Europe Built a System to Fight Russian Meddling. It’s Struggling | Hacker News Reader

Europe Built a System to Fight Russian Meddling. It’s Struggling

nytimes.com

37 pointsdankohn162 comments

I really don't get this whole Russian interference moral panic. Like sure, maybe there are some people paid by foreign governments to target people on social media, but at the point people are susceptible to that they're already so addled by other factors it's basically irrelevant surely? I feel like I must be missing something obvious?

For instance here in the UK there's a huge amount of pearl clutching about Russian disinformation leading to the vote to leave the EU (Brexit). But I really don't believe some older folks saw a few adverts on Facebook and that was it. Radicalisation, such as it is, set in decades before through a news media that was overwhelmingly anti EU, incredibly biased to the point of being propaganda and often with no basis in fact.

The idea some Russian millenials in a St Petersburg basement lead to Brexit, or Trump, or whatever else they're being blamed for now seems utterly fanciful. Radicalisation for these people set in long before any of this and it was bought in the shop as a newspaper or delivered as part of your cable package.

The only reason it’s a panick is because they are contrarians. If they were astroturfing for the mainstream candidates, you wouldn’t hear much. Do we hear about other efforts that likely go on but are in support of non-contrarian candidates? I have not. I doubt it’s because no one is doing it. I mean I’d be surprised.

Now, I agree foreigners should not meddle in the elections of others, but some of that stuff is blurry. Would China’s mr. Xi saying he’d wish Bernie would win “interference”? Is a candidate delivering a political speech on foreign soil interference?

Especially on the internet, which, for all that individual countries may not like, is an international platform. Citizens from every country are encouraged to use every mainstream form of social media. And in every major country people are paid to make certain posts. That it's now political just seems like the natural evolution.

It is real... not just a figment of imagination of politicians...

Hang around in forums of countries, where they are trying to actively create chaos and you will see it....

Ways it comes into forums:

1. Asking question: "Is the EU good for Albania, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, etc", then you see puppet accounts saying the EU is bad and it is being taken over by socialist/nationalist and doesn't want those countries. etc.. etc..

2. Spreading information about how USA foreign policy is bad... etc.. etc.. and why is NATO needed, (Macedonia is trying to get into NATO. Albania is already in).

3. Soros, somehow is being turned into a Boogeyman, (this was especially championed by the Orban's wanna bees), and a symbol of the 'corrupt west'

Russian comments sometimes are obvious, but sometimes are hard to spot. But, they can be spotted as they often speak with a weird language, probably straight out of Google Translate.

What are they trying to do? Try to create as much as discontent amount countries of the west, so people are busy and not paying attention on what Putin is doing in the east. Very much Cold War propaganda into the 21st century....

Your evidence that Russian interference is real is that some people on the internet post anti-EU comments? Until I see some credible evidence that Russian trolls are A. state-sponsored and B. any more ubiquitous than the trolls hired by other government agencies (the Hillary campaign hired content farms in 2016) I still think it's pretty alarmist.

Or C. Anywhere near spacing the ubiquity of naturally existing trolls...

Clear russian troll accounts, posting in Albanian forums, on how X Western entity is bad (by X, it is usually EU/NATO/US). It is a monthly pattern. A couple of times, it can be a coincidence, monthly repeated occurrences? It is not.

Are they getting paid by the government, or just doing on their own, that I don't know. But it is clear Russian activity.

(btw, Albania is not a slavic country, and albania is a mediterranean country and has nothing to do with Russians, and these are not just random folks dropping in asking for the usual tourist info, or just sheer curiosity.... )

If "by clear evidence" you mean a video of the people actually typing these comments, located in some Russian building, with clear "Troll Farm Company sponsored by Putin and the Russian Government" marking, sorry, I don't have that.

You have to be really ignorant of the world to think that, outside its borders, the USA is a well-respected entity.

It doesn't take a Russian operation to turn the world against American policies.

All it takes, is for an informed person to pay attention to what America and its allies are actually doing around the world. A majority of the world outside of America's borders, actually do inform themselves, and guess what?

What America is doing to the world is ugly. Russia doesn't need to campaign against America and convince people - America is doing enough of that itself.

Those of us who have actually gotten to know refugees from Americas wars, see the truth. America is destroying sovereign states around the globe in order to serve its own special interests (its military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex).

Here in Europe, Americans need to understand one thing: we're not stupid. We see what your nation is doing without needing to be told by authorities what to think about it. A significant portion of the European middle class actually ignore the propaganda and go see for themselves.

