Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 171 posts

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#151

Post by tim333 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #80
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as America would like to think their laws apply across the globe, they don't actually have jurisdiction over you. There's nothing they can do to prevent you from talking about the campaign. They do have jurisdiction over the candidate and campaign you endorse, though. If you contacted your candidate and offered them money or services in the hope that they could use your help to get elected, and they accepted…

> As much as America would like to think their laws apply across the globe, they don't actually have jurisdiction over you. You might want to check with Humberto Álvarez-Machaín (acquitted, sure, but not because the law didn't apply to him) or Manuel Noriega about that.

Or Howard Marks in the book Mr Nice tells a bit about his thinking the US had no power over him and then, oops.

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#152

Post by bitJericho »

0xbear wrote: post #95
Retric wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia does not have actual meaningful elections. That's a fairly fundamental difference.

Neither does the US really, in the sense that no matter who wins, you lose.

It's true. You can only win an election with piles of money. With gerrymandering and lying. The US government is a train wreck

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#153

Post by paulddraper »

jonknee wrote: post #88
ThomPete wrote: post #78

"Facebook officials reported that they traced the ad sales, totaling $100,000, to a Russian “troll farm” with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda, these people said." Excuse my ignorance but isn't $100K chicken feed?

That’s what Facebook self reported that it discovered, not necessarily the whole operation. It’s also direct evidence of non-hacking related attempts to influence the election. Furthermore, considering there is a criminal investigation going on over whether or not the Trump campaigned colluded with Russia on such activities, the dollar amount is pretty meaningless.

> criminal investigation going on over whether or not the Trump campaigned colluded with Russia

It is technically a criminal investigation, though colluding with Russia would not be a crime.

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#154

Post by tim333 »

mirimir wrote: post #138
klenwell wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This New Yorker article from March provides a lot of background on Russia's "Hybrid War" strategy and its motivations: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-an... Reading that article left me pretty slack-jawed. It cites a 2013 article, "The Value of Science in Prediction", by Chief of General Staff of Russian Federated Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov as a canonical text behind the Russian election…

Yes, it was that New Yorker article that I was remembering. In particular, this bit: > In 1996, during a summit meeting in Moscow, Clinton went for an early-morning run with Talbott in the Sparrow Hills, near Moscow State University. Clinton had known Talbott since they were students at Oxford, and confided his anxiety. He did not regret the expansion of NATO or the decision, at last, to battle Serbian forces in Bosn…

I thought this bit was interesting:

>In 2008,[...] Russian hackers accomplished a feat that Pentagon officials considered almost impossible: breaching a classified network that wasn’t even connected to the public Internet. Apparently, Russian spies had supplied cheap thumb drives, stocked with viruses, to retail kiosks near nato headquarters in Kabul, betting, correctly, that a U.S. serviceman or woman would buy one and insert it into a secure computer.

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#155

Post by Sommersonn »

mirimir wrote: post #137
meri_dian wrote: post #90

I implore everyone alarmed by recent Russian assaults on Western Democratic institutions to get their hands on an English translation of 'The Foundations of Geopolitics' by Aleksandr Dugin. Dugin is a Russian academic and the book is essentially a textbook on how Russia should seek to subvert and destabilize Europe, the US and other Russian rivals in order to forge a new empire for the explicit purpose of ethnic Russ…

The US "won" the Cold War by bankrupting the former Soviet Union. And then they humiliated its leadership. Putin was Yeltsin's protégé, and watched him dying of alcoholism. He's still angry. And remember, much of his family died in the siege of Leningrad. So, yes. They have a plan.

Putin is angry because Yeltsin died from alcohol? What US has to do with it? Or with the fact that Putin's family died in the siege (which was USSR faut, by the way, since they've friended Hitler in 1939)?

