thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Nov 6, 2017 18:25:05 GMT -5
Do you feel the same way about the Hillary-Russia investigation? I haven't been following it closely. Yesterday I read a conspiracy theory that the Uranium One rumblings, followed by the Wienstein scandal, followed by Donna Brazile's book release in rapid succession were an attempt to "put a stake through Hillary Clinton's heart" in response to her reporting she'll run again in 2020 "if the people want her to". She didn't say that. Did she?
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 6, 2017 19:28:03 GMT -5
You call it "Russian content", but it's content that originated in thousands of places that resembles the content in the psy-op. 99.999% of the content would still have circulated had Russia sat on the sidelines. If you believe Ms. Clinton's health wouldn't have been called into question, immigration would have been a back-burner issue, and BLM wouldn't have dominated news headlines without the Russians, beam me up. The war for people's attention on the Internet is a multi-billion-dollar war employing millions of skilled marketers, designers, analysts, bloggers, journalists, and pundits. The idea that the Russian op was so phenomenally well designed that it made a meaningful impact among a sea of competitors literally millions of times its size is the fantasy to end all fantasies. I know it's what the media wants you to believe, but they have their own agenda, as you well know. Tell that to the posters who posted sample Russian ads. One was a "Hillary is Satan" meme. One was a Bernie Sanders colouring book. I'm not laughing at it, and I'm not claiming it has no impact whatsoever. I'm claiming its impact is closely related to its seed magnitude, which is proportional to its cost and man hours invested. Both are negligible in the great miasma of Internet content that surrounded the 2016 election. The "lecture" you're talking about was this thread, and my grievance was with you (and others) was that you were treating Facebook manipulation (see here) as something you were immune to. Note that I concern myself with the scale of search engine and social media manipulation, and its effectiveness. I also acknowledge that Mr. Zuckerberg, whose power over Facebook content dwarfs Russia's by many orders of magnitude, has the right to manipulate people on the platform he's built. Again I emphasize that I'm not dismissing propaganda and foreign psy-ops as ineffectual. I'm emphasizing perspective. The amount of attention being paid by the media to this Russian op is absurdly disproportionate to its impact. It's like blaming a single drop of water when a child drowns in a bathtub. You spent a lot of time explaining to me how Facebook manipulation warps people's perspectives. You're right. You can't now pretend that, yes, it does warp what people think, but in this case, the fact that 126 million American voters saw propaganda generated by the Russian government for the sole purpose of interfering with our election process 'is absurdly disproportionate to it's impact.' Indeed, absurdly disproportionate to its impact. Some hard numbers for you: Here is the math - the Russians supposedly created 80,000 pieces of content. Now, as WaPo explains, for Facebook, which places roughly 220 posts each day in the news feeds of U.S. users, the amount of content equals a tiny fraction of total content served. How tiny? Americans in total were served over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds between 2015 and 2017. In this context, those 80,000 Russian posts appear... modest.
Which is precisely what Facebook will say tomorrow in its defense. Quote the WSJ: In his testimony, Mr. Stretch plans to say that “any amount” of fake or malicious activity is “too much,” while at the same time playing down its importance, according to the prepared remarks. Mr. Stretch plans to argue that these posts were a small fraction of the content consumed by Americans during this period—0.004% of posts, or one out of 23,000 pieces of content. Note also (ibid.): Facebook revealed that some 470 alleged Russian troll accounts had paid Facebook a whopping $100,000 to purchase 3,000 advertisements potentially influencing the outcome of the election (even though many of the ads "showed support for Clinton" and only half ran before the actual election). The furore [sic] did not last long: gradually the story fizzled, before becoming a watercooler joke that Russia had managed to buy the outcome of the US presidential election for a whopping 100 grand - which would make Vladimir Putin not only a propaganda genius of the highest order, but the best damn advertising mastermind to ever live, generating the highest ad IRR in history. And from here (bold by me): However, the leaks earlier this week revealed that political messages contained in the ads fell across the political spectrum, including ads that were pro- and anti-Black Lives Matter, ads that advocated second-amendment rights, and ads that were pro-life. Lawmakers and media outlets claimed that the ads were meant to "sow dischord" in the US, without explaining exactly how political ad copy that sounds virtually indistinguishable from ads run by other political groups would accomplish this. So, let's summarize: - 0.004% of political content consumed by Americans between Q2 2015 and Q1 2017, with half running after the election
- 0.0102% of Facebook political advertising spending between Q2 2015 and Q1 2017
- ads across the political spectrum
- ads focused on "sowing dischord"
- content indistinguishable from ads run by political groups in the US
- happyhoix asks: "If only a relatively few voters saw the Russian propaganda and it provided extra motivation to either stay home on voting day, or to make sure they did go out and vote, did it impact the election? How can you claim for sure it didn't?"
Answer: It's a statistical impossibility.