We don't have the immense American media apparatus blinding us to the truth of America's wars: 500,000 innocent peoples' lives lost since Iraq, endless refugees from American wars, walking across Europe.

You want evidence that America is out of control? Go talk to a refugee from one of America's wars. Can't do that? Then its your propaganda apparatus working to turn your face from the truth.

I am European dude and not a US citizen, so I am speaking as a third party .....

And Yes I know USA and support it (most of their actions, but not all), and so most of my country.

Interesting, as I lived in Sweden as well, and they were pretty fond of USA as well, even though they are not part of NATO.

Looking at your post history, it is mostly vitriol against USA. Where are you from? How come you speak in the name 'of all europeans'.

You're speaking for 'most of your country, and "Sweden", when you lived there.

Ever been to a refugee camp and spoken to Iraqi's, Syrians, Lybians, Yemeni, Afghani victims of the illegal wars being carried out by America and its allies?

I live within walking distance of a refugee camp. I've spent the last few years getting to know the victims of America's illegal wars.

The vitriol is warranted. Real human beings have been smashed to pieces.

(Note: am Australian, have lived and worked in the USA, and am now in Austria, also a non-NATO country. Austrians inform themselves, and have done a lot for the victims of America's illegal wars. Swedes?)

We've asked you many times to stop taking HN threads further into flamewar. As I've told you repeatedly, if you can't or won't stop doing this, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good comments. But would you please fix this? HN is not for fulminating and fomenting, however justified your cause.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Are you an American, dang? Because its very clear to me that you won't tolerate any criticism of your in-group, and that makes HN less valuable, not more.

Anyone who wants to can slog through my moderation comments (not that I recommend it) and find reams of counterexamples. The reason that is "very clear to you", even though it's false, is that people notice the calls they disagree with much more strongly than the ones they like. If your loyalty were to the opposite side, the cases you like vs. dislike would be flipped, you'd notice the opposite ones more strongly, and so would perceive us as being biased the opposite way. In other words, your perception is a function of your views, not mine. For users with passionate opinions, it always feels like the mods are against them. It's just the same as passionate sports fans who feel the refs are against their team. Meanwhile the other team's fans feel the same.

The main thing, though, is that this response is a non sequitur. You've been breaking the site guidelines, regardless of your view of America's wars (or whatever $issue happens to be), and we need you to follow them instead.

I agree with you that there is no need to be rude or offensive in these threads, and I do try not to flame individuals, but when there's a fire to be put out and we are told not to go anywhere near the fire because it bothers the people who started the fire, what's to be done?

Is there a thread on HN which provides a good example for how to discuss these issues without incurring your wrath?

I think this whitewashing on HN, and the constant censorship of those who would raise the alarm in the context of relevant threads ("Russian meddling" is okay to discus - "American War Crimes", not so much), is a travesty.

If there is a way to discuss this without incurring your ban hammer, I'm all ears. Or is criticism of American wars, because it hurts Americans feelings, simply off limits?

Perhaps its also time to discuss whether or not having a multi-national team of moderators would be a better way to redress this issue on HN.

As it stands, I think you work hard and provide a valuable service, but its clear you've reached your limit when it comes time to think critically about what America is doing to the world, especially when it seems perfectly acceptable to highlight Russia's negative influence. This doesn't seem right.

> ("Russian meddling" is okay to discus - "American War Crimes", not so much)

> it seems perfectly acceptable to highlight Russia's negative influence

To me this reads like complaining to the firefighters, "it seems perfectly acceptable to start petrol fires. Why do you only care about electrical fires?" This is the same bias I was talking about. It always feels like your team gets the penalty, it always feels like you're the one who gets pulled over for speeding, it always feels like the mods are against you.

> when there's a fire to be put out and we are told not to go anywhere near the fire because it bothers the people who started the fire

Fanning flames is the opposite of putting them out. Your comments on these topics are noticeably more flame-fanning than others. No doubt the topics are important, but that doesn't make it ok to do that here. HN is a specific kind of website, not a free-for-all, and flamewars are destructive to the kind of website it is.

If you understand that the goal is only to move a small number of people from unlikely voter to likely voter (or vice versa) over the course of several months, given targeting tools that are capable of a high-degree of precision, it doesn't seem implausible at all. An entire industry exists to take people from complete ignorance to paying advocate, and I don't see anyone arguing that the concept of advertising is an "utterly fanciful", "basically irrelevant" proposition. Voting costs nothing but your time, all you need to do is convince someone that their ideas matter.

What makes you think "Russian trolls" would be more effective at this than hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign financing from the candidates themselves?

Has it actually happened though, that's the part that seems a bit fanciful. How have they measured it?

If Russia launched a missile at a Western nation, but it turned out the missile was a dud, so when it hits it does almost no damage, would anyone have the slightest doubt that this was an act of war? It doesn’t matter if the missile does damage, the mere effort of launching is an act of war. Likewise, it does not matter if a Russian intelligence operation is successful.

Ok, so is a single internet troll post by someone from another country sufficient to be considered an act of war? And if so, does this apply to all countries, or only Russia?

Why are you asking this question? If Russian intelligence engaged in an action against the USA then it is an act of war. Everyone knows this. So why are we still talking about it? I feel like, for some strange reason, on this particular topic, some people are looking for any possible excuse to argue against common sense.

> Why are you asking this question?

Because I am interested in your opinion on it.

An even better question is: why didn't you answer it?

> If Russian intelligence engaged in an action against the USA then it is an act of war.

For the sake of argument, let's take that as true (I'm curious if it actually is, I've never read the formal text on what constitutes an act of war, if you have please share it). Considering that, once again: does this apply to all countries, or only Russia?

> Everyone knows this. So why are we still talking about it?

Well, now that you put it this way, I think I would like to formally request a link to where I can read about how a Twitter post (which is an an action) by an individual who is employed by Russian intelligence is considered an "act of war". My intuition tells me this is an exaggeration. Or maybe it's just "common sense"?

I believe that the grandparent poster could be qualified as rather 'hawkish'. I hope truly that cooler heads are at the helm of international politics.

I find it fascinating how people's abstract (in their mind) philosophical opinions can change as you move a topic through different dimensions.

Widespread realization of this phenomenon would make political change possible imho.

Sure, but the guy to whom we are responding suggests implicitely that some hypothetical political meddling is an act of war that requires a war-like response -- twice with an identical comment, in fact. I don't think that I am poorly interpreting what he says. Both the US and Russia have meddled in other countries' politics but I will bet real money that the meddling of the US has ended in greater disaster that that of post-Soviet Russia. So move through the dimensions as you will -- this guy wants to let the missiles fly. Troll or completely barking mad, black or white.

His words say just that indeed, but I doubt he realizes it.

Propaganda works. Even the relatively intelligent are highly susceptible to it, as can be seen every single day on HN. And this particular propaganda is sowing the seeds for conflict not just between countries, but also within countries.

With effort, discipline, and cooperation, I strongly believe something could be done about it. Certain people happen to be in unique positions to facilitate the start of this change, which could in turn alter the course of the humanity. But how one gets them to realize this is something I don't know how to do.

The people of whom you speak would need to be gifted communicators. I'm sure that there are some smart, well informed and well intentioned people on Hacker News that could argue for realistic, multipolar solutions.

That said, it's an anglophone site for IT professionals. I feel that most political discussions are steered in the direction of 'good thinking' progressivism and neo-conservative interventionism. It's the majority demographic where many of those people live.

> The people of whom you speak would need to be gifted communicators.

Going about it one way yes, but not all ways.

For example, if you could alter the HN guidelines to include new rules like:

- do not state speculation as fact

- be careful to not confuse beliefs based on facts with beliefs based on heuristics

- just as you realize it is foolish to say "people of ethnicity X do (or will do) Y", also realize it is similarly foolish (in most cases) to say things about various groups of people. Realize that you cannot read minds and cannot predict the future, so do not do it in comments.

- be mindful that there's a difference between fact and opinion, and it's often very difficult to tell the difference (errors hidden in axioms, etc)

- do not lie; try to not write untruths

- etc (I can't recall all the ideas I've had over time)

If you made some reasonable changes like this, and actually enforced them, do you think it would not (could not?) make a change? Perhaps the very idea seems absurd, but if you stop and think about it for a while, is it really? You can go into any non-technical thread, and it is full of utterly delusional statements, and it keeps getting worse. I simply cannot believe people as intelligent as those who frequent HN are not capable of significantly decreasing this behavior.

I also don't see a plausible way that this problem gets fixed otherwise. Perhaps some amazingly persuasive enlightened guru could spring onto the world scene and wake people up, but I have a feeling he wouldn't get a very warm reception, from a wide variety of powerful people.

> You can go into any non-technical thread, and it is full of utterly delusional statements

An even better example (although, the "delusional" charge is a bit heavy in this case):

I was wrong about spreadsheets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20417967

Even here, in a largely objective domain, one can clearly see a variety of strong "statements of fact" (or so the author believes), but if one was to dig down into each, I suspect you would likely find that the erroneous thinking ultimately resides at the axioms (heuristics) level.

I would love to know if you even somewhat see what I'm getting at, or if this sounds like some form of batshit insanity. Most anyone I run into seems to have a strong aversion to this type of thinking, kind of similar to how people seem to have a natural aversion to certain conversations (discussions in "polite company" that go into too much detail about sex, for example).

From the Russians, it’s unclear, but the Trump campaign certainly used micro targeting in swing states to get Sanders voters to not turn out to vote for Clinton.

As for the Russians, they are not interested in getting a specific candidate elected as much as amplifying falt lines in Western societies. There are many cases where they were inciting unrest on both sides of an issue.

What you’re missing is that democracies only work with an informed electorate. But it turns out most western countries have passed the point where the average citizen is smart enough to tell fact from fiction.

All of these people whose sole source of information about brexit (or US presidential candidates) comes from tv, blogs, and social networks — all 3 designed to sell ads — are easily manipulated.

When this manipulation comes from outside sources who have a vested interest in the destruction or degradation of democratic institutions, it’s a problem that needs to be worried about.

That you don’t get it, shows short term thinking. These are chickens that are going to come home to roost 50 years later.

>What you’re missing is that democracies only work with an informed electorate.

You can't have that in a state that priorities protecting its own secrets as a matter of security.

"Finally, another important right in any free society is the liberty to contribute to the Public Good. But for this to happen, it must be possible to make the state of affairs in society known to one and all, and everyone must be free to express their thoughts about it. Where this is lacking, liberty is not worth its name." - Peter Forsskål

I'm not sure it's a moral panic so much as annoyance at a sketchy foreign power trying to screw with our democracy.

This happened to some degree with WWII, and the accusation is less that people are radicalised and more that they are given a target for their frustration.

This TED talk summarises it well. You are correct that certain media in the UK very much laid decades of foundations, and also the government with its austerity measures arguably created much of the environment conducive to radicalisation.

https://www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_facebook_s_role_...

I guess I want to say that the fact the situation is far more nuanced than "the Russians did it" neither excuses it nor does it render those actions irrelevant. They seem to be a fairly clear piece of the puzzle.

I'm also sure that all our secret services have been at similar games for years so it's ok to have little sympathy too, but Facebook targeting did get in the way of scrutiny and oversight of these messages which is really problematic for democracy.

[edit] fix typo

A good parallel is how fad diets slip into the zeitgeist. People were already looking for a magic cure for their weight problems. When that cure falls on their lap many people fall end up with a new (frequently self-destructive) solution.

The key is the finding susceptible people and giving them the solution they were already looking for and it'll almost feel obvious.

> “To be very clear, there is no similar operation going on anywhere in the world,” said Johannes Bahrke, a spokesman for the European Commission.

The general idea of spotting and analyzing ongoing disinformation campaigns seems similar to the Taiwanese system that was recently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20083829

That also includes a strategy of responding to detected campaigns before they go viral by issuing counter-statements. The EU might want to do something similar.

The weakness of the TW system is that it relies on the actual official version to counter misinformation as well as deemed “misinformation”. So it relies heavily on the official version or official organ to set the record straight. Which you know, can be problematic for obvious reasons.

How else would you present a counter argument to false information? Without appeal to authority nothing makes a source inherently more or less trustworthy.

One of the biggest issues with any system is to stop spread of false information. All social networking platforms are designed to give importance to viral content so they can get opportunity to monetizing these things. Most likely by the time they figured out that there is something wrong with the content its already been exposed to the people.

The first thing the EU should do is ban political contributions from non-Europeans, the way the US does for non-US-persons. Unfortunately this is not within the remit of the EU, however, and can only be undertaken by member states.

The UK banned non UK political contributions but it seems quite likely that much of the brexit funding came from such sources. Not proven yet. I guess it may be a grey area - if Arron Banks UK insurance business is going bust, then is bailed out by a Russian investor and then he gives money to the leave campaign is that Russian money in the election or not?

In the country in which I live, what I fear the most is Brussels meddling in the democractic process. Although an immigrant, I have become very attached to the institutions and culture of my host country. Every move closer to the EU, of which we are not a member, menaces those institutions. Yet Brussels has no problem financing NGOs, articles, 'economic research' etc. that want just that. Some are known, yet for others, the source is quite opaque.

Responding to myself since I first wanted to note the irony of the submitted article. Now I'll talk about this.

First, the US has many times interferred in Russian elections. I will not mention the interference in those of Russia's neighbours, Russia's allies, or others. So understand me when I find it absolutely impossible to be shocked by the allegations of Russian interference in the US since at least 2016. Brussels is an ally of the US, submitted to the NATO and therefore the US by treaty, and has done similar.

Second, no concrete evidence has been produced that this Russian interference in the US elections went beyond some tens of thousands of dollars of adverts in social media. The fingerprints of Russian troll farms are speculation. To believe some of the commentors here, if someone writes in an online forum that the EU is bad or we need to improve relations with Russia, then it's a Russian troll farm. Well I'm not from a Russian troll farm and I'll say (a) that the economic and political model of the EU has brought suffering and servitude to many of its members and (b) that it is imperative that western countries improve their relations with Russia rather than blindly following the irrational and bellicose positions of the US and NATO.

It's incredible that The New York Times continues to chase the Russian troll story about election interference but not once mention that Google executives were recently caught saying that they will not allow another Trump "situation" and they plan to actively manipulate search and news results to make that happen.

Google has so much more leverage than any "troll" yet doesn't even get a passing mention because The New York Times and Google agree on which political party they'd like to see win the 2020 election.

Google is in an unfortunate catch 22. If they choose to act, that impacts the election. If they choose not to act, that also impacts the election.

The most obvious thing I've seen is they appear to be killing off independent news in favor of the old guard. We'll see what happens as this continues to unfold.

The ethical choice would be to not make any partisan or skewed editorial decisions. As it stands, they're using their immense leverage to advocate for left wing politics. A story that dearly needs to be told but isn't by the same mainstream media sources you correctly identify as Google's chosen sources.

Left wing independent sources are getting cut too. David Pakman and others have opened up about how the changes are really hurting then.

The reporting on that was kind of dubious. I'm not surprised that mainstream media didn't cover it https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/6/27/18760463/projec...

The Verge are exactly the type of skewed media that is being promoted by Google. Really it doesn't matter who reported on the Google story as the Google executive's words speak for themselves, as do the leaked internal Google documents that explicitly state that they would modify results to get the political view they're looking for.

I urge people to take a look for themselves and make up their own mind.

Do you have a link where the words speak for themselves? The quote mentioned

>Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that.

is only really a problem if you assume something bad for 'trump situation' as opposed to just preventing Russian trolls hacking overseas elections.

I definitely take those words at face value, especially since Russian "trolls" didn't "hack" our election. It's not exactly a secret that Valley tech companies hate Trump with a burning passion. The docs also speak for themselves.

Verge is doing Google's bidding? I get the feeling that any information that counters the narrative that you're selling is "fake news", right?

Western intelligence agencies all agree that a foreign adversary is working to influence elections. This is a problem. The monopoly power of a handful of tech giants is also a problem but bringing it up in this context is a perfect example of whataboutism.

The Verge is absolutely doing Google's bidding here. Google's words and documents speak for themselves. Just like The Verge reporting on Damore without actually publishing his own words. This is actually fake news. You can't just manufacture stories and not supply the primary source because it counters your spin.

I dont know, the idea that people even cared for EU elections sounds ludicrous. I mean they completely ignored the result in the selection of the new EU leading person and nobody cares.

several things: the head of the European comission isn't elected in a popular election, but chosen by representatives of the respective countries, and then affirmed by parliament. So that has little relevance to the actual elections of the parliament itself.

Furthermore cooperation between European countries on election security isn't just relevant when it comes to EU elections, but also when national elections are at stake.

> the head of the European comission isn't elected in a popular election, but chosen by representatives of the respective countries, and then affirmed by parliament.

Exactly. All the more reason why people don't care. Having a parliament for decoration is not something to boast about.

the parliament is not for decoration simply because it does not elect the head of the commission by direct vote. The EU is a supranational collection of countries, not a nation state.

Right, there are many other reasons too. I actually agree, and i would wish EU would stop trying more and more to become a state, and return to being an economic union that encourages each member to use its competitive advantages to prosper.

The eu is the biggest meddler in national elections

More than 200 million people voted in the last eu elections. Somebody cared.

That says nothing. There is no widespread feeling that russian-whatever is causing EU's current issues. Saying that it is the Russians is just as effective as sticking its head in the sand and parroting american political chitchat. On the other hand, a perceived external threat usually increases coherence in nation states, but EU is a different kind of institution that should not pretend to work this way.

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