US Teens Are Being Paid to Spread Disinformation on Social Media (adn.com) 204
The Washington Post covered "a sprawling yet secretive campaign that experts say evades the guardrails put in place by social media companies to limit online disinformation of the sort used by Russia" during America's last presidential campaign in 2016.
According to four people with knowledge of the effort, "Teenagers, some of them minors, are being paid to pump out the messages..." The campaign draws on the spam-like behavior of bots and trolls, with the same or similar language posted repeatedly across social media. But it is carried out, at least in part, by humans paid to use their own accounts, though nowhere disclosing their relationship with Turning Point Action or the digital firm brought in to oversee the day-to-day activity. One user included a link to Turning Point USA's website in his Twitter profile until The Washington Post began asking questions about the activity. In response to questions from The Post, Twitter on Tuesday suspended at least 20 accounts involved in the activity for "platform manipulation and spam." Facebook also removed a number of accounts as part of what the company said is an ongoing investigation...
The months-long effort by the tax-exempt nonprofit is among the most ambitious domestic influence campaigns uncovered this election cycle, said experts tracking the evolution of deceptive online tactics. "In 2016, there were Macedonian teenagers interfering in the election by running a troll farm and writing salacious articles for money," said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. "In this election, the troll farm is in Phoenix...."
The messages — some of them false and some simply partisan — were parceled out in precise increments as directed by the effort's leaders, according to the people with knowledge of the highly coordinated activity, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the privacy of minors carrying out the work... The messages have appeared mainly as replies to news articles about politics and public health posted on social media. They seek to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process, asserting that Democrats are using mail balloting to steal the election — "thwarting the will of the American people," they alleged. The posts also play down the threat from covid-19, which claimed the life of Turning Point's co-founder Bill Montgomery in July...
By seeking to rebut mainstream news articles, the operation illustrates the extent to which some online political activism is designed to discredit the media. While Facebook and Twitter have pledged to crack down on what they have labeled coordinated inauthentic behavior, in Facebook's case, and platform manipulation and spam, as Twitter defines its rules, their efforts falter in the face of organizations willing to pay users to post on their own accounts, maintaining the appearance of independence and authenticity.
One parent even said their two teenagers had been posting the messages since June as "independent contractors" — while being paid less than minimum wage.
According to four people with knowledge of the effort, "Teenagers, some of them minors, are being paid to pump out the messages..." The campaign draws on the spam-like behavior of bots and trolls, with the same or similar language posted repeatedly across social media. But it is carried out, at least in part, by humans paid to use their own accounts, though nowhere disclosing their relationship with Turning Point Action or the digital firm brought in to oversee the day-to-day activity. One user included a link to Turning Point USA's website in his Twitter profile until The Washington Post began asking questions about the activity. In response to questions from The Post, Twitter on Tuesday suspended at least 20 accounts involved in the activity for "platform manipulation and spam." Facebook also removed a number of accounts as part of what the company said is an ongoing investigation...
The months-long effort by the tax-exempt nonprofit is among the most ambitious domestic influence campaigns uncovered this election cycle, said experts tracking the evolution of deceptive online tactics. "In 2016, there were Macedonian teenagers interfering in the election by running a troll farm and writing salacious articles for money," said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. "In this election, the troll farm is in Phoenix...."
The messages — some of them false and some simply partisan — were parceled out in precise increments as directed by the effort's leaders, according to the people with knowledge of the highly coordinated activity, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the privacy of minors carrying out the work... The messages have appeared mainly as replies to news articles about politics and public health posted on social media. They seek to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process, asserting that Democrats are using mail balloting to steal the election — "thwarting the will of the American people," they alleged. The posts also play down the threat from covid-19, which claimed the life of Turning Point's co-founder Bill Montgomery in July...
By seeking to rebut mainstream news articles, the operation illustrates the extent to which some online political activism is designed to discredit the media. While Facebook and Twitter have pledged to crack down on what they have labeled coordinated inauthentic behavior, in Facebook's case, and platform manipulation and spam, as Twitter defines its rules, their efforts falter in the face of organizations willing to pay users to post on their own accounts, maintaining the appearance of independence and authenticity.
