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Comment by soared | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't really communicate anything. All the examples are something of this ad about americans liking cars was targeted to americans who like cars. I don't at all deny Russia meddling, but the website does a poor job at showing what they were trying to influence.

Example: This ad targeted people interested in same-sex marriage and 12 more.

We speak for all fellow members of LGBT community across the nation.

How is this influencing anything, all it does is advertise a group to people who would be interested in that group? They aren't stoking the flame or promoting racism/etc.

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So the long standing rumor is that Russia influenced the US election through Facebook. Okay, fine.

You know what I want to hear about? The wealthy Americans who used Facebook to influence the US election. If Facebook can be used in this way, I think looking at what Russia did is interesting, but it’s not the only story! The story is, people are subtly and quietly influincing our elections! Shouldn’t we look closely at everyone who did that? Not solely the Russian bogeyman?

No, that’s nice but it’s a different issue. We already have plenty of inquiry into the influence of Americans with money on politics, with Citizens United and whatnot.

A hostile foreign government’s operations to propagandize Americans about politics is important to analyze.

Call it a different issue, that’s fine. But it’s an issue I want to hear about! I haven’t heard nearly the hand wringing over home grown control as I have over Russia.

I’ve seen plenty of concern over citizens United and the unfair influence of money in politics, so you might want to broaden your sources. Your posts remind me of basically what Trump is saying, that evil things that other countries do are fine because we are hypocrites, or other countries attacking us is okay because it’s our fault we’re vulnerable.

I've never heard Trump say this. I would be happy to read any sources or analysis which supports your claim.

Original: I’ve seen plenty of concern over citizens United and the unfair influence of money in politics, so you might want to broaden your sources. Your posts remind me of basically what Trump is saying, that evil things that other countries do are fine because we are hypocrites, or other countries attacking us is okay because it’s our fault we’re vulnerable.

“He’s defended Putin’s authoritarian rule (“he’s a strong leader”) and, when asked about the murder of Putin opponents, said the United States has murdered people, too — much as Putin asserted in his interview with Chris Wallace”

Supports my first point. From The Chicago Sun Times, with links: https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/president-donald-tru...

And to support my second point, here you go: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/15/trump-russia-hack-...

“The DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had bad defenses, and they were able to be hacked,” Trump said

Almost verbatim what I said, isn’t it?

> I haven’t heard nearly the hand wringing over home grown control as I have over Russia.

If you haven't heard the hand-wringing over the influence of money in politics in the US, you've literally paid zero attention to any US politics for at least the last, oh, half century. (And the hand-wringing didn't start then, it's just been ubiquitous for about that long; it's really older than the US, since the main line of complaint in the US on that score is basically a continuation of a complaint about the political influence of moneyed special interests that has been repeated fairly consistently, in every generation, since it appeared in The Wealth of Nations.)

OTOH, the problem, while widely viewed a significant, is also widely accepted as a routine and perennial feature of liberal democracy, whereas a foreign influence operation deeply bound up with a domestic Presidential campaign is still considered unusual and extreme.

It should be equally as important as any other valid hostile entity with proven strength.

Sure, like which entities do you mean? I think it is worth distinguishing from domestic and external, and state actors vs. non-state.

Russia spend is estimated at $100k between 2015 and 2017, when Trump and Clinton spent $81M on Facebook alone.

I've spent more than the Russians did on Facebook ads, to think that amount of money was a deciding factor is pretty absurd.

Is it absurd though? Russia probably didn't follow any disclosure laws. Also, these ads are more about driving traffic to groups with content designed to influence people without coming off as ads. I guess the real question is how much Clinton and Trump spent on astro-turfing vs Russia's ads.

It's absurd. 100k vs 81m. If their ads were that much more effective for that much less money, they've not just got the best marketing pros in the business, they've discovered some revolutionary secret to advertising. What's the most likely explanation? 100k ads from Russia tilted the election, or Hillary was a shit candidate. Could it be that someone's ego is at play in this narrative besides Trump's?

No, when Obama does it, it’s a smart use of new technologies. When Trump gets elected it’s a foreign nation that stole the election. Also the front page of the Economist this week is about why the US electoral system is biased in favor of Republicans and therefore needs to be reformed (and of course this wasn’t an issue a few years ago when the very same system was thought to structurally favour democrats, and likely to block Trump).

Not a US voter, no skin in the game myself (and I would vote neither D nor R anyway), but I find all these excuses to a lost election unconvincing.

You seem to be conflating the workings of a flawed democracy with meddling by a foreign power. Those are nothing like the same thing.

Vladimir Putin and Robert Mercer both seem like foreign powers to me.

I'm taking a wild guess here: The ads look like they were intended to drive traffic to pages, which would be the real 'meat' of the campaign. The ads themselves aren't very interesting.

Also, the image data is missing. A lot of these are non-sequiturs without the picture.

It's just terrible UX. The images show if you hover over the camera icon (assuming something else isn't broken for you). E.g. the car example is a picture of the General Lee (or something similar with the Confederate flag on top of it).

The south rising again is a giant confederate flag. Etc.

Most of the ads has around 10-20 impressions.

Turns out influencing people with seemingly small pieces of seemingly unconnected information is extremely effective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQXe1CokWqQ (link to Darren Brown's Advertising Experiment)

> the website does a poor job at showing what they were trying to influence.

Maybe they weren't trying to do that. I know it's uncommon these days, but maybe they just wanted to present the facts, and allow us to deduce whatever we wanted to deduce from them.

But I need to be explicitly told what to not only think, but feel!

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-pag...

"This doesn't really communicate anything. All the examples are

... How is this influencing anything, all it does is "

I agree with your impressions, but I think that it 'communicates' the most important thing of all: Data without much spin, without excessive interpretation and cherry picking.

My takaway is: The Russian sponsored ad campaign is not as serious as some would like us to believe.

Yeah, okay - many others like yourself want to convince us it is not significant.

So what about their hacking of state and national elections systems, hacking into voter databases, voting machine software companies? There have been a wide variety of warnings from wide variety of national security agencies concerning Russian activity that goes far beyond advertising propaganda.

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