
Twitter is suspending pro-Bloomberg accounts, citing ‘platform manipulation’ - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-21/twitter-suspends-bloomberg-accounts
======
frou_dh
> As part of a far-reaching social media strategy, the Bloomberg campaign has
> hired hundreds of temporary employees to pump out campaign messages through
> Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These “deputy field organizers” receive
> $2,500 per month to promote the former New York mayor’s candidacy within
> their personal social circles

Accusations of paid shills have been thrown around so freely on the Internet,
it's refreshing to have actual textbook examples for once!

~~~
ForHackernews
Wow, how can get paid $2,500/month to post Bloomberg spam? That sounds like a
fantastic deal! If you extrapolated that to an annual salary, about 35% of
Americans work jobs that pay less than that.

~~~
DethNinja
And that is very minuscule fraction of his wealth.

This is really scary because it means that if somehow billionaires and
companies that received assistance from Quantitative Easing decided to spend
their wealth, it would cause considerable inflation.

~~~
rubyn00bie
He could spend his entire fortune and it wouldn't even make the smalle blip in
our economy. While he's wealthy, $55 billion isn't really much money in the
American economy with a GDP of over 21 trilion.

Quantitative easing has literally zero to do with what you're proposing, the
amount of money infused was pretty small compared to the size of our economy
(arguably way too little), and the rest of us would've been even more fucked
had it not happened.

Correlating QE to billionaire spending and inflation is like correlating how
much change you find in your couch to your maximum potential earnings. It
doesn't make sense.

And don't get me wrong, I totally hate Bloomberg and I know he has literally
zero business being president. I'm not shilling for him, he's a piece of crap,
don't vote for him...

I just really fucking hate it when people say things that sound "right" or
even "informed" about economics that aren't because the whole science gets
shit on daily by people who have no business talking about it without stating
"I know nothing" before posting. If you don't make posts on physics theories
don't make them about economics; it's actually even more hurtful because
getting through the misinformation is harder and more prone to error.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> Correlating QE to billionaire spending and inflation is like correlating how
> much change you find in your couch to your maximum potential earnings.

Of course you have to correlate it. Do you know what QE was? Without QE fixing
the balance sheets of the banking system and low interest rates, we'd most
likely be facing major deflation. Without QE and low interest, bloomberg's net
worth would be much smaller and that most definitely would affect his
spending.

> it's actually even more hurtful because getting through the misinformation
> is harder and more prone to error.

The fact that you correlated economics to physics/science makes it difficult
to take your argument seriously.

[https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/10/17/eid-
economics-...](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/10/17/eid-economics-
not-science/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/11/nobel-...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/11/nobel-
prize-economics-not-science-hubris-disaster)

At best you can argue that economics is a pseudo/soft science like political
science than a real/hard science like physics.

~~~
rubyn00bie
_sigh_

You linked to absolute bullshit.

Dody T. Eid is a fucking nobdoy. Straight up just some jackass who has no
background in economics writing very conservative op-eds. Next up is Joris,
who let me quote the wikipedia block from google: "[..] is a Dutch non-fiction
author, anthropologist, news correspondent, and TV interviewer. Wikipedia"

You can credit my Economics background for my astute bullshit detector.

> Of course you have to correlate it. Do you know what QE was? Without QE
> fixing the balance sheets of the banking system and low interest rates, we'd
> most likely be facing major deflation. Without QE and low interest,
> bloomberg's net worth would be much smaller and that most definitely would
> affect his spending.

Yeah, great idea deflation, that's how the great depression happened because
the government at the time and federal bank said "piss off wankers." It
triggers a deflationary spiral, which stops spending, and causes economic
collapse, here's a link:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Deflationary_spiral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Deflationary_spiral)

It's safe to say it's you, friend, who does not know anything about QE,
economic history, theory, or its application.

FWIW, I hate Milton Friedman and think he was an asshole who had an enormous
amount of bullshit ideological driven policies that strayed far from the
science, but god damn he hit the nail on the monetary policy preventing the
great depression... which is exactly what happened in 2008/9 by the FED
holding interest rates low or negative.

I do like Keynes mostly, but unfortunately, because a lot of America has no
idea about how economics works, especially on a macro scale, we didn't get the
"new deal." We should have we got "the shitty deal," which was no investment
infrastructure.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> You can credit my Economics background for my astute bullshit detector.

