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Russia Reportedly Bought Thousands of Facebook Ads Sought To Stress Racial Divisions (thehill.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the ulterior-motives dept.

According to The Washington Post, Russia government actors bought Facebook advertisements during the 2016 election cycle that sought to exploit and divide based on hot-button racial issues. Some of the ads promoted civil rights groups such as Black Lives Matter, while others criticized them in an effort to sow division. The Hill reports: Facebook is handing over some 3,000 ads to congressional investigators as part of probes into the Kremlin's alleged effort to influence the outcome of last year's presidential election. Other ads allegedly highlighted Hillary Clinton's support among Muslim women and promoted anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant messages. Facebook didn't comment on the story, but did refer to a statement earlier this month from its chief privacy officer, Alex Stamos: "Rather, the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the idealogical spectrum -- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights."

41 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. So by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Facebook is a willing participant in election fraud?

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    1. Re:So by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2, Informative

      Guardian proudly sponsors a campaign for foreigners to interfere in the 2004 election

      "I'm taking the liberty of asking you, a citizen of a country built upon the principles of democracy but whose very might is in danger of disenfranchising the rest of the world, to use your right to vote, and to vote with all your heart and your mind, in your own name but also in the name of all those millions of people who will be looking to your decision in two weeks' time."

      Translation: Think of us first, and the needs of your own country last. F off foreigners, stop trying to influence our votes. Oh, but it was OK when they did it.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:So by msauve · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hell, the US news media does the same thing, they're no longer about informing, but about advocacy. What difference does it make if the source is foreign or domestic? They're all working to affect the vote. And, is foreign propaganda illegal? Do you think we don't do the same damn thing (Radio America as a simple example)?

      The proper response is an intelligent, informed electorate.

      The voter registration movements work against that. If someone can't figure out the how, and won't put the effort into registering on their own, there's no chance the'll expend the effort to make an informed choice. All those voter registration drives are simply attempts to get irrational sycophants to vote.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  2. No, that would be rags like HuffPo and Salon... by Uberbah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...who have used race baiting against working whites in the same way white supremacists attack black and latinos. It's an inversion of LBJ's famous observation about poor southern whites:

    "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

    Only instead of getting poor whites to resent minorities who have never done a thing to them, it's getting poor minorities to resent white people who have never done anything to them. And all the while, the fine folks at COINTELPRO are laughing their asses off as people ignore the deep state crony capitalists hiding behind the curtain.

  3. Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 2

    I grew up with these types of stories since the cold wars days. But were told that it was all cia propaganda and that they would never do anything like that.

    1. Re:Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ...and ridiculous beliefs like this are why the Right will be in power for the next 50 years. It's not the facts of the situation, it's the fact that to you, they are The Other. And you'd rather do anything than tolerate The Other.

      The conservatives I know have a realistic understanding of human nature (i.e., it is fundamentally flawed) and set expectations accordingly; i.e., there will never be a Utopia.

      It is the leftists who believe that human nature is basically good, and that people do bad things because of external forces (e.g., their living conditions); Therefore the goal of arranging those external forces so they no longer cause people to do bad things becomes the greatest moral imperative.

      So, on one hand we have people who believe that Utopia is impossible, and on the other we have people who believe that creating Utopia is the highest (perhaps only) moral priority. The first group believes the second group is deluded in their belief that Utopia is possible; the second group believes the first group is immoral for opposing their efforts to create one at any cost.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re: Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? by Reverend+Green · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Alas, "proudly ignorant" seems to describe both sides of contemporary American political discourse.

    3. Re:Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? by deviated_prevert · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ...and ridiculous beliefs like this are why the Right will be in power for the next 50 years. It's not the facts of the situation, it's the fact that to you, they are The Other. And you'd rather do anything than tolerate The Other.

      The conservatives I know have a realistic understanding of human nature (i.e., it is fundamentally flawed) and set expectations accordingly; i.e., there will never be a Utopia.

      It is the leftists who believe that human nature is basically good, and that people do bad things because of external forces (e.g., their living conditions); Therefore the goal of arranging those external forces so they no longer cause people to do bad things becomes the greatest moral imperative.