One parent even said their two teenagers had been posting the messages since June as "independent contractors" — while being paid less than minimum wage.
Should we care? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Should we care? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to shill for or against a side, that’s your prerogative. But to protect against wide scale fraud, there are laws that require that things like paid endorsements and actor portrayals be disclosed properly so as to protect against dishonest advertising. While not directly applicable here since these aren’t ads, per se, the principle is certainly similar, and the law may need to be updated to account for this new form of deceptive practice. If you’re engaging in a campaign, either for advertising or political reasons, you certainly have an ethical obligation to disclose such exchanges of money, and if you don’t already have a legal one, you should.
Re: Should we care? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Should we care? (Score:5, Interesting)
Schilling does NOT mean you're getting paid, it means you pretend to be impartial when you have a vested interest. See SuperKendall.
"Both Left and Right" is a false equivalency.
"... between them they make up the bulk of the completely trash comments here and elsewhere."
and this is horseshit. You can't possibly know the source of the "bulk of completely trash comments", much less attribute them (implicitly) evenly between left and right. It's almost as though you're shilling for a special interest. Are you getting paid?
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Schilling does NOT mean you're getting paid, it means you pretend to be impartial when you have a vested interest.
in the context of the comment (being paid to advertise) your comment makes no sense, you're saying essentially the same thing.. Moreover, you say it's false equivalency based on what? Do you have research showing that shill comments online are a right heavy phenomenon?
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Does any of it make any difference? If I went on every website where I could comment and said "Trump sucks", would it have any effect at all? No.
On twitter - no. Twitter influence has significantly decreased since the 2016 USA election. Otherwise, this is business as usual:
Exhibit A: three nearly identical articles by different authors on how "Boris is a bit tired and destitute the poor darling" in different (and even with different owners) conservative newspapers on Friday.
Exhibit B: the coverage of Boris Johnson being literally disassembled by Ed Milliband in the parliament on Tuesday in the same newspapers. Identical visuals (in one case phot
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Haha yes. That guy apparently has a speech impediment but it was de Piffle who was lost for words.
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Re:Should we care? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because you want to control the narrative of those "unpaid monkeys". The more they can pay people to post the things they want amplified, the more likely those other people will pick up on it and amplify it, thus ensuring the message they want is the one that gets replicated and amplified. We all know those "unpaid monkeys" aren't coming up with their own ideas, they are just parroting what they see.
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The stupid do this. The smart sickos do it the smart cheap way. You target the richer narcissists convince they how smart that are that they think your bullshit is real and how special they are and then the arseholes will post all your crap for free because they are smart and special and the ruthlessly attack their peers, to push those ideas and marketing because it proves how smart and special they are, nope just arseholes but done for free, modern marketing been that way for decades.
You tube is also choc
if it didnt make any difference, nobody would pay (Score:5, Interesting)
these are just the activities that we can see in public.
facebook is a closed ecosystem. there are massive numbers of private groups where advertising can be targeted with only facebook, the advertiser paying facebook, and the people in the group knowing what is the content of the ad.
we have no idea what is going on in these places. call it the "shadow politics".
cambridge analytica proved that if you get enough good targeting to the correct people, which you can if you gather thousands of points of data on every individual user like facebook does, and use enough machine learning and a.i. to do real-time spamming of information, then you can sway an election. especially in the US where gerrymandering and swing states mean that only a small number of people actually have a statistical likelihood of making a difference in the election outcome.
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Does any of it make any difference? If I went on every website where I could comment and said "Trump sucks", would it have any effect at all? No.
People with your attitude are one of the reasons someone like Donald Trump gets to be president. Your opinion is not worthless. It is probably not even a minority opinion. I do not expect expressing my views on social media to create some new wondrous political world all on my own. But if I just say "fuck it" and walk away, then the nutjobs have won.
What I find interesting (Score:5, Funny)
What I find interesting is the side that claims to be the moral side of the debate, has to spread lies to win an election. You know, the same people that claim to follow some commandments that specifically state not to lie. There is some IMAX level projection going on with these guys.
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From my outsider poiint of view, you say that and I don't even know if you are referring to the left or the right. That statement can equally apply to either side.