Is that because of all the bullshit in economics gave you ample practice in
detecting bullshit? Well be patient with me because my limited economics
background most likely pales in comparison to yours.

> Yeah, great idea deflation

I didn't say deflation is great. You are reading into things too much. I just
said QE and low interest rates had an impact on inflation. Something which you
cavalierly dismissed. I said QE and low interest rates prevented deflation.

> It's safe to say it's you, friend, who does not know anything about QE,
> economic history, theory, or its application.

All you've provided are just ad hominems and just cnbc talking points with
nonpertinent rants on the side. Everything you disagree with is "bullshit" and
everything you say is "gospel". Typical economics background behavior.

For someone "with an economics background", you would know how it has so many
"gurus" and so much unsettled "science" in it. How one nobel prize winning
economist could say the world economy is going to collapse after the previous
election and another can say it will be great and economics couldn't settle
the issue either way.

But then again, this comment thread is precisely why I view economics as a
religion rather than a science. Where people make up shit that aligns with
their agenda and worship their prophets ( Keynes, Marx, etc ). Sometimes it's
hard to differentiate between a religious zealot and someone with "an
economics background".

~~~
rubyn00bie
I only want to quote you from a couple days ago because I think you need to
reflect here and take time to stop spewing non-sense which you're making up...
and I don't think you're seeing it clearly; so, maybe this will help you
out...

In reply to this:

>> I rely on Matt Levine to explain, more clearly than I could, how brokerages
make money

You wrote:

> You rely on someone who never worked for a brokerage to teach you how
> brokerages worked?

Maybe you should really think that through in the context of economics.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> I only want to quote you from a couple days ago

You are invested in this. That's the type of religious zeal I'm talking about.

> Maybe you should really think that through in the context of economics.

Only if economics worked like brokerages work.

The fact that you have to go "3 days back into comment history" rather than
using the "science" in economics to support your argument should tell you
something. That's the difference between religion, economics, political
science, etc and physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc. One responds with straw
man and red herrings, the other responds with actual science and facts.

------
nneonneo
The more I look at platforms like Twitter and Facebook, the more I start
liking the WeChat “anti-viral” timeline concept. Posts on your WeChat timeline
show only likes from your friends. This applies even on posts from other
people - you can only see likes on those posts from _your_ friends, not any of
that person’s friends. Boom - no more platform manipulation, since everything
on your timeline is 100% driven by your friends.

Unfortunately the Chinese government can and will censor posts on these feeds,
which is made super easy by how slow things usually spread on that platform -
but that’s a different issue entirely. I’m not advocating literally switching
to WeChat - just that the concept feels at once far more “social” and rather
less prone to certain kinds of manipulation.

~~~
geofft
Does WeChat have an equivalent to "Trending"? Part of the strategy of
campaigns like this one is to get something globally trending, and Twitter
seems to like the idea of global (or even local) trends existing. It'd be
interesting to have a per-user concept of "Trending," scoped to just the
people you follow, but I suspect Twitter wouldn't like it because it's harder
to onboard new users and get them engaged.

The other part of campaigns like this is replying to major accounts to push
something, so you'd have to have your "anti-viral" timeline hide replies that
weren't endorsed by people you don't follow. That is, if friend A retweeted
something by a famous politician, and a thousand people replied including none
of your friends, and friend B liked one of those replies, _only_ that one
reply would show up for you if you looked at the tweet. Again, I suspect this
is bad for engagement (so I'm wondering if WeChat actually does this?).

~~~
science4sail
In my recollection, Tencent (WeChat's owner) derives a lot of their revenue
from microtransactions, so engagement in the core app isn't as big a deal for
them.

~~~
Jommi
I think it's not giving the whole picture of paint WeChat/tencent as a normal
company trying to make profit. They are providing a national service, it
doesn't need to be profitable.

------
adrianmonk
> _Facebook’s response to the Bloomberg campaign’s novel social strategy_

Novel? What?

The practice has been around a really long time, and it has been around on the
internet long enough that the term "astroturfing" was coined decades ago. And
the term "paid shill" has been around longer than that. Today it's very common
in several places including Amazon product reviews and political discussions.