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Nov 6, 2017 19:39:46 GMT -5
You spent a lot of time explaining to me how Facebook manipulation warps people's perspectives. You're right. You can't now pretend that, yes, it does warp what people think, but in this case, the fact that 126 million American voters saw propaganda generated by the Russian government for the sole purpose of interfering with our election process 'is absurdly disproportionate to it's impact.' Indeed, absurdly disproportionate to its impact. Some hard numbers for you: Here is the math - the Russians supposedly created 80,000 pieces of content. Now, as WaPo explains, for Facebook, which places roughly 220 posts each day in the news feeds of U.S. users, the amount of content equals a tiny fraction of total content served. How tiny? Americans in total were served over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds between 2015 and 2017. In this context, those 80,000 Russian posts appear... modest.
Which is precisely what Facebook will say tomorrow in its defense. Quote the WSJ: In his testimony, Mr. Stretch plans to say that “any amount” of fake or malicious activity is “too much,” while at the same time playing down its importance, according to the prepared remarks. Mr. Stretch plans to argue that these posts were a small fraction of the content consumed by Americans during this period—0.004% of posts, or one out of 23,000 pieces of content. Note also (ibid.): Facebook revealed that some 470 alleged Russian troll accounts had paid Facebook a whopping $100,000 to purchase 3,000 advertisements potentially influencing the outcome of the election (even though many of the ads "showed support for Clinton" and only half ran before the actual election). ... crap, need to comment inside the quote. Here's some hard reality for you. One, FB is only one avenue of social media. Two, the amount of exposure compared to everything else is not necessarily relevant. Think of the amount of content you've seen all year and the amount of content on say the Las Vegas shooting or even the current church shooting. Notice that it isn't the amount of content that is necessarily important, but the relevance you might attach to that content. My understanding is Twitter and Reddit were also involved. And there's likely stuff we don't even know about such as forwarding all those political emails which seem way too popular for those who lean or fall right of political center. Don't fixate on the numbers, understand relevance is more important. What might stick in your mind. The SNL Moose Lamb was only in one skit, but it sticks in my memory and also made it to several different versions of T-shirts. Memorable content works. Content that plays to your beliefs, works.
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Nov 6, 2017 19:47:20 GMT -5
Measuring the wrong thing will always steer you to an incorrect conclusion. You don't know whether it was effective or not because its hard to do a hindsight experiment. But pretending statistics prove anything notable, is a mistake. Some things need repetition to stick. Others really don't. Three words. Radical Moose Lamb. And remember the big uproar over a Colbert monologue concerning Trump, Putin, and indelicate suggestions? Didn't really need repeating.
ETA: Well that was weird, my paste of the statistical improbability ala Virgil, just didn't post!
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 6, 2017 21:38:18 GMT -5
Measuring the wrong thing will always steer you to an incorrect conclusion. You don't know whether it was effective or not because its hard to do a hindsight experiment. But pretending statistics prove anything notable, is a mistake. Some things need repetition to stick. Others really don't. Three words. Radical Moose Lamb. And remember the big uproar over a Colbert monologue concerning Trump, Putin, and indelicate suggestions? Didn't really need repeating.
ETA: Well that was weird, my paste of the statistical improbability ala Virgil, just didn't post! If you'd prefer to believe Russian posts indistinguishable from American posts were at least 23,000 times as effective as their American counterparts, by all means ignore the numbers. But you should also be utterly terrified. Pres. Putin has the power to do with $100K and 80,000 posts (less than the post count of our top two posters combined) what $1.2 billion in campaign money, $920 million in Facebook ads, 33 trillion political posts, the US MSM, and several million journalists and bloggers couldn't accomplish. The power he wields is unlike any man has ever known. The results of the election should be overturned, Pres. Trump should be jailed, and Ms. Clinton should be installed as the rightful POTUS. Social media should be policed by a newly formed federal Ministry of Truth to ensure no super-propaganda infects political discourse in future. The US should treat the psy-op as an act of war and launch a preemptive strike against Moscow to protect American interests. Americans who voted for Pres. Trump should be required to undergo deprogramming, surrender their firearms, and forfeit their right to vote until 2040 to ensure Russian influence doesn't spread. Some of these measures might seem unreasonable at a glance, but you're dealing with what is essentially a superweapon here if your conclusion is correct. For all our sakes, I hope you're wrong.
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Nov 6, 2017 22:18:25 GMT -5
Measuring the wrong thing will always steer you to an incorrect conclusion. You don't know whether it was effective or not because its hard to do a hindsight experiment. But pretending statistics prove anything notable, is a mistake. Some things need repetition to stick. Others really don't. Three words. Radical Moose Lamb. And remember the big uproar over a Colbert monologue concerning Trump, Putin, and indelicate suggestions? Didn't really need repeating.
