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Facebook 'Likes' Are a Powerful Tool For Authoritarian Rulers, Court Petition Says (qz.com)

A Cambodian opposition leader has filed a petition in a California court against Facebook, demanding the company disclose its transactions with his country's authoritarian prime minister, whom he accuses of falsely inflating his popularity through purchased "likes" and spreading fake news. From a report: The petition, filed Feb. 8, brings the ongoing debate over Facebook's power to undermine democracies into a legal setting. The petitioner, Sam Rainsy, says that Hun Sen, the prime minister, "has used the network to threaten violence against political opponents and dissidents, disseminate false information, and manipulate his (and the regime's) supposed popularity, thus seeking to foster an illusion of popular legitimacy." Rainsy alleges that Hun had used "click farms" to artificially boost his popularity, effectively buying "likes." The petition says that Hun had achieved astonishing Facebook fame in a very short time, raising questions about whether this popularity was legitimate.

63 comments

  1. What Facebook needs... by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 2

    ..is more dislikes.

    1. Re:What Facebook needs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  2. Facebook = Fake News by daftdada · · Score: 0

    Such a fine example. I tolerated Facebook for about three weeks, such a losers portal.

    1. Re: Facebook = Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hard to break it to you... That Facebook thing you visited? It's not a news portal...

  3. Standing and Jurisdiction by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    Wondering if this suite will get past the question of the petitioner's standing to sue and the jurisdiction of the CA court over Facebook, Cambodia.

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Standing and Jurisdiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They'll have to block it some how. It's their entire business model. When Russians buy ads it's "meddling", but when DNC and RNC do it, it's just campaigning.

    2. Re:Standing and Jurisdiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > but when DNC and RNC do it, it's just campaigning
      As long as it's in their own elections and they don't lie about who's footing the bill, indeed it is.

    3. Re:Standing and Jurisdiction by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "When Russians buy ads it's "meddling", but when DNC and RNC do it, it's just campaigning."

      Congratulations, you understood the law perfectly!

    4. Re:Standing and Jurisdiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Except what this article is about and the main thing Russia is accused of is not buying ads, but buying manufactured presence on social media sites, which is not simply failing to disclose the source of a political ad buy (which, yes, is illegal), but, in fact, fraud, although I suspect fraud laws are poorly written to handle things like buying likes and impersonating someone on social media, so it may or may not be technically illegal for local political parties to do depending on the locality and the courts.

    5. Re:Standing and Jurisdiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They'll have to block it some how. It's their entire business model. When Russians buy ads it's "meddling", but when DNC and RNC do it, it's just campaigning.

      From an American perspective, that is 100% correct.

    6. Re:Standing and Jurisdiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think it funny that Republicans are all about protecting our borders and preventing a fifth column of foreign government agents to enter the US and undermine our political system, but they've no issue with cross-border campaigning and foreign government agents spreading propaganda to undermine our political system. It's almost like they only really care about getting a Republican in office, even if he were Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin.

    7. Re:Standing and Jurisdiction by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Technically speaking the RNC and DNC do not buy ads. The people really buying ads are the campaign donors, the corporations and the lobbyists. The lobbyists are way more cunning than people think, they pack the RNC and the DNC itself with consultants who must be paid millions and this is stolen from the campaign donations of the corporations. Think about that, the thieves are stealing from the thieves who pay the thieves to pay the bribes to make thievery legal and blocking it illegal. A bunch of emails demonstrated how the lobbyists and consultants collude to steal as much as they can of the campaign donations of the corporate class and keep in going by filling the corporate class with fear of the workers rising up.

      It's just lie after lie after lie. Take heart though, let's be honest, how worth while a marketing platform are they in reality. They were all in the tank for Clinton, all of the tech companies, and corporate media was there too, as was the war industrial complex, NATO, CIA, FBI, DOJ and they lost. Reality is they should have won but they do not control the internet, the tech companies do not control the internet, in reality the only thing they brought to the table was the marketing they had targeted at advertisers, convincing the advertisers how good they were at selling, they provided not much else.

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      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    8. Re:Standing and Jurisdiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They were all in the tank for Clinton

      No doubt*, however...

      Reality is they should have won but they do not control the internet...

