, and the debates will probably focus on that. How much/little regulation is needed to mitigate its applications that can affect our free social democracy, while maximising our capitalist ambitions.

I don’t think Brexit really falls into the same category. At the time of the Brexit vote there were a lot of stories in circulation that were incorrect or not telling the whole story. If people were given the real facts, I find it very unlikely that the majority would have still voted leave.

Yes I agree there are some real arguments for leaving, but most people were voting leave for reasons like the NHS getting an extra £350m a week, which turned out to be just spin. Maybe a company like CA was invoked to promote stories, and maybe they were funded by powerful people, but that’s not really a conspiracy.

Even now it’s still unclear on what is going to happen on some major issues, like what will happen to British citizens living in the EU.

The British media has been reporting on CA and its links to the leave campaign for some time now. I watched a video in which an incredibly snarky reporter interviewed someone from CA and demanded to know why they were at an event being held by the leave campaign if they weren't working together.

This is even with most of the global mainstream media supporting Hilary and party. And now the media wants to divert their failures to some social media effect - as if FB only showed pro Trump news.

> ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it

Same happened in USSR, Yeltsin was accused in almost all of the above, and won - not so much despite of this, but to a large extent due to this. When the entire establishment gangs up against one, the normal human instinct is to support him. And the effect is so well-known that I'm actually suprised Trump's opponents acted this way.

Perhaps the reality is two things. One, there may have really was been collusion and manipulation of peoples psyche as the data seems to be trending towards.

But two, as you suggest, perhaps some people really do like him and what he represents. And maybe the "other side" would rather believe Trump voters were tricked then believe the alternative, that Trump voters really love Trump and what he represents.

The thing that posts like yours seem to silently imply is that if "the other side" would just accept Trump and his ideology, the country will be fine. But perhaps two peoples can become so divided that they would rather take up arms against each other then accept the ideology of the other group. This is the possibility that really scares people the most, and is something that no one wants to talk about.

There's no reason to accept the ideology, just the fact that the election was won and that a very significant number of people want that ideology. Ideally now is the time to engage with them and reach a compromise.

Unfortunately the reaction has been incredibly childish.

There are tens of millions who would vote for trump no matter what, and I literally mean no matter what. No candidate has ever got less than ~40% of the popular vote in recent times. So that fact, that "tens of millions voted for Trump after all", tells us squat.

And besides that, the allegations being made are extremely serious, an utter threat to democracy, and they are to be taken so independently of any other factors.

I do agree, but it's also annoying that people keep using this to try and downplay stories like the Russia investigation and the fact that shady practices are going on at places like Facebook and in our political campaigns.

People did vote for Trump. Without someone twisting their arm.

But there is still merit to these other stories (even if the perspective that they got Trump elected is false).

Are you saying that hundreds of years of ad business has never worked and the billions upon billions of dollars spent on ads were wasted?

Because if you're not, "People did vote for Trump. Without someone twisting their arm." is disingenuous, at best.

All of our arms are being twisted by that standard. And all candidates were using ads.

I'm saying that the people voted how they voted without the use of anything that seems outside of the norm.

We should investigate these data-driven ad campaigns if they do have that much influence over our democracy.

And we should investigate Russian meddling because it looks like there was a divisive propaganda campaign and a bunch of shady business deals.

And we should investigate the Trump campaign because it looks like there were a bunch of shady business deals with questionable ties.

My real point was that the fact that these things involve Trump shouldn't impact their seriousness. We know there are people trying to find dirt on Trump but that doesn't mean all of the angles they're looking at are purely about Trump.

> All of our arms are being twisted by that standard. And all candidates were using ads.

But there are rules regarding how and how much can be spent on ads.

My initial post was to establish that we agree that ads work, the next issue is to establish whether campaign finance laws were broken, and if spending (foreign or otherwise) were not disclosed.

I can't vote in the US election. I don't give a fuck who wins. I still think Facebook is shit.

The election was won by a very slim margin. The core of Trump's support may have been with him regardless but they weren't enough to win. It's the actions on the margin that matter here.

Also, as other's have pointed out, there are a lot of other problems with social media in general and Facebook in particular. Russian meddling in the election is the spark that is lighting the fire but the fuel was already there. (That last sentence optimistic to an extent that might not be warranted).

Exactly, he won the election thanks to 80000 votes in three states.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...

Even applying such retroactive analysis to determine the smallest set of people who could change their votes so as to alter the election result, that doesn't imply anything about why Trump voters voted for Trump. That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc.

> That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc.

At the risk of engaging in a debate I don’t want to participate in, is this not building a strawman?

When I purchase a product after viewing a targeted advertisement for that product, no reasonable person would claim I’d been brainwashed. One might, however, claim I’d been influenced by the advertisement.

This should probably be a response to fareesh's top-level post. My comment was just to say that Trump's margin of victory -- however you want to analyze it or state it -- doesn't have any bearing on what motivated Trump voters and isn't even relevant in the context of fareesh's comment.

