All images of the Facebook ads Russians purchased during the election • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by Nydhal » Sat, May 12, 2018, 1:15 AM UTC

jbuzbee wrote: post #14

The wording on many of these ads is odd. In hindsight they are clearly written by a non-native english writer, but perhaps the Facebook audience is used to awkward writing by their peers?

This is an indicator of a large scale operation. Scaling an operation entails a degree of tolerance to the degradation in the quality of the product, especially when the marginal benefit from quantity significantly exceeds that of quality.

Cyber space is a high leverage domain which rules out the possibility of a shortage in resources from the opponent. It is also a recent evolving space which makes it more difficult to assess the opponents capabilities, reach and sophistication.

By its nature this operation seems to be part of a bigger destabilisation strategy, maybe a stress test to validate different tactics.

I would be really worried once the ads become well written which would increase the complexity of the situation since quality measures can be manipulated.

In other words once they can fake "fake news", things might get really weird.

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

#82

Post by 205guy » Sat, May 12, 2018, 1:19 AM UTC

eric_h wrote: post #60

This is really a pretty fascinating example of psyops in the wild. Propaganda for both "tribes" assembled in opposition over various issues in order to sow more division between them. Imagery clearly designed to influence with emotion, twisting the dials of fear, anger and pride in the audience. The power to disseminate information (or disinformation) is not one that should be taken lightly. It seems that most of the…

To take the analogy further, if education in its various forms represent the patches, they have been MITM'd, compromised, and sold on the dark web. This seems to be the achilles heel of a consumer culture: it's also in the corporate interests to have weak education and psychologically compromised consumers.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 12, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

mlb_hn wrote: post #11

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…

To clear up your question, I believe it was Facebook that identified the ads as being of Russian origin and specifically purchased by Internet Research Agency (and then provided to Congress)

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by dingo_bat » Sat, May 12, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

newsat13 wrote: post #29

That was anti-climatic. How exactly did these ads sway the election? In fact, many of them are pro-gay and have liberal idea.

Thinking that these Facebook ads influenced the election in any meaningful way is dumb, let alone swaying it in a desired direction.

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

#85

Post by mythrwy » Sat, May 12, 2018, 1:42 AM UTC

Is it just me or does Q3 2017 have the same ad 5 out of 8 times?

Also is it just me or does the domain "documentingreality.com" sound like it's probably going to document something else.

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

#86

Post by mistermann » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:02 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #49

RIMR wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 politic…

How do you know so much about this person, are you aquaintances in real life?

-2? What is happening to this website?

"This, in the end, just illustrates the point that repeating misinformation constantly will convince people that it is the truth."

"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."

These "observations" are in fact 100% imagined.

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

#87

Post by Natsu » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

slipperymate wrote: post #52

RIMR wrote: post #24

Does anybody have a source that isn't a gore site? With that said: Do not visit the root domain if you don't like seeing lots of mutilated dead people.

https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/facebook-ads/social...

I found this imgur album easier to read than individual PDFs:

https://imgur.com/a/ZjQ3PLS

The WaPo also has them sorted by popularity:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/t...

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

#88

Post by Natsu » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #6

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…

The goal was to sow division, disrupt the entire process, and in the chaos their preferred candidate could thrive.

I dunno, I've seen a lot of ordinary Americans sow more division than images like these would:

https://imgur.com/a/ZjQ3PLS

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

#89

Post by ripdog » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

rubycowgames wrote: post #27

Would be great if FB released the audience targeting data associated with these images. Context and audience matters when it comes to advertising.

See the WaPo post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/t...

Each image includes some targeting info.

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

#90

Post by jancsika » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

eric_h wrote: post #60

This is really a pretty fascinating example of psyops in the wild. Propaganda for both "tribes" assembled in opposition over various issues in order to sow more division between them. Imagery clearly designed to influence with emotion, twisting the dials of fear, anger and pride in the audience. The power to disseminate information (or disinformation) is not one that should be taken lightly. It seems that most of the…

> It seems that most of the human race was deployed to production with a pretty critical RCE vulnerability, and the patches available (education in its various forms) do not appear to be sufficient to protect the whole system from corruption.

I don't get what education has to do with it.

HN is a forum full of hyper-educated users, but it still greys out downvoted comments by default. I don't think the reason for that is because it makes it slightly more convenient to read comments. I think the reason is because it lowers the probability that hyper-educated users get irritated and end up expending energy responding to low-effort comments.