      That's a funny comment because neither do the Russians. The comment implies that propaganda ads can control the population's voting behavior, yet just like Russian ads or manipulation, it can only have some effect. The more in-depth truth is that the marketers and advertisers want as close a race as possible because it means more people jumping on news sites (or all other web sites) and that means more ad revenue. So, in that sense, this is why there's a big issue about it. Those that tried to influence to have as close a race as possible got juked by the Russians were able to push the edge ever so slightly to the right and get Trump in.

      Now, you could ask why Russia would like Trump? The main reason that most the establishment don't want him: he's unstable and could do all sorts of unexpected things. That's great for ad revenue, maybe, but the whole "fake news" thing is hurting the establishment at the expense of other groups. That Trump is sympathetic to Russia and wants to, for his own benefit, try to normalize relations, is really just a side benefit. Clinton would have been the same old and pushed sanctions and gone through the established motions because she doesn't particularly have a vested interest in Russia.

      Now, if the media tried to taint all the places Clinton held a lot of her assets...

      * Not only did they want Clinton to win, they presumed Clinton would win. There wasn't some mass effort to make an unpopular character win. Instead, Trump spent most of his campaign on pushing Clinton down to make her unpopular***, and the media latched on because they wanted a close race and presumed rational people would see through the bullshit. Meanwhile, the also latched on to all the mudslinging on Trump, except there Trump really is a sexist, racist** asshole. Ie, there wasn't much effect on pulling him down, and so any space where he spoke was more an opportunity to just lie blazingly to burn his opponent.

      ** One could argue Trump isn't racist and merely an opportunistic, abusive asshole who happens to use nationality or race as a proxy to quick determine his odds of being able to successfully exploit that person for his own ends. That's still a sort of racism, even if it's not of the gut-level, unchangeable kind. If Trump figured out blacks or Mexicans could make him more money, he'd praise them. Ie, he views the world through race and statistical advantage.

      *** Don't get me wrong. Clinton should be in jail for the whole mail server thing, just like a lot of other politicians who have ignored the law (Bush and Palin spring to mind, although there's definitely tons of other examples). The problem is, most people never really cared about the mail server. Trump supports just wanted to see her in jail for their own advantage, not out of some sense of justice. I mean, Trump openly called on Russia to help him smear Clinton during his campaign--an act that almost certainly would involve things like hacking into personal or government computers or having a mole leak classified information (as the Clintons are really good at keeping everything else questionable private). There's really nothing to like fundamental about either candidate, but the bar for politicians used to be the level of Clinton: a person who didn't constantly lie, you didn't worry would openly flaunt the law, etc. Perhaps if Trump is actually punished things will change? I doubt it.

  4. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by NettiWelho · · Score: 3

    "Making Again Good for America" and his support is entirely grassroots and real!

    now, my views as a finnish person may not have much weight in this discussion but in my experience trump does authentically have higher popularity until you get up to category of +60 year old women who overwhelmingly would've preferred clinton of the males in my own age group I am yet to find the first one telling they'd have liked clinton over trump

  5. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your worldview is then incredibly small and narrow

  6. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

    You're a fool if you think Slashdot has any "reach" and thus would be worth it to spend money on paid shills. Those days have come and gone. Remember when the Slashdot Effect could crush websites? Today articles barely get 100 comments each.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  7. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2, Funny

    Shit, I'd take David Hasselhoff over Trump

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    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  8. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by NettiWelho · · Score: 1

    I don't think he is running

  9. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by nospam007 · · Score: 3, Funny

    "now, my views as a finnish person "

    I had a Nordic girlfriend once, don't know which nation exactly, but during sex she always yelled: "I'm not finnish!"

  10. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by OYAHHH · · Score: 1

    If you don't know any 60+ women who like Trump then you are extremely out of touch.

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    Caution: Contents under pressure
  11. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by JoshuaZ · · Score: 2

    The data doesn't support your anecdote: Young people of both genders were both more likely to vote for Clinton than the general population. See e.g. http://college.usatoday.com/2016/11/09/how-we-voted-by-age-education-race-and-sexual-orientation/

  12. Fishing expedition by OYAHHH · · Score: 2

    Somebody is simply using the courts to try to find out dirt on their opponent.