That should give you some pause for thought on how your whole election process, and politics itself, has turned into something that's not in the public's interest.
Re:What I find interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
And that is what we technically refer to as "bullshit". Seriously, "both sides!"? You can't possibly be for real.
For what it's worth: yes, my fellow members of the liberal-left are quite capable of biased nonsense-- the nuclear power issue remains a prime example-- and yet the sheer quantity egregious nonsense coming from the right is up at a tsunami level. Just start with Trump-- and no, you don't get to claim that he's an outlier, not after putting him in office and backing him up for years-- the question isn't whether he lies a lot, the question is his rate of lies per minute. It's a trivial matter to put together videos of him contradicting himself, how do you shrug those off? Out of context? Everyone does it? Q: on Covid-19 has Trump played the issue *down* or *up*?
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Ok, now you are definitely not an objective outsider.
Just another troll. It's a sad hobby, but you do you.
Re:What I find interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
One more time: Maybe "both sides", but no not equally and retreating back to that is in itself a sign of how bad off you and you're side is doing.
You don't need to be perfect to point out that the other guy is worse, and sometimes the other guy really and truly is worse. At this point the right in this country is transparently, overwhelmingly bad to historic proportions, and no amount of "whatabout" maneuvers is going to hide that from anyone who's been paying attention for even a second.
Collusion with foreign governments to influence American elections, abusing government office for private profit, encouraging violent, arguably seditious behavior among a radical faction... recently we got up to using federal agents to commit kidnapping and murder on US soil...
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"its bullshit"
"yes, I agree, the liberals can be just as bad at nonsense as the right"
This is exactly my point, you prove it with your level of bias. Its not OK to say "that guy smells, but that other guy smells worse" and think only one of them a problem. At that point, you are the one with the problem, take some time away from the bubbling pot of piss that is today's politics and you can clear your head.
Indeed Left and Right are subject to their own blindspots at times.
You, on the other hand, have outted yourself as a bullshit troll with your "whataboutism".
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The Democrats are too nice. The Republicans don't give a fuck, but the Dems stick to their principals even when it costs them.
Take SCOTUS. The Republicans refused to hold hearings for Obama's pick. He could have just appointed the guy and told them to swivel, but instead he took the high ground and made some speeches.
Now the situation is reversed again the Republicans don't care that they look like massive hypocrites, they will appoint someone weeks before the election anyway. Winning is all that matters, c
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The Democrats are too nice. The Republicans don't give a fuck, but the Dems stick to their principals even when it costs them.
Take SCOTUS. The Republicans refused to hold hearings for Obama's pick. He could have just appointed the guy and told them to swivel, but instead he took the high ground and made some speeches.
Now the situation is reversed again the Republicans don't care that they look like massive hypocrites, they will appoint someone weeks before the election anyway. Winning is all that matters, commandments are for idiots that believe that kind of thing.
"The Democrats are too nice" is retarded bullshit that partisans like to say. They are political animals, and they play to win.
"The Republicans refused to hold hearings for Obama's pick. He could have just appointed the guy and told them to swivel, but instead he took the high ground and made some speeches."
This is complete nonsense. Presidents don't "appoint" Supreme Court justices, they nominate them. The senate has the advise and consent role, and in this case the Republican majority figured they could
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The legal theory was that he could appoint the guy and if the senate declined to offer any advice or disapproval it would stand.
Remember that the Republican senate made up the rules as it went along too, e.g. having a majority vote instead of full hearings and mutual agreement when Democrats didn't like Trump's picks.
And in the end the ambiguity would be resolved by SCOTUS anyway.
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The legal theory was that he could appoint the guy and if the senate declined to offer any advice or disapproval it would stand.
Remember that the Republican senate made up the rules as it went along too, e.g. having a majority vote instead of full hearings and mutual agreement when Democrats didn't like Trump's picks.
And in the end the ambiguity would be resolved by SCOTUS anyway.
There is a provision for "recess appointments" but the president can't just decide when the senate is in recess. Bush tried to get around Democrat obstruction by using recess appointments and they blocked him by pretending they were in session. That must have been back when the Democrats were being "too nice".