Wikipedia gives
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#History_of_incide...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#History_of_incidents))
an example from way back: 'an early example of the practice was in Act 1,
Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. In the play, Cassius writes fake
letters from "the public" to convince Brutus to assassinate Caesar.'

I'm not a big fan of the practice (it involves ulterior motives), but the most
unique thing I see about this is they did a clumsy job of it.

~~~
xkemp
Despite your (and many others in this thread) assertion, this is fundamentally
_new_ because it hasn't previously been done in political campaigns in any
meaningful scale.

The mere existence of a few private campaigns of the sort doen't diminish how
much of a departure this is with what has previously been considered
acceptable in the political realm.

If we assume that the widespread every-politician-is-corrupt cynicism goes
along with/is rooted in a wish to see _less_ corruption, you are also applying
rather harmful tactics: by claiming everyone plays dirty, any differences
between the candidates are erased, and so are any incentives to behave
ethically. The cynicism is self-fulfilling: politicians only ever getting
superficial accusations with no discernable relation to their actual behaviour
will soon stop trying, because why bother?

------
SXX
Good work, Twitter! Now just ban at least 20,000,000 more of bot accounts over
the world and your platform will actually become a bit better.

~~~
netsharc
I imagine if Bloomberg (or whoever the next billionaire is) was more
friendlier with the Twitter C-levels, or was a big investor, they wouldn't
have dared to do anything...

So that's the new first step for the next billionaire (or fake one) who wants
to be president: buy a significant share of Twitter.

Chilling, huh?

~~~
alkibiades
they didnt mind the hillary "correct the record" shills

~~~
iron0013
They obviously don’t mind the thousands of pro-trump shills, either

------
jdavis703
The execution of this is so stupid. For $2500 they should have been getting
more than copy paste content. Are there no under-employeed recent college
grads who can write a few original, pro-Bloomberg tweets a day for $2500 a
month?

~~~
tylerl
I donno, I think this shows that Bloomberg has a knack for government work.
Pay people an extraordinarily inflated price for something that sounds
straightforward on the surface, only to have them execute on the letter of the
contract in cheapest and most amateurish way imaginable. The man clearly
belongs.

~~~
xkemp
The only thing more boring than government work are tired lazy stereotypes
accusing government employees of incompetence/lazyness/wastefulness.

~~~
IceDane
Or prissy internet sissies that can't read a joke without feeling personally
attacked

------
kanox
I don't see how Bloomberg did anything wrong.

Paying people to publish your message is part of normal political campaigning.

~~~
mc32
Yeah I don’t know how you handle something like this and don’t end up in a
place where only sanctioned decrees and declarations from the ministry of
truth in information is allowed. Not that there’s an obvious solution to this
mire

~~~
dragonwriter
You require paid political ads by campaigns to explicitly say “Paid for by
<campaign>”.

As, in fact, we already do, this is just a hack around the way those laws are
applied.

------
therusskiy
I wish they would do it for Kremlin bots as well, they do a lot of propaganda
here in Russia

~~~
tenpies
Why is Russia so special and unique in this regard?

I am honestly curious because there are countries with more impactful and
tangible geopolitical interests (e.g. Saudi Arabia - who owns a substantial
portion of Twitter), and yet it's only the comic-book villain, Putin's Russia
who apparently does this.

The other alternative is that Russia does this, but so ineffectively that they
stand out, but that seems unlikely because it would also imply that other
countries do it so effectively that no one notices.

The third alternative I can think of is that interested parties are okay with
the direction in which _some_ foreign powers want to sway American public
opinion. Those interested parties control the mainstream media - or enough of
it - to be able to decide which countries' bots get reported on and which get
ignored. Honestly it's this option that I find exponentially more likely.

~~~
esnible3
Russia was experiencing democratic protests against their czar and might have
had a peaceful transition to democracy in 1918. German-supported propaganda
ended up ruining their 20th century. Russia is copying that playbook.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/was-lenin-a-
germa...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/was-lenin-a-german-
agent.html)

~~~
mFixman
The Germans definitely sent Lenin because he would pressure whichever
government Russia ended up with to withdraw from the war. It's wrong to call
Lenin a German agent the same way it's disingenuous to call Corbyn a Russian
agent in the UK just because he's a critic of NATO.