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    Caution: Contents under pressure
  13. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As a Greek i am socked by your naivety my little Finnish boy!

    You reply to a comment about "Americanskaya droogs" titled "[...] no Russians on Slashdot!" and, after confessing that you are Finnish, you claim that the support of Trump may be legit - think what some people may think:

    • USA citizens of below average geographic knowledge: you are a Trump voter from some state...
    • USA citizens of average geographic knowledge: you are from Cambodia?
    • USA citizens of above average geographic knowledge: you are from Russia!
    • Russians (of any geographic knowledge level): you are from Russia.
  14. Just throw it out by DeplorableCodeMonkey · · Score: 1

    One of the valuable lessons from Ukraine is that it's almost always "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." If you want to accelerate the process to finding a good leader, just send weapons to both sides and let nature take its course until the aggressive, lawless fucktards on both sides annihilate each other leaving the meeker folks to inherit the Earth.

    1. Re:Just throw it out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately quite a few of the meeker folks tend to be caught in the crossfire, because lawless fucktards don't care much about who does - not to mention the kind of crossifre mutually assured destruction assures...

  15. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you would ... gaffot bitch.

  16. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by alvinrod · · Score: 1

    I don't know how you can draw that conclusion. First, the data you provide is U.S. voters when you're speaking to someone who's from a different country. Second, you don't actually know how old the poster is so it's inappropriate to assume the poster is 20 when they could just as easily be 40. Third, people tend to self-segregate into groups with similar belief structures. Odds are you're going to be friends with a people who are more similar to you on average than dissimilar. That's not to say that you can't have friends with differences, just that if you're a strong Clinton/Trump supporter, most of your friends are probably the same.

  17. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

    my views as a finnish person

    You're drunk right now, aren't you? I love Finland and Finnish people, but they are drunk almost all the time.

    in my experience trump does authentically have higher popularity until you get up to category of +60 year old women who overwhelmingly would've preferred clinton

    In your experience, do you realize that there are actually data that shows you have it completely wrong? Among women, Trump is most popular with women over 65.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/fe...

    http://college.usatoday.com/20...

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    You are welcome on my lawn.
  18. As designed, not a bug. by Picodon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Facebook 'Likes' Are a Powerful Tool For Authoritarian Rulers

    ...Facebook, (...) whom he accuses of falsely inflating his popularity through purchased "likes" and spreading fake news.

    Well, Facebook is designed to be just that: a paid propaganda conduit enabling corporate customers (you know, the ones who actually pay Facebook) to get their kool-aid into the heads of billions of unwitting consumers. What else would motivate them to collectively pour billions of dollars into a service like Facebook? Follow us on Facebook, little people! Hammer your brain with our name, make it look like we’re the most popular and let us see everything about you, all in a single click!

    And why think that politicians wouldn’t do the exact same thing when they regularly employ the same marketing agencies and the same mass propaganda techniques as commercial entities?

  19. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Trump didn't win: Clinton lost. People feel betrayed by career politicians. It's the basis of a most fitting and famous quote from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (part of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series): "The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

  20. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by JoshuaZ · · Score: 1

    If he meant, men his age in Finland, then that has very little to do with the people generally posting about Trump; pro-Trump posting on Facebook is going to have a lot more people from the US than Finland for a whole bunch of reasons. These include simply differences in the size of the populations of each country, US people more likely to focus on their own politics, and Trump being generally unpopular almost everywhere outside the US http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/26/u-s-image-suffers-as-publics-around-world-question-trumps-leadership/ (That data set doesn't include Finland but it does show a broad general pattern through a whole variety of countries, including Sweden).

    As for the issue of their age, it isn't just the 18-29 bracket. The same data set I linked to earlier shows also more support for Clinton among the 30-44 bracket, although not as extreme as in the younger age bracket. It is possible that they are older, but the phrasing doesn't really suggest that.

    Third, people tend to self-segregate into groups with similar belief structures. Odds are you're going to be friends with a people who are more similar to you on average than dissimilar. That's not to say that you can't have friends with differences, just that if you're a strong Clinton/Trump supporter, most of your friends are probably the same.

    Sure! But this is precisely why anecdote is not a good source of data, and why data is more important than anecdote. It is precisely because self-segregation occurs that actually asking what the data shows is important.

