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Facebook Says 126 Million Americans May Have Seen Russia-Linked Political Posts (reuters.com)
Facebook said on Monday that Russia-based operatives published about 80,000 posts on the social network over a two-year period in an effort to sway U.S. politics and that about 126 million Americans may have seen the posts during that time. Reuters reports: Facebook's latest data on the Russia-linked posts - possibly reaching around half of the U.S. population of voting age - far exceeds the company's previous disclosures. It was included in written testimony provided to U.S. lawmakers, and seen by Reuters, ahead of key hearings with social media and technology companies about Russian meddling in elections on Capitol Hill this week. Twitter separately has found 2,752 accounts linked to Russian operatives, a source familiar with the company's written testimony said. That estimate is up from a tally of 201 accounts that Twitter reported in September. Google, owned by Alphabet, said in a statement on Monday it had found $4,700 in Russia-linked ad spending during the 2016 U.S. election cycle, and that it would build a database of election ads. Facebook's general counsel, Colin Stretch, said in the written testimony that the 80,000 posts from Russia's Internet Research Agency were a tiny fraction of content on Facebook, equal to one out of 23,000 posts.
I am beyond sick and tired of Slashdot trying to push the "Russians influenced the election!" BS that the left has been pushing. It's fake. It never happened.
Who cares if they bought ads on Facebook? Does it matter? Does anyone seriously think people voted for Trump because they saw ads from Russians?!
The thing that caused Hillary to lose more than anything else is likely her shady dealings involving her email server and the FBI "investigation" into it. An investigation that could still be restarted as it's becoming more and more clear that one campaign did, in fact, have dealings with Russia: the Democrat's.
The real question is how many unique views were served for each ad and how many ads there were total. 126 million people seeing one silly racist political meme one random afternoon is nothing to panic about, and certainly they'll try to spin this revelation as nothing more than that. But 126 million people being immersed daily into an advertising environment that's completely saturated with unregulated foreign propaganda, rubber-stamped with approval by an ostensibly loyal, United States citizen-owned publicly traded corporation... now that my friends, that right there is how you sew destruction throughout the minds of an entire population. That is how you fundamentally pervert the perception of reality of an entire social class. That is how you sever friendships and turn families against each other. That is how you topple a government. That is how you start a civil war. That is something worth panicking about.
You can always tell old guard Slashdot folks from new Slashdot folks as to whether they believe FUD is a real force at play in people's minds. It wasn't positive ads for Trump. It was FUD.
First, they tried to say the advertisements promoted Potus Trump, now "Divisive" ads. Divisive is code for Hillary and Bernie.
And if we are only talking Divisive advertisements, what about ShareBlue or Correct the record? How many millions did these companies pay to change social media, 50 Million? 100 Million? How much did the DNC and related political pacs pay, 500 Million?
And 80k from Russians is a big issue vs a billion?
Wag the dog indeed. If you are still blaming Russia for Trumps win, you still haven't learned. Nobody liked Hillary and Bernie only ran as a Democrat to get on the stage.
This two party system is a problem with all the money is funneled into 2 people. WTF, All that money into 2 parties. When vary widely on so many issues, 2 parties don't cover everyone. I have no idea how, but wish we had a multiparty system to stop this "us vs them" tribal cultural war. We got Democrats voting Republican for financial issues, and Republicans voting democrat for social issues. Libertarians, Socialist, Communists, etc, its a clusterfuck.
That's how you sell bubble gum. Nobody changed their mind on who to vote for based on a facebook ad. If you think someone did, prove it.
Or do we just have to take their word that they've fortuitously found exactly what they set out to look for, from people who are supposedly foreign operatives but apparently are too dumb to cover their tracks?
Disclosure rules? WTF? The filter should be on the receiving end. The Russians have their agenda (and it's more about trolling us than overpowering us), and the media has their agenda (which is more about indoctrinating us than educating us). F them all, it's not like any are trustworthy anymore. It's the info that matters, not the source.
