
Russian ads, now publicly released, show sophistication of influence campaign - paulrigor
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/russian-ads-now-publicly-released-show-sophistication-of-influence-campaign/2017/11/01/d26aead2-bf1b-11e7-8444-a0d4f04b89eb_story.html
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craftyguy
Wow, those ads are terrible. The fact that some of these[0] exist says a lot
about the people in this country.. I get the impression that all of this
'political action/interest' against the tech companies is really just treating
the symptom, and not the underlying problem.

0\.
[https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/Wash...](https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2017/11/01/Others/Images/2017-11-01/russianads001.JPG?uuid=kVlzVL87EeeSlHBfgBZPbg)

~~~
johndoe90
Do you think this could really have any impact on the elections?

I don't see how any of those images or texts could change my opinion on who I
want to be the president. Why would anyone take them into consideration?

P.S. I'm Russian. I'm no fan of propaganda and I just want to figure out
whether our government really wanted Trump to be the president and if so, then
why? I might have missed something, but I don't see that the decisions Trump
making are any good for Russia. I see the opposite.

For example, Trump wanted to remove the oil production limit, which would have
affected Russian economics.

~~~
peoplewindow
Clinton was campaigning on policy of starting a war with Russia in Syria
(establishing a "no fly zone" i.e. by shooting down planes that were flying).
Trump was saying he'd make peace with Russia. So there is a motive.

However, I think this sort of article raises more questions than answers.

Firstly what makes them think this was the work of the Russian government vs
private sector Russians with an interest in US politics? The only evidence
seems to be the use of a particular payment service and the rest is
assumption.

Secondly, how are these ads meant to benefit Russia specifically? What are
these ads supposed to achieve? The evil plan being to "sow division in
society"? US society is already very divided and has been for ages. It's very
hard to imagine any government signing off on the purchase of a bunch of
stupid Jesus arm wrestling memes, especially as there's no coherent theme to
any of this.

The whole Russia-American-election story continues to look to me like a huge
set of suppositions and dubious mental leaps. It's all very clearly an attempt
to get Trump impeached. Motivated reasoning is bound to follow.

PS. I am not Russian.

~~~
turndown
>Firstly what makes them think this was the work of the Russian government vs
private sector Russians with an interest in US politics?

The opposite reasoning also works. Why assume this is a private sector Russian
with an interest in politics, when there is a more simple/straightforward
answer in who would create something like this?

I do agree that Russians should have been interested in the election, as most
of the world should for a country that has a large impact on the socioeconomic
fabric, but any time you begin to input your own time/money into something,
you immediately become obviously vested in the outcome of something you have
no right in influencing.

>Secondly, how are these ads meant to benefit Russia specifically? What are
these ads supposed to achieve? The evil plan being to "sow division in
society"?

Come on, it should be very clear to you why these are beneficial to a supposed
Russian effort to affect the election. Demonization is a classic, and
effective strategy to influence opinion, and while I do agree that this meme
is a very ineffective rhetorical strategy to you/me _when we look at it in a
more skeptical light than normal,_ just seeing this on your Facebook feed
randomly could be very effective to many people.

>The whole Russia-American-election story continues to look to me like a huge
set of suppositions and dubious mental leaps.

It's an investigation that hasn't been finished yet, so I do understand a
skittishness in the veracity of some of the claims made so far in the dossier,
but the idea that the entirety of the Russian collusion saga has just been
trumped-up charges is a joke. Two men have been indicted, and another plead
guilty to crimes that are at least casually related to a possible Russian
collusion.

>It's all very clearly an attempt to get Trump impeached. Motivated reasoning
is bound to follow.

Politically it's absolutely an attempt to impeach Trump, yet day after day
more information is released/revealed/found that is more and more damning to
the idea that something illegal _didn 't_ happen in the 2016 election.

Remember, the idea of Russian collusion isn't something that was just made up
after Trump became President. There has been a natural build up of
evidence/steam that has slowly shed more light on possible activities by those
strongly linked with Trump, or by Trump himself.

>PS. I am not a Russian.

Neither am I. It doesn't matter.

~~~
peoplewindow
_Why assume this is a private sector Russian with an interest in politics,
when there is a more simple /straightforward answer in who would create
something like this?_

I don't agree it's more simple or straightforward. Governments don't do
anything without signoff in triplicate. For a government to end up buying
large quantities of Jesus memes would require a fairly large number of people
to be involved, and they would have to justify themselves to the hierarchy.
This seems extremely implausible to me. For one, if this was even slightly
effective, wouldn't we be seeing all governments at it against each other?

In contrast people in the private sector spending their own money can do what
the hell they like, without having to justify to anyone.

In fact the original perps don't even have to be Russian. They could just be
paying a firm in Russia to do it.

 _Come on, it should be very clear to you why these are beneficial to a
supposed Russian effort_

No, I'm afraid you'll have to enlighten me. Generic "sowing division" \- if it
had any benefit to foreign powers at all - would benefit lots of countries
simultaneously, i.e. any country that wanted the USA to stay out of their own
politics which is most of them. How would they scope the benefit to just
Russia? And if it can't be scoped in this way, what's the evidence that it's
them?

 _Two men have been indicted, and another plead guilty to crimes that are at
least casually related to a possible Russian collusion_

So what? I don't trust the US establishment to be even slightly sane in
regards to this. As you admit large parts of it want Trump gone and have been
throwing around overblown accusations for the past 18 months to try and get
that.

 _Remember, the idea of Russian collusion isn 't something that was just made
up after Trump became President_

I'm afraid that's not how I remember it. I remember it being very much
something that came out of nowhere after Trump won. After a month or two of
trying to pin Trump's victory on sexists and racists, I think the Democratic
establishment realised that attacking Trump voters directly wasn't going to
work and alienating half the country wasn't great politics even if it did
work. So they shifted their efforts to a new strategy - imply the election
itself was illegitimate, imply that people who voted for Trump aren't really
people deep down, they were just brainwashed by dank memes. That allows direct
attacks on Trump without direct attacks on his voters.

Since then I've watched as every day the Russia/Trump conspiracy reaches new
ludicrous heights. If the USA doesn't get a collective mental grip it may end
in civil war.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Governments don't do anything without signoff in triplicate.

Once a broad strategy and objective for a sensitive covert operation is signed
off from the top, yes, they often do things with considerably less
bureaucratic oversight and control than the same government would apply to
less sensitive operations.

Compartmentalization isn't just a thing for non-governmental
criminal/terrorist/rebel groups (in fact, many of those, particularly in the
latter two categories, were taught it by their government sponsors.)

And governments where the executive isn't subject to effective legislative and
judicial oversight frequently are fairly slapdash with controls even outside
of covert operations on issues where the leadership is more focussed on the
perception of progress than specific documented accountability.

------
thisisit
I noted in an earlier thread Obama was lauded for his use of data science and
big data: [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-
us...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-
data-to-rally-voters/)

We have come a long way since then. Data collection has become even more
pervasive. And with such tools existing they were bound to back fire at some
point of time. Sure people might blame FB etc for this but then whose fault is
that the data collection is so pervasive.

------
jnwatson
Though, it is wrong for non-US organizations to try to influence US elections?
They paid for the ads fair and square.

The fear mongering isn't any worse than local tv news ads...

~~~
RickS
Election related TV ads have stringent requirements about disclosing
financiers, relative to other kinds of ads.

Is this more insidious than running a blatant attack ad with a donor list? I'd
say that it definitely is.

The more pressing question IMO is on what grounds we get upset that a foreign
nation did this to us, when we do the same and worse to weaker nations across
the globe?

~~~
dragonwriter
> The more pressing question IMO is on what grounds we get upset that a
> foreign nation did this to us, when we do the same and worse to weaker
> nations across the globe?

No, more the reverse, even leaving aside the accuracy of the fact claim
underlying your claim of significance; it's fairly normal, if not abstractly
desirable, for people to recognize something is wrong when it is done to them,
and then only after that examine and correct their own behavior. So, it's more
natural (again, granting, _arguendo_ , the premise of your question) to ask:
_given that we see this as wrong when it is done to us_ , how should we
correct our behavior toward others?

~~~
RickS
I may have worded my original comment poorly. I meant "why do we not find this
hypocritical?", not "how do we manufacture a difference between our actions
and theirs"

I agree that such behavior by America is unacceptable most if not all of the
time, even when there's a plausible moral imperative (eg replacing a violent
dictator with a nonviolent one)

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sekh60
Note I'm not a twitter user so I have no real idea how far the average tweet
spreads. That said I find it interesting how few impressions a lot of these
tweets had. It is fascinating to see this "new" sort of propaganda though, it
will be interesting (and horrifying) to see how propaganda like this evolves.

------
Feniks
Sophistication? I'm of decidedly average intelligence and I laugh at these
ads.

Probably not the target demo though.