Anyway, it's a fallacy to think that Russia would be fine without the
Revolution. Peaceful transitions to liberal democracy are an exception that
only happen on very particular cases.

~~~
dmix
I think you have it opposite. Aren't there far more examples of peaceful
transitions to liberal democracies (ie, almost every country who had a
monarchy in Europe and or were under control of said countries... and now has
a parliament/republic).

Albeit it took longer and it was "gradual" but few of them had the hyper-
violent post "vanguard" revolutions events that resulted in some of the worst
tragedies in history?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge)
(note famous french liberal Jean-Paul Sartre attempted to cover up news of
this event in the west because he thought it would hurt the spread the
revolution to the global "politeriat")

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror)

Almost all violent revolutions have resulted in a stain on world history. Yet
the (less news worthy) numbers who gradually adopted independent courts and
shifted from monarchy to republican/parliamentary power are much higher, and
none of them had awful mass murders of people whose ideas weren't "in line"
with the revolutionary ideology, not long after the revolutions.

------
fartcannon
I don't believe proof of shilling is necessary. It should be considered
fundamental small group primate behavior.

~~~
whatshisface
How would it get status as a recognized "fundamental small group primate
behavior" without proven examples? You're saying that you want the 200th floor
penthouse without any of the apartments below it.

~~~
ta999999171
Wait, are these comments saying they're unaware of proven examples of
shilling/astroturfing?

~~~
pixl97
Some people have purposely avoided studying any of the last 3000 years of
human history involving communications. Especially those involving deception.

------
ipnon
Democracy is crippled when megatech decides who gets to speak and when,
whatever you may think of Bloomberg in particular.

------
artemisyna
Conspiracy theory: Bloomberg is doing this cash-pump campaign so that folk are
forced to talk about (and become aware of) the shady techniques that campaigns
use normally anyway.

~~~
somebodythere
To what end?

~~~
artemisyna
To prime the populous for when other types of media manipulation occur - folk
aren't going to dig into media manipulation if it's done by someone they like
and never realize the sheer mass of it. But if it's by someone they don't...

If nothing else, Bloomberg's ad budget is a solid experiment for the impact of
ad budgets on elections. I don't know how much of the transparency that seems
to exist around what Bloomberg is doing is normal for campaigns, but that is
also a plus.

------
moomin
Should have hired the Internet Research Agency.

------
shadowprofile77
As much as I generally dislike and have wariness of these sorts of selective
suspensions from the giant tech communications platforms, Micheal Bloomberg
himself is such a thoroughly detestable individual that it's hard not to be
pleased. Whether you're a republican conservative type or a liberal democrat,
Bloomberg has the worst of either world to offer you in his smugly
authoritarian, elitist and humorless tendencies. Grotesque in so many ways.

------
rdtsc
I can see opposing candidates pretending to be Bloomberg’s paid people saying
stuff to make Bloomberg look bad. Any country who wants Bloomberg to not be a
viable candidate could do the same.

