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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.
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?
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.
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.
I run U-Block Origin.
#DeleteChrome
I bet the "tens of thousands" of dollars spent was really successful, considering that Clinton and surrogates spent 1.5 Billion influencing her electoral failures.
But yeah, keep on blaming the Russians for her loss, because that totally happened!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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?
Apparently the typical Hillary supporter is easily susceptible to Russian advertising since so many of them apparently abandoned her due to facebook and youtube ads.
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 bet the "tens of thousands" of dollars spent was really successful, considering that Clinton and surrogates spent 1.5 Billion influencing her electoral failures. But yeah, keep on blaming the Russians for her loss, because that totally happened!
I think it's clear she lost because she wasn't as compelling a candidate as trump.
But completely aside from the fact that the foreign ads had an insignificant effect -- don't you still think it's concerning? Sure lots of nations have interfered or influenced the elections in other nations. It's not nice to be on the receiving end. It's against the law in the US. And what if these are just small incursions to test the water in preparation for much larger influence campaigns in future? not necessarily even ones targeted at elections?
Sure, foreign powers already have considerable "top-down" influence through bribes, lobbying, corruption. We might be seeing the first signals that in a decade from now we'll see the dawn of the era of "bottom-up" influence as well.
I think that these incidents do merit investigation, even though the ones in question didn't affected Hillary's loss.
Don't you?
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'".
BAD: Russia giving money to the pro-Brexit campaign
GOOD: Obama personally flying to London and speaking against Brexit.
Well at least you're not hypocritical or anything.
Oh, and of course there's this.
betrayal of the founding principles of your country for money is also called treason.
Not according to the US Constitution.
I bet the "tens of thousands" of dollars spent was really successful, considering that Clinton and surrogates spent 1.5 Billion influencing her electoral failures.
But yeah, keep on blaming the Russians for her loss, because that totally happened!
This isn't about who won or lost, it's about another country interfering with our nation. The goal of Russia has been to destabilize other nations for their own gain. You are either being disingenuous or just ignorant if you refuse to or do not realize these were highly targeted advertisements.
This is about information warfare.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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