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Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

#41

Post by hellbanner »

Harimwakairi wrote: post #36
tynpeddler wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down. We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.

> the outrage needs to be kept down No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.

You're American (USA)? How often do you get outraged about your country's government interfering with OTHER country's elections?

Re: Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

#42

Post by synicalx »

Harimwakairi wrote: post #36
tynpeddler wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down. We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.

> the outrage needs to be kept down No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.

Would you be equally outraged if your country interfered with someone else's elections?

Re: Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

#43

Post by kbenson »

VickBear wrote: post #6

Main questions and comments that strike me when I see the $100,000 amount is: With Clinton spending $141.7 million and Trump spending $58.8 million on advertising, does that miniscule amount even matter? What was even the CTR with those advertisements? Is there even anything wrong with any country or person(s) doing that or trying to do that since we already have Super PACs and lobbyists? I have more thoughts that ar…

I believe the number of voters in key districts needed to swing the electoral college to Clinton was in the tens of thousands. If it was targeted perfectly (which of course is impossible), that's almost two dollars a person that needed to be influenced. How many Facebook ads impressions does that buy per person? While I think it's unlikely that anyone could have accurately targeted to that degree, it does put into perspective just how important targeted advertising might be to something like this.

Additionally (and I think more likely), the advertising might have been been used more as an agitation device, and to reduce the trust in traditional information through highly effective misinformation. If you can start viral memes, it doesn't matter how many impressions you paid for, what's important is how far the meme spreads in the end. A single shared article can lead to tens of millions of views and re-shares. In this case, money is purely a way to help get critical mass for your specially crafted meme, so it doesn't necessarily compare to candidate spending directly, which needs to both educate and counteract opponent messaging. Targeted disinformation can just ignore failed meme campaigns and counteractions to them and move onto the next meme, since it's effectively anonymous.

1: https://medium.com/@hoffa/hillary-only-needed-to-switch-53-6...

Re: Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

#44

Post by beager »

PathToHumble wrote: post #28

This started as "Russia hacked the election" and now we are talking about Russia taking out ads in support of BLM claiming its a psyop? At what point do people just accept the fact that Trump won a democratic election, racists voting or not. The actual campaigns took out billions of $ in ads and campaign ads are never honest, accurate or logical. Who cares about $100k in Russian ads?

Those are not the same things. There is an unfolding story about employment of paid and farmed action on social platforms by Russia to influence the election, but also an unfolding story about attempts to infiltrate state voting systems and voter rolls. The nexus of the two is in how users were targeted for the former using data potentially taken from the latter.

It was pretty clear, even for the sensationalized media and sensationalizable public, that Russia did not "hack" the election and that no votes were altered, etc. But now it turns out, hey, there were actually successful penetrations of state voting systems, and at present we are not sure of the extent.

So while the initial "Russia hacked the US election" line was quickly redrawn to be precise about what we knew, it turns out now that there's a reasonable possibility that Russia actually did hack our election. To what extent or effect? Yet unknown.

Re: Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

#46

Post by 0x445442 »

Harimwakairi wrote: post #36
tynpeddler wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down. We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.

> the outrage needs to be kept down No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.

I'd suggest you redirect some of that outrage toward Isreal as they have much more influence over our elections and policies than Russia does.

Re: Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

#47

Post by mythrwy »

I find it hard to believe anyone susceptible to having opinions on BLM or Muslims would be measurably influenced by an ad on facebook.

Maybe that's why they only spent 100K. A similar op by Western intelligence services would cost what... maybe 10 million? 100K in ads, 9.9 million for contractors and mid level management bureaucrats.

Re: Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

#48

Post by tynpeddler »

Harimwakairi wrote: post #36
tynpeddler wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down. We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.

> the outrage needs to be kept down No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.

I'm outraged that the Russian's attempted to influence the election, but I'm not outraged that the Russians 'stole' the election for Trump because there's no proof of that yet. Many of the articles I've read on this topic just today (from CNN,BI and WaPo) seem to take it as a forgone conclusion that this paltry amount of money means that the Russians interfered with the election in a way that amounts to a political crisis.

Bush and Obama both had bogus crisis whipped up in an attempt to delegitimize their elections. This is an incredibly dangerous pattern in a democracy and one that I'm not really excited to see repeated again.

Re: Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

#49

Post by Gargoyle »

mythrwy wrote: post #47

I find it hard to believe anyone susceptible to having opinions on BLM or Muslims would be measurably influenced by an ad on facebook. Maybe that's why they only spent 100K. A similar op by Western intelligence services would cost what... maybe 10 million? 100K in ads, 9.9 million for contractors and mid level management bureaucrats.

You're downvoted, but this has been exactly my thought all along. The people who saw these ads weren't going the other way anyway.

Re: Russia used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter, Muslims

#50

Post by lern_too_spel »

synicalx wrote: post #42
Harimwakairi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the outrage needs to be kept down No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.

Would you be equally outraged if your country interfered with someone else's elections?

Not necessarily. They are doing so on my behalf. I would be outraged if somebody punched me with what I perceive as poor reason, but I would not be outraged if I punched somebody with good reason.

There are times when the US has meddled in other countries' affairs that I don't agree with, but there are others, like covertly slowing nuclear proliferation, that I do agree with.

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