  21. Isnt that everywhere? by wolfheart111 · · Score: 1

    Buy, trade, ect FB likes https://www.google.ca/search?q...

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    [($)]
  22. Wait, what? Isn't that the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Facebook 'Likes' Are a Powerful Tool For Authoritarian Rulers, Court Petition Say

    Facebook likes are a powerful tool for individuals. Some individuals are authoritarian. Did someone find this non-obvious?

  23. German crowd 'like' a man. 1934. Decolorized by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2
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    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  24. Re:Always authoritarian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Of course it had a chance.. it's the political system of the world's richest countries. What a load of FUD.

  25. Re: is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shouldn't you be busy clapping and drooling over the executrix from Best Korea?

  26. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by pots · · Score: 1

    Now, be fair: those statistics are only for Americans. The parent said that he was talking about people he knew, in Finland presumably. Here, I found this. No doubt it completely validates NettiWelho's remarks. I assume.

  27. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    To be really fair, does anyone believe Trump is popular in Finland?

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    You are welcome on my lawn.
  28. Prison for clicking Like on FB posts in Thailand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In Thailand, a man is facing 32 years of prison for clicking the “like” button on a photoshopped photo the King of Thailand and sharing an infographic about a scandal involving dodgy dealings for a park funding.

    Local authorities say that factory worker Thanakorn Siripaiboon was charged with sedition, treason and cyber crimes. Siripaiboon confessed to the charges and will be put behind bars for a very long time.

    AFP reports that the 27-year old offender clicked “like” on December 2 on a doctored photo of the King and shared it with 608 friends. Doing so is illegal under Thai law as anyone guilty of insulting the King, or any part of the royal family can be charged up to 15 years in jail on each count.

    https://nextshark.com/thanakorn-siripaiboon-facebook-like/

    Thailand has warned users of the social networking site Facebook they could face prosecution under harsh lese majeste laws if they press ''share'' or ''like'' on images or articles considered unflattering to the Thai monarchy.

    http://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/940668/risky-click-on-facebook-could-land-thais-in-jail/

  29. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    In the US, Trump lost the popular vote by millions. He was less popular than Clinton.

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  30. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    I'm not convinced Putin is a fool, but whenever topics related to Russia come up we see lots of people with high user IDs making lame pro-Russian arguments.

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  31. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    Gosh, maybe that means people have different opinions than you? The resurgence of Russophobia is pretty recent, we put it away after we had a bad experience with it during the Cold War. People were seeing Russians under the bed and influencing things that they weren't doing. Kind of like today, eh?

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  32. Re: is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'd say you need to get out more...

    But we all know you're a paid shill for a Soros-funded NGO.

  33. Re: is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot by Reverend+Green · · Score: 1

    Slashdot had a far more sophisticated and robust moderation system and rather less censorship than most other news-related forums. I suspect information warriors from many different organizations use it as an R&D battleground.

  34. Re: is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    That's a wonderful conspiracy theory you have for a website that hardly anyone reads any more. Face it, there are opposing opinions that you don't like and accusing them of being DIRTY FOREIGNERS is just a mental defense to avoid admitting that they might have a point.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  35. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Lots of people have different opinions than I do. Some of them are frequent Slashdot posters. These are people who seem to show up just to make really lame arguments (lamer than most of the people who disagree with me) that just don't have the right style.

    Westerners are exposed constantly to the most sophisticated mind-influencing material ever, largely in the form of advertisements. We've developed a limited amount of immunity to it. There's a difference in style that people who are either Westerners or have contact with a lot of them have that these shills don't. Keep a careful eye on them.

    As far as your digression into current politics, we don't know what the Russians have been doing in the top levels of government, only that some people are trying to suppress the Mueller investigation. We know they were somewhat active on Facebook. Russia is not our friend, and hasn't been for a long time, and Putin is trying aggrandizement.

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  36. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    Shouting "treason" isn't how you fight foreigners, it's how you delegitimize your political opponents. Sometimes they might be illegitimate traitors. But most of the time the traitor-shouters just want an excuse for getting rid of their political opponents. Domestic politics has limits. War doesn't.

    If your opponents are traitors, you can spy on them, entrap them and imprison them. You can overturn elections, censor the press and take any measures you need to defend against a foreign threat.