Anyone who gets their information from the Bookface, or sucking at the media's (left or right) teat, deserves what they get. People need to take personal responsibility for educating themselves with diverse viewpoints, and using that to create a worldview based on knowledge and belief informed by root principles. If you can't filter disinformation from your inputs, you're doing it wrong.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It either shows how incompetent and her campaign was or how horrible of a message she actually had. Either way, she had no place being elected as President. A decent candidate with a coherent message would have wiped the floor with Trump.
This is FB advertising the cost effectiveness of placing inexpensive ads on their service. And they're doing it "for free" by "revealing" the information to a willing press.
"SEE HOW MANY IMPRESSIONS RUSSIA GOT FOR ONLY $[insert current estimate here]. YOUR AD COULD DO AS WELL!"
These ads are getting more play now than they got before, most likely.
The US has done this all over the world. Talk with Iran. Talk with Grenada. Talk with Guatemala. The list goes on.
Russia won't allow any of this in their country. They've banned this stuff on Facebook internally because of this.
This is one of the main reasons the Chinese have "The Chinese Firewall."
Go suck Hittler's petrified cock you Putin cum hole.
I remember learning about slab allocation on slashdot. Who let you in? I bet you are proud of yourself.
If you don't think fake news changed the outcome of the election, it's because you're inside the bubble. So the proof is irrelevant, I couldn't convince you the sky is blue if Fox and Friends told you it wasn't.
Whatever you do, don't blame the (heinously unpopular for years & years before the election) losing candidate for losing the election. Blame Canada instead!
If you don't think fake news changed the outcome of the election, it's because you're inside the bubble.
The outcome of the election was the result of two opposing forces: the repulsion for Trump that made a lot of people vote Hillary, even if they didn't like her, and the repulsion for Hillary that made a lot of people not vote her, even if they do not like Trump. Eventually the second force prevailed, and that was thanks to all the media that endorsed Hillary: the media fanfare made alot of people think that Hillary's victory was obvious and so they voted libertarian or something else and that was fatal in swing states.
Wtf?
First of all, who said the point of the ads is to get people to change their mind? This is what the Trump team itself was doing with ads/targeting before the elections:
All you need to dö is get enough people in the key demographic of your opponent to stay home in key areas.
Second of all: many people don't recognize sponsored content/ads in social media, or elsewhere. You'll see a news article or a blog post that has above it something like '[Your friend name here] also liked [our site]' and that's in fact a paid ad targeted to you because someone you know has liked the page and they've targeted their promotion that way, but really people generally don't think of these as ads but just another part of their newsfeed which actually makes them more effective.
Third of all: ads (both direct and sponsored content) do affect people's decisions. That's why they exist and why companies are pouring money into them but you obviously will have a hard time finding anyone who says they bought any opinion/product/service because it was advertised to them, partly because people don't often recognize the impact ads have on them. Chances are high advertising has affected your behavior during your lifetime without you being directly aware of it. You see ads and at some later point when you're making the decision of what to buy, the ads play into your preconceptions and decision making process at a subconscious level. Hardly no-one is at the store like 'I'm going to buy this product because I saw that ad last week" but there is still is an increase in sales following a successful marketing campaign.
So no, if you poll people and ask them 'did you see any paid for articles in your news feed about either candidate and if so did they effect your decision on whether to vote or not and for which candidate?' you're likely going to get a 'no' on all 3 of those from most people but that doesn't mean there was no effect, it just means most people can't recognize well placed ads as ads anymore and that like always, people think they're immune to the psychological effects of ads/sponsored content when they provably are not.
Human beings on average are much more easy to influence than we tend to admit, and the marketing industry has been honing their skills for way over half a century at this point becoming more and more successful at it.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Prove that it had zero influence on anyone. You can't, any more than I can prove that a specific ad influenced a specific person.
But it wasn't just ads of course. There was an army of fake accounts amplifying those messages and shitposting from 8 AM to 6 PM Moscow time every weekday.
Frankly the claim that it all had zero influence lacks any credibility. I don't think any reasonable person would contest that propaganda and fake news has zero influence on anyone.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC