The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President

It’s a long read, but interesting. The first section is a lot of review of tactics you’ve probably already heard about post-2016.

One thing I hadn’t heard about before was the use of potemkin local online newspapers. Apparently there are a lot of them. The idea is to make them feel like authentic local newspapers with coverage on neighborhood schools, etc. People trust local papers more than national media. When you’re ready to push an agenda, you have a venue.

HN isn’t the place for politics, but there’s an interesting thrust to this piece that’s more generally about information and disinformation; noise as a tactic for overwhelming truth; the relativity of truth; etc.

Many politicians will lie and most will stretch the truth to win votes. Trump and the Republicans are not unique. This article reads like an effort by Democrats to explain away in advance their possible failure in 2020.