
Russian “troll” describes interview for meddling in elections - boulos
https://www.recode.net/2018/2/18/17025216/russia-troll-factory-facebook-election-hillary-clinton
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montrose
At the end he makes an interesting point: that this worked in the US not
because it has a lot of stupid people (which Russia presumably has too) but
because it has a lot of stupid people _who have not been lied to too much._

“Who really reads the comments under news articles, anyway?,” he said when
asked whether the tactics worked in Russia. “Especially when they were so
obviously fake.”

“But for Americans, it appears it did work,” he continued. “They aren’t used
to this kind of trickery. They live in a society in which it’s accepted to
answer for your words.”

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dominotw
When I moved to United States from a semi-communist country this was one the
things that I found amazing about American Society. If you someone tells you
something people just belive it. For example even CEO's have fake resumes[1],
because people just believe what you tell them. In the country where I grew
up, people are so used to lying and scheming that people just assume everyone
is a cheat by default unless proven otherwise.

It was just an amazing feeling to be a part of higher trust society like USA.
Things are just easier and less stressful, you are not constantly worried
about someone trying to get you.

1\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/successful-executives-who-
hav...](http://www.businessinsider.com/successful-executives-who-have-lied-on-
their-resumes-2015-7)

~~~
52-6F-62
Having grown up in North America, I think I can say that the kind of higher
trust society you're speaking to only exists at certain strata.

If you were born into a lower strata, upward movement will sometimes be viewed
with suspicion. If you were born high, you'll not likely sink below your
level.

In short, I think that's a privilege of the upper-middle classes and above.

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moolcool
Non blogspam link:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/17...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/17/a-former-
russian-troll-speaks-it-was-like-being-in-orwells-
world/?utm_term=.a90b3c0d86ed)

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boulos
The interesting bit to me is that the guy didn’t make the cut. ML based
methods are way behind humans at this point, but how far off is the day that
we could train something to pass? 5 years? 3? Less? Especially for the sort of
short-form comments on news articles, it seems possible to me to at least
insert high-confidence “sounds American, but false” today-ish.

~~~
avs733
So this is an entirely out of my ass theory but here goes...

The reason something like ML is failing here is because what the russian
trolls are trying to do is fundamentally change how discourse occurs, how
people in the US receive and process information, and the tone of the
conversation. ML is great are reproducing things that already exist. That's
why they get accused of being racist...because they are reproducing patterns
in data. The russians were trying to cause things to happen by changing the
conversation.

That's fundamentally different and I haven't seen a lot of ML systems where
one can dictate a goal like that and have the system work out the response.
From what I know, that seems like one of the differences in the 'older'
schools of AI and the newer schools that let the field actually have such an
explosion of success nowadays...they got way more comfortable with backward
vs. forward looking learning.

