Posted on 02/19/2018 6:37:36 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Making the click-through worthwhile: Russia’s ham-fisted propaganda efforts, and what makes people gullible; the limits of the Assault Weapons Ban, then and now; a limited defense of FBI Director Christopher Wray; and a sign that Russian athletes cheat, even when it isn’t necessary for victory.
You Can’t Legislate Away the Desire to Believe the Lie
The New York Times looks at Russia’s propaganda efforts and offers an unflattering assessment of how easily Americans could be influenced by foreigners posing as out-of-town activists:
Heart of Texas and Blacktivist were phony groups, part of a sweeping Russian disinformation campaign that was funded with millions of dollars and carried out by 80 people operating out of St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Russian attempt at long-distance choreography was playing out in many cities across the United States. Facebook has disclosed that about 130 rallies were promoted by 13 of the Russian pages, which reached 126 million Americans with provocative content on race, guns, immigration and other volatile issues.
The Russian efforts were pretty devious, planning rallies for and against a particular perspective in the same time and place and hoping the two groups would confront each other.
The Heart of Texas group had more success with a Houston rally to “Stop the Islamization of Texas,” which provoked an angry confrontation in May 2016. United Muslims of America, another Russian creation, called its own rally to “Save Islamic Knowledge” for the same time and place, outside the Islamic Da’wah Center.
Although even in this case, the effect was#…#limited. Coverage at the time: “A rally outside the downtown Houston Islamic Da’wah Center Saturday attracted about a dozen protesters, more than 50 counter-protesters and a local resident armed with a fully charged bubble machine.”
Facebook’s vice president for advertising, Rob Goldman, is grumbling that the coverage of Russia’s online manipulation efforts is ignoring the fact that a lot of Russia’s social media efforts were so ham-fisted that they reached. . . no one:
44% of total ad impressions (number of times ads were displayed) were before the US election on November 8, 2016; 56% were after the election.
Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That’s because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result.
You may recall that most of the social-media materials the Russians were posting were not sophisticated messages or images. If anything, they were so over-the-top that they seemed too ridiculous to be genuinely persuasive. I mean, if you’re swayed by an image that suggests that Hillary Clinton is the devil and she wants to get into a boxing match with Jesus Christ. . . I’m pretty sure you were probably leaning against her already. The woman’s gotten into a heck of a lot of scandals, but I don’t think she’s ever explicitly challenged the Son of God to get into the UFC Octagon with her.
And if Hillary Clinton supporters really want to argue that they lost the votes of a segment of progressives because Bernie Sanders supporters were persuaded by muscular-Bernie cartoons. . . look, if that’s really the case, then it’s not Russia’s, Trump’s, or the Republicans’ fault that a part of the Democratic base is a bunch of easily-distracted shallow idiots. If your voters are getting deterred by doodles, they never really were “your” voters.
How do you get someone to believe a lie? It’s much easier if the mark wants to believe before the con begins. Right now, we have a lot of Americans who are quite eager to believe the worst about prominent figures on the other side. They choose not to distinguish between “I strongly disagree with this person’s political views” and “this person is terrible in every conceivable way.” That’s why we have Americans convinced that Obama was born overseas, and why we have Americans who believe the “pee tape” and evidence of Trump conspiring with Vladimir Putin is out there somewhere.
When Trump first announced, I told my family, “I am voting for him.” I did!
We need some real data on how many online ads are seen overall in the USA, how many pertain to the issues touched on by the “Russia” ads, etc.
My guess is that the ads under controversy were some miniscule percentage of all ads viewed online in the USA, like maybe only 0.01% or even less.
The hysterics try to hype “Russian interference” by making it seem like there was significant influence. I doubt that was the case at all.
Also, the Facebook VP of Ads has stated that a large majority of the “Russian” ad buys came AFTER election day 2016.
It’s propaganda by the liberal media. They don’t think Russia affected the Election.
Just think, 13 Russians speaking / writing broken English had better messaging than the Clinton campaign!
When is Mueller going to prosecute all the illegals who campaigned for HRC? They’re foreign nationals too.
If there were ads on facebook then NOBODY paid any attention to them. We are so bombarded with ads everywhere all the time that nobody notices any of them.
I know, but we need someone to do a real data dive and come up with a full analysis. The MSM keeps saying b.s. like “reached 126 million Americans” to imply that Russia, Russia, Russia elected Donald Trump. It is all asinine but we need a comprehensive analysis with data.
Yes, we are all “exposed” to millions of advertising images. I doubt that this Russia b.s. had the slightest influence at all.
We were exposed to millions of hillary ads disquised as journalism.
The thing I resent the most, I think, is that the Democrats presume us to be so stupid and easily impressed that with a little cash and a few big lies we can be fooled into voting for Trump or anyone else
Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That’s because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result.
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Did this FB tool just admit that you can pay for FB ads, but you arent garanteed they will run? I mean... what the hell, America?
Pro tip: if you are on FB you are a democrat slave. Stop giving your time and money to evil people.
And none of this speaks to the fake information put out by U.S. political campaigns every single election.
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