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#156

Post by Sommersonn »

raquo wrote: post #47
spaceseaman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> virtually never mentioned I (anecdotally) hear this tidbit in every comments section relating to Russia's involvement in the U.S. election. Almost as if it's a common talking point. Reminds me a lot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism EDIT: ... And so a conversation was effectively derailed and nothing was gained. Arguing about the validity of Whataboutism or who is doing it isn't the point. It's a deflec…

It's the line that Putin and Lavrov (foreign minister) have been pushing since forever: "you westerners are no better than us, stop shaming us for the shady things that we do". That's an easy way to keep your population happy – tell them that life is no better in other countries. Corruption is everywhere, police state is everywhere, etc. And most Russians believe that.

There's a definition for that: "reverse cargo cult". Russians are told to believe that Westerners build their planes from branches and dirt too - but Westerners pretend better.

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#157

Post by Balgair »

klenwell wrote: post #108
meri_dian wrote: post #90

I implore everyone alarmed by recent Russian assaults on Western Democratic institutions to get their hands on an English translation of 'The Foundations of Geopolitics' by Aleksandr Dugin. Dugin is a Russian academic and the book is essentially a textbook on how Russia should seek to subvert and destabilize Europe, the US and other Russian rivals in order to forge a new empire for the explicit purpose of ethnic Russ…

This New Yorker article from March provides a lot of background on Russia's "Hybrid War" strategy and its motivations: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-an... Reading that article left me pretty slack-jawed. It cites a 2013 article, "The Value of Science in Prediction", by Chief of General Staff of Russian Federated Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov as a canonical text behind the Russian election…

Where is a good place to learn about these things in the future. I'm a bit floored by all this but want to keep tabs on it all too.

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#158

Post by dragonwriter »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #124
dragonwriter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can't logically be the foreign nationals who are attempting to help a campaign. They're not under the jurisdiction of US federal law. Criminal violations of US laws whose prohibition is not expressly territorially restricted that occur outside of the US are successfully prosecuted in US courts with some frequency. Bringing people before the court for prosecution may be challenging where extradition isn't an opti…

In this this hypothetical scenario though it's not even a "person" providing the funds, but a foreign government organization. A US court can't "fine or imprison" the Communist Party of China, or the Russian GRU, for example.

A US court can fine or imprison any of the individual people who comprise, direct as superiors, or act on the direction of those abstract entities that the US executive branch arranges, by whatever means (which, again, have historically included both foreign kidnapping and outright invasion) to bring before the court. Vladimir Putin is obviously, as a practical matter, much safer from that than Manuel Noriega was, but lower level individuals may not be so much.

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#159

Post by spaceflunky »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #64
chvid wrote: post #39

In the context of the 2016 election 100.000 usd is a tiny amount.

In the context of web ads it's not insignificant.

If you can sway a US presidential election from 99% chance of losing, to winning, using only a $100k ad budget. Maybe you deserve to be in power...

Re: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

#160

Post by mirimir »

tim333 wrote: post #154
mirimir wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it was that New Yorker article that I was remembering. In particular, this bit: > In 1996, during a summit meeting in Moscow, Clinton went for an early-morning run with Talbott in the Sparrow Hills, near Moscow State University. Clinton had known Talbott since they were students at Oxford, and confided his anxiety. He did not regret the expansion of NATO or the decision, at last, to battle Serbian forces in Bosn…

I thought this bit was interesting: >In 2008,[...] Russian hackers accomplished a feat that Pentagon officials considered almost impossible: breaching a classified network that wasn’t even connected to the public Internet. Apparently, Russian spies had supplied cheap thumb drives, stocked with viruses, to retail kiosks near nato headquarters in Kabul, betting, correctly, that a U.S. serviceman or woman would buy one…

That's interesting. Stuxnet used a very similar strategy. It was identified in 2010, but could have been in use earlier. So I wonder if the Americans/Israelis got the idea from the Russians, or vice versa. Or maybe they both got the idea from malware hackers. Or employed them ;) Maybe even the same malware hackers. That'd be a trip!
Post reply on HN