      So, on one hand we have people who believe that Utopia is impossible, and on the other we have people who believe that creating Utopia is the highest (perhaps only) moral priority. The first group believes the second group is deluded in their belief that Utopia is possible; the second group believes the first group is immoral for opposing their efforts to create one at any cost.

      Hitler very successfully made the very same arguments. He even quoted Darwin. IMO it all comes down to whether or not humans can rise above the fundamental urges that lead to tribal manifestations of these urges. A majority of the German population fell under this spell and we know it lead to WW11. It seems that America right now is undergoing the very same shift to an idiotic pseudo Darwin concept of survival of the meanest bastards, this is happening on a financial basis as well as a political one.

      Tsar Putin is no dumb ass cookie. He knows that by putting small amounts of intel dollars into the already volatile American political system his sponsorship of the oligarchs and up and coming Russian elite will help him stay in power. Why you ask? Because the already established organized crime institutions in the US are ripe for take over and this is what is happening. Although Castro is dead and his brother still sorta runs the show there are still a great many who would like to have Cuba turn into a free for all of organized crime that sucks dollars from the US and this now includes the new up and coming Russian Mafia kingpins not just the native American ones.

      Sadly the governments of both the US and Russia are now under the control of organized crime. What the Russians are doing in no different than the CIA secretly backing drug lord dictators while turning a blind eye to the Mafia king pin Santo Trafficane and his French connection heroine trade all the way back to Laos during the De Gaulle era in Indo China. And what is going on to this very day with the internal corruption of the so called "war on drugs". This secret economy and political actions of a key part of the US government has created a serious risk of division by corruption of the entire US political system. Left and Right, conservative and democrat in reality have nothing to do with it. We are all being taken for a ride by those who seek only to have a free ride at the public trough and rule by division and deception and could in reality, care less about the populace they have sworn to serve.

      --
      This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
    4. Re:Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Too bad you have that 100% backwards. Conservatives believe in a utopia in which charity covers all the needs of the needy, while Liberals believe that you have to legislate helping them, because history has shown that the conservatives (who are holding all the money) will not actually spend enough of their money on charity to make a noticeable difference unless forced. That's why the natural order is to keep cycling back to torches and pitchforks. Liberals know that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, while conservatives think it's a buck-oh-five.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:Haven't they been doing this stuff forever? by Xyrus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, that's bullshit. The left doesn't believe in "Utopia". Why the fuck do you think they're supposedly the party of "evil" laws and regulations the right likes to demonize? It's the CONSERVATIVES who think we need less regulation. They're the ones who want to remove environmental protections. They're the ones that want to remove business regulations. They're the ones who want to remove the FDA. They're the ones that want to remove consumer protections. So on and so forth.

      The CONSERVATIVES are the ones who believe in this ridiculous notion of Utopia. We'd all be happy if we just got rid of all these pesky rules and regulations! That's utter bullshit.

      --
      ~X~
  4. This is not what was intially reported by ebonum · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The ads were initially reported to be pro Trump. It seems Facebook itself reported false information to seed decent.

    1. Re:This is not what was intially reported by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Err.. no, they weren't. The initial report was:

      Most of the ads and accounts didn't have to explicitly do with the election or either of the then-candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Instead, they were focused on divisive political topics, including LGBT issues, immigration and gun rights.

      If you read that as "pro-Trump", that's on you. Don't go crying "false information".

    2. Re:This is not what was intially reported by Dan+East · · Score: 2

      I don't know if FB reported false information, as much as the news media presumed that anything funded by Russia must be pro-Trump. Most news organizations are searching with a microscope for anything tying Russia to Trump, and they tend to get a bit giddy when they think something has been found. According to the article, there isn't much of a smoking gun here, and in fact there may not have been anything illegal as far as the "foreign nationals can't influence elections" laws. In the past these laws were primarily investigated in relation to foreigners providing direct campaign contributions to candidates. The main problem is that laws of this sort must enforceable. If someone offers me a $100 to put a bumper sticker on my vehicle for a specific candidate, how would I be able to determine whether or not those funds came from a foreign national? I purchase ads from Facebook for various projects. How could Facebook know if my ad was attempting to influence an election, and then whether or not my funds (payed for via credit card) had originally come from some foreign government?

