Slashdot Mirror
Are We Seeing Propaganda About Russian Propaganda? (rollingstone.com)
MyFirstNameIsPaul was one of several readers who spotted this disturbing instance of fake news about fake news. An anonymous reader writes:
Last week the Washington Post described "independent researchers" who'd identified "more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda" that they estimated were viewed more than 200 million times on Facebook. But the researchers insisted on remaining anonymous "to avoid being targeted by Russia's legions of skilled hackers," and when criticized on Twitter, responded "Awww, wook at all the angwy Putinists, trying to change the subject -- they're so vewwy angwy!!"
The group "seems to have been in existence for just a few months," writes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, calling the Post's article an "astonishingly lazy report". (Chris Hedges, who once worked on a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the New York Times, even found his site Truthdig on the group's dubious list of over 200 "sites that reliably echo Russian propaganda," along with other long-standing sites like Zero Hedge, Naked Capitalism, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.) "By overplaying the influence of Russia's disinformation campaign, the report also plays directly into the hands of the Russian propagandists that it hopes to combat," complains Adrian Chen, who in 2015 documented real Russian propaganda efforts which he traced to "a building in St. Petersburg where hundreds of young Russians worked to churn out propaganda."
The Post's article was picked up by other major news outlets (including USA Today), and included an ominous warning that "The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on 'fake news'."
The group "seems to have been in existence for just a few months," writes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, calling the Post's article an "astonishingly lazy report". (Chris Hedges, who once worked on a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the New York Times, even found his site Truthdig on the group's dubious list of over 200 "sites that reliably echo Russian propaganda," along with other long-standing sites like Zero Hedge, Naked Capitalism, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.) "By overplaying the influence of Russia's disinformation campaign, the report also plays directly into the hands of the Russian propagandists that it hopes to combat," complains Adrian Chen, who in 2015 documented real Russian propaganda efforts which he traced to "a building in St. Petersburg where hundreds of young Russians worked to churn out propaganda."
The Post's article was picked up by other major news outlets (including USA Today), and included an ominous warning that "The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on 'fake news'."
Well, Americans didn't stay home.
CNN right now says Trump has 62,693,993 votes in the popular vote. That's more than any Republican has ever gotten in the popular vote (closest was George Bush in 2004, with 62,040,610). Obviously, these numbers are influenced by there being more Americans than before, and Trump is at 46.3% of the popular vote, while GWB's reelection was 51%. It is off by a few percent only, however- whatever the magnitude of Trump's thing, it still only affected a couple voters out of every hundred.
For comparison, Obama got 69.5 million votes in 2008, and 66 million in 2012, to Clinton's 65 million.
I feel that the solid performance of the 3rd parties this time around is the big thing not being talked about. Gary Johnson in 2012 set yellow team records for a Libertarian with 1.3 million votes. In 2016, he got over 4 million votes- Wikipedia says it is "more votes than the previous eight Libertarian presidential tickets combined", and was over 3%. The Greens got .36% of the vote in 2012, and 1% of the popular vote.
The reason that the 3rd party tickets are interesting is that *both are the same candidates as in 2012*. It is implausible that Johnson and Stein quadrupled and tripled in popularity- it is much more likely that many voters who consider themselves leaning towards the libertarians or the greens, but who usually vote for republicans or democrats, instead did not, driven away by the candidates.
America didn't seem to stay home, is my point- they definitely chose third party options a lot more than normal, though.