Actually, he won thanks to ~63,000,000 votes. You’re also trying to make it sound like there was something uniquely nefarious about his campaign. He used the same marketing tactics that all recent campaigns have used. The same tactics that Obama was widely praised for in 2012. He won because voters liked him more.

* he won thanks to 304 electoral votes and ~3,000,000 less popular votes.

Neither candidate was campaigning for a popular vote, they were both campaigning to win the electoral college. Which Trump did because ~63,000,000 Americans decided, purely of their own free will, that he was the better candidate. No matter how much you try to retroactively gerrymander the outcome, both candidates were playing on a level playing field, one of them won and one of them lost. It’s really a testament to democracy that an outsider candidate can prevail over the amount of establishment support Hillary had.

There's so much wrong with this comment. Correct, he received ~63m votes. Hillary received 65.85m votes. He won because our presidential election system is based on an electoral college (which may be debated as a plus or minus). But that also means certain states have a disproportionate amount of representation with respect to their population.

Please don't delude yourself or at least attempt to be honest. Races at the county and state level matter a lot. It matters that outside of a couple of states, the winner take all electoral system can have a significant impact on elections.

Yes, those are the rules that have been established, that both parties are privy to when developing their campaign strategy.

But let's not reduce that to "oh, one person won because people liked them more."

Nobody complains about the electoral college when their candidate wins. But when they do complain about it, you’ll notice they tend to only mention the shortcomings that support their point of view. For instance, you’ll never hear a Democrat talk about all of the Republican votes that are suppressed in the large liberal states.

Both candidates entered a race to win the electoral college. The race was fair and one of them won. You can’t claim some moral victory by counting the popular vote, because every candidate would campaign very differently to contest a popular vote.

I think you’re correct about one thing though, it is an oversimplification to say that people liked him more. It would be more accurate to say that they thought he would be a better president.

There was no “Russian meddling” in the election. Stop parroting nonsense without evidence.

Hillary did cheat though. Her campaign directly collaborated with correct the record - last time I checked coordinating with a super pac was illegal. She also directly worked with the media to spread progaganda.

Thank god Trump won. Hillary would have been more of the same.

Also, it’s hilarious that we’ve all stopped caring about Citzens United now. Corporations influencing our elections is A-OK!

We've established beyond a doubt by now that there was, in fact, "Russian meddling" in the election. It's incredible that someone could still deny this.

Really? Cool! I’m sure you won’t have any troubles pointing me to some evidence then! Let’s see it...

Also, I’m not alone in this, notable journalists such as Glenn Greenwald are also asking for evidence.

Are you just not paying attention to the Mueller investigation? There's like five guilty pleas by now. Is that just a nothing burger? Seriously, what do you think that's all about?

If you want a timeline of events you can go here[0] or here[1], but something tells me you won't accept these...

[0]: https://www.politico.com/trump-russia-ties-scandal-guide/tim...

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/05/a...

Can you spell it out? How did Russia "hack" the election? Please try to be specific. If I wanted random news stories, I'd google them.

The topic at hand is "meddling", not "hack"ing. Please don't try to change the topic.

Whatever adjective you prefer. But can you answer the question? You're being purposely obtuse.

Can you read? Those lists are very detailed and deal exclusively with this topic.

I have read and didn't find anything concrete. That's why I asked. No need to be rude.

Crossing into personal nastiness will get you banned here regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.

All: Please keep garden-variety partisan flamewars far away from this site, too.

Your timeline is a list of accusations. You’ve provided no evidence to support your claim of Russian’s interfering with the election.

More importanly: why should I care about Russians interfering with elections when we let corporations do that to a far greater extent?

The timeline contains confirmed events which are in fact evidence. They're not accusations; the point of the timeline is that these are things we know happened.

How, exactly, are you defining evidence?

I assume you don't mean in the P(A|B) > P(A) sense?

I bet 10 bucks nobody here is going to reply with what you asked for. Because there is no "evidence" of any sort of "hacking".

You're the first person in this thread to introduce the word "hacking".

My point still stands. Whatever adjective you prefer.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download

"From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016."

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments."

People can say anything. Anything proven in the court? To me all this sounds like partisan activities against the President. I skimmed both documents, but couldn't find any proven fact. Only allegations. Did I miss something?

Also the DNI report is too generic. They literally have screenshots of Russian news channels. This is bordering on cold war era style propaganda.

PS: thank you for taking the time and effort to have a conversation. I haven't seen anything convincing me that Russia meaningfully interfered in the election. And I'm wary to jump to conclusions since there are a lot of people who seem to be hell bent on undercutting the President using any means.

I provided those two documents because they currently bookend official public activity on the subject.

The indictment I provided is from the investigation headed by Robert Mueller, special counsel, former FBI director, and Republican. Dismissing it as "partisan activities" suggests either that you are extremely uninformed on this subject (in which case you should do your own research) or that you've already decided in advance to dismiss the results of a nonpartisan investigation.