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Remember that the Republican senate made up the rules as it went along too, e.g. having a majority vote instead of full hearings ...
Harry Reid has entered the chat.
Both sides are just as power hungry and devoid of morals and ethics as the other. They both forget that the way they screw over the other side in their race to the bottom will be used against them when the pendulum swings the other way.
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Both sides are just as power hungry and devoid of morals and ethics as the other.
If that were true the Democrats would have forced their pick through back in 2016. I hope they have changed and will fight this one harder but I'm not holding my breath.
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"The Senate acted completely legally and according to long-standing Senate rules in declining to confirm Garland."
Bet we won't see those same rules this time around.
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The Democrats are too nice. The Republicans don't give a fuck, but the Dems stick to their principals even when it costs them.
The very same Dems who now demand putting off a new appointment were calling for one when it was their turn. Obama, Biden, Schumer all called for a replacement when the roles were reversed in 2016. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself did so.
they look like massive hypocrites
https://twitter.com/BarackObam... [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/SenSchumer... [twitter.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0... [nytimes.com]
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The Democrats are too nice. The Republicans don't give a fuck, but the Dems stick to their principals even when it costs them.
Take SCOTUS. The Republicans refused to hold hearings for Obama's pick. He could have just appointed the guy and told them to swivel, but instead he took the high ground and made some speeches.
Come again? Pray tell, how was he to go about getting around the whole "advice and consent" of the Senate thing?
Please don't respond with some nonsense like "recess appointment".
You have to prove the lie first... (Score:2)
It's weird, then, that the Slashdot article doesn't bother to detail the lies, no?
Also, this is from someone with a sig saying "doctors destroy health" ... so yeah, let's just say that we don't agree with you on what the facts are and this childish name calling doesn't help you. Also, don't you have to establish that they don't believe it before you can call them liars? But you guys never both with that part for some reason. Almost like you can't do it.
So really, isn't childish name calling all you've go
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The point is not that they're paid to lie, the point is they're paid.
It would be interesting to know what "lies" they alluded to-- but they don't claim all the paid traffic was lies-- but not strictly relevant to the discussion at hand. But thank you for thread-jacking.
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Interestingly, the opening lines of this story detail the kinds of posts the story is about:
Of course, if you're the kind of person who can find
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The fact that you think anyone has to be paid to say things like that amazes me.
You also have to prove that those are false, which is pretty hard given that they're opinions.
I mean, I know you guys completely ignored all of the leaked emails in 2015, but one of them is the same Fauci simping on Hillary. So this may shock you, but yeah, some people see him as being rather political.
And no, for the record, I do wear my mask. It'd be silly not to. But you'd have to be dumb to think that Democrats wouldn't d
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What I find interesting is the side that claims to be the moral side of the debate, has to spread lies to win an election. You know, the same people that claim to follow some commandments that specifically state not to lie. There is some IMAX level projection going on with these guys.
*And* they have to resort to voter suppression. The fact they feel they have to keep people from voting to have a chance to win should tell them something about the current clown shoes state of their party and their belief system.
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I can think well enough to see you're going off-topic.
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But....what "lies" are there?
Participating in a discussion as a paid plant and not disclosing it is lying by omission. You're being intentionally obtuse.
Take your "I'm just asking questions" faggotry and cram it up your "questioning" ass.
I could use some extra cash. (Score:2)
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Does Slashdot count as Social Media? (Score:5, Interesting)
A fair proportion of the comments here - and a lot of them are by a/c posters - are following that party line, are these people True Believers or Paid Believers? Of course some will be both.
It came out recently that one of Trump's appointees was trying to change the narrative on Covid-19 deaths recently, trying to push the line that the dead had been at least partially at fault when they contracted the illness. Curiously that was pretty much what happened - except from the other side - when Herman Cain died. He had been at a Trump rally in Oklahoma and had been pictured with some friends with no masks in sight. His website - https://hermancain.com/ [hermancain.com] - was outraged at all this victim blaming. The site is apparently run by two people who are still very busy there right now. Several "black" people have turned out to be white in real life, there we have a case where the reverse applies. Did this make Cain a sock puppet?