At this point I think anyone telling me to vote for Bloomberg received a check
from him. It’s not true always of course, but it’s the first thing that pops
into my head.

~~~
luckylion
Valid point, it's fuzzy. I just remembered New Knowledge [1] who ran false
flag operations to make it look like their opponent was supported by Russian
bot nets.

There's likely a bit of both. Would Bloomberg pay $2500 per month for simple
copy & paste jobs? Doubtful, I'm sure he has better media people that know
they could get that for tiny fraction of the price. There may be pro-Bloomberg
paid posting while somebody also pays for dumb multiplication bots to spread a
message (or false flag it).

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-
jon...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-
russia.html)

------
abvdasker
I have seen this happening in other forums, particularly the comments section
of the New York Times. I can't be sure that astroturfing is what's happening,
but it seems pretty likely given this new information.

------
mirimir
OK, so the Blumberg campaign arguably erred by being so open about this
effort. Unless, as others note, it was just consciousness raising. Or getting
Twitter blamed, or whatever.

But what's interesting is what this portends for the coming campaign. Will
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram be suspending all accounts that post
~duplicative political content? And if their policies vary by candidate, will
that be firm evidence of bias?

This is going to make 2016 look like 2012, I suspect.

------
twittermoneh
Who gives a crap about Bloomberg.

Everyone with a monetary interest in Twitter should be ashamed of themselves —
shareholders, employees, etc. they are all “people” without a moral compass.
Or rather, the compass exists, but it just points to money.

------
css
The tweets in their example look like people clicking a share button, which
commonly use a link shortener and are often formatted like “article - link,”
you can see this by searching for headlines of nearly any publisher on
Twitter. Here is an example for an article currently on the NYT homepage:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=Bernie%20Sanders%2C%20th...](https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=Bernie%20Sanders%2C%20the%20Teflon%20Candidate%2C%20Faces%20Sudden%20New%20Tests&src=typed_query&f=live)

The OP’s hero image caption states:

> Twitter says duplicative messages violate its policy against platform
> manipulation and spam

Does this mean people should start to worry about clicking share buttons now?
It is hardly bot activity to use a feature of the platform. Everyone who
clicks a share button by default is tweeting the same message.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> Does this mean people should start to worry about clicking share buttons
> now?

If they're getting paid to, then I certainly hope so.

------
twittermoneh
Everyone with a monetary interest in Twitter should be ashamed of themselves —
shareholders, employees, etc. they are all “people” without a moral compass.
Or rather, the compass exists, but it just points to money.

------
tus88
This has to be the most embarrassing run for president in history.

------
kauffj
Archive link: [http://archive.is/59nJN](http://archive.is/59nJN)

~~~
DailyHN
Doesn't work, try [https://outline.com/LWxMUu](https://outline.com/LWxMUu)

~~~
asymptotically2
Are you using a broken DNS server, like 1.1.1.1 from Cloudflare?

~~~
Dylan16807
Cloudflare merely asks for the IP and returns what it is given. Which in the
case of archive.is is a fake result, but Cloudflare can't help that.

------
TLightful
A little like slapping a gnat on your neck whilst an avalanche crashes down
the mountain towards your timber cabin.

------
throwanem
Michael Bloomberg is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being
I've ever known in my life.

~~~
sudosteph
You forgot to add "this HN comment sponsored by Bloomberg2020".

~~~
throwanem
No, I didn't.

------
dghughes
I go to Twitter and the first thing I see is Twitter's "News for you" which
states "Clint Eastwood signals his support of Mike Bloomberg".

------
DyslexicAtheist
this was also pretty brazen by him actively taking part in the shilling (or
whoever[1] manages his account):
[https://twitter.com/dominicholden/status/1230522541111947264](https://twitter.com/dominicholden/status/1230522541111947264)

[1] does anyone know if he manages the account?

~~~
oplav
Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t seem like the Bloomberg campaign was trying
to pass that video off as real. They edited crickets chirping into the audio.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
I hope it is satire as sibling comment suggests.

------
osrec
I'm surprised they don't do it for the _obviously_ fake accounts posting in
favour of Donald Trump. There's something very fishy with some of those
comments, and the profiles that they come from are very sparse. It should be
easy enough to flag/detect automatically.

~~~
altcognito
I've had sarcastic supported upvoted by Trump bots as true support to the tune
of hundreds of accounts. It's almost embarrassing how manipulated Twitter is.
Facebook is a lost cause. The climate change stuff they repost alone convinces
me we're not going to win the 21st century propaganda war.

------
lokl
Is Twitter a net positive for society?

~~~
ta999999171
Softbank, aka, the Saudi national fund, seem to think so!

------
DailyHN
Bypass paywall [https://outline.com/LWxMUu](https://outline.com/LWxMUu)

------
vinniejames
"Twitter says duplicative messages violate its policy against platform
manipulation and spam"

Sounds like retweeting should also be banned under this policy. But that would
require some semblance of continuity and fairness in policy enforcement.

~~~
eesmith
Your quote isn't present in the text. I don't see the phrase "Twitter says" or
"duplicative messages".

The closest is: Twitter said the campaign violated its rules against “creating
multiple accounts to post duplicative content,”

~~~
css
It is in the caption of the hero image, displayed right above the article
body.

~~~
eesmith
Ahh, I see. Thanks!

I couldn't use normal view to read the page without agreeing to the ToS so I
switched to Firefox's reader view. That doesn't include the image.

