Russian Influence Reached 126M Through Facebook Alone | Hacker News Reader

Russian Influence Reached 126M Through Facebook Alone

nytimes.com

11 pointscoloneltcb8 comments

Russia rigged the election with a couple of hundred thousand dollars in propaganda. Clinton spent more than a million dollars on CTR alone. The Koch Brothers dumped over one billion dollars according to some articles I've seen.

Either the Russians have vastly superior propaganda and probably in control of global politics or their influence in the US election is overstated.

It's a convenient theme: "It's the (evil) Russians."

I can't stand how the Democrats are trying to excuse their loss with Russia's influence. Yes, I've seen RT, and other pieces of news, but will they make me vote for a clown vs for a crook? Well, this alone is stereotyping, and patronizing, which is why people like me elected Trump, and why conservatives are winning elections across the globe! People are tired of getting their arms twisted, and being patronized by activists who (to those who know them intimately) resemble the Soviet Commies!

Again, just like America influenced the elections and the events in many countries around the globe, Russia tried and would keep trying. What's the news here?!

or... the influence of social media sites has been underestimated.

Given how much time people spend on facebook, and how often they see ads/stories, and given the attraction to an echo chamber of ideas that most people have, this just doesn't seem all that far-fetched.

We don't seem to question the memeification of things, or 'viral videos' of a dancing dog that gets 50M views in a week - why does this scenario seem all that much more unbelievable?

Comments, likes, follows, and upvotes are free. We only know about a few hundred thousand dollars in ad buys. What we don't know is how much was spent hiring people to create fake identities to promote content.

Or it costs a lot more to tell the truth than it does to tell lies.

I have to wonder how many national/political entities around the planet right now are devoting resources to try something similar.

At the end of the day, it's the people at the bottom of the food chain that are going to be taken advantage off the most from all this bullshit. And coming from an under-developed country with enough day-to-day survival issues to deal with, all this extra unnecessary manufactured chaos just pisses me off.

Recode source: https://www.recode.net/2017/10/30/16571598/read-full-testimo...

Recode title: Facebook says 126 million people in the U.S. may have seen posts produced by Russian-government-backed agents

Techmeme summary: Tony Romm / Recode: Sources: Facebook, Google, Twitter to tell Congress that Russian election meddling wider than reported; source says 126M Facebook users may have seen content

>Muck like its peers, though, Facebook plans to stress to U.S. lawmakers that the activity represents only a fraction of what happens daily on its site. Russian-generated disinformation during the election amounted to four-thousandths (0.004) of one percent of content in the News Feed, according to a source familiar with the company’s findings.

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