ETA: Well that was weird, my paste of the statistical improbability ala Virgil, just didn't post! If you'd prefer to believe Russian posts indistinguishable from American posts were at least 23,000 times as effective as their American counterparts, by all means ignore the numbers. But you should also be utterly terrified. Pres. Putin has the power to do with $100K and 80,000 posts (less than the post count of our top two posters combined) what $1.2 billion in campaign money, $920 million in Facebook ads, 33 trillion political posts, the US MSM, and several million journalists and bloggers couldn't accomplish. The power he wields is unlike any man has ever known. The results of the election should be overturned, Pres. Trump should be jailed, and Ms. Clinton should be installed as the rightful POTUS. Social media should be policed by a newly formed federal Ministry of Truth to ensure no super-propaganda infects political discourse in future. The US should treat the psy-op as an act of war and launch a preemptive strike against Moscow to protect American interests. Americans who voted for Pres. Trump should be required to undergo deprogramming, surrender their firearms, and forfeit their right to vote until 2040 to ensure Russian influence doesn't spread. Some of these measures might seem unreasonable at a glance, but you're dealing with what is essentially a superweapon here if your conclusion is correct. For all our sakes, I hope you're wrong. I might reply to this in full tomorrow or the day after, but I'll jump to the conclusion OMV! Why do you feel its necessary to occupy opposite poles of reason instead of ending up somewhere reasonable and towards the middle?
Again, stop fixating on just the FB numbers you believe you know and look at the big picture. RW bloggers were quite successful at pushing the Hillary is not healthy issue way before her collapse at the memorial. If you want to believe the Russians were less accomplished in their targeted efforts, I can't stop you. Does not mean you are right though.
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Nov 7, 2017 9:51:05 GMT -5
Measuring the wrong thing will always steer you to an incorrect conclusion. You don't know whether it was effective or not because its hard to do a hindsight experiment. But pretending statistics prove anything notable, is a mistake. Some things need repetition to stick. Others really don't. Three words. Radical Moose Lamb. And remember the big uproar over a Colbert monologue concerning Trump, Putin, and indelicate suggestions? Didn't really need repeating.
ETA: Well that was weird, my paste of the statistical improbability ala Virgil, just didn't post! If you'd prefer to believe Russian posts indistinguishable from American posts were at least 23,000 times as effective as their American counterparts, by all means ignore the numbers. But you should also be utterly terrified. Pres. Putin has the power to do with $100K and 80,000 posts (less than the post count of our top two posters combined) what $1.2 billion in campaign money, $920 million in Facebook ads, 33 trillion political posts, the US MSM, and several million journalists and bloggers couldn't accomplish. The power he wields is unlike any man has ever known. The results of the election should be overturned, Pres. Trump should be jailed, and Ms. Clinton should be installed as the rightful POTUS. Social media should be policed by a newly formed federal Ministry of Truth to ensure no super-propaganda infects political discourse in future. The US should treat the psy-op as an act of war and launch a preemptive strike against Moscow to protect American interests. Americans who voted for Pres. Trump should be required to undergo deprogramming, surrender their firearms, and forfeit their right to vote until 2040 to ensure Russian influence doesn't spread. Some of these measures might seem unreasonable at a glance, but you're dealing with what is essentially a superweapon here if your conclusion is correct. For all our sakes, I hope you're wrong. Opt is right, there is no happy medium with you. Putin either threw the election or had zero impact.
It's not possible to measure exactly what impact their interference had on the election. What we can measure is the time and effort Russians put into the task of sowing discord among Americans. Their posts were not necessarily 'Hillary is Satan' - they were much more subtle than that. They made fake BLM accounts and posted things guaranteed to offend right wing whites. They made up fake Texan and Tennessee accounts and sowed them with anti-immigrant posts guaranteed to offend liberals. They created Muslim accounts guaranteed to offend Christians convinced that the Muslims want to impose Shira law here.
Obviously it's not possible how much more fractured all this activity managed to make an already divided and angry country, just as it isn't possible to judge how much it might have influenced the vote, but the fact that it isn't quantifiable isn't really the point. The point is that Russia attacked us using a new and devious weapon, using our own social media to agitate and already agitated population, and our current POTUS and his inner circle of business partners wants to be best friends with the country that is responsible for doing this.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 7, 2017 12:05:11 GMT -5
If you'd prefer to believe Russian posts indistinguishable from American posts were at least 23,000 times as effective as their American counterparts, by all means ignore the numbers. But you should also be utterly terrified. Pres. Putin has the power to do with $100K and 80,000 posts (less than the post count of our top two posters combined) what $1.2 billion in campaign money, $920 million in Facebook ads, 33 trillion political posts, the US MSM, and several million journalists and bloggers couldn't accomplish. The power he wields is unlike any man has ever known. The results of the election should be overturned, Pres. Trump should be jailed, and Ms. Clinton should be installed as the rightful POTUS. Social media should be policed by a newly formed federal Ministry of Truth to ensure no super-propaganda infects political discourse in future. The US should treat the psy-op as an act of war and launch a preemptive strike against Moscow to protect American interests. Americans who voted for Pres. Trump should be required to undergo deprogramming, surrender their firearms, and forfeit their right to vote until 2040 to ensure Russian influence doesn't spread. Some of these measures might seem unreasonable at a glance, but you're dealing with what is essentially a superweapon here if your conclusion is correct. For all our sakes, I hope you're wrong. I might reply to this in full tomorrow or the day after, but I'll jump to the conclusion OMV! Why do you feel its necessary to occupy opposite poles of reason instead of ending up somewhere reasonable and towards the middle?
Again, stop fixating on just the FB numbers you believe you know and look at the big picture. RW bloggers were quite successful at pushing the Hillary is not healthy issue way before her collapse at the memorial. If you want to believe the Russians were less accomplished in their targeted efforts, I can't stop you. Does not mean you are right though.
Fig. 1 - Impact-o-Meter, showing "opposite poles of reason"
As is clearly seen in Fig. 1, the actual impact isn't flush against the "Fart in a Windstorm" pole. It's roughly 1/23,000th of the way between "Fart in a Windstorm" and the "Putin can Alter Election Outcome" marker. We also see the Optimist/Happyhoix "Who cares about numbers; let's stick it in the middle somewhere." assessment floating arbitrarily about in the middle, and the MSM's totally-not-agenda-driven assessment sitting midway between where Pres. Putin has just enough power to sway the US election and where he's an all-powerful Dark Lord able to brainwash men with a flick of his hand. Hopefully this graphic will clarify where all quantities lie on the spectrum, and clear up the misconception that I believe reality must exist at either of the two poles.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 7, 2017 12:24:37 GMT -5
... The point is that Russia attacked us using a new and devious weapon, using our own social media to agitate and already agitated population, and our current POTUS and his inner circle of business partners wants to be best friends with the country that is responsible for doing this. - It's not a new weapon.
- It's a weapon the US routinely uses against other nations, to a far greater degree than what we're witnessing here. You also have a consistent record of arming foreign agitators, revolutionaries, and dictators in addition to propagandizing them.
- Psy-ops of this magnitude are routinely perpetrated by major nations against the US, including China and Saudi Arabia, as a matter of determining what works and what doesn't.
- I'm not advocating that the US treat Russia like "best friends". I'm advocating you treat them like China, Saudi Arabia, and every other major nation that puts its own interests ahead of the US's.
- Despite what we may think of Russia's subterfuge, it did not--I repeat: did not--alter the outcome of the election. Claiming that it "might have" pulls any discussion about countermeasures out of the reasonable and into the land of Iraq WMD's.
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Nov 7, 2017 15:50:03 GMT -5
I might reply to this in full tomorrow or the day after, but I'll jump to the conclusion OMV! Why do you feel its necessary to occupy opposite poles of reason instead of ending up somewhere reasonable and towards the middle?
Again, stop fixating on just the FB numbers you believe you know and look at the big picture. RW bloggers were quite successful at pushing the Hillary is not healthy issue way before her collapse at the memorial. If you want to believe the Russians were less accomplished in their targeted efforts, I can't stop you. Does not mean you are right though.
Fig. 1 - Impact-o-Meter, showing "opposite poles of reason"
As is clearly seen in Fig. 1, the actual impact isn't flush against the "Fart in a Windstorm" pole. It's roughly 1/23,000th of the way between "Fart in a Windstorm" and the "Putin can Alter Election Outcome" marker. We also see the Optimist/Happyhoix "Who cares about numbers; let's stick it in the middle somewhere." assessment floating arbitrarily about in the middle, and the MSM's totally-not-agenda-driven assessment sitting midway between where Pres. Putin has just enough power to sway the US election and where he's an all-powerful Dark Lord able to brainwash men with a flick of his hand. Hopefully this graphic will clarify where all quantities lie on the spectrum, and clear up the misconception that I believe reality must exist at either of the two poles. That graphic may clarify to you what you believe, but its just a graph pulled out one end with help from the other.
Did Russia affect the election? IMO yes. But how much I am not willing to judge without much more information. Trump's campaign said they micro-targeted voters in certain areas such as counties. Odds are Russia did similar things leading to Trump's nomination AND eventually influencing voters on who to vote for President.
There were so many moving parts its hard to even guess impacts. There are lots of paid shills for the RW funded by the Koch brothers and the like. If Russia was smart, they just augmented and reinforced things they found that were gaining traction in people's minds. Conservatives have more self protective instincts than liberals and unfortunately that often leads them as a whole to be more gullible about any story referencing safety concerns. They are also more biased against women leaders as they prefer authoritarians, or at least those who appear that way.