Re: Does Slashdot count as Social Media? (Score:2)
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At a guess, slashdot is now such a relatively small player that it wouldn't make any sense to deploy hired shills here, but organizations like this often do things that don't quite make sense, and it could easily be that slashdot is still on some lists of places where subverting the discussion is important.
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If I ever win the lottery one of my dreams is to buy /. and bring the hammer down. Back to "news for nerds, stuff that matters". It would be brutal and bloody, but it would be nice to have one place on the internet where politics doesn't absolutely ruin everything.
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Ok, but where do you stand on letting Apple's "smart" quotes work? Because I find it fucking hilarious when someone writes a mangled post on their iThing.
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The discussion at hand, if anyone were interested in actually having it, is the way our "social media" sites can be gamed to influence public opinion. Hypothetically, this would be a bad thing no matter which faction were engaging in it, but in recent years it's clearly been allies of Republicans egaging in it-- so your perception of how bad the problem is, is strongly influenced by your political orientation.
It could be that at thi
Here its pretty simple. (Score:2)
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You can choose witch one of them it is...
Are you trying to start a witch hunt? Which witch is which?
The US is late (Score:2)
Turning Point USA is Trump's Hitler Youth (Score:3, Informative)
If you disagree, see the "white power" video and the long history of white supremacists being found among their ranks.
Trumpkin whataboutism in 3,2,1...
Perk farming? (Score:2)
Would it be possible to set up a swarm of bot accounts, get them paid by TPUSA to share disinformation links privately with each other, and then donate the proceeds to the DSA? :D
Tay (Score:3)
At this point, I'm pretty sure that Facebook and Microsoft's Tay are using the same approach. Easy to manipulate garbage. At least Microsoft had the sense to turn it off. Everyone likes to talk about how smart Zuck is, that guy is like a living Eric Cartman - "screw you guys my idiot accelerator is making money!".
Web 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
MOD UP. (Score:2)
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Sorry if this seems like quibbling, but you're doing well enough here that I want to correct some details:
Web 2.0 was the fantasy that web-sites were all going to have published APIs that would let everyone link them together in multiple different ways to achieve great things. This has largely fizzled because sites like to get paid for providing resources and they largely skipped that bit in the dreaming about Web 2.0.
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Re: Web 2.0 (Score:2)
A "secretive campaign" employing teenagers? (Score:2)
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Similar idea to China's 50 cent army (Score:2)
This is in no way new as the concept exists within China: 50 Cent Party [wikipedia.org].
The allegation being that people in the CCP were paid 50 cents for every post they made on the internet to spread a specific narrative for the party. However, its unlikely anyone was actually paid and instead everyone that posts was a govt bureaucrat and expected to participate.
So, let's just fix technical, legal and economic f (Score:2)
I have to say, "coordinated inauthentic activity" is a great phrase but doesn't it describe most music videos? (The word they're groping for is "shill".)
And isn't coordinated authentic activity just as bad a problem for a typical "social" media site? Brigades of true believers creating bubbles of opinion passing for a common consensus are more the rule than the exception.
The entire "wisdom of the crowds" effect collapses when there's even a little bit of cross-talk between the members of that crowd,
so? (Score:2)
I assume that 95% of people on social media are idiots. I assume that anyone who thinks otherwise is in the 95%. I assume that anyone who thinks that 95% number is meant to be a precise measurement is in those 95%. Why do I care that some idiots are paid to scream at some other idiots?
Most presidential elections are decided by less than 5% of the vote.
The disinformation will always be rampant. If it ever stops, we don't have a freedom of speech anymore.
The most effective way to increase the number o
John Brunner (Score:2)
Being written in 1975, the first victim of the virus was the food, pharmaceutical and cigarette industry: Suddenly anything printed on any of their packaging is the truth... I don't think he realised in 1975 how useful this virus would be 45 years later.
Let's clear this up (Score:2)
One person's hilarious "memes" is another person's "disinformation" or "racism". Which can be censored. All social media platforms are guilty doing this.
People have always tried to censor political speech. Whether it's a yard sign snatched away or an internet posting removed.
There is even a formula. Get the ability to institute a policy to remove objectionable content that everyone universally agrees is bad. Then at a later date use that same policy to further your own cause and kneecap your opponent.