      --
      Better known as 318230.
    3. Re:This is not what was intially reported by sound+vision · · Score: 2

      They were pro-Trump in that they helped his campaign. Inflaming racial tensions also keeps Americans focused on problems at home while the Russians are out pulling all kind of stunts up to and including annexing territory from sovereign states. Electing trump was just a side effect. I get the feeling most of the Russian contacts with his campaign weren't even serious attempts to collude with him. They just wanted to leave a concrete trail of contacts that would make a further circus, paralyzing the us government that much longer.

  5. Timeline of Treason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Before the election

    Dec. 10, 2015
    Lt. Gen Michael Flynn is part of a panel discussion in Moscow for the 10th anniversary of government-backed Russia Today, for which he receives payment (The Washington Post, Aug. 15, 2016). Officials notice an increase in communication between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, following the Russia Today event (CNN, May 19, 2017).

    Late 2015
    British intelligence agencies detect suspicious interactions between Russia and Trump aides that they pass on to American intelligence agencies (The Guardian, April 13, 2017).

    March 19, 2016
    Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is sent an email that encourages him to change his email password, likely precipitating the hack of his account (CBS News, Oct. 28, 2016).

    March 21
    During an interview with The Post, Trump lists Carter Page as part of his foreign policy team. Page had been recommended by a son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox (WP, March 21, 2016).

    March 28
    Political veteran Paul Manafort is hired to help the Trump campaign manage the delegate process for the Republican National Convention. He is recommended by Trump confidante Roger Stone (New York Times, March 28, 2016). Before joining the campaign, Manafort lobbied on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That deal followed a memo from Manafort in which he offered a plan that could "greatly benefit the Putin Government." His relationship with Deripaska ended in 2009 (Associated Press, March 22, 2017). Manafort also worked on behalf of the Russia-friendly Party of Regions in Ukraine, helping guide the party's leader, Viktor Yanukovych, to the country's presidency. Yanukovych would later be ousted. (WP, Aug. 19, 2016)

    April 27
    Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) may have met with Kislyak at a reception at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington before a foreign-policy speech given by Trump (CNN, May 31, 2017).

    June
    At a closed-door meeting of foreign policy experts and the prime minister of India, Page praises Putin effusively (WP, Aug. 5, 2016).

    June 9
    Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya's efforts to reverse a law passed in 2012 sanctioning Russians suspected of human rights violations at some point drew the attention of the FBI. The meeting was not initially reported to the government by Kushner as required when he took a position with the administration (Times, July 8, 2017). After the meeting was originally reported, Trump, Jr. admitted that the pretext for the conversation was that he believed Veselnitskaya to have information incriminating Hillary Clinton (Times, July 9, 2017).

    June 15
    A hacker calling himself "Guccifer 2.0" releases the Democratic National Committee's research file on Donald Trump (Gawker, June 15, 2016). News reports already link the stolen data to Russian hackers (WP, June 14, 2016).

    July
    At some point this month, the FBI begins investigating possible links between the Russian government and Trump's campaign (Wired, March 20, 2017).

    July 7
    Page travels to Moscow to give a lecture (NYT, April 19, 2017). The Trump campaign approved the trip (USA Today, March 7, 2017). This trip was likely the catalyst for the FBI's request for a secret surveillance warrant to track Pageâs communications (WP, May 25, 2017).

    July 11 or 12
    Trump campaign staffers intervene with the committee developing the Republican Party's national security platform to remove language call arming Ukraine against Russian aggression. (July 18, 2016).

    July 18
    At an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation as part of the Republican National Convention, Sessions and Kislyak have a brief conversation (WP, March 2, 2017).

