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All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election

documentingreality.com

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Re: All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election

#31

Post by RIMR »

johnpowell wrote: post #16
jonpon wrote: post #9

I see a bunch of the pictures they advertised organized events. How did that work if these ads and supposedly pages were run by Russians? Were those events real? Who showed up? Who organized the protest on the ground?

Yes.. People showed up and got fighty. And this is a tiny blip compared to hacking into the DNC's email servers. I see a lot of these ads are stupid and people totally think that was all there was. The ads were the part of the iceberg you can see.

Yeah, the ads were just the content they paid for. This doesn't take into account all the sockpuppet accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit that were designed to swing conversations in the direction they wanted them to go.

Also, link aggregator sites (like our very own HN) are susceptible to vote manipulation, which can promote the content the attackers want, and demote the content they don't want.

These ads were just to rope people in. You can see that "Black Matters" has 200k+ members. Those are people who are now getting information directly from the Kremlin on their feeds now.

Re: All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election

#32

Post by Sharlin »

lucb1e wrote: post #3

> These are images of the Facebook ads the Russians purchased to try and alter the 2016 U.S. Election. These were released from Congress And what does congress base this on? Looking through a bunch, they don't seem to favor either Hillary or Donald... is it supposed to prove that the elections weren't tampered with? Or am I missing something? Edit: managed to find one! Against Donald: https://www.documentingreality.c…

Eh, of course these aren't even supposed to directly champion one or the other. Their point is clearly to amplify the existing "us vs. them" mentality, make people even more entrenched, and to encourage the thinking on both sides that the other side is out to get them. Classic divide and conquer.

Re: All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election

#35

Post by sigmar »

lucb1e wrote: post #3

> These are images of the Facebook ads the Russians purchased to try and alter the 2016 U.S. Election. These were released from Congress And what does congress base this on? Looking through a bunch, they don't seem to favor either Hillary or Donald... is it supposed to prove that the elections weren't tampered with? Or am I missing something? Edit: managed to find one! Against Donald: https://www.documentingreality.c…

>And what does congress base this on?

They were created and promoted by the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory run by the Russian government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

Re: All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election

#37

Post by Sharlin »

minitel wrote: post #4
mieseratte wrote: post #2

Having seen my fair share of vitriolic content during the past election cycle, most of these images honestly seem quiet tame.

I think the point is that they pander to both sides of any argument to increase the divide and lessen the chances of society making a sane compromise. Much more effective than just spewing insanity and hyperbole. Extreme progressives would destabilize the country by setting up structural racism and sexism in order to achieve "equity", dissolving borders, gutting the police, and over taxing companies. Extreme rightist…

Yeah. This is subtle manipulation; I guess Americans are accustomed to loud yelling and namecalling.

Re: All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election

#38

Post by RIMR »

Cowicide wrote: post #13
zerostar07 wrote: post #12

i wonder if this release is going to be the turning point for the current facebook anti-hype cycle? the ads don't paint such a horrible picture as it was supposed to be.

Yep, a picture of SpongeBob made me vote for Bernie instead of Hillary. Had nothing to do with her record or anything.

You're trying to make a psychological argument against a sociological effect.

No, a single Spongebob meme didn't sway your vote. This is obvious.

But hundreds of thousands little manipulations of social media did have ripple effects throughout existing communities, and created a more divisive political atmosphere that absolutely could sway peoples votes.

For example: Hillary doesn't really have all that bad a political history. She wasn't a great candidate, but she also wasn't the "Killary" character right-wing media portrays her as. You, however, think that "her record" is self-explanatory, because you keep hearing people talk about her as if she were the antichrist.

I would be curious to hear about "her record" from you, but I suspect you're just going to bring up Benghazi, Uranium One, her e-mails, or maybe even Pizzagate to explain why she was unelectable. This, in the end, just illustrates the point that repeating misinformation constantly will convince people that it is the truth.

At the end of the day, propaganda divided the DNC into two camps and turn those camps against each other, destroying any sense of unity during the election. You chose a side, it ended up being the losing side, and the whole debacle likely cost the Democrats the White House, yet you're still unable to see that you were played.

Re: All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election

#39

Post by richsherwood »

ithilglin909 wrote: post #25

I’m sincerely at a loss for how most/many of these could have influenced the election. Part of me think that Congress is making mistakes and Putin is scrolling through these, laughing hysterically that we actually think he’d pay for this nonsense.

Most of these pages won’t be so forthcoming in their desire to influence. The idea for these ads is to pay for reach and credibility. Send it out there and hope that it goes viral. After which you’ve gathered a whole new army of people who have liked your seemingly innocent page. After that it’s just a matter controlling the tone on that page using bots to create a false narrative. As humans, we are so used to be told what to do that it becomes easy to follow the general flow of your social circle. If everybody you hang out with hates one politician, then the chances that you’re also going to hate that politician is high. So by creating pockets of people who are all there on the page because they have something in common, you can control it and therefore controlling the direction of their thoughts by manipulating their peer circles.

Re: All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election

#40

Post by detuur »

stefan_ wrote: post #19
minitel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that they pander to both sides of any argument to increase the divide and lessen the chances of society making a sane compromise. Much more effective than just spewing insanity and hyperbole. Extreme progressives would destabilize the country by setting up structural racism and sexism in order to achieve "equity", dissolving borders, gutting the police, and over taxing companies. Extreme rightist…

Nothing could ever make compromise more unlikely than a winner take all voting system that has then predictably created exactly two parties whose followers again following the incentives rarely have an original though beyond "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

Worse yet: "the opposite policy of my enemy is my policy". We're seeing situations on both sides where people are taking positions in arguments solely because it's the opposite position of their opponents. Because taking any less than the polar opposite position would be seen as "going soft on them" by their electorate. It's a total shitshow.
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