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Nov 7, 2017 16:03:46 GMT -5
If you'd prefer to believe Russian posts indistinguishable from American posts were at least 23,000 times as effective as their American counterparts, by all means ignore the numbers. But you should also be utterly terrified. Pres. Putin has the power to do with $100K and 80,000 posts (less than the post count of our top two posters combined) what $1.2 billion in campaign money, $920 million in Facebook ads, 33 trillion political posts, the US MSM, and several million journalists and bloggers couldn't accomplish. The power he wields is unlike any man has ever known. The results of the election should be overturned, Pres. Trump should be jailed, and Ms. Clinton should be installed as the rightful POTUS. Social media should be policed by a newly formed federal Ministry of Truth to ensure no super-propaganda infects political discourse in future. The US should treat the psy-op as an act of war and launch a preemptive strike against Moscow to protect American interests. Americans who voted for Pres. Trump should be required to undergo deprogramming, surrender their firearms, and forfeit their right to vote until 2040 to ensure Russian influence doesn't spread. Some of these measures might seem unreasonable at a glance, but you're dealing with what is essentially a superweapon here if your conclusion is correct. For all our sakes, I hope you're wrong. Opt is right, there is no happy medium with you. Putin either threw the election or had zero impact.
It's not possible to measure exactly what impact their interference had on the election. What we can measure is the time and effort Russians put into the task of sowing discord among Americans. Their posts were not necessarily 'Hillary is Satan' - they were much more subtle than that. They made fake BLM accounts and posted things guaranteed to offend right wing whites. They made up fake Texan and Tennessee accounts and sowed them with anti-immigrant posts guaranteed to offend liberals. They created Muslim accounts guaranteed to offend Christians convinced that the Muslims want to impose Shira law here.
Obviously it's not possible how much more fractured all this activity managed to make an already divided and angry country, just as it isn't possible to judge how much it might have influenced the vote, but the fact that it isn't quantifiable isn't really the point. The point is that Russia attacked us using a new and devious weapon, using our own social media to agitate and already agitated population, and our current POTUS and his inner circle of business partners wants to be best friends with the country that is responsible for doing this.
I think for those people who just want to wave this away as if its no big deal, need to reread and really understand the bolded. Early on Trump asked Russia publicly to find Hillary's emails. Some, especially right leaners said he was just joking and it was no big deal. Others, middle and left leaners saw this as a major red flag. Trump probably didn't help Russia influence the election. But, if he had known about it, everything points to him being OK with it and possibly helping.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 7, 2017 17:59:09 GMT -5
That graphic may clarify to you what you believe, but its just a graph pulled out one end with help from the other.
Did Russia affect the election? IMO yes. But how much I am not willing to judge without much more information. Trump's campaign said they micro-targeted voters in certain areas such as counties. Odds are Russia did similar things leading to Trump's nomination AND eventually influencing voters on who to vote for President.
There were so many moving parts its hard to even guess impacts. There are lots of paid shills for the RW funded by the Koch brothers and the like. If Russia was smart, they just augmented and reinforced things they found that were gaining traction in people's minds. Conservatives have more self protective instincts than liberals and unfortunately that often leads them as a whole to be more gullible about any story referencing safety concerns. They are also more biased against women leaders as they prefer authoritarians, or at least those who appear that way.
This is a lot of words for "There are several unknowns so I'm going to believe what I want to believe. Also, conservatives are gullible and hate women." I've given you the relevant numbers. I've explained the status quo on foreign government psy-ops. I'll leave you to your conjecture.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Nov 7, 2017 19:10:20 GMT -5
Someone was showing the planted stories and memes that originated from a Russian IP address. I was surprised at how many I had seen. Mostly reposts by a super conservative friend.
Today he posted 'proof' that vaccines cause autism. Didn't that die like 5 years ago?
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Nov 8, 2017 2:05:29 GMT -5
That graphic may clarify to you what you believe, but its just a graph pulled out one end with help from the other.
Did Russia affect the election? IMO yes. But how much I am not willing to judge without much more information. Trump's campaign said they micro-targeted voters in certain areas such as counties. Odds are Russia did similar things leading to Trump's nomination AND eventually influencing voters on who to vote for President.
There were so many moving parts its hard to even guess impacts. There are lots of paid shills for the RW funded by the Koch brothers and the like. If Russia was smart, they just augmented and reinforced things they found that were gaining traction in people's minds. Conservatives have more self protective instincts than liberals and unfortunately that often leads them as a whole to be more gullible about any story referencing safety concerns. They are also more biased against women leaders as they prefer authoritarians, or at least those who appear that way.
This is a lot of words for "There are several unknowns so I'm going to believe what I want to believe. Also, conservatives are gullible and hate women." I've given you the relevant numbers. I've explained the status quo on foreign government psy-ops. I'll leave you to your conjecture. Back at you. Fixating on statistics instead of reason does not make your argument better than mine, it just allows you to snow people who don't think it through including yourself. And I didn't say they hate women, but I am correct in saying they prefer male leaders over female ones. Stereotypical gender roles frown on women being authoritarian, so really for those who prefer that style and want usual gender roles there is no way a woman is going to be seen as well as a male leader. I've also noticed women have to obey many more dress and appearance rules to do well. Men can throw on a tie and call it a day. Women need the right hair, at least three pieces of jewelry, the right clothes - fashionable but not too much, nails done, etc.
