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Google Uncovers Russia-Bought Ads On YouTube, Gmail and Other Platforms (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has discovered Russian operatives spent tens of thousands of dollars on ads on its YouTube, Gmail and Google Search products in an effort to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a person briefed on the company's probe told Reuters on Monday. The ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated entity that bought ads on Facebook, but may indicate a broader Russian online disinformation effort, according to the source, who was not authorized to discuss details of Google's confidential investigation. The revelation is likely to fuel further scrutiny of the role that Silicon Valley technology giants may have unwittingly played during last year's election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow's goal was to help elect Donald Trump. Google has uncovered less than $100,000 in ad spending potentially linked to Russian actors, the source said.
Adblockers have to become mandatory, let's say 4 years before each election.
American companies will gladly take your money to influence an election.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
These people do realize that $10k to $100k, compared to the $1.2 billion spent on the election is chump change and couldn't have effected squat, right?
Ban ads everywhere!
They are all lies.
There is no second amendment protection for ads. Ban ads!
It's a commie name is what it is so this is NO surprise.
When it's true.
1. How many adds CNN/MSNBC/MSM/YOUTUBE/ETC buys that show up to Russian viewers.
2. How many adds may have been bought by Russians that show up to Americans.
Stop the Russian xenophobia.
So, $100,000 of ads in Google and Facebook was enough to counter over ONE BILLION DOLLARS of ads that the other candidates spent? If this was done through an ad agency, someone is proud and happy.
I run U-Block Origin.
#DeleteChrome
Paid troll armies manipulating the lack of verification of facts and assessment of source reliability and its substitution with google/facebook popularity as a sociological trend with political implications. Russia is broke and dead country, but one that is jealous of all with vibrancy and success. Russia hates all other nations, and its leaders even hate its productive citizens (see the recent trucker's protests about being taxed 50% of their yearly gains after costs). It is innovative in one area only - using state-sponsored groups of otherwise unemployed and often unemployable miscreants with a thin veneer of control from political officers, just like the old soviet army. Only now, Putin is a pure narcissist using fascist idolization to cement his ego more effectively than the North Korean Kim's personality cult.
I have a source that's not cleared to release information telling me that the Russians paid for chem trails man. I'm not revealing his name though but you be assured that he is super trustworthy and super secret important.
Tens of thousands of dollars of advertising is fucking nothing. Jesus Christ when we people let this shit go?
So Russia tried to screw with our elections, like they and the Chinese do every single election going back for decades. We are supposed to believe that because they bought "less than $100,000" in online adds (most of which go right into the add blocker never to be seen again) that somehow the Russians stole the election from Hillary Clinton, the most disliked (especially after stealing the primary from Sanders) and incompetent presidential candidate in a generation who spent nearly $1,000,000,000 on her campaign? At worst, the Russians bought 0.1% of the add space that the Clinton campaign bought. GTFO, that is the fake news BS of the century that she lost for any other reason than her own unlikability and incompetence.
By the way, $500 is also less than $100,000. Interesting to see alt-left bad actor Google not giving an exact number but making a huge deal out of it.
Posting as AC because of all the triggered alt left mod bombers. Try to formulate a logical response rather than down modding based on your fascist political leanings.
The problem is lazy, disengaged, stupid voters who vote the way Facebook tells them to. Banning Russian ads (or corporate ads, or any other kind of political ads) won't change this.
And the sore loser Democrats know this. They don't want to change how it all works. They just want to change who gets to manipulate the voter.
Can someone explain to me why Russians buying advertising to influence the US election is wrong, but Americans buying advertising to influence, well, pretty much every election or political body in the world, is perfectly fine?
What is this absurdity that it's only by Russia doing it that makes it wrong? What of the massive influence American/European NGO's have in politics? What about the giant Israeli lobby in the American political system that some would say has massively influenced American intervention in the middle east?
If I buy an advertisement supporting tomorrow's politician and they become a media/political/public Pariah, am I going to be prosecuted for supporting the 'wrong' candidate? Do I get to lose my job like Brendan Eich did for a donation I made ten years ago that went against modern sensibilities?
What the fuck is this orwellian dystopian bullshit and why are so many people just passively nodding their head along to all this shit? What the literal fuck is happening to western democracies and media?
Hillary had over one billion 200 million dollars. Trump had more than 500 million. And there are all these crocodile tears over $100,000. Remember corporations are people even if they are Russian. Who needs fake news when you have this?
How many other countries or surrogates thereof did the same for any candidate? Or funneled contributions to campaigns?
I seem to remember a China/Clinton issue way back when.
If true it doesnt seem like anything new.
For something like a year now we've heard nothing but accusations of "Russians! Russians! Russians! Russians! Russians!" spewed again and again by left wing politicians and the media, Slashdot included.
Shit, it's like there's a Slashdot submission on the front page about this alleged matter every other day, it seems!
Yet despite so many left wing politicians and media talking heads putting so much time and effort into crafting this "Russia" narrative, we haven't seen any significant evidence of any sort presented to back up the claims.
Just look at what we have here:
Notice that it contains the word "potentially", and the very vague term "Russian actors". There's not even any certainty here, apparently! And the amount of money involved is absolutely trivial when it comes to online marketing.
If something actually happened, and so many left wing politicians and media personnel are so sure of it, then why the hell can't they present some compelling evidence?! They've had a year to produce something, yet they haven't been able to. All we get is really half-assed and very uncertain "evidence" like in this case.
I think we're well beyond a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" situation at this point. This, of course, is dangerous, because it has now trained most Americans to not trust such claims in the future.
If Slashdot has any integrity, I think the editors here should stop wasting our time with these nonsensical submissions unless some substantial and conclusive evidence is presented.
What has the world come to? Communists acting like capitalists...*faints*
I'm going to use the shit out of it!
C'mon, you bitch, find me some Western APTs!
Everyone is a stupid loser voter, including yourself.
Meet black star and sunny boy. They are two bulls. They are known for producing up to $60,000 worth of semen per ejaculation.
We know that less than $100000 was spent on adds by Russians that may have altered the election.
Why its relevant:
These people would have us believe our election isn't worth two bull seman loads. Kinda puts it into perspective.
There are a surprising number of people here who seem to think a hostile foreign government meddling in US elections is okay as long as they spend less than the candidates spent. And there is an equally surprising number of moderators marking them as insightful.
My initial reaction to this article is that the google's "confession" is highly suspect. I suspect Putin could have afforded a MUCH larger investment in what now looks like a decapitation strike against the US.
Mostly I'm laughing at how slow I was to realize "Don't be evil" had become a joke. The current motto might be "All your attention are belong to us." However it all comes down to a religious issue:
There is no gawd but profit, and the google is gawd's true prophet.
Of course the joke is that ALL the giant soulless corporations think the same thing. According to Fortune for 2016, the main prophets of profit are Apple, Gilead, Google, Exxon, and some gamblers (AKA various financial organizations playing games with other people's money). Amusingly enough, Trump's laundry receipts for dirty rubles don't count as real profits.
Constructive suggestion time? Seems such a waste on today's Slashdot, but:
Solution involves reputation. Use the public information about us that the corporations are already collecting, hoarding, and hiding and make it usable by US for OUR purposes, not just for secret manipulations to sell toothpaste and political candidates. DSAUPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Anybody else notice the hordes of Russian shitposters on Youtube, posting the usual talking points (complete with foul language) to any video having anything to do with American politics?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It seems to me like the CIA has been influencing elections around the world for decades. What is with all the NIMBYism all of a sudden?
And on a related subject, where is all the outrage about Palantir and Cambridge Analytica influencing elections via Social Media?
And on another related subject, does anyone really believe that elections in America are anything more than reality TV-esque "news" programs designed to present the illusion of control to an electorate that is bought and paid for by corporations?
Can you really call them "sore losers" when they won the popular vote but lost the election, by a very narrow margin, and with the result being the "winners" constantly trying to screw them over?
The same intelligence agencies that said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq now say that the Russians wanted Trump to win? Really? After the Russians put so much effort into the dossier to try to discredit Trump? And after they poured so much money into the Clinton Foundation? They had Hillary already bought and paid for and they supported Trump? And which administration would have raised the price of oil by shutting down all our exploration and drilling?
No one can logically look at the facts and think Oil Billionaire Putin wants Trump to win and make the US competitive in both business and military again.
Look at content. The only idiots thinking this was about the election are HRC and her deluded supporters.
This is about destabilization. And it's working wonderfully.
Your dumbass sportsball players taking a knee, your human speedbumps blocking highways, your unwashed gated community twats screaming about fascism, your hysterical blobs screaming about forty two genders...
Yeah. They're the targetted useful idiots, and golly, they're sure useful.
tried UBlock Origin for about a day (in advanced mode) and found that certain ads *STILL* got through. One was even a complete lock-up-your-browser-while-playing-an-audio-file-telling-you-that-your-browser's-security-is-at-risk ad.
You should try adding and refreshing more "lists" in UO's configuration. And by that I mean most of the options above the language section. Then apply changes, hit purge button and hit the refresh or reload to update the "lists".
As far as sounds getting through, you can disable that crap by installing NoScript and configure it to block most audio/video shit on the net.
You can also use a hosts file but UO does allow to add "mvps hosts file" in settings w/o having to copy/paste this into your hosts file.
FWIW, install "HTTPS Everywhere" as well.
They're sore losers because they lost, and they're sore about it. The only reasons the Republicans aren't sore losers right now is that they didn't lose. Had they lost, they'd be the sore losers, and they'd want to change who gets to manipulate the voters instead.
There's no difference between Republicans and Democrats any more. They only thing any of them want is to go through our pockets for loose change they missed last time.
What do you know about the world, you little piece of shit? Nobody outside your shitty U.S of A wants your stupid retarded "democracy". American regime is the worst that happened to this world.
Sorry but, as much as I hate the Clintons, anybody but Trump would not be doing the things he's doing. He's making health care, immigration policy, foreign policy, fiscal policy and everything else he touches worse.
If I was an American voter, I would be insulted that both Russia and the US think that an odd pop up here and there is enough to sway the vote.
I'm not, so I find it hilarious that it is.
Sure, it can be said that the US media is blowing it out of proportion, and this wouldn't actually impact the outcome of an election, but Russia thought it would, to the point of actually spending time an money making it happen.
Just think how little the Russians thought of the average american to actually go ahead with this. Imagine the conversations in the meetings, and amongst the staff.
Comedy gold!
everyday leftists try turning a multitude of things into politics that have nothing to do with politics. football, computer programming, dr suess books, etc etc.
The election was over with almost a year ago. you lost. get lost creeps.
A friend's housekeeper was deported three times under Bush, five times under Obama and zero times under Trump. Is this the worse you are talking about?
all the USA has spent on foreign elections? Are the media outlets making that completely transparent to Joe Sixpack? I am no fan of any foreign influence in any election - ever. But for f--- sake, can we understand the realities of the problem in a "Fair and Balanced" way?
The problem is lazy, disengaged, stupid voters who vote the way Facebook tells them to. Banning Russian ads (or corporate ads, or any other kind of political ads) won't change this.
No, the problem is that the current US voting system mathematically favors only having two candidates on the ballot. Another problem is that campaign financing gives a significant amount of influence to the rich on who will be the party candidate which allows them to only have representatives that favor their interests.
And the sore loser Democrats know this. They don't want to change how it all works.
Actually, neither side wants this to change because the current system gives them a stranglehold on power.
They just want to change who gets to manipulate the voter.
The Kremlin has an opposing interest, isn't this the lesser evil?
If we want to actually change how things work on the state and federal level then we need to start demanding change at the local level.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Actually only about 50% of the American population votes.
So no, only half the people are stupid loser voters, the other half are just stupid losers.
YMMV
How many ads were paid for directly or indirectly by the Alphabet agencies (CIA, NSA, DOD, etc.).
I find it a bit in your face ironic that Google named its parent company "Alphabet".....!
People all over the world thinks Americans are idiots. $1 != 1 ruble. Idiots
1USD = 0.017 US Dollar
Wow, it's not often we get world leaders replying in person here.
The housekeeper crossed the border to come back to your friend eight times? S/he must pay really well.
Your duty as a patriot of course is to turn them both in.
Fixate on ads at Google and Facebook. To distract the actual content on Wikileaks.
Spoiler: It was a Dem staffer that sunk Clinton - and they had him shot.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
It always cracks me up how authors manipulate their words.
Russians made my loaf of bread go stale! It was just fine when I left it sit out on the table last week - but now it's hard as a rock. I blame Russia! And Trump, I know Trump was working with the rooskies on this one. Bread is good therefore Trump hates bread!
This shit is ongoing and continuing. It's not about the FUCKING election.
What is with this "Rah rah rah, Russia is EVIL" nonsense, anyway?
Nice try, but we're still not buying. Accept the loss and move on, please.
...I misread this as "U-Block Orange".
Aside from the fact that the entire "Russia meddling" narrative is BS, they are using extremely poor definitions to make the claims. What what I've been able to tell, "Russian actors" refers to anyone browsing from a Russian IP address or anyone who has their language preferences set to Russian. A random people in Russia placing ads is worlds away from a coordinated effort by an intelligence agency or some other state actor. In addition, many of these "actors" may be US citizens. I myself am a natural born US citizen who currently lives in Russia and often browses with my language set to Russian.
I can't be bothered to answer this nonsense, to be honest. I was originally attracted to slashdot because it was about technology, and you would often come across comments from people with real insight into things, but it has gone downhill - and now it is dominated by people, who prefer to deny simple, observable facts, and who display a strange sort of impenetrable stupidity, assigning perversely twisted meanings to words - like in this comment, where "leftist" apparently means "doesn't agree with me", or perhaps even just "bad". Who knows? Who cares?
One can only waste so much time - I don't mind losing arguments or being proven wrong, but I do mind wasting my time on blind, wilful stupidity. So, I will now log off, delete the bookmark that points to slashdot and move on. I leave without anger or bitterness - so why the parting shot? Well, I know there are some that will agree with me, and who knows - maybe this can be a small nudge in the right direction, and though it is very unlikely, perhaps it can eventually be part of something that will lead to a change I won't know, but others may benefit. That's it - bye now.
reeee my ellection. reee let's do recount.
ree Barnie can still win!
People have been screaming about the reliability of voting machines and voter fraud for years, but they where dismissed as paranoid.
Now, when it's in favor of their political interest, the establishment suddenly cares about the reliability of elections.
They're talking about thousands of dollars in an election where Hillary spent more than a billion dollars, 550 million more than her opponent.
https://www.bloomberg.com/poli...
Yet somehow a couple hundred thousand dollars from Russians flipped the election...
Also, why would we trust these establishment companies who have a huge political bias?
It's so obvious that they're just pushing this bullshit to excuse Hillary's failure.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
companies, technologies and countries do not have wits.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Jeebus. How long are you Americans going to keep whining about "Russian" intereference in your elections ? What are you ? pre school children ?
Every country meddles in every other countries elections to try and give themselves advantage. This has been going on since countries knew about each other's existence. This is not news. Unless you're a 5 year old child.
As for the particular election you're whinging about all I can say is that one of the parties ("the blue one) fielded the single worst candidate I've ever seen in any election, anywhere, ever. That's why the "blue" party lost. They would have lost if the "red" party had put up a scarecrow. And in case any of you haven't worked it out it doesn't actually matter whether the "red" or "blue" party "wins" the election. The government still gets in.
So here's a messages from the rest of the World: Shut your whining about "Russian" interference. It's making you look collosally stupid, ignorant and childish.
1. No such ad has so far been presented to the public.
2. Nearly a year has passed since the elections and no-one until now had reported having seen fishy Russian ads? Strange.
3. Google has _claimed_ such ads were placed. Google is at least alleged to have been supportive of Clinton (e.g. by Julian Assange), and is known to have collaborated with sections of the US security establishment in the PRISM mass surveillance program. So at the very least its credibility is limited and its claims require evidential backing.
4. The report on this Google claim was first made by the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, who has strong ties to the CIA. The WP has been widely criticized for problematic news reporting, especially over the past year.
5. The accusations seem to conflate being Russian or surfing from Russia with being a Russian government operative.
6. If we take it all at face value, suppose the Russia government itself posted ads which say "Clinton sucks, Trump is great, you should vote for him." - I still don't see how this is a news story.
People don't vote "the way Facebook tells them to". Facebook posts normalize extreme views and make candidates like Trump seem like a plausible, even good idea. It's the power of peers and large numbers of others appearing to confirm your biases and fears.
Check the recent Brietbart email leaks. They detail this strategy of normalization in detail. It's why the opposition tried to de-normalize Trump, and why they even now keep repeating "this is not normal".
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
on their own propaganda and covert efforts. Please, don't try to make Russia out as the bad guys, they have _nothing_ to show when compared to America. Wake up and realize that the enemy is America, and they are the ones trying to start a new cold war.
"why the opposition tried to de-normalize Trump"
Trump comes de-normalized as standard.
American MSM fake new propaganda in full swing and boys is it ugly, I feel like I am already living in the bizarro world.
Anyone who considers themselves an American has an obligation to do so. There is no honor in them and they deserve to be conquered: look at all that land and resources they have. They are lazy and corrupt to the core.
And any American that supports that cocksucker Putin deserves death as well.
When Russia Made the NY "NGOs" operating in Russia Register as Foreign Agents, there was a Lot of fuss in NATOland.
Now America uses exactly the Same Terms. Funny.
That a $100,000 or $200,000 spending by Russia on limited ad buys on Facebook and Youtube somehow swayed people to vote against Hillary, who spent $1.2 billion on her campaign...(and lets ignore for a moment that the Facebook ads supported Hillary). I'm a bit...skeptical.
How about, instead, the Democrats and the left face up to the fact that Hillary was an extremely unappealing and disengaged candidate who assumed her victory was a foregone conclusion and thus failed to campaign in rust belt states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Is *this* the sort of "hack" perpetrated by the Russians that the news media has been talking about for months?
Because to this day I still haven't heard of any evidence that somehow a vote for Clinton got changed to a vote for Trump.
Or did I simply not get the memo that explained that "propaganda" is now considered a "hack"? Because this is what this amounts to, as far as I've been able to tell. And if that's the case, my next question is, when did propaganda become illegal?
Who are the sore loser Democrats you speak of?
If it is anyone in the DNC, or a currently elected Democratic US Senator or Congressman, say that.
All other 'Democrats' you speak of, would be 50-60 Million Americans who identify as 'Democrat'.
So which sore losers, are you referring to. I don't see 50-60 Million Americans constantly complaining enough to be designated, as 'sore loser'.
And please, if you think the likes of CNN, F.B., MSNBC, etc... are the 'Democratic' sore losers, I applaud your for showing that level of ignorance here.
Oh please Slashdot.
Stop posting this rubbish.
For every single dollar Russians supposedly "spent" on these nobody-ever-watches-ads, Hillary to had spend $7000 to be counter effective. Now who's the stupid one here? Media? Hillary? Slimey Demon-crats?
It appears many of the comments are by paid Russian thugs. Aside from exacerbating the racial divide(i.e.selling black live tee-shirts) and other subversive activity now they are on slashdot spewing Putin's sewage.
Okay, so tens of thousands of ads were bought thru Russia.
$80,000 (tens of thousands) = 0.000016% of $5 billion
= 0.00014149% $563,756,928 Hillary's direct funds
= 0.00024% 333,127,164 Trump's direct funds
If you think tens of thousands of dollars influenced the election in any decisive way, you're a moron. Second, these are merely adds purchased from Russian IP's. I would wager, that most of these were in fact purchases by American's who had donated their legal limits to campaigns, and went thru darknet options to buy them (routing thru Russia).
