
How Twitter pushed RT to spend big on 2016 US election - gaius
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/407858-rt-twitter-us-election/
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danjoc
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.

~~~
travmatt
Or RIS broke into state election boards to get hyper accurate data on voter
and voting patterns unavailable within legal means, broke into campaigns to
find information they could construe as satanic (like child sex slave rings
run out of pizzeria shops), and then colluded with Republicans to distribute
their propaganda to the most low information voters they could find in swing
states for maximum impact.

~~~
vim_wannabe
Can someone link some of these "fake news articles" from rt.com? That sounds
crazy, heh.

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travmatt
Just look up any regarding Putin's slaughter of the passengers of MH17,
they've been quite active in trying to spread disinformation there.

~~~
vim_wannabe
I mean regarding 2016 US election, sorry.

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everdev
Don't we have a bigger issue if ad money can swing an election? Where's the
critical thought on the part of the electorate?

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FLUX-YOU
Critical thought doesn't make you immune to propaganda.

~~~
moomin
This is a really important point. Everyone thinks that they, personally, are
immune to this sort of thing. Every scientific study suggests they’re wrong.

The Mercers and Putins of the world do this because it’s cost-effective.

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1001101
> Every scientific study suggests they’re wrong.

Which scientific studies? Interested.

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nimos
Has anyone seen what the promoted tweets were? Would be interesting to see
which tweets got promoted.

The twitter report says:

"Based on our findings thus far, RT spent $274,100 in U.S. ads in 2016. In
that year, the @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT accounts promoted 1,823
Tweets that definitely or potentially targeted the U.S. market. These
campaigns were directed at followers of mainstream media and primarily
promoted RT Tweets regarding news stories."

Which doesn't seem particularly nefarious to me. Does RT have a political bend
to their organization? Probably. What state funded news organization doesn't?
It's 270k on stuff that "definitely or potentially" targeted Americans? What
does potentially mean and what is the breakdown? What % actually had to do
with the election?

Also if I have the timeline correct Twitter bans RT from advertising two hours
after they publish their side of the events?

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powertower
That is more or less the main way the media in the US, the EU, and some other
world regions, is operating right now.

For each major story, they remove all the real details, even the context, and
just present you with a well crafted narrative which itself is mostly
supported only by promises of inside-knowledge, secret/anon sources, and
"proofs" that are never released.

Then after some time passes the details are re-introduced by the non-liars and
the narrative collapses.

Except nothing changes because the general public has already been conditioned
to want to be lied to daily and just moves on to the next fake-news story.

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smoll
>They remove all the real details, even the context, and just present you a
well crafted narrative that has no basis in reality.

I don't normally comment on political topics, but who are you talking about
here? Is the "they" in this sentence RT or Twitter? Both have huge incentives
to misrepresent facts to make themselves look good.

>Except nothing changes because the general public has already been
conditioned to want to be lied to daily and just moves on to the next fake-
news story.

Sounds about right. I just assume both parties are lying here.

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bhhaskin
They being the media. Journalistic integrity died years ago. We like to blame
Russian for the last election outcome, but are quick to forget that mega
corporations spent way more time and effort trying to sway the election. For
some reason we are ok with Google trying to influence voters through
recommends and search results, but aren't ok when Russian does the same thing
using ads (on Google platforms). Google, Twitter, Facebook had no problem
taking Russian money during the election.

~~~
icebraining
_Are_ we ok with and/or easy to forget about mega corporations trying to sway
the elections? Why do you think so?

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mistermann
If Hillary won, no one would care. If they cared, the whole process would be
under review for obvious corruption.

