As for Russian interference, the article you linked to says this: "The Russian meddling that German state security had been anticipating apparently never materialized. Instead, the foreign influence came from America."
For several reasons.
Over these past years the rise of the AfD, the alt-right in general, has been heavily credited to Russian interference.
But to this day there's no actual solid evidence for anything like that, and these accusations of "You are just a Russian bot!" have been a major factor for driving protest voters to the AfD.
When in reality it seems to have been a US American PR firm facilitating most of it, one that has managed to make political attack ads an actual thing in Germany. While I was wondering why and how the political discourse suddenly became so unbelievably hostile in Germany.
But all the German mainstream gets to read and hear about is the Russians attacking "democratic institutions in Germany" [0] and supposedly propping up the alt-right, which keeps on driving voters to the AfD for feeling marginalized with their "Russian opinions".
[0] https://www.dw.com/en/hackers-target-democratic-institutions...
I'm going to take the bold stance that: yes, fascists renting time on sophisticated ad networks to spread pro-fascist propaganda is in fact scary.
This is not a case of a simply political party pushing a policy agenda. This is a dangerous, militant and xenophobic group attempting to target individuals with materials designed to stoke fear and subtly misinform the public.
So yeah, it is scary. It's also scary that they had help from American interests. It speaks to how far right American politics are sliding.
They can be targeted to diffuse fear and inject purpose, hope etc. Which is the thesis of the book Nudge (by Nobel winner Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein who tried doing this during the Obama Administration)
Democracy was about educated voters, I thought. If you find this acceptable, we're on different planets. Perhaps ask a German about slippery political slopes? Or live long enough and find yourself in the middle of one.
> the article you linked to says this: "The Russian meddling that German state security had been anticipating apparently never materialized. Instead, the foreign influence came from America."
It also says "While the Russian episode involved ads bought under false identities by people with Kremlin ties" which you must have seen if you'd searched for 'russia'. How this statement links with the one you found, I don't know.
So trying to convince voters is undemocratic because voters are supposed to be educated before they become potential voters (and therefore don't require convincing)? Or is it just that you shouldn't try to convince them with simplified messages that don't reflect the actual complexity of the universe? Or that you shouldn't do it via Facebook?
yes, in that they make up their own minds rather than be open to influence by those with most money.
> Or is it just that you shouldn't try to convince them with simplified messages that don't reflect the actual complexity of the universe?
Such messages tend to be of the form 'vote X! Y is crap!'. Or outright lies (qv. certain leaders) That's not even a simplified messages, the first is pure tribalistic emotive, the second, well, it misrepresent reality (aka 'wrong' or 'deceitful' or 'lie').
If the were factually based and told both sides I guess I'd be OK with it.
> Or that you shouldn't do it via Facebook?
No, facebook is just a tool. How that tool is used is what makes it right or wrong.
That's at least how I understand the Americans.
Do you have an example of a message that you'd be okay with?
So an example message I'd be OK with is if bojo (boris johnson) had said that the uk gives 160 million (or 199 million[0]) a week to the EU, instead of his claim that it was £350 million a week (which deliberately and dishonestly ignored the rebate), I'd be OK with that.
I fear that tribalism is a disease that's damaging both the UK and the US at the moment; make your point with facts as far as possible.
[0] dependng on how you count, I've heard both figures
And since we typically vote on our shared expectations, "no false claims" would probably mean everybody has to shut up. That might be a good thing, I don't know. I don't believe in the power of elections to bring about change (whatever party wins will have very little room for maneuvering), so maybe removing the loud and divisive parts of them might be helpful. Basically: if they don't help, we can at least make them less harmful.
The entire point of profiling is to spend less money, or spend their money more efficiently, by only advertising to a smaller part of the population.
If you have tons of money, you can just carpet bomb the entire population with your message.
This totally misses my point.
"Although Canter gave up on getting the display ads approved, he did keep paying for the Google search term “Angela Merkel,” which it linked to the Oath Breaker site. The Merkel campaign could’ve paid Google more money to displace the ad, but, to Canter’s disbelief, it never did. “We’ve been running search on Merkel’s name, calling her ‘Oath Breaker,’ and pointing to a very ugly website about her,” Canter said, laughing. “If it was us, we’d say, ‘You need to invest to get that ad bumped down.’ ”
For US Americans this might not be anything out of the ordinary, after all, "money=speech" and political campaigns mostly focusing on tearing down the opposition have been the norm for decades.
But for the German political landscape, where political parties are publicly funded to ensure a somewhat level playing field (at least in theory) this is a complete perversion.
Particularly the change in tone in the political discourse, it's become extremely toxic, apparently in no small parts due to the introduction of US American campaign tactics.
Public funding is only a part (about ~30%), donations and member fees contribute far more.
As for that being totally new, I don't think so. The AfD is the only new addition in recent years which changed a lot and still takes adjustments (though I don't know if it's actually that different from the Greens way back when - only they aren't conservative, so they wouldn't have used the patriotism angle and websites weren't a thing).