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dezii
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Post by dezii on Nov 8, 2017 9:23:25 GMT -5
This is a lot of words for "There are several unknowns so I'm going to believe what I want to believe. Also, conservatives are gullible and hate women." I've given you the relevant numbers. I've explained the status quo on foreign government psy-ops. I'll leave you to your conjecture. Back at you. Fixating on statistics instead of reason does not make your argument better than mine, it just allows you to snow people who don't think it through including yourself. And I didn't say they hate women, but I am correct in saying they prefer male leaders over female ones. Stereotypical gender roles frown on women being authoritarian, so really for those who prefer that style and want usual gender roles there is no way a woman is going to be seen as well as a male leader. I've also noticed women have to obey many more dress and appearance rules to do well. Men can throw on a tie and call it a day. Women need the right hair, at least three pieces of jewelry, the right clothes - fashionable but not too much, nails done, etc. "Stereotypical gender roles frown on women being authoritarian, so really for those who prefer that style and want usual gender roles there is no way a woman is going to be seen as well as a male leader"You may be correct...though it is a shame...While not many of them...those that became country's heads, leaders turned out to be superior leaders...ruld for a long time..were able to be as tough, hard and direct their country's to do battle if needed...Golda, Margaret, Aquino...Markel, India's PM...[assassinated] sorry senior moment....name escaped me, Gandi ?...possible others...We got the Donald instead..[sigh, sad] Possible another 100 years before another attempt...Maybe a VP succeeding a very popular POTUS.
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Nov 8, 2017 9:37:52 GMT -5
Someone was showing the planted stories and memes that originated from a Russian IP address. I was surprised at how many I had seen. Mostly reposts by a super conservative friend. Today he posted 'proof' that vaccines cause autism. Didn't that die like 5 years ago? No. It's still alive. We need a vaccine for it.
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Waffle
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Post by Waffle on Nov 8, 2017 10:27:53 GMT -5
According to Virgil Showlion So, let's summarize:
•0.004% of political content consumed by Americans between Q2 2015 and Q1 2017, with half running after the election
•0.0102% of Facebook political advertising spending between Q2 2015 and Q1 2017
•ads across the political spectrum •ads focused on "sowing dischord"
•content indistinguishable from ads run by political groups in the US •happyhoix asks: "If only a relatively few voters saw the Russian propaganda and it provided extra motivation to either stay home on voting day, or to make sure they did go out and vote, did it impact the election? How can you claim for sure it didn't?"
Answer: It's a statistical impossibility.
You're statistics aren't even measuring the correct things. The idea isn't that Russia affected the election by changing votes all across America, it's that they specifically targeted a few states. So before you can declare with any certainty that it's a statistical impossibility, you'd need to narrow your focus and know what the Russian content was in some of the purple or traditionally blue states that voted Republican.
For the record, I am not saying that the Russian influence definitely changed the outcome of the election, I'm just saying you haven't proven that it didn't.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 8, 2017 12:12:12 GMT -5
According to Virgil Showlion So, let's summarize:
•0.004% of political content consumed by Americans between Q2 2015 and Q1 2017, with half running after the election
•0.0102% of Facebook political advertising spending between Q2 2015 and Q1 2017
•ads across the political spectrum •ads focused on "sowing dischord"
•content indistinguishable from ads run by political groups in the US •happyhoix asks: "If only a relatively few voters saw the Russian propaganda and it provided extra motivation to either stay home on voting day, or to make sure they did go out and vote, did it impact the election? How can you claim for sure it didn't?"
Answer: It's a statistical impossibility.
You're statistics aren't even measuring the correct things. The idea isn't that Russia affected the election by changing votes all across America, it's that they specifically targeted a few states. So before you can declare with any certainty that it's a statistical impossibility, you'd need to narrow your focus and know what the Russian content was in some of the purple or traditionally blue states that voted Republican.
For the record, I am not saying that the Russian influence definitely changed the outcome of the election, I'm just saying you haven't proven that it didn't.
Half of the content was released after the election. Of the content released before the election, most was designed to "sow unrest" rather than influence votes. Of the content designed to influence votes, it wasn't exclusively pro-Trump. Let's liberally estimate that 75% of the 80,000 posts went out pre-election (reality is closer to 50%), that they exclusively targeted swing states (which isn't true), that 75% of these were designed to manipulate votes rather than simply foment unrest (the reality is < 50%, possibly well under), and that 90% of these favoured Pres. Trump (making the Trump-to-Clinton differential 90% - 10% = 80%). This amounts to a grand total of 80K · 0.75 · 0.75 · 0.8 = 36,000 posts. Hence, based on the evidence at hand, for us to conclude that the Russian op possibly changed the outcome of the election, we must concede that 36,000 Facebook posts directed at users in swing states could potentially change the outcome of the election. As it happens, our very own swamp has accrued nearly 36,000 posts during her time with YMAM. Hence what we're contemplating is that, if the Russians hasn't run their op but swamp had devoted 2015 and 2016 exclusively to Facebook posts lauding Pres. Trump (rather than hanging out with us on YMAM), it's possible she might have single-handedly changed the outcome of the 2016 federal election. Call me a hardened skeptic if you will, but I do not believe this is possible. Or more accurately: I believe it to be improbable to a degree that makes it impossible to regard as something that could realistically happen. The media blaming Ms. Clinton's electoral loss on the Russians makes approximately as much sense as blaming it on swamp.
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Post by swamp on Nov 8, 2017 12:37:47 GMT -5
I'm glad you think i have that power, but it wasn't one swamp posting for the russians, it was a whole bog of them.
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Post by thyme4change on Nov 8, 2017 13:19:17 GMT -5
Hey Virgil - I would like to read more about the numbers, but Google isn't helping much. Can you link me to where you are getting your information?
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Post by thyme4change on Nov 8, 2017 14:54:34 GMT -5
So, maybe we should change our speak a little. I went through Colin Stretch /Facebook's prepared statement. It looks like Virgils data is picked carefully from there.
There are two sets of Russian inputs here. One is paid advertising, which looks small as compared to the vast world of Facebook. Those advertisements did a number of things, but they were pretty successful at driving people to Facebook pages where they posted all kinds of stuff for free. Those "fake accounts" (Facebook's terminology) are where the real damage was done. Those accounts put out 80,000 posts that showed in 29 million people's news feed. Those 29M can then comment, like or share the story. Those activities are how those posts reach the estimated 126M people, as estimated by Facebook. That is how I saw the content, not by paid advertising.
I see no reason why Facebook would carefully examine all their data and then estimate something so damaging for a congressional hearing. If they wanted this to go away, the would have figured out a way to give a lower estimate. So, I will believe them that 126M people had content in their feed. We all know that doesn't mean they read it or saw it or were influenced by it. But, they didn't need to sway 126M people.
Virgil, I get what you are trying to do, but you are ignoring the most important part.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 8, 2017 18:37:40 GMT -5
I'm glad you think i have that power, but it wasn't one swamp posting for the russians, it was a whole bog of them. It could be one posting 80,000, ten posting 10,000 each, or 80,000 posting one each. The total magnitude is the same: 36,000 posts related to influencing the election outcome, which you could have produced single-handedly.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 8, 2017 18:54:50 GMT -5
Hey Virgil - I would like to read more about the numbers, but Google isn't helping much. Can you link me to where you are getting your information? Follow the links in Reply #276 (and the links within those articles) and you'll find all the base numbers. The "75% of the 80,000 posts went out pre-election" assumption is based on the observation that half of the money spent on Facebook ads went out post-election. It seems reasonable to assume half of the 80,000 posts also went out post-election, but I knocked it down to 25% to get a more liberal estimate. The "75% of these were designed to manipulate votes rather than simply foment unrest" assumption is based on Congress' statement that "most" (i.e. > 50%) of the content was designed to foment unrest rather than influence the election. Again, I knocked it down to 25% to get a more liberal estimate. The "90% of these favoured Pres. Trump" was a wild guess based on the observation that "some" of the content favoured Ms. Clinton. I figured 90% (9 out of 10 favouring Pres. Trump) was a liberal estimate. If you change it to 100%, 36,000 becomes 45,000--or Zib's post count instead of swamp's. Big deal. If we don't use the liberal estimate, we get a net 14,000 posts pre-election focused on swaying voters to Pres. Trump, which puts us in NoNamePerson territory. Meaning: NoNamePerson + Pres. Putin's secret sauce = possibly altered outcome of US federal election If that doesn't scare you, I don't know what would.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 8, 2017 19:25:59 GMT -5
Virgil, I get what you are trying to do, but you are ignoring the most important part. I'm saying that if Russia could do it, swamp could do it. The effort invested is 36,000 posts on altering the election outcome. Now, these may have been reproduced, retweeted, re-Facebooked, memed, e-mailed, and otherwise distributed to tens of millions of Americans, but this doesn't change the fact that the seed effort is still 36,000 posts. Swamp could have quit her job in 2015 and devoted her days to putting out 50 posts a day into people's Facebook feeds, bashing Ms. Clinton and encouraging everyone to share the articles. Unless the Russian trolls are vastly more persuasive, she'd have accomplished the very same thing. I'm willing to grant that the Russian trolls could do a better job than swamp, perhaps by a factor of 2-3, but not by any margin that would turn the infinitesimal into the substantial. The 21st Century reality is that 33 trillion Facebook posts were consumed over the period in question, which is because the political content put out by a single person can ultimately wend its way into 120 million little corners of the Internet. It seems like a big number but it has to be seen in the context of 33 trillion--a number 275,000 times larger. This is why the percentages are so negligible. It's simultaneously exhilarating and sobering: If you really worked at it, you alone could ever-so-briefly touch 126 million people with your ideas; but bear in mind that you're competing with 275,000 other voices just as loud and determined as yours.
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Post by midjd on Nov 8, 2017 21:44:33 GMT -5
That seems like saying if you invest $36K in Bitcoins and the value shoots to "tens of millions" and you sell, pocketing the money, it doesn't matter because you only originally invested $36K.
I am not expressing an opinion on whether it had a tangible impact or not, but I know enough people who are willing to buy--hook, line, and sinker--anything they read online that is in meme form and plays to their underlying beliefs to know that 36K posts that could have been shared 10,000,000+ times are not, by definition, "infinitesimal."
People like Alex Jones try to create viral content, and are arguably far better at it. But the fact that a foreign country with whom we've had hostile relations since long before my parents were born sponsored it is chilling.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 8, 2017 23:54:29 GMT -5
...I know enough people who are willing to buy--hook, line, and sinker--anything they read online that is in meme form and plays to their underlying beliefs to know that 36K posts that could have been shared 10,000,000+ times are not, by definition, "infinitesimal." 'Infinitesimal' comes in when we consider the ratio of 1 to 275,000: the ratio of Russian content to total political content digested by a Facebook consumer. The actual number cited by Facebook is 1 to 23,000, which ignores the factors I include in my analysis (pre-election vs. post-election, etc.). From the data we have thus far, we can estimate that 36K posts worth of effort yield ~57 million total views on Facebook when sharing and distribution are included. This isn't unreasonable. For example, even here on YMAM, a very isolated corner of cyberspace, a typical thread page is viewed several hundred times. Let's say 200 times on average. This amounts to 7.2 million views for 36K posts. If we had the ability to share posts (bounce them around social media), it's easy to see how this number could grow to 57 million views. Of course, because there's so much more competition over on FB, each view is worth substantially less. But here's the catch: everybody posting 36K political opinions on Facebook gets their 57 million views, which is why Facebook accrued 33 trillion posts and reposts (which we can think of as views). Suddenly 57 million doesn't seem so significant. It isn't. Whether we compare one poster (swamp) to the millions of Facebook political posters, or 36K posts to the millions of posters' posts, or 57 million views to the 33 trillion views shared on Facebook, although the ratios vary somewhat, the result is always the same: the Russian op was a drop in the proverbial ocean. Not much more impactful in terms of total views than the posts of the 4-5 most prolific YMAM posters combined, unless one believes in Putin's secret sauce for all-powerful propaganda.
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Post by NoNamePerson on Nov 9, 2017 7:48:18 GMT -5
Hey Virgil - I would like to read more about the numbers, but Google isn't helping much. Can you link me to where you are getting your information? Follow the links in Reply #276 (and the links within those articles) and you'll find all the base numbers. The "75% of the 80,000 posts went out pre-election" assumption is based on the observation that half of the money spent on Facebook ads went out post-election. It seems reasonable to assume half of the 80,000 posts also went out post-election, but I knocked it down to 25% to get a more liberal estimate. The "75% of these were designed to manipulate votes rather than simply foment unrest" assumption is based on Congress' statement that "most" (i.e. > 50%) of the content was designed to foment unrest rather than influence the election. Again, I knocked it down to 25% to get a more liberal estimate. The "90% of these favoured Pres. Trump" was a wild guess based on the observation that "some" of the content favoured Ms. Clinton. I figured 90% (9 out of 10 favouring Pres. Trump) was a liberal estimate. If you change it to 100%, 36,000 becomes 45,000--or Zib's post count instead of swamp's. Big deal. If we don't use the liberal estimate, we get a net 14,000 posts pre-election focused on swaying voters to Pres. Trump, which puts us in NoNamePerson territory. Meaning: NoNamePerson + Pres. Putin's secret sauce = possibly altered outcome of US federal election
If that doesn't scare you, I don't know what would. I try to use my powers for the greater good
ETA: To be tagged by Virgil in Politics is an honor of the highest - I think
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Post by Value Buy on Nov 9, 2017 13:52:03 GMT -5
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Post by thyme4change on Nov 9, 2017 16:57:39 GMT -5
Trump turned down the offer of Russian prostitutes. Finally, a report of him doing the right thing!
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Post by dezii on Nov 11, 2017 7:52:02 GMT -5
According to a Newsweek article, it's just possible that, even with the denials...the tweets...claiming no collusion , fake news...just possible there just might have been some truth of collusion of members of the administration and Russia.... in fact article suggests five separate happenings that point to this possible collusion.. ------------------------------------- "President Donald Trump keeps tweeting that there was “NO COLLUSION” between his campaign and Russians in the 2016 election, and though a widening FBI probe on the matter has not pulicly unearthed hard evidence that the two sides were in coordination, some of what has surfaced makes the allegations seem increasingly likely to be true."==================================== www.yahoo.com/news/five-ways-seems-russia-colluded-224010257.html
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