Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Says It Exposed Nearly 700,000 People To Russian Propaganda During Election (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Twitter this evening released a new set of statistics related to its investigation on Russia propaganda efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including that 677,775 people were exposed to social media posts from more than 50,000 automated accounts with links to the Russian government. Many of the new accounts uncovered have been traced back to an organization called the the Internet Research Agency, or IRA, with known ties to the Kremlin. The data was first presented in an incomplete form to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee last November, which held hearings to question Facebook, Google, and Twitter on the role the respective platforms and products played in the Russian effort to help elect President Donald Trump. Twitter says it's now uncovered more accounts and new information on the wide-reaching Russian cyberintelligence campaign.
"Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period," writes Twitter's public policy division in a blog post published today. "Because we have already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available."
"Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period," writes Twitter's public policy division in a blog post published today. "Because we have already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available."
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
We have no idea what Mueller has, but the people he is handing subpoenas to is highly interesting.
Most NATO countries are civilized, civilized countries doesn't put people in jail because of accusations.
Turkey isn't civilized. Many reasons for that, sadly.
The US isn't civilized - Guantanamo anyone?
What about twitters own people saying on video they wish to "ban a way of talking" from "shitty people"... their words. Forget russia what about twitter's own propaganda via censorship?
I'm fairly sick of Twitter and Facebook going on about this. The Internet is full of propaganda. The world is full of propaganda. We should not be surprised if Russia meddled a bit, because we meddle in everyone else's affairs, especially in the Middle East. I don't like Trump much either, but the fact is that people are using this merely as a way to comfort themselves about him having won the election. But does it really make a difference? Were we really naive enough to think that democracy was truly fair in the first place?
Let's think about this rationally. 700,000 were exposed; that's a tiny number. A Google search says that almost 139,000,000 voted. So that means that about 0.5%--a mere half percent of voters may have been exposed. But chances are that only some of those who were exposed actually voted. And then most of them probably already were Trump supporters in the first place, who merely grabbed hold of the propaganda as confirmation of their already-held point of view. So it's impossible to say how much it affected the vote--especially given the complexities of the electoral college and the fact that we do not know where these viewers lived--but chances are that it did not affect it enough to have swayed anything.
Or let's put it another way: the burden of proof would be on those who would claim that Russia actually changed the outcome of the election. Prove it. I sincerely doubt that it will ever be proved, but people will go on and on about it because it gives them a kind of comfort to think that it was really the fault of some sinister external force. People love blaming outsiders, or even internal minorities who are treated as outsiders--such as Mexicans like myself--but it is a sad, pathetic, illegitimate comfort.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Hacked the DNC and DCCC,
Allegedly.
hacked elections systems in several states, grabbing electoral data.
Allegedly.
Handing the electoral data and political information to people like Aaron Nevins and defacto co-ordinating with them to get Ron DeSantis elected in Florida
Allegedly.
There are plenty of allegations flying around that this was all Russia's doing. It very well may have been. What is lacking is evidence.
It would be politically expedient for the US if it were Russia behind the meddling. It may or may not be politically expedient for Russia to have Trump as president. Hillary was a known quantity to Russia. They've dealt with her before as Secretary of State. Knowing how someone operates is diplomatically valuable.
Trump *seemed* to be more friendly to Russia, but he was also incredibly flaky, even as a candidate. The reasoning behind a coordinated push to back Trump over Hilary seems tenuous at best.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
As I said, you are more interested in arguing about standards of evidence -- with the implication that the people asking for evidence are so unreasonable that nothing will convince them -- than actually pointing to evidence.
Here's a bonus hint to not sound pretentiously ignorant: Nobody is engaging in Bayesian reasoning about this. Nobody's going to give you a prior probability that politician X colluded with the Russians on subject Y, unless politician X has been caught on tape telling the Russians how much more flexibility X will have after his election. Nobody is going to give a formula on how to form an a posteriori belief from the combination of an a priori belief and a particular piece of evidence, until all the parameters are set -- at which point it is entirely an ad hoc, political, and non-repeatable exercise.
Would meetings by people in the campaign with what they believe to be people working for the Russian Government for purposes of obtaining favors rise to the level of collusion for you?
The definition of collusion is simple :
col . lu . sion
secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.
So for this "meeting" to be collusion, it would require for it to be to "cheat" or "deceive" and have been secret or illegal. Does said meeting meet those requirements ?
Let's look at the other side. Was it in fact deception that even led to this meeting ? And did this deception require special steps from an outside influence ?
Is the fact the meeting took place collusion, or did collusion result in said meeting even taking place under false pretenses ? So what do you think about me thinking about a "simple meeting" being equal to collusion now ?
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
So what does "cooperation" mean? Your definition seems foolishly broad, because using the common definition of cooperation, probably any politician who seeks national office, a governorship, or the like, has "colluded" under your definition.
No, I told you why (a) the actions you described are not illegal under the law you cited, and (b) why your comment didn't clarify your piss-poor definition of "collusion". Perhaps you should get out of that mental rut that you're in.
The evidence we now have is very substantial but circumstantial.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/...
https://www.newyorker.com/news...
Demanding evidence from Slashdot commenters when there is an ongoing - and accelerating - investigation going on by Robert Mueller is pretty disingenuous. By the way, that investigation has already produced arrests and convictions of Trump associates.
You gotta admit, for someone with "no collusion", there sure are a lot of people lying about dealings with Russians. A lot of effort being expended in order to cover up something that they claim doesn't exist.
You are welcome on my lawn.