Slashdot Mirror
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.
When it's true.
That is generally called corruption, but betrayal of the founding principles of your country for money is also called treason. The rule of law is a global indicator of civilization, which has been trashed by the US Trump administration, and particularly by Trump himself. He may not understand reality as it occurs every day though, which means he needs to go into a hospital for treatment rather than jail.
Lost in all of this is the outrage for the Clinton Campaign spending millions of dollars to astroturf comments sections all over the web during the campaign. David Brock was the culprit yet no outrage.
It's been Boy who Cried Wolf for almost a year now, multiple times daily. Enough that when Trump does something news worthy, it's gets ignored and/or buried.
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.
I'd still stake Trump over Hillary. Actually, after seeing Hillary's post election actions, I'd be even more inclined to take Trump over Hillary today than last year.
Let me break down what you wrote
The presented idea is that either individuals stopped voting for HRC or started voting for Trump because of facebook and youtube ads.
I don't subscribe to this theory but Hillary and a large portion of her supporters view her voters as this easily duped.
I am a bit amazed that you you immediately follow that sentence with
Either way by definition those people would not be Hillary supporters.
You just said they stopped voting for HCR over facebook/youtube commercials which means they once were supporting her else how would they stop? Or are you doing the typical Clinton double talk "I said 'are' not 'was'".
17-December-2015 A grinning putin made this odd statement to the press.
How's that "odd"? From pretty much the day he announced Trump was never in any serious danger of losing the nomination.
I noticed that many shitty right wing blogs were registered by russians.
Uh huh. May we ask which blogs? And are these real Russians or the "someone disagreed with me and therefore must be a Soviet propagandist"-Russians?
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
Flynn was attempting to reform the Intelligence Community, to bring it back in line with the law and with open American values. Thus he was smeared and had his good name dragged through the mud.
Nice bullet points from "Media Matters", started by David Brock, who is funded by George Soros.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!