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Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

Political manipulation is a problem, but I don't think it's nearly as profitable as pushing scams and gambling.

just get residential botnets to watch ur youtube channel click all the adds u dont need many bots..There are many ways to monetize things.

Governments just run sim farms etc. they dont need to use this kind of approach for political influece. Not to say that some dont but generally they will not be stealing accounts. (most bots involved in campaigns to get trump in his seat were not stolen accounts)

I suspect that politicians right before elections may pay more than standard gambling. They gamble with much higher stakes.

Hah, outsourcing political "influencing" to tiny "consulting" companies that promise great things but is a rickety AI slop shop in the backend.

I suppose the only difference to the Big 4 is the price tag.

I guess politicians could claim to be hiring a voter research company and profess to be oblivious to the "voter hacking" schemes (hacking the voters' minds to lean whichever way the politician wants them to lean).

On that level, power and control trumps profit

It's more profitable because it allows you to select political perspectives that allow you, the scammer and or gambler, to scam or gamble harder.

It doesn’t need to be profitable if it’s cheap - political manipulation by unsavory parties is worth a cheap botnet if it means they can keep power and keep grifting.

I will agree with a sibling up there that the political part is pure speculation, and I’d guess anyone running a moderately sized botnet is open to use for any nefarious purposes if the price is right.

a kind of

You'd be surprised as how there's individuals and organizations willing to pay a lot of money to do political manipulation / influencing.

> ... and organizations willing to pay a lot of money to do political manipulation / influencing.

Like what, parties campaigning?

We're talking about foreign influence here. All recent US and German elections reeked of Russian dark money, then there was the entire Cambridge Analytica mess and before that it was Brexit.

And Elon Musks dark money. Don't forget that. He gives his best to influence european politics.

Don't think he gives money, but yes, he definitely does everything he can to help out the far-right with his global audience.

Not every result you dislike is "Russian inference".

more like it would be from the nation state level. for example, RU pushing these lil psyop bots to get Trump elected and/or grow the divide in between Ds and Rs.

Pushing certain talking points, managing discourse, amplifying certain people/events/whatever. Not all of it is nation-state stuff, some things are just lobbying and influence-building and market manipulation. Spreading rumors for shady purposes is a very old scam.

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