Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

Because then it isn't news anymore. It is history, and it's probably better found on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United...

I'm right there with you that "this sort of thing", i.e. deliberately subverting the process of democracy, should be a serious crime on par with treason.

However, can we qualitatively define a line that demarcates "honest communication" from "malicious attempts to change public opinion"? You can't make it a crime to try convince people of things. The basic intent we would like to capture is it should be illegal to lie for political gain, including subtle lies of omission like anonymously pretending on the internet that you're a disinterested bystander. But lying is a very slippery concept to legally define (as is "political gain").

I try to shy away from politics on this website but I can't shake this nagging feeling that this says something important about the current state of the US and the world. I am not a US citizen nor a resident, nor am I a Russian citizen or resident, so my opinions are absolutely subjective.

I feel like whenever an external agent such as Russia opens up the troll farms, the US gets all up in arms about the threat to democracy and how its poor country is under assault by the big bad meanies sending their virtual gargoyles to pray on its innocent citizens and influence their voting habits and put whoever they want in charge of the country and oh woe me, while they are doing it to their own citizens!

I don't hear Russia on the world stage as vocal about it as the US, if anything I'm hearing a lot more pragmatic (not something everyone agrees with) geopolitical discussion coming from that side, and I don't hear about them actively targeting their own citizens in "psyops" with the same fervor as the US.

Of course, this could mean that the press is free in the US and totally controlled in Russia so of course we hear only one side of the story, but I have this nagging feeling that whereas Russian government is actively and directly sabotaging its citizens, the US is engaged in far more psychologically dangerous activities targeting its state of being, and that the most damage is done by internal forces, not by external baddies.

I dunno, might be totally off, who knows...

Because there are new developments in the case, sadly persisting the perversion.

Context: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/why-ajit-pais-un...

I am also not a resident of these countries but I also don't think you are that far off. Noam Chomsky talked about this[1] a long time ago. Lies of omission etc are more common in "free" societies. My own view of this is that if you are only presented one side of the story, you are not really free as you are not making an informed choice. Sadly, it is widely accepted everywhere ( even in "liberal" societies ) that certain elites should define what is good and bad and then present it to us in an absolute manner, through deception, if necessary.

[1]https://youtu.be/kusAX4Th4N8