My reading is that the caption (which I can read by view-source) is a second-
hand interpretation of Twitter's statements. I think the direct Twitter quote,
which I copied earlier, is more relevant, and addresses vinniejames's concerns
about retweets.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
It's spam - just like anyone else. Sensationalized because it's connected to
someone special.

~~~
ganstyles
Sorry, what? This is spam, but the potential effect is significantly greater.
This is someone trying to buy an election and circumvent democracy. I'd say
it's not sensationalized enough given the stakes.

~~~
Jorge1o1
I’ve never fully understood why bots are seen as subverting democracy when
things like flyers, posters, and yard signs aren’t.

If I go to an empty lot and I put up 50 Mike yard signs, what’s the difference
between that and a bot that makes 50 Mike tweets?

~~~
mytherin
The difference is that the bot is pretending to be a person. People are herd
animals, they are easily manipulated to follow views that the herd sees as
"correct". Having bots that are pretending to be people expressing their views
is essentially an attempt at large-scale psychological manipulation. It is not
simply about making people aware of a candidate or a certain point of view, it
is about trying to make people believe many others believe that point of view
to try and manipulate them into believing it as well.

~~~
vinniejames
Bots are not "pretending" to be anything. Humans have a false assumption that
everything posted on social media was hand typed by another human, at the time
it was posted. This is not, and almost never had been true, therein lies the
problem. There have been "bots" posting online since day 1

~~~
mytherin
When bots have human names and human profile pictures they are most certainly
pretending to be human. But even if they do not have these, by not explicitly
mentioning they are bots on social networking sites (including sites like
reddit) they are effectively pretending to be humans as well, because like you
mentioned people assume that other users on the site are human.

~~~
vinniejames
It's a false assumption. People shouldn't assume anything, there are plenty of
places to do legitimate research, political or otherwise, social media isn't
one of them

------
skizm
I mean I guess at least Bloomberg is being honest about it. Every other
campaign is doing the exact same thing, but pretending they’re not.

~~~
dannyw
Can you source your statement that other candidates are paying people to
promote campaign messages on their own social circles, without disclosure?

~~~
lern_too_spel
This article says the people are disclosing.

"We ask that all of our deputy field organizers identify themselves as working
on behalf of the Mike Bloomberg 2020 campaign on their social media accounts."

------
vinniejames
This is how democracy dies. When we, as a society, permit the election outcome
to be determined by the executive leadership of a handful of tech companies.

"Russia" has absolutely no power compared to the implications of this

~~~
kyrra
Look how much money Bloomberg had spent and isn't doing all that great in
national polls. Also look at the 2016 election, Hilary spent almost double
what Trump spent and still lost.

[https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-
primary...](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-
primary-d/national/)

[https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primary-
forecast/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primary-forecast/)

Money doesn't mean automatic votes unless people agree with your message at
least some.

Also, Russia had very little impact in 2016 election (if you have proof
otherwise, I'd love to see it). It did make much of the media and Washington
go crazy for a couple years, but that seemed just an amplification of Russia's
attempt to mess with things.

~~~
wpietri
In contrast, look at how far along Bloomberg would be if he was not able to
spend any of his own money. I'd say his money has had quite an effect.

The 2016 election margin was very slim. A great number of factors could
plausibly have made the difference. Russian social media manipulation is
likely within that margin. Russia's hack of the DNC is definitely within that
margin.

~~~
rayiner
The Bloomberg example demonstrates @kyrra’s point. Bloomberg is moving up
rapidly in the polls because Democrats are desperately looking for a “not
Bernie” candidate. Bloomberg is using money to get his message out there. But
money alone wouldn’t have done it. Tom Steyer spent $127 million of his own
money and couldn’t buy any support.

Clinton spent twice as much on her campaign, and adding in pro-Clinton PACs
spending on her behalf was three times as much. If money was as important as
people say, it should never have been close enough for Russian media
manipulation to matter.

~~~
wpietri
I don't think anybody is saying that money alone is enough. For one thing,
just like any ad campaign, you have to spend it well.

But if you really believe money isn't very important, you'll have to explain
why successful candidates all spend a great deal of time raising money. And
then keep on doing so despite the clear advantages of incumbency.