Social
Re:Big deal. (Score:4, Interesting)
This election is going to get really nasty. People have already started trying to block polling stations and there are another six weeks to go.
https://www.dailykos.com/stori... [dailykos.com]
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Sigh..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Will the fully unbiased and reputable news source please raise your hand?
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Here you go: almost one thousand videos documenting police brutality and escalation during the protests:
https://drive.google.com/drive... [google.com]
Re: Big deal. (Score:2)
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Projection much.
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Re: Big deal. (Score:5, Funny)
"Sorry but you are vastly outnumbered, nutjob. You'll learn that Americans want law and order when Trump gets reelected on November 3rd and we start arresting and prosecuting your violent, insane mobs"
Small comfort to those business owners who finds out that their insurance won't pay enough or at all when their buildings are burned down, on top of the contracters who charge as much as the building is worth just to haul the debris away.
I'm sick of Trump. I'm sick of the hate and division he has caused, I'm sick of his private torrettes moments when he says that he wants to use medieval style torture methods on illegal immigrants, and I am just sick of his extreme arrogance. No, I'm not posting any links here to cite this, because it's time you crawl out of your shell of ignorance and go look it up youself, hopefully finding out other things along the way of why your shiny knight is really rusted all over and cheaply painted up to hide the damage.
I am truly worried about what could very well happen on election night, to the point I've been telling my friends to stay home that night and get ready for some serious trouble and to guard their homes.
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Amomojo DOES care about your kids. He wants to educate them about the glories of becoming transexual, especially if its against your wishes. He says he will fuck with your kids while they are at school. Says its for the greater good.
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This is the ultimate concession. An admission that you have no arguments left and must resort of a ludicrous combined ad-hominem and straw man attack.
All you have left is the Red Peril scare. In fact it's worse than that, you have been reduced to arguing against education and in favour of keeping kids dumb because you are so paranoid that they might learn something you disagree with.
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They claim security asked the protesters to move away from the polling station (40', in this case. All states have laws like this. I don't know if 40' is a standard). And they also claim that they mostly went away when more security was called. But yeah, no videos of that. Security would have a record of what happened, though, if they were involved.
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Sheesh. NOBODY should be hanging around polling stations.
One mans "protect voters" is another mans "intimidate voters". And you don't get to decide the guys you like are in the protection business and the guys you don't like are in the intimidation business.
Here's a mental exercise: Take some bad thing that's happened recently- something you acknowledge is not right- to some group you care about by some group you don't care about. Now reverse it in your head, making the opposite parties the aggressors and v
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Re: Big deal. (Score:3)
"How can you stand to see yourself in the mirror? You sub-human, crybaby animals are destroying and murdering in a pathetic attempt to force your fickle views on to others. You should be arrested, tried for sedition and executed, traitorous scum"
I think the United States needs to step back and look at itself in the mirror.
We are a nation of hypocrites who will let somebody literally die in the gutter while pretending to value human life. We have ingrained the notion into the past several generations
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Invisibility versus censorship? (Score:2)
Mod parent up, though you should have cut the troll's Subject while you were at it. In particular the focus on rendering the torllage less visible is sound.
However I think the problem is complicated and the only general solution approach I've been able to imagine so far would be some form of MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation), with filtering trolls as one application. My own application would be to seek a balance of about 30 to 50 visible people who write interesting stuff for most of what I s
Re: Also SWASTIKAS!!! (Score:2)
"Ban the IP for life, ban the poster's account for life."
I'm not really a fan of shit banning, but I like the thought of the swastik-toddler getting presented with a giant image of vaguely creepy looking smiling clown saying "ah ah ahhh, only 18 or over to view this forum!" Maybe a fake "verify your age" with endless captcha "puzzles" that don't actually grant access to torture him with, like the ones another poster here keeps complaining about.
(maybe add some covert Javashit bitcoin miner if you really wa
Re: Removing AC is my GOAL. Have a great KKK! (Score:2)
Nice, the toddler is now giving us multiple 20 consecutive swastika rolls.
This is why daddy should not have put a computer in little britches's bedroom.
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And how many false or misleading claims has the "Washington Post" made?
They've documented their claims. Where the fuck is the documentation of your ridiculous statement?
And comparing one person to a 150-year-old newspaper is simply insane.
But you did create some what-aboutism for an idiot to mod up, so congrats on that.
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"Their "whistle blower" was the assistant FBI director, the guy ultimately overseeing the investigation and with full authority to decide what information should be shared with the public or anyone else."
Anybody with "Assistant" in their title does *not* have the authority that you are claiming.
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"it's a fool's game to try to distinguish between claims that are true and false." you mean after the alleged president has worked overtime to obliterate the difference.
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"Do you have any arguments that aren't logical fallacies, or are you nothing but fallacies all the way down?"
qft
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"Is being paid to post some particular opinion or information in digital or print media not precisely what journalists do?"
No, Most journalists working for major news organizations are overseen within those organizations for properly sourcing their articles. This doesn't include Fox but it does the major newspapers.
Re: Am I missing something? (Score:2)
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Interesting bit of revisionism. This comment is what I remember CNN being:
"CNN has changed news. Before CNN, events were reported in two cycles, for morning and evening newspapers and newscasts. Now news knows no cycle. When a plane has crashed, or shots are fired in school, we expect to see it immediately on all-news channels. We don't depend on the Big Three broadcast networks. The turning point came shortly after CNN's 10th birthday, when Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett and John Holliman provided play-by-play
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No, Most journalists working for major news organizations are overseen within those organizations for properly sourcing their articles.
10-20 years ago I probably would have agreed but these days it's all "anonymous sources" and "people familiar with the thinking". Telling people what to think has become more important than reporting what actually happened. Major newspapers have become a mirror of social media: they're political echo chambers.
psyops by a foreign govt is not campaigning (Score:5, Informative)
if a foreign country has a massive organized effort to pour money into spreading lies, with the intent to harm the targeted country and it's interests, then it is not campaigning, it is psychological warfare (although the US has done it for generations against other nations).
cambridge analytica proved that with mass surveillance enabled by social networks like facebook, gathering thousands of points of data on every user, and then using machine learning and a.i. to microtarget people with ads, then do it in real time to constantly refine and update those ads until they have higher and higher engagement, then you can do advertising on an unimaginable scale that is nothing like we have seen before.
newspapers like the wapo do not, for example, take an individual reader, know where they shop, know what products they buy on a regular basis, know what movies they like, know what their search history is, know what websites they visit, know what comments they write, know their educational and employment background, their dating history, what makes them angry, sad, upset, delighted, joyful, know their deepest fears, their regrets, their failures and successes, what types of scams they have fallen for in the past, etc etc. facebook does, and even if it doesnt directly sell that data to third parties, it will sell tools that allow 3rd parties to target people using those psychographic profiles. this has never been possible in history, this is like the changeover between 19th century rifles and machine guns in WWI.
it doesnt really matter which side is doing it 'this time', there will always be a next time. the point is to make the rules of the game so that this never happens, not to fight over which side its helping in the short term. long term, we cannot have this happening, otherwise its basically the end of democracy.
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A meaningful amount of stories nowadays is written by machine learning AI, because a large amount of stories are just re-worded articles. Much of anti-Trump nonsense is in this category, for example a large portion of the "Ukraine scandal with Trump" stories were slightly rephrased "Russia scandal with Trump" stories. It'd be horrifically uneconomical to pay someone to do the re-writing instead of just passing many existing stories thought a fairly basic rephrasing AI algorithm with "find Russia, replace wi
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Anti-trump articles write themselves and are actually rather boring and repetitive, publishing them in WaPo is hardly going to touch Trump's base (who might be able to read, but it often doesn't seem like it), and you are indulging in thread-jacking to turn a very real problem in designing internet discussion forums into a "oh my god they said mean things about conservatives!".
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Do you agree that what this group did--paying children to post lies without disclosing they were being paid or that they were just posting what someone else wrote for them--is immoral and reprehensible? Don't defend it by saying, "Democrats do the same thing." If you can point to a documented case of Democrats doing the same thing, I'll condemn the people who did it. In this case it was Republicans doing it. Will you condemn them for it?