Even the highly contested House Intelligence Committee report acknowledges that there was Russian interference in the election (they simply claim that there is no proof the Trump campaign was involved). There is a bipartisan consensus on this subject.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

There is enough evidence to substantiate beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia deliberately interfered with the 2016 presidential election. It is hard to determine the degree with which that interference influenced voters.

When all the stories first started coming out about U.S. torture around 2005 the first stage was denial by supporters of Bush. The number of intelligence officials, the number of investigative reports, etc. is such that someone denying Russian influence is being willfully naive. The question isn’t if they did influence the election it’s just how much the influence really was. It is beyond question that the Russians were involved in shenanigans. The U.S. has regularly unduly influenced elections in other countries so I don’t begrudge the Russians for what they did. I do begrudge those of our leaders who don’t care.

They also organized anti-Trump protests after the election : http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/16/indictment-reveal...

Who did? The Russian government? Russian citizens? How did they organize these protests? Where’s the evidence?

Also, this is a completely different claim, separate from the “Russia interferes with our election” claim.

Agreed, Russian citizens doing stuff may not mean Russian government ordered it

I'm a strong Trump, and even more so Putin, hater, but I don't really get why Russian "meddling" is so bad. I kind of expect them to do this. I am sure the US is supporting candidates it wants to win in other places.

If it is hacking polling stations or other illegal activities, that is pretty bad. But still the responsibility is on the harmed country to make that harder, detect it and show proof.

Of course it would make Trump appear illegitimate, but I don't think it should be unexpected by Russia. Can't really expect them to be silent and do nothing when they know Hillary has strong negative views (for good reason!) of their country.

> I don't really get why Russian "meddling" is so bad. I kind of expect them to do this.

Here's an analogy: We expect belligerents to kill each other's soldiers during war. It's the responsibility of each side to minimize their own losses. That doesn't mean that war isn't bad.

You might be able to win an argument with smart, but you'll never win an argument with stupid. t_d has arrived, so the correct response is:

FREE JULIAN!

It's the actions on the margin that matter here.

Just think of what this whole story (Foreign meddling) says about these marginal voters in that case: That they were so easily swayed, that they decided to vote ostensibly against their own better judgement simply by being shown a series of ads to influence their emotions.

Something is very wrong with voter education if it's that easy to sway a certain influential population of voters.

Or they really disliked both candidates, so a small push could send them in either direction. Just as an example.

It's pretty difficult to make meaningful wide-ranging inferences about the voter populations this way.

...or it's not that voters were swayed by anything at all, and lots of people voted for an unproductive celebrity for their own reasons.

In the months and weeks approaching election day, I was struck numerous times by the reality that each political faction was profoundly disconnected from the other, in media consumption silos so different that if you happened to drift from one conversation to another, it felt like crossing an ocean and entering a distant country.

And to me, it was obvious that this social rift had calcified during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Somehow, amid the victory of the Obama presidency, left wing democrats simply felt as though their job was done, they could die happy, and anything else they imagined as natural was a foregone conclusion of the retirement they were set to sail into.

I don't think the media silos I noticed are the root of the problem. You cannot blame cartoons, talk radio and memes. I strongly believe that complacency, assumption and tone deaf, willful blindness among democratic party consituents led to the results we have watched unfold. I don't think it was New Media manipulation, and I don't think "fixing social media" will solve for the chaos we now see.

Ah yeah, totally. I feel similarly to you. I was talking about a smaller contingent of voters who might have been caught in the middle. I should have made that more clear.

I always love people who tout the "how could those feeble minded simpletons be so easily swindled; I would never fall for that" slogan.

Have you considered it might be happening to you, right now? How would you tell, if by definition we are talking about pressing unconscious psychological buttons?

You may be very well educated, but you've never the less the same monkey brain as everyone on this earth.

Note that you are attributing to me a sentiment that I don't hold. Rather, the argument that a significant number of voters were swayed to vote for Trump through targeted ads on Facebook, if taken to be fact, must imply such a state for the average voter. Not a very kind argument to be making.

Your comment adds nothing but a personal attack on me where one is not warranted.

Exactly. And in the US I have a hard time believing the Democrats have done anything to remedy why they lost. In fact, they've made it worse.

Um, what? The whole point of this is whispering hundreds of half truths and individually targeted propaganda into voters ears. It’s all a fabrication even the “Cambridge” connection was faked! What the hell is going on with Facebook running their own investigation and turning up at Cambridge Analytica’s office? Why is Facebook asking to see this whistle blowers laptop? All seems very strange as if there is something to hide here...

How do you explain lower turnout for Hillary Clinton when compared to Obama's two turnout numbers?

Wow, what a spot on comment.

For me, one of the most memorable moments during the campaign was when one of my liberal friends told me that he suspected Melania of being a Russian spy. I was so relieved when it was over - people were acting nuts.

Absolutely. Trump got the true American feelings in every issue out which have been suppressed for far too long. The media will move on to the next Trump tweet tomorrow and face book will regain lost value in a week.

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