    To save us from $100K in Facebook ads and their own leaked emails, they had to eavesdrop on Trump officials, bring them up on charges and run an endless investigation of the President of the United States. Obama and Clinton supporters in the IRS, State, the FBI, the DOJ and the NSA broke a few rules. But they were protecting us from the Russian menace lurking in Trump Tower.

    Just ask Putin. It's how he does it. It's how every dictatorship does it.

    Waterboarding the mastermind of 9/11 is not "who we are as Americans". So said the politician whose regime spied on members of Congress, pro-Israel activists, reporters and the Trump team. But Muslim terrorists didn't represent a grave threat to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Republicans did.

    Russia in America now serves the same function as America in Russia. It's a casus belli for delegitimizing the supporters of a free society as catspaws of foreign interests who must be suppressed.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  37. Re: is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdo by Reverend+Green · · Score: 1

    It's not a conspiracy, it's an observation.

    If you believe information warfare is not happening on many fronts today, you're either dense or (more likely) willfully ignorant.

  38. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Um, no. Finding evidence on people who broke the law and convicting them is normally considered a good thing. Nobody's talking about censoring the press.

    You don't know what Mueller is finding out. Neither do I. The fact that some top Republicans are bad-mouthing the investigation and trying to make it look illegitimate is suspicious. The fact that you're already predicting what Mueller will find with certainty is also suspicious.

    If the President needs to be investigated, by all means let's investigate him or her. It's possible to do that without interfering with the duties of the office. If anybody is above the law, we need to fix that as fast as possible.

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  39. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    Baha, the free press is remarkably incurious about the biggest political scandal since Watergate. Why isn't it on every front page? Because the media is a partisan force on the Democrats' side.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  40. Re: is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdo by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    LOL blame the dirty foreigners. OK man. Sure. Keep fighting those imaginary commies in your head. Be sure to check under your bed for commies before going to sleep. They could be anywhere. And we used to ridicule right wingers for this exact same thing! LOL

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  41. Re: is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdo by Reverend+Green · · Score: 1

    Good morning, Agent Smith! How's the weather in Fort Meade today?

    Btw, in case you didn't notice it broham, *you* are the only one talking about dirty foreigners.

  42. Re: is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdo by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    Those Russians did everything! War with Russia now! Impeach Trump! Resistance!.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  43. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    What political scandal would that be? You appear to be saying that there is a very large Democratic political scandal, but I have failed to find one. Could you be more specific?

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  44. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    You didn't notice that the DNC rigged the primary to put up literally the only person in the US who could lose against Donald Trump? Because the primary was rigged. But we're talking about the *other* very large Democratic political scandal, 50 times bigger than Watergate.

    The Obama Administration spied on the Trump campaign without any evidence to do so.

    The information used to justify spying was from a dossier and the dossier came from the Russians and the Clinton campaign.

    There was no basis for a legitimate investigation into alleged collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians. The only basis was a smear job created by Hillary Clinton political operatives.

    Why's this a surprise? What media have you been watching? Have you been spoonfed fake news? This video highlights the key points surrounding how the DOJ and FBI put together a FISA Court application to conduct surveillance on political opposition: Where are they? Where are the Woodwards and Bernsteins? Where is Seymour Hersh on the current scandal? See here for a comparison with Watergate. The investigative reporters are nowhere, and their general attitude seems to be that they need to defend governmental wrongdoing, not uncover it. Liberal and progressive voices are excusing, not airing, the excesses of Obama's DOJ and FBI.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  45. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    The DNC favored the mainstream candidate. I don't think Sanders would have fared any better. No primaries were rigged. Clinton did better in the primaries than she did in the caucus states, which I'd figure would be easier to rig. Clinton got more delegates than Sanders even not counting superdelegates. At least the Democrat nominee wasn't anybody like Trump.

    And then you start going way beyond the evidence. You claim the information used was from a biased dossier. It was used, but apparently used properly. Law enforcement officers and judges have to work with biased information. You don't specify what other information was used.

    The Nunes memo picked through hundreds of pages and couldn't find a smoking gun. That speaks for a high level of FBI professionalism. If Nunes had known that the FBI warrant requests were improper, he could have shown it plainly, but apparently he couldn't. He talks about certain specific things about the Steele dossier that were not in the warrant application, and doesn't say what the application did say about it. He mentions an article that doesn't actually corroborate the dossier, but not that it was supposed to be corroborating it. Nunes had plenty of time and plenty of incentive to come up with some actual misconduct on the part of the FBI, and failed.

    Oh, and Watergate was about the Republicans rigging the Democratic nomination process to put forth the candidate of their choice. It wasn't just about spying on the other campaign, although that happened. Watergate was conducted by people close to the President, not the somewhat independent FBI. Assuming everything you said without supporting evidence was correct, it isn't nearly as bad as Watergate.

    And Trump has strong business ties to Russia, which I don't believe he divested from, and lots of Trump supporters lied about talking to the Russians. I find that suspicious.

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  46. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    Steele was fired in September 2016 for being unreliable, his information was used in October 2016 to get a FISA warrant without the judge being told the source was fired for being unreliable.

    What's it called when you use fake information and lie to a judge to get a warrant? List who committed the crime this instance:
    James Comey
    Loretta Lynch
    Rosenstein
    Sally Yeats
    Andrew McCabe
    Bruce Ohr

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  47. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    You don't know that, unless you are hacking into the investigation. The Nunes memo said that the warrant application did not say certain specific things about the dossier. IIRC, "source fired for being unreliable" was not in the memo. The Nunes memo did not give any specifics about anything that was in the application, except that the dossier was attributed to a "named individual", whatever that may mean. Nunes supplied no reason to believe the dossier was presented as unbiased.

    Was Steele fired for being unreliable? The FBI terminated their informal relationship with him because he talked too much, according to what I've seen.

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  48. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    I forgot about this thread. Where was I? OK Steele said he'd stay quiet and not talk to the media. Then he talked to the media. Then the FBI fired him. After that, the FBI used his dossier to justify a FISA warrant. Anyway, that's all been out for a while. The new news is that the big indictment didn't find any collusion between the Russians and Trump. Nope. No Russians were indicted for acquiring the DNC emails for WikiLeaks - The original accusation of Russian interference.

    Which one fed more misleading propaganda to voters in the 2016 Presidential election? Russian spies? Or the US mainstream media?

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  49. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    The Russians were involved in trying to affect the 2016 election. That's clear now. The MSM got that right. There will probably be other indictments in Mueller's investigation, so we're going to have to wait and see.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  50. Re:is all legitimate! And no Russians on Slashdot! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    Facebook VP: "The Majority Of Russian Ad Spend Happened AFTER The Election" https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2...

    "many of these ads did not violate our content policies. That means that for most of them, if they had been run by authentic individuals, anywhere, they could have remained on the platform."

    Shouldn't you stop foreigners from meddling in US social issues?

    The right to speak out on global issues that cross borders is an important principle. Organizations such as UNICEF, Oxfam or religious organizations depend on the ability to communicate â" and advertise â" their views in a wide range of countries. While we may not always agree with the positions of those who would speak on issues here, we believe in their right to do so â" just as we believe in the right of Americans to express opinions on issues in other countries.

    - the ads were non-political in nature, and didn't feature or favour a political candidate
    - 56% of the ads were run AFTER the 2016 US federal election
    - 25% of the ads were never displayed to anyone due to Facebook's algorithms not finding them relevant to trending interests
    - only 25% of the ads were geographically-targeted
    - Facebook is not sure that the ads were part of an organized campaign
    - Facebook is not sure that the accounts the ads were purchased with are associated with each other
    - Facebook is not certain that the ads were purchased by Russians
    - many of the ads were not purchased using Russia's currency
    - huge numbers of actual political ads are bought and run on Facebook from all countries around the world, and that is normal and OK
    - the "overwhelming majority" of ad-space purchases from Russia by Russians are normal and not suspicious in any way

    So, after a year of investigations and debunked conspiracy / false claim after debunked conspiracy / false claim, the strongest argument for alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US federal election is $100K of non-political or partisan Facebook ads - more than half of which ran after the election, and a quarter of which never ran at all. That's telling.

    "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge."

    "[There is] no allegation in the indictment of any effect on the outcome of the election."

    -- Rod Rosenstein

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!