> In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook’s most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms.
Why wouldn’t this article mention the Black American content as well? Certainly this is newsworthy, given the crucial implication here: foreign actors were pushing opposite views on many topics in order to manufacture division.
> Why wouldn’t this article mention the Black American content as well?
Relevant Magazine isn't a news outlet. It's a Christian culture magazine. So the point of the article is "Hey, our culture is being hijacked", not to give a full picture of what's happening in the news.
The RELEVANT Story
RELEVANT is a multimedia company whose purpose is to impact culture and give voice to what God is doing in and through our generation.......Our Mission
We’re twenty- and thirtysomething Christians seeking God and striving to impact the world around us.
In general, I prefer when people posting on HN post the URL to the original reporting, rather than one of the many summaries different venues write riding their coat-tails.
In this case, the first sentence ends in "internal documents leaked to MIT Technology Review reveal", with a link -- why not just post the MIT Technology Review article in the first place?
[Also, just as an aside, don't forget that obviously many Christians are Black people].
[And also, as far as your original question, if you scroll down in the MIT Tech Review article to the charts from which the headline of this re-report come from, you'll see that the troll farms were particularly successful in their "Christian" positioning, with 19 of the top 20 pages. The other groups targetted, they didn't achieve that level of penetration. This is notable, but I agree the other groups they were targetting is also notable!]
To me, seeing a Christian media outlet cover the story is interesting in itself, so I think this is sufficiently different from the MIT Technology Review article to merit its own post. However, since I don't know what kind of reach Relevant Magazine has among American Christians (and I suspect it's very little) I'm surprised to see it on the front page.
I encourage people to contribute to all kinds of things I'm not a "front" for. ???
Clearly, they are sympathetic to Black Lives Matter, and don't particularly hide it, it's right there on the page! "Front" to me implies that a) they are operated by the thing, not just sympathetic, and b) they try to hide that fact.
Those things don't appear to be true? But sure, you can tell people they are sympathetic to Black Lives Matter movement, if you think this is important context for their facebook reporting re-posts, why not. About half of the USA would currently apparently agree, and half disagree, with that sympathy. (I don't think the half that would agree are all 'fronts'!)
I don't know if they are sympathetic to "antifa" or not (which is not the same thing or people as Black Lives Matter, despite right-wing talking points), but... I am, personally.
I'm certainly in favor of contributing to bail funds, which is a pretty basic part of the legal system (like it or not), and which is not even the same thing as legal-defense funding. It's quite milque-toast, yet ignored.
Bail was designed to ensure the defendant arrives at the trial by taking a fraction of their wealth as collateral.
Instead, we now live in a society where most americans cannot afford a surprise $500 bill. We're really stuck-in-first-gear here if this is what we settle for.
The two of you broke the site guidelines egregiously with this flamewar. We ban accounts that do that, so no more of this, please—it's not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for.
Lol, mask off. I don't debate bad-faith actors, and that's all this reply is; sensationalist and fantastical; not rooted in the reality.
"Burning down cities"; a few buildings across seperate incidents. Reporting focused entirely on senstationalizing that, and ignored the very real, very NEEDED progress made by the remainder of the protests.
Just pre-empptively (because I won't be further replying to this sub-sub-thread): It's well documented that inciting of violence is OFTEN done by undercover cops, well-to-do-white-supremacist-home-owners-using-spray-paint-for-the-first-time and neo-nazis.
Edit: One more thing I can't let slide: Families can organize traditionally. Some don't get the privelege to choose; violence campaigns of austerity ripped apart their neighborhoods. Others self-determine that the traditional family structure doesn't suit them. Autonomy means we should be able to choose...
...either way, the forced assumption that "BLM is anti-family" is...WOW! This is a movement about family members having their loved one's LIVES ripped away by Illegitimate State Violence.
...The mental gymnastics you'd have to do to logically rest with the idea that BLM is somehow "anti-family", wow, ok buddy.
So nope, your little yugi-oh card does is not such a good uno-reverso, after all ♥
The two of you broke the site guidelines egregiously with this flamewar. We ban accounts that do that, so no more of this, please—it's not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for.
Are neo Nazis still active enough to be a significant part of the conflict around BLM? I was under the impression that while they're hateful and dangerous aholes, there numbers were so low to that interactions with them were rare?
This supercut should illustrate the way neo-nazis such as the proud boys [1]
are normalized and swept under the rug. Some 30% of the US voters will enthusiastically support such groups, and another ~20% happily look the other way.
Fascism is like a weed that must be continually demonstrated against. Else you end up with police departments executing their own countrymen in the street, pregnant and naked, gun to the back of the head; convinced that if they don't they "betray their brothers in arms". [2]
It is an insidious ideology brought about by increasingly desperate conditions of the proletariat and stoked by "might makes right" worship of the "glorious leader".
Ah I see, the term neo-nazi no longer requires a direct connection to the Nazi ideology.
I tend to reserve the label for those that follow the philosophy's that inspired the
Nazis such as the white supremacists Houston Stewart Chamberlain. I'd expect them to hold to racial purity beliefs.