The fact that the media is working so so so so so hard to convince American's that the election was lost/altered due to the Russia's would almost be comical, if the media wasn't trying to take it so seriously.
Actions like blaming everyone but herself, and her getting caught trying to cheat with the DNC.
First off, no, not every head of every agency. Rather, the single political head of the U.S. intelligence community, which includes around 17 various agencies claimed such.
Second, they published a report, it was a few dozen pages long. Did you read it? I did... their evidence largely amounted to the Russian Times publishing articles with a pro-Russia bent. Duh...it's the Russian Times. And on that point, compare the U.S. readership of the Russia Times to even Huffington Post, let alone CNN, NBC, etc. All of which were complicit in actively campaigning for Hillary Clinton.
Third, we have a constitutional protection of the press and free speech. Guess what, Kim Jong Un could start publishing a newspaper in the U.S. that has article after article praising him. And it's totally legit, not unconstitutional, nor does it count as altering the election anymore than it does the likes of CNN or HuffPo, publishing repeatedly false and misreprentative articles.
Fourth, as for the hard IT end of things. The only real evidence we have is that there was some Russian based malware on DNC servers, And probably on about 20% of the servers on the web. That two groups supposed to be Russian actors, and possibly in collaboration with the Russia government...mostly due to their activity during the Ukrainian/Russian conflict. However, in counterpoint to this, we also learned that several tools once thought to be of "foreign actors" turned out to be from U.S. NSA/CIA, and a couple of unnamed hacker groups once associated with Russia have not been recognized as state agents, just agents of the United States. The so-called sophisticated tools and methods only an agent state could be responsible for, was thoroughly debunked. And shown to in fact be outdated versions of hacker malware available on the dark web. And common hacking techniques.
So please....show me an actual single piece of evidence....thank you very much.
Let's assume that the evidence of Russian involvement in the election is a fact. Thus far, it seems that less than a million dollars in advertising has been uncovered. In an election where billons were probably spent in advertising and where it would be a kindness to refer to most political communication as drivel, misinformation, propaganda, outright lies, or evidence of mind numbing ineptitude, the only response worthy of the situation is "and this is a problem because ...". I suspect that the number of players at this spending level lacking anything amounting to a moral compass or that can be classified as a wack job is legion (I know we are talking about politics and some may think this is a distinction without a difference, but somedays I just want to be irrational). Of course, there is that Slavic part of the family with funny names of which one might be suspicious, but their origins are Slovenian not Russian. In any case, current Russian meddling in the political process through advertising seems to be at an order of magnitude that falls below that of a roundoff error. Which means the current fixation on Russian meddling is a red herring (of course the Russians might be fueling this fire for their own evil purposes). Nonetheless, Russian meddling, or that of any other nation-state, for the purpose of disruption to the point that we are ungovernable is a clear and present danger that the internet makes all too possible. We only have ourselves to blame, however, for our sensitivity to such meddling, for we have created a political environment rife with discord that makes us brittle and prone to distrust -- fertile ground indeed for those that wish us ill.
in other countries' elections for decades, as have many other powerful nations. But it is an issue THIS TIME why? Because YOUR candidate lost? Grow the fuck up children.
Im sure in other countries the CIA is buying ad's as well. Why people are getting surprised is the media leads them like sheep.
If that was the case, then it would have HELPED Hillary, not hurt her. Do you know how many posts I saw on Facebook about "Unfriend me if you voted Trump"? I saw dozens just in the wide array of people I am linked to through friends and friends of friends. Do you know how many I saw saying "Unfriend me if you voted for Clinton" or anything even remotely close? Zero. I saw absolutely none.
So, of $4.400,000,000 ad money the Ds & Rs spent on advertising, apparently Russians purchased a bit more than $100,000 on FB and a bit less than that on Google...let's just say ~$200k total. Or, .0454% of the advertising budget that the campaigns spent. Well, that certainly explains why HRC lost.
Just another day in Paradise