    Flynn delivers a speech at the Republican convention, joining in the crowd's "Lock her up!" chant. "If I, a guy who knows this business, if I

    1. Re:Timeline of Treason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You do realize that the point of the actual linked article is that the Russians objective is to sow disconnect and divide Americans. Then you go on to post a bunch of loosely connected and out of context examples to help feed a very partisan and divisive narrative. Currently those on the Left are actually doing exactly what the Russians want them to do. They're creating disconnect and trying to destroy American unity and faith in our democratic process. The left, unknowingly, are the ones colluding and doing the work the Russians want done. Try some introspection and realize you've been played and are part of the problem dividing us and weakening us as a nation.

    2. Re: Timeline of Treason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Just as I suspected, I laid out the evidence of treason right in front of you and you have simply chosen to ignore it.

      June 9
      Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya's efforts to reverse a law passed in 2012 sanctioning Russians suspected of human rights violations at some point drew the attention of the FBI. The meeting was not initially reported to the government by Kushner as required when he took a position with the administration (Times, July 8, 2017). After the meeting was originally reported, Trump, Jr. admitted that the pretext for the conversation was that he believed Veselnitskaya to have information incriminating Hillary Clinton (Times, July 9, 2017).

    3. Re:Timeline of Treason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The left is standing up to Russia while the right wing embraces Russia's attack on our country.

    4. Re:Timeline of Treason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The left is standing up to Russia while the right wing embraces Russia's attack on our country.

      The right is mostly saying wtf are you talking about to the left. While the left is playing right in to the goal to sow division. The "standing up" is actually doing Putin's bidding. The irony is completely missed by ivory tower moral crusaders.

    5. Re:Timeline of Treason by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nice summary of the unthinkable collusion that has been going on between the Trump team and Putin's Russia.

      But I'm afraid the far-right (alt-right?) Republican camp has been padded so thoroughly against investigative journalism (fake news) and real facts (with -alternative facts-) that all of this evidence of collusion and treason will simply bounce right off them. It's amazing and scary thoroughly this group of people has been shielded from reason. It seems practically like brainwashing.
      All it takes is propaganda and a "great", charismatic leader that talks loudly.
      Now everybody should understand how Nazi Germany could happen.

    6. Re: Timeline of Treason by stealth_finger · · Score: 2

      You can tell which are the trolls because they never admit to the possibility of Russian interference.

      Here's my problem. Who gives a shit? Of course they tried to influence it. Just like America and everywhere else tries to influence the election of other countries to get the best situation for them. It's nothing new apart from Trump whining and crying about it now it's started to work against him. Mother fucker needs to grow up and, well I would say get on with the job but has he actually started? As far as I can tell it's all golf and tweets.

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    7. Re:Timeline of Treason by dave420 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just turning up to meet the lawyer was illegal, whether they had any information or not. It doesn't matter what happened at the meeting or afterwards - the very act of trying to get the information instead of reporting the offer is illegal. That's it. That's the only piece the wall of text needed to include, and it's damning.

      I don't know how you see a Russian-government paid lawyer trying to give information on an opponent in an election as not a foreign country intervening in said election.

    8. Re:Timeline of Treason by mpercy · · Score: 2

      Remember when Mitt Romney sai Russia was the biggest geopolitical threat to the US? Remember how he was mocked mercilessly for his views?

      President Barack Obama, among others, mocked the Republican candidate: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the cold war’s been over for 20 years”.

      Vice President Joe Biden opined that Romney belonged to “a small group of Cold War holdovers.”

      John Kerry said “Mitt Romney talks like he’s only seen Russia by watching ‘Rocky IV,’”

      Rachel Maddow: “He read about Reagan’s private, outside-the-CIA cabal of team-B zealots who were telling him that Russia had all the stuff they didn’t have so he could justify a giant defense budget,”

      Chris Matthews: “I don’t know what decade this guy’s living in. Is he trying to play Ronald Reagan here, or what?”

      And then, of course, we have President Obama telling the Russian President that if he (Obama) was re-elected, he'd be able to cut more deals with Russia... 'I'll have more flexibility after election' President Barack Obama was caught on microphone telling Dmitry Medvedev.

      The about-face by Democrats may have caused them whiplash...

    9. Re:Timeline of Treason by DamnOregonian · · Score: 2

      Can you please cite what law that breaks?

      Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

      And one more question...had it been an American citizen would it have been legal?

      As long as that citizen was not acting as an agent of a foreign government.

      I'm asking because campaigns put a lot of effort into digging up dirt, so I'm wondering why it matters what the source of that dirt is.

      Because you're free to collude with any American to bring around a political shift in the United States, but the second you start doing that with agents of a foreign government, you're treading very close to what, in many countries of the world, is called treason.

      Hypothetically speaking, say Hillary were going to win. Say Russian interference secured the win for Donald. The US government would have been overthrown by the Russian government. Non-violently, of course, but the end result the same.
      Americans are allowed to non-violently overthrow our government. It's our job every election cycle. Foreign governments are not. That's an act of war.
      Fortunately for Russia- just like all the countries we have done the same thing to, nobody can *really* physically make good on the consequences of them committing an act of war.

      FWIW, I'm a Cold War vet, I'm very much against any Russian interference

      Then you should fucking know better, sir.

      And let's remember that their goal is to divide us, and it appears to be working.

      Can't argue there. But I can say you are not helping by attempting to weasel out of the criminal element for sake of Party.

  6. Propaganda by SeattleLawGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I grew up with these types of stories since the cold wars days. But were told that it was all cia propaganda and that they would never do anything like that.

    Yes, propaganda is a very real part of everyday life, both state-sponsored and corporate-sponsored, throughout the developed world. Many newspaper articles are heavily influenced by it even when someone writing a story doesn't realize it, because fundamentally reporters have very little time to spend on each story. Most of this propaganda has political objectives.

    That doesn't make it okay. It is something that causes harm and that there should be both protection from and defenses for. A foreign government that uses propaganda to destabilize a country should be treated as a kind of attack and an appropriate proportional response (although it may be of a different kind) should be employed until you are able to negotiate a de-escalation. Here, the evidence appears to show that there have been propaganda and electronic attacks on the United States and it should respond intelligently.

    --
    Real lawyers write in C++
  7. We need some guts and a law about political ads by mattr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Net media must stop either micro-targeted ads (not likely for FB or Google) or political ads (since micro-targeted political ads are death to society). It only took big data science and social media to deliver the most hideous election in U.S. history and assist the ascendancy of white supremacism in what had been a nation of immigrants.

    All FB would have to do is hire human beings to turn down political ads, and the guts to pass up the money. Though broadcast TV takes the opposite path, at least TV does not intentionally try to fool the watcher into thinking everybody on that channel sees the same ads. The next step is to get money out of elections (every candidate gets the same budget for ads and buying supporters) and out of politics (flat dead impossible unless someone other than politicians makes the law).

    1. Re:We need some guts and a law about political ads by Kiuas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, that and Facebook didn't cause Hillary to lose Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. You know what did? Ignoring the plight of real Americans who are really hurting. Telling them off and letting them know you absolutely refuse to represent their interests in the government.

      The most successful trick Trump pulled during his campaign was convincing these people that he, a millionaire cosmopolitan and a 'globalist' in every sense of the word, would represent their interests, or that he cares about them in any sense. He doesn't. He's now been in office for 8 months and done very little, and his attempts are focused on giving out tax-breaks to the wealthiest segment of the US - his co-millionaires - at the cost of the very poorest.

      This is the main problem currently faced by all western democracies: there's a segment of poorly educated poorly employed people who do not understand why their jobs are gone and won't be coming back except as automated factories, and these people will vote for anyone who tells them that he'll get their jobs back and make everything better. Put another way: the people most negatively affected by the current economic development are also the ones with the least understanding of it, making them easy targets to manipulate into voting against their own interests.

      Hillary's main problem has always been that she's not really a charismatic figure in any way, nor is she a great speaker, put simply: she's way too boring and unenthusiastic. Trump isn't an orator either and seems to be running on a vocabulary of a 9 year-old, but what he has over Hillary is emotion: like any good salesman, he's able to deliver an enthusiastic pitch that gets people interested, it gets them listening. He's a superior showman and knows his crowd, but it doesn't make him a competent politician, that he's clearly not.

      --
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  8. Huh? by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    where you and me watching different campaigns. Racial divides were a big part of it. The tough hombres & rapists comments come to mind right off the bat. One of his chief advisors, Steve Bannon, made his mark first and foremost playing to that shtick. And let's face it, there was a lot of resentment over having a black president for 8 years that brought a lot of folks to the polls.

    I'm not saying it was the only that got Trump elected, I'm just saying he wouldn't have been without it. Hell, he wouldn't have made it through the primaries.

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    1. Re:Huh? by houghi · · Score: 2

      where you and me watching different campaigns.

      Most likely, yes. That is what they can do. Remember when the ad companies told us it would be great to have personalized ads? This is it.

      And no, you are not immune to it, neither am I. Even if you are not on Facebook, people around you will have opinions and that will also influence you. (Yes, it will.)

      There are a lot of ways you could influence people. Say you tell them that candidate A is sure to win, there will be some people that won't bother to go and vote, because their candidate already won. That will not be enough, but when you to a lot of it and it is already close, then it might just be the drop that overflows the bucket.

      This is not "Vote MY candidate" or "Do not vote the other candidate". This is more somebody saying he heard of a very nice pizza place during the morning meeting and pizza is ordered for the next lunch meeting.

      So yes, most likely you watched different campaigns, because that is the point of personalized advertisement.

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    2. Re:Huh? by dwillden · · Score: 2

      Except that Hillary's 08 campaign created the claim.

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    3. Re:Huh? by swb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This only works as propaganda to the extent that people already believe it enough to have it reinforce their own perceptions.

      If this is a Russian "campaign", it's only a campaign to exploit the gap between the false narrative official discourse and the everyday reality of most Americans. The false narrative of official discourse is that Americans are racist -- uniformly biased against non-whites -- and the problems of African Americans are almost exclusively the result of this racism and not of any widespread social problems they contribute to.

      The every day reality is that most Americans aren't uniformly racist against all races. If they were, millions of marginally literate, marginally English capable Mexicans wouldn't have had fantastic success in getting hired for jobs, millions of South Asians couldn't have been imported into Corporate American to staff IT departments, and people like Satya Nadella couldn't wind up in charge of one of the largest corporations in America and the world. The level of active "globalism" in the US just wouldn't work if the people making decisions were racist and the employees they had to work with were racist.

      Americans do hold racial biases towards African Americans specifically, but this is largely not the cause it's given credit for, but an effect of their everyday interactions in most cities with the large plurality of poor and criminally inclined African Americans. And you can't talk about that reality without blaming white racism for it and freeing African Americans from most all responsibility for it.

      As long as we continue to push the phony narrative of "racism" rather than "Americans don't like many African Americans", the propaganda will work. Once we acknowledge that white Americans are generally racially tolerant EXCEPT for African Americans, we will start to acknowledge the specific problems African Americans have (many of which are structural but not racist) and possibly get around to helping them. Once that happens, then the propaganda of racism won't really work.

  9. Did you RTFA? by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Informative

    they targeted BLM ads to people likely to oppose the movement in order to rile them up. They did the same thing with ads showing Hilary was popular among Muslim women. They were shitposting on an epic scale. What's more they weren't just trying to divide the American people, they were trying to rile up a very specific group of voters (angry white men) in order to get them to oppose a very specific, left wing agenda. That in turn helped Trump win, which is almost certainly the intended purpose.

    They were basically trying to get a whole bunch of folks who normally stay home to show up at the polls and without thinking about individual issues, vote their feelings. Worked too.

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    1. Re:Did you RTFA? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Interesting

      TIME magazine in 1996 bragging about how we interfered in the Russian election.

      The outcome was by no means inevitable. Last winter Yeltsin's approval ratings were in the single digits. There are many reasons for his change in fortune, but a crucial one has remained a secret. For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin's campaign.

      For two days the supersecretive Yeltsin high command avoided Dresner, and none of the team ever actually met the President. "There are too many factions and too many leaks to risk your dealing with him directly," Braynin explained to Dresner. "You are our biggest secret."

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:Did you RTFA? by ScentCone · · Score: 3, Informative

      And they probably also tried to keep others home by saying Clinton already had won

      No, that was Clinton herself, her very rich supporters, and the vast majority of academia and the press who all supporter and considered her the presumptive winner a year before the election. Clinton was so sure she had already won that she bought the house next door for the Secret Service to use (you know, we can't have them in HER house, those peasants), and couldn't even trouble herself to set foot ONCE in states like Wisconsin, because she assumed they were going to follow her royal edicts and vote for her as demanded. She and her party fell for their own lies about her appeal as a candidate, and got exactly what they deserved.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  10. Impressive ultra efficient Russian propaganda by poity · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Looks like a couple thousand dollars worth of foreign ads tipped the balance against a billion dollar campaign run by a powerful well-connected establishment.

    ... and I can't even get a 2% clickthrough rate on my adwords

    --
    your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
    1. Re:Impressive ultra efficient Russian propaganda by sysrammer · · Score: 2

      From TFA, fwiw: "According to Facebook, fraudulent accounts, which have now been closed, paid $100,000 for the ads." Still, point taken. Tip of the iceberg, though.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    2. Re:Impressive ultra efficient Russian propaganda by ScentCone · · Score: 2

      Getting Americans to vote against their own interests

      Putting the wildly corrupt Clintons back into the power they demanded so they could continue to enrich themselves selling access ... THAT would have been against Americans' own interests. Giving Hillary Clinton the power to nominate Supreme Court justices when she came right out and told us that she was going to use that power as a foil against a not-liking-her-agenda legislature that she knew wouldn't follow her demands ... THAT would have been voting against Americans' own interests.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  11. $100,000? That is a thing now? by SlovakWakko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    $100,000? Like, really? The Clinton+Trump campaigns have spent together over $200,000,000 on their campaigns. Either the Russians are absolute geniuses and light years ahead of everybody else when it comes to effective political ads, or this is just another inflated sensationalist article trying to get views for WaPo using a hot topic.
    Also, I'm somehow missing the connection to Russia in the article - it's once again presented as a certainty, but it is not explained how the authors managed to do the attribution to the Russian government. If this is considered a serious article in the US, I'm not surprised that "fake news" is a thing there. How about some critical thinking?
    Really, guys, to the rest of the world this histeria is beyond awkward and facepalming. Trump is your creature, born out of the swamp that is the 2-party scam, not some foreign plant. Reform your political system, and these things won't happen. Until you do so, according to the article everybody who has $100,000 to burn will be able to elect your president for you...

    1. Re:$100,000? That is a thing now? by Xyrus · · Score: 2

      $100,000? Like, really? The Clinton+Trump campaigns have spent together over $200,000,000 [bloomberg.com] on their campaigns. Either the Russians are absolute geniuses and light years ahead of everybody else when it comes to effective political ads, or this is just another inflated sensationalist article trying to get views for WaPo using a hot topic.

      You really haven't been paying attention, have you? Yes, the Russians are well ahead of the curve. They've been doing this for a LONG time. Our allies warned us that they've been doing for a long time. They warned us that we were going to be targeted. Putin isn't fucking stupid. He caught on to how powerful (and cheap) using social media was as a tool. You get something to go viral even just once, and it's already paid back a thousand fold.

      And that's what happened. Not just here, but also in Europe. More to the point, it was extremely successful.

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      ~X~
  12. Re:Treason by ilguido · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't think that Russia needs to buy Facebook ads to sow hate and dissent in the USA: reading these comments, I think that you are terribly capable of sowing hate by yourself. I think that Trump is quite foolish, but the hate and belittling campaign against him is not a sign of rightful social activism, but another mean through which American institutions are weakened. This kind of social turmoil is nowadays quite common in all the Western world (anti-establishment movements are strong everywhere), no matter if you are conservative, liberal, socialist or whatever: the pretension of being some kind of sole paladin of justice is what is killing the democratic process in the USA and in Europe.

  13. Re: "According to the Washington Post." by sysrammer · · Score: 2

    Pedant here. It's spelled "successky".

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain