How to Hack an Election
bloomberg.com
How to Hack an Election
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Re: How to Hack an Election
#2> He also splurged on the very best fake Twitter profiles; they’d been maintained for at least a year, giving them a patina of believability.
> Sepúlveda managed thousands of such fake profiles and used the accounts to shape discussion around topics such as Peña Nieto’s plan to end drug violence, priming the social media pump with views that real users would mimic. For less nuanced work, he had a larger army of 30,000 Twitter bots, automatic posters that could create trends. One conversation he started stoked fear that the more López Obrador rose in the polls, the lower the peso would sink. Sepúlveda knew the currency issue was a major vulnerability; he’d read it in the candidate’s own internal staff memos.
I've been wondering when more sophisticated Twitter sockpuppetry would start having an impact. The media seems generally unprepared for a coordinated campaign of fake tweets from accounts that don't have eggs as their avatar or #freeiphones in their profiles...I don't mean just the trend of "Hey 3 people said something on Twitter so it's a story", but that there's also not enough skepticism paired with efficient ways for sniffing out fakery on social media. I hadn't thought about the problem of a mass army of bots suddenly creating a trending tag.
It reminds me of "The Agency", a story published last year investigating how Russian operatives allegedly used human-controlled Twitter spamming to try to publicize a fake story of a Louisiana chemical plant explosion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_...
But as sophisticated as that sockpuppet campaign was...it was obviously destined to fail by the fact that an exploding chemical plant is fairly easy to confirm as true or false in real life. Trending opinions about politics don't offer such binary ways of filtering.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#3> He also splurged on the very best fake Twitter profiles; they’d been maintained for at least a year, giving them a patina of believability. > Sepúlveda managed thousands of such fake profiles and used the accounts to shape discussion around topics such as Peña Nieto’s plan to end drug violence, priming the social media pump with views that real users would mimic. For less nuanced work, he had a larger army of 30,00…
Propaganda takes time. Often the most effective stuff happens when you aren't even aware of it. You progress through your regular life and encounter regular things. People bitch on the internet about stupid stuff with the occasional decent argument, and nothing looks out of the ordinary. You see laughable arguments about politicians with hints of truth, or intrude, but maybe you ignore it.
After a while you see more arguments along the same line of reasoning, but with more data and less vitriol. You find yourself agreeing more, even if you like the person being disparaged. You may even come around to accept a side of an argument you didn't think much about before.
This is how minds are turned. First the trolls and bots do as they do. Some people catch a whiff and continue the trend. Sometimes as a joke, other times seriously. Even those who pretend to be joking will not long be indistinguishable from the fools who think they are in good company.
Propaganda is not a tidal wave that comes crashing down on established opinions, it is a steady stream that eats at solid rock until it creates a deep gorge you could not have imagined structured in any other way.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#4This shouldn't be a surprise: I think most HN members know that it's possible; we know that the rewards (incredible power, status, and everything you can get with them includig the spoils of office) are worth the investment (only $600K for this solution!); we know that there are many people, including politicians, unsavory enough to do it.
The question is, why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking gun?
Consider the U.S. presidential election: The outcome is worth billions each to very many parties worldwide; it's existential to some foreign governments and actors; many in the U.S. have very powerful ideological motives. How much would it cost to hack voting machines? It seems very likely to me that it's happening, though I don't know where or to what extent.
I know I'm not the first to point out this risk, but why should we assume that the reported vote count represents the actual vote? Becasue there is no smoking gun yet? That's like assuming your critical network hasn't been hacked, and doing nothing to protect it, because you haven't seen evidence of an attack yet.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#5> He also splurged on the very best fake Twitter profiles; they’d been maintained for at least a year, giving them a patina of believability. > Sepúlveda managed thousands of such fake profiles and used the accounts to shape discussion around topics such as Peña Nieto’s plan to end drug violence, priming the social media pump with views that real users would mimic. For less nuanced work, he had a larger army of 30,00…
> The media seems generally unprepared for a coordinated campaign of fake tweets from accounts that don't have eggs as their avatar or #freeiphones in their profiles.
Why should they care? The purpose of a news business is to make money. If it works, then it works.
I think the real problem here is the incentive structure for a modern news business, as well as the network effects of sharing, links, etc.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#6Ugh. I don't know if the particular people involved here are telling the truth, but I basically know that something like this must be happening, given the incentives involved. Dispiriting, I have to say, since it would be hard to beat this sort of thing without becoming what you're fighting against.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#7Ugh. I don't know if the particular people involved here are telling the truth, but I basically know that something like this must be happening, given the incentives involved. Dispiriting, I have to say, since it would be hard to beat this sort of thing without becoming what you're fighting against.
Also, at the end there when they implied that HRC is hiring Rendon for the general election, did anyone else find themselves thinking that this whole story could be a manipulative plant of the very sort they were discussing? Not that I think HRC is above this sort of thing.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#8This shouldn't be a surprise: I think most HN members know that it's possible; we know that the rewards (incredible power, status, and everything you can get with them includig the spoils of office) are worth the investment (only $600K for this solution!); we know that there are many people, including politicians, unsavory enough to do it. The question is, why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking…
It is happening in the US and in plain sight--yet its citizens don't seem to care.
Eg. Gerrymandering, drastically reducing voting stations (see AZ), goofy voter registration law changes. These issues don't occur in other mature democracies.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#9> He also splurged on the very best fake Twitter profiles; they’d been maintained for at least a year, giving them a patina of believability. > Sepúlveda managed thousands of such fake profiles and used the accounts to shape discussion around topics such as Peña Nieto’s plan to end drug violence, priming the social media pump with views that real users would mimic. For less nuanced work, he had a larger army of 30,00…
> The media seems generally unprepared for a coordinated campaign of fake tweets from accounts that don't have eggs as their avatar or #freeiphones in their profiles. Why should they care? The purpose of a news business is to make money. If it works, then it works. I think the real problem here is the incentive structure for a modern news business, as well as the network effects of sharing, links, etc.
Even assuming maximum cynicism, they should care about losing trust (and therefore future business) when it's shown they've spread fake news.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#10> He also splurged on the very best fake Twitter profiles; they’d been maintained for at least a year, giving them a patina of believability. > Sepúlveda managed thousands of such fake profiles and used the accounts to shape discussion around topics such as Peña Nieto’s plan to end drug violence, priming the social media pump with views that real users would mimic. For less nuanced work, he had a larger army of 30,00…
The media are often... how should I say it... a tad behind the times in regards to how the internet works and how it can be exploited. For example, note all the media coverage a year or two ago about 'fake reviews' on sites like Amazon and Yelp. These have been widespread since both sites begun, yet were pretty well ignored by the media for most of that.
Or the comments and articles about Reddit's launch. Apparently, the idea that someone could use fake users to start a community shocked a few unwary people (and journalists). Despite this being a forum building tactic since the internet begun, and a business tactic (to some degree) for decades or centuries.
Or heck, the 'trolling' and harassment stuff about Twitter and social networks. Old tactics and behaviour, but seemingly not known by the mainstream media till it affected sites their journalists used.
Really, the media is unprepared for a lot of stuff, since they're about two decades behind when it comes to knowing how technology and culture works.
As for when sophisticated Twitter sockpuppetry would start having an impact? It might well already be having one. I mean, similar stuff is endemic on Russian language forums and sites, and hey, governments have access to these techniques and useful software to help carry them out...