
How Russia Got Americans to Turn Against One Another - jseliger
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/facebook-google-twitter-russian-interference-hearings.html
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babesh
It didn't take Russians to turn Americans on each other. Some Russians just
gave it a nudge.

Perhaps some Americans just wanted power and used an effective divide and
conquer strategy on their fellow Americans.

Perhaps some Americans need to look down on some other Americans.

Perhaps some Americans are intolerant of other Americans.

BTW this applies to both sides of the political spectrum.

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maxxxxx
Americans didn't need the Russians to turn against one another. I have been
here since 2000 and I am still amazed how vicious a lot of campaign ads are
and how much a lot of people have bought into the mindset that the "other
side" liberals/conservatives is basically evil.

The American system did this to itself. The Russians are just a little
sideshow.

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babesh
The very foundation of these companies is influence peddling: pay me money to
get people to do what they would not otherwise do. It obviously works else
Facebook and Google wouldn't be worth north of half a trillion dollars each.

~~~
eighthnate
That applies to the nytimes too. They are in the business of influence
peddling.

~~~
babesh
True. They are transitioning to a subscriber model though.

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Boothroid
'“What they did is wrong, and we’re not going to stand for it,” Mr. Zuckerberg
said.'

I'm sure the FSB are quaking in their boots.

I also think it's legitimate to point out firstly that the US has a long and
distinguished history of interfering in democratic elections the world over,
sometimes even overthrowing democratic regimes to install horrible dictators,
and secondly that Israeli influence on the US elections is considerable and
out in the open, but for some reason hardly every reported by the MSM as
malign. Funny old world eh.

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eighthnate
Firstly, we have always been divided and against each other. Rich vs poor,
white vs black, rural vs urban, native vs settlers, native born vs immigrants,
states vs federal government, etc. What is the NYTimes going to do next? Blame
russia for the civil war?

Secondly, the media, including the NYTimes,

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-
cl...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-clinton-for-
president.html)

did far more to divide the country and turn everyone against each other than
russians. The nytimes and their fellow media cohorts incessant agenda-pushing
via their socio-political propaganda war has soured the nation.

Thirdly, what disturbs me is the coordinated propaganda campaign waged by
almost all the media ( nytimes, wapo, bloomberg, cnbc, etc ) all pushing the
same message. It almost seems like they are just different mouthpieces of the
same propaganda organ.

Fourthly, it's exhausting and quite frankly ineffective to spam "russia is
behind everything" everyday. It just makes the nytimes and the rest of the
media look like propagandists rather than actual news organizations.

But that's just me. My faith in news organizations is forever lost anyways.
Once you peek behind the veil, there is no going back.

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mythrwy
So we'd all be living in perfect harmony (with Hillary Clinton as president)
if it weren't for those 100K in Russian ads?

Geeze. Cmmon NYT. Your anti-Internet Media and and anti-Russian and pro-
whoever the democrat is positions are understandable and may even have some
merit based on political beliefs, but please, be a little more reasonable,
especially with your headlines. It's not like everything was fine and
harmonious even if Russia didn't even exist.

~~~
eighthnate
The NYTimes is upset their candidate didn't win.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-
cl...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-clinton-for-
president.html)

They have to blame someone because they themselves can't possibly be
responsible.

