Russian Propaganda and how all of us got duped

[Predicto]

Still better than Nashville 

[DogofWar1]

DC oscillates between tick and brains-of-the-operation depending on what the people in charge are doing.

 

Eisenhower, with the interstate highway system certainly made it a brain.  FDR with the new deal and WWII made it a brain.

 

Current status is tick tho, what with Trump and GOP actively discussing punishing blue states financially for the benefit of red states.

 

But that's the thing about DC, DC is entirely what the rest of the country makes it.  Don't like DC?  Look in the mirror then vote better.

 

At its best, DC makes the US greater than the sum of its parts.  At its worst it squanders gains of its parts.

 

 

 

Anyways, back to Russia, not sure what the solution is.  So much of Russia's success came from free activity.  Social media is huge and probably here to stay in some form or another.  The only real solution is to put up a paywall and make the social media the product instead of the people using it the product.

 

Of course, if you had to pay 1.99 per month for FB, I imagine 80% of users would bail and go to the new free market competitor.

 

I suppose fed regulation could help but it can't fix everything, and could end up overreaching.

 

Maybe just get rid of anonymity for social media, as tough as that would be to do.  If you can see that the organizer of your group is based in Moscow, might help get in front of some of the silliness.

 

The easiest thing is to limit bots.  Make bots get "verified" by twitter.  For example, the bot that takes all of Donald's tweets and makes them look like official white house statements?  Great.  Random Russian bot 2000?  Nope.  People prove they're human, then can get full access; bot AI will hopefully not overcome that hurdle that quickly, meaning unverified bots will need a human at the wheel, making mass botting not feasible.

[TheGreatBuzz]

So I think what Zoony is saying is that all essentially politicians are corrupt and care only about money and keeping power?  And that DC is a swamp that should be drained (but won't)?  

 

I agree.

[Springfield]

1 minute ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

So I think what Zoony is saying is that all essentially politicians are corrupt and care only about money and keeping power?  And that DC is a swamp that should be drained (but won't)?  

 

I agree.

 

Unless you take the money out of it (won’t happen).

[twa]

Just now, Springfield said:

 

Unless you take the money out of it (won’t happen).

 

Unless you take the power from them.(won't happen)

 

 

[sportjunkie07]

9 hours ago, No Excuses said:

 

I disregard anything that isn't being reported by a well-sourced and reputable news organization. Doesn't matter if it's right or left leaning. 

 

The social media meme culture where you have people posting memes with unverified slogans and statements, without links to credible sourcing is insane. No one should believe these and the fact that not only is this information believed, but widely shared across platforms, is the sign of a dumb, ignorant society.

 

The more I think about it, the most important school lesson, that seemed so trivial back then, was when we were taught about sourcing as it relates to research and information gathering. It is obvious that a lot of American's simply aren't equipped with well functioning bull**** radars.

So true. As someone who leans right, the amount of bs people get their panties twisted about is astounding. And it is unverified or undocumented on both sides. 

 

Generally one takes a bit of truth and couples it with bias to support any belief. It's pretty absurd really. 

[tshile]

11 hours ago, No Excuses said:

It worked for a variety of reasons:

 

1. There are a lot of stupid people in this country.

We pay and treat the people almost entirely responsible for our populations education, and entirely responsible for the core of our populations education, like babysitters.

 

Then wonder why we lack the critical thinking skills required to realize <insert anything from long list of stupid **** people believe/don't understand>

 

We're a headline reading nation. People think because they Googled something or read a Wikipedia page they're capable of debating a subject with an expert on said subject. 

 

We have fake news sites that have links in their articles that don't go to the content the article claims it goes to. These links are used as proof for the narrative of the article. It works cause the dip****s reading them never even check the link.

 

We are a laughably stupid society when you consider the level of access the average person has to knowledge and what our education system easily could be with a little determination.

[tshile]

4 hours ago, DogofWar1 said:

The only real solution is to put up a paywall and make the social media the product instead of the people using it the product.

Disagree.

 

A conversation about what the internet is and what it should be needs to be had.

 

It's currently the wild west. Majority of purists want it to remain that way. Free speech, unfettered access to information, governments are bad and will propogandize and such.

 

Which sounds great until you're a us citizen having your presidential elections tampered with by foreign countries, a private sector losing untold billions in research and development work, and government entities at risk of being hijacked.

 

How hard would it be to exclude certain areas of the world from our Internet? There are clearly net-takers. Eastern European countries offer little positive, it's mostly spam, script kiddie hacking, etc.  Same with most of SE Asia.

 

I don't have a solution to present at the moment, but there are certainly options. I have no doubt we'll fail to pick a good one.

[AsburySkinsFan]

“Still better than Hillary.”

 

No one but the Left gives a damn.

[twa]

Nothing gets the left woke like losing a sure thing.

 

[Going Commando]

15 hours ago, Predicto said:

But there can be no comparison in how deep the rot currently runs.

