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Comment by rl3 | Hacker News Reader

Is it not fact that the manipulation of public discourse using bots on social media has taken place at scale?[0][1][2]

When U.S. Presidential elections can be significantly swayed by information warfare campaigns run by malign actors, I can't help but feel that dismissals in such a context are rather aloof, if not out of touch.

[0] https://intelligence.house.gov/social-media-content/

[1] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ICA-dec...

[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/infamous-russian-troll-fa...

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Ah yes, the "Russian Troll" conspiracy theory. Gonna get a lot of big mad downvotes for this one because people actually believe this nonsense.

The public has been able to be swayed by media for a very long time. The CIA in particular has been deeply involved in it [0]. For some reason this was deemed okay, or at the very least acceptable, by the public. The only difference between the CIA controlled media cited and social media is the lack of US government control.

I do appreciate the irony here. That every other election was so-called "free and fair" yet an absolute wildcard gets in for 2016 and the deepest level of coping by every agency in the union was witnessed. I am not a fan of Trump, but if elections are truly "free and fair" then 2016 was legitimate. If 2016 wasn't legitimate, then why would anyone have any reason to believe 2020 was legitimate? I'm not intending to start a conspiracy theory fight here - but rather raise the question that is trying to be asked. If "foreign actors" elected a president in 2016, then whose to say they didn't in 2020? Or 2008? Or 2004? Who can you believe? I'd argue you couldn't believe any agency who might have an interest in having you believe otherwise. Maybe our elections are actually selections and in 2016 the powers that be lost the information war.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...

Is it possible that both CIA intervention into public discourse and foreign entities with unknown interests with reach far greater than the largest media outlets in the country[1] are both not ideal? And that one does not excuse the other?

1: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook...

It’s possible to believe both that the 2016 result was legitimate, and that Russian Psyops influenced the result. After all it’s incumbent on the electorate to inform themselves and employ critical thinking in the information they consume, but at the end of the day it’s their choice. That doesn’t mean Russian Psyops is ok, it doesn’t mean CIA Psyops is ok (while noting that you didn’t actually say that they are).

As an external observer (full disclosure, conservative Brit) I deplore both those who try to malign the legitimacy of the 2016 result, and the 2020 result. Even so, I hold a special contempt in my heart for those Americans trying to excuse, justify or even in some cases explicitly encourage foreign covert influence on US elections and obstruct efforts to counteract it. Those people are not even borderline traitors and enemies of democracy, they’re all the way over the line. All IMHO, and it’s not my country.

What’s your evidence for the notion that the presidential campaign was “swayed” by “information warfare?”

The reports that I linked from the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the National Intelligence Council.

What degree of sway is up for debate, but given the documented scale and scope of the efforts, it certainly wasn't zero.

There's a difference between tried to manipulate and manipulated. We don't know what effect they had. I suspect a miniscule one.

If their efforts yielded minimal results, somebody else must have had success. Online discord seems to have been sown somehow.

Online discord is being sown because there is real world discord. It’s not coming out of thin air. The college educated upper middle class is increasingly pulling away economically from the middle class, and is being increasingly assertive about their value system which is increasingly diverging from the traditional values held by most of the rest of the country. Institutions are breaking down in different parts of the country in different ways—both red America and blue America are less likely to attend church than before, but what they do instead is creating greater gaps between them. Immigration and globalization are bringing an increased pace of change, and the New York Times is calling anyone who objects to that change bigots and racists.

On what basis exactly?

I can't speak for JamesBarney's reasons, but agree with them that it's probably minimal.

Facebook and Twitter have better funded research groups focusing just on the sub-task of knowing what my current state is (a necessary part of being able to tell if you've changed my preferences), and for advertising purposes I am categorised as being into nouns I don't recognise, foods and sports which repulse me, and so on.

I expect the three letter agencies to mix me up with the horror film director I share a name with, and also to confuse me with three pet dogs and two pet cats.

Because there's been lots of research on how much advertising affects election outcomes and it's minimal.( At the federal/state level, in smaller races where voters lack information about either candidate it can be slightly more influential)

I can't imagine a Russian internet trolls with much a smaller reach and lower budget are going to be that much effective than best political ad minds of America at changing our opinions. (For Russian governmental organizational competency see Ukraine)

And then anecdotally I could have predicted every person's i knows vote a year before based on how they felt about woke culture and their party identification.

I remember back then that there was also evidence that China ran some kind of bot campaign[1] but no one really cared and it was never brought up. Ironically your second source says that but again, no one seems to talk about Chinese bot farms or election interference strangely. That same source talks about all the countries that do this. I assume this is pretty routine and the US probably does it in other countries. I don't know why Russia is focused on for this in 2016. I have my guesses.

But then there were investigations into the Russian election swaying campaign. I remember Facebook said that there was no evidence the ads they bought had any impact on anything[2]. There were also groups the trolls made. It's completely unclear what conclusion to draw from them.[3] The article says people mostly didn't follow the groups but that their posts reached people. What conclusion can be drawn from this? Is there any evidence the posts changed people's opinions? Also, one of the weird and counter intuitive things about it is they targeted left wing people.[4]

So I don't see any evidence that an election was significantly swayed. I didn't see it in those sources. I am not trying to make this a left/right thing. I am just saying that yes, there are bot and troll campaigns all over the place. But I don't know if we should conclude that they significantly swayed an election. It's just something to keep in mind. I brought up the China thing because I would think if it was actually a concern then people would have talked about it but how many knew that China, or Venezuela or Iran, were involved in this?

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-china/trump-...

[2]: https://fortune.com/2017/11/01/facebook-google-twitter-russi...

[3]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook...

[4]: https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-facebook-russia...

>So I don't see any evidence that an election was significantly swayed.

Well, in my defense I did say can be swayed. However, I do think there was serious damage done when you take the full scope of Russian influence operations into account.[0]

That said, considering just the troll farm influence alone in an election scenario with tight margins—the 2000 election, for example—it's rather easy to see how it could make the difference.

It's taken seriously for good reason.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

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