 

You're right, it's not comparable.  The Left is not as easily agitated as the Right because they haven't been radicalized.  Democrats got shut out of every level of the Federal government by anti-Democratic Republican corruption and bull****.  Obama's SC nominee blocked without a hearing for over a year.  Absolutely shameless racial and partisan gerrymandering in purple states all over the country.  The ****ing Electoral College, a vestigal organ of slavery, making it so that blue votes literally and arbitrarily count for less than red ones.  Imagine the reaction if the situation were reversed and Democrats had cheated Republicans out of every part of the government.  There would be widespread violence and secession movements.  There is zero comparison between the level of radicalization on the right and left in this country.  And it wasn't Steve Bannon and the Russians who radicalized the vast majority of Conservatives either.  That link about him targeting "rootless white males" for radicalization is important for understanding our current political climate.  But I know you well know that the comprehensive radicalization of almost every Right wing constituency was perpetrated by party leaders and influential organizations and media outlets over decades, and done so that the party could continue winning elections by pandering to the rich and shrinking their true constituency.  And their work at radicalization is the smoking gun for the dying of a civil and functional political and institutional culture necessary for making a First-World Democracy governing a broadly diverse continental Nation of 330 million people work.  They're going to turn this country into a Third World kleptocracy in a generation or two.

[Llevron]

10 hours ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

So I think what Zoony is saying is that all essentially politicians are corrupt and care only about money and keeping power?  And that DC is a swamp that should be drained (but won't)?  

 

I agree.

 

I think we all agree with that. It's the "No collusion" part at the end that throws us all off lol

[Burgold]

16 hours ago, zoony said:

 

Agreed.  And this is whaat the investigation will find.  There was no collusion, period, despite the overwhelming hysterics from the left

 

However, there is no doubt that russia interferred and wanted trump to win

We've already seen collusion. How many Trump people met and discussed election tactics with Russian government officials? We already have a guilty plea for goodness sake. We've read Kushner's emails written by his own hand.

 

There is no question that there was an ongoing active partnership between Russian officials and members of the Trump team.

 

Edit: Ah, I came into this argument late it seems.

[Cooked Crack]

19 minutes ago, Llevron said:

 

I think we all agree with that. It's the "No collusion" part at the end that throws us all off lol

Like Trump wouldn't be slimy enough to do that. Literally his son, son-in-law, and campaign manager took a meeting that was pitched as the Russian government's effort to aid the campaign. But yeah that's just lefty hysteria. Nothing to see here.

[AsburySkinsFan]

1 hour ago, twa said:

Nothing gets the left woke like losing a sure thing.

 

[PeterMP]

 

1 hour ago, Burgold said:

We've already seen collusion. How many Trump people met and discussed election tactics with Russian government officials? We already have a guilty plea for goodness sake. We've read Kushner's emails written by his own hand.

 

There is no question that there was an ongoing active partnership between Russian officials and members of the Trump team.

 

Edit: Ah, I came into this argument late it seems.

 

It isn't clear to me that they did collude, but there is at least evidence that they were willing to consider colluding.

[Llevron]

Next list is gonna be all the connections the rump Campaign had with Russia. That one would be fun. But this technically isnt the topic for that 

 

On Topic: Jenna Abrams, twitter celeb and media clown, was a Russain Troll all along 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jenna-abrams-russias-clown-troll-princess-duped-the-mainstream-media-and-the-world

 

She was big on Trump - but not a supporter, hated BLM, huge proponent of blue lives matter, into the "history" of the confederate flag, very John Kelly-ish on the civil war, fan of segregation, went all @twa on Hilldog and parroted pretty much every idiotic argument that you would expect a typical 2017 republican voter would. She was the perfect bot in everyway.

 

Whats crazy is that she started as a seemingly normal blogger talking **** about Kim K naked photos. Didn't get started with politics until the start of the 2016 election season. 

[Burgold]

17 hours ago, zoony said:

 

 

The question is did Trump and his chief campaign strategists strategize with and collude with the Russians to win the election.  I am confident the answer is and always will be no.  Could i be wrong?  Yes, but Im not

 

I guess the answer who is you considered chief campaign strategists. If you think they are Manafort, Lewbandowski, Kushner, etc. then we have pretty hard evidence already they've met many times and for the purpose of discussing, working the election.

[Jumbo]

11 hours ago, tshile said:

everything he said

 

 

add all the malevolent bigoted resentments held so dearly by so many...the omnipresence of  all that spite-filled arrogant ignorance....the unfortunate rarity of competent self-awareness,...the lack of ability or desire to discern between valid and invalid data....and a widespread disregard for personal integrity in argument, and voila!

 

par-tay! 

 

 

there's an argument to be made that any culture capable of putting a creature like djt as its head, no matter how, is certainly worthy of any ill fate that befalls it as a consequence...obviously our nation's living through the civil war didn't teach those lessons that well even with all the horrific consequence, as is the case with most history (sorry Mr. Burke)

 

i advise low expectations re: most human doings 

 

 

certainly for the doings i do 

[PeterMP]

2 hours ago, Llevron said:

Next list is gonna be all the connections the rump Campaign had with Russia. That one would be fun. But this technically isnt the topic for that 

 

On Topic: Jenna Abrams, twitter celeb and media clown, was a Russain Troll all along 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jenna-abrams-russias-clown-troll-princess-duped-the-mainstream-media-and-the-world

 

She was big on Trump - but not a supporter, hated BLM, huge proponent of blue lives matter, into the "history" of the confederate flag, very John Kelly-ish on the civil war, fan of segregation, went all @twa on Hilldog and parroted pretty much every idiotic argument that you would expect a typical 2017 republican voter would. She was the perfect bot in everyway.

 

Whats crazy is that she started as a seemingly normal blogger talking **** about Kim K naked photos. Didn't get started with politics until the start of the 2016 election season. 

 

Clearly, the Russians had a little foresight here in planning this.

[Llevron]

Just now, PeterMP said:

 

Clearly, the Russians had a little foresight here in planning this.

 

That are they were smart enough to buy twitter profiles from people who had enough of a following that the messages would get out but not enough that someone would notice. People sell twitter accounts all the time. 

[DogofWar1]

9 hours ago, tshile said:

How hard would it be to exclude certain areas of the world from our Internet? There are clearly net-takers. Eastern European countries offer little positive, it's mostly spam, script kiddie hacking, etc.  Same with most of SE Asia.

 

I don't have a solution to present at the moment, but there are certainly options. I have no doubt we'll fail to pick a good one.

I don't think exclusion of states from the internet would solve the problem, at least not in the long term, and even then I'm not sure how you'd do it.

 

You'd need companies to agree to block web traffic too, not just ISPs, so that you don't end up with basically a toothless proposal, where direct interaction isn't allowed per se, but indirect interaction through international sites like twitter and FB is still doable.

 

Add in that you can buy computing power in other countries, and suddenly the Russians could hypothetically act via, say, France, and we would be severely limited in stopping it.

 

We, and by we I mean the international community, could try a complete economic and informational blockade of Russia, and anyone who still does business with Russia, but I doubt that'll fly.

 

Realistically I think social media needs to be help accountable and forced to be more involved in their sites.  Some additional automatic blocks as well as manual review on top of that, could help limit things, and I think realistically it probably has to start with social media sites, and force these kind of things off of the popular sites and to the fringes.

 

I'm imagining something like youtube's reviews, but youtube also presents a major problem too.  Their flaggings are automatic and automated, with a high false positive rate; only upon request does a person manually get involved, and the time to review is rather long.

 

Youtube's system could be fixed and used as a model for others, but the way forward for the foreseeable future will include manual review, which is manpower intensive.  There will undoubtedly be pushback from the companies, and/or erosion of services (like with youtube I suspect ad money to creators would go even lower despite being already super low, both objectively and compared to what it was in, say, 2012).

 

It's a tough problem overall.

[No Excuses]

1 hour ago, Llevron said:

 

That are they were smart enough to buy twitter profiles from people who had enough of a following that the messages would get out but not enough that someone would notice. People sell twitter accounts all the time. 

 

This happens on reddit too.

 

I am 100% sure that Russian troll farms were working reddit as well.

[tshile]

55 minutes ago, DogofWar1 said:

I don't think exclusion of states from the internet would solve the problem, at least not in the long term, and even then I'm not sure how you'd do it.

 

 

There's definitely a way, and no matter what you do there will be a way to circumvent it, the question is the cost of circumventing it and what you can do with it and what the real goal is here. Trying to limit exposure to intentionally false and misleading "news" pieces to incite hatred among our population by a foreign country, in an effort to destabilize our society, is a pretty specific goal.

 

The problem is you have to decide what it is you want the internet to be. What if no other country wants to partake int his adventure? We're stuck asking if a closed internet would still be a good internet for us - I think it would be perfectly fine, but there would obviously be a loss of some kind. With or without other countries you would need private industry buy-in, or government regulation to force their hands. 

 

You can absolutely control flow information in and out of a country, there are plenty that do it. And yes, there is a way to circumvent it, and it's a constant cat-mouse game between the government and the people they're isolating. It has a level of effectiveness though, and I'm genuinely curious how effective our government could be keeping a select few other states out of our area of the internet. I'm willing to bet, given industry buy-in, it could be pretty effective.

 

Cost would also be an issue you'd have to consider.

[Jumbo]

1 hour ago, No Excuses said:

 

This happens on reddit too.

 

I am 100% sure that Russian troll farms were working reddit as well.

 

 

you hear of "stealth breitbarters"?

 

might be a regional term---i've picked it up in recent years at several pac nw university campuses and a couple other venues

 

i got to talk to one who's getting an mba and an ms in communications (media focus)

 

 

perhaps somewhat connected to rooskie trolling at times, but primarily over the last 5-10 years they increasingly join message boards and other discussion communities--not just facebook/twitter---to play a long con where they work to appear more moderate and reasonable much of the time while more subtly propagating various "nationalist" angles and driving division and usually focusing on a "both sides are equally bad" tactic via long-term and patient manipulation/steering of discussion as opposed to the more extreme in your face stuff

 

the breibart dude  told me that they have categories of types of site they prioritize and among them are all major national sports teams which if so, would make sense

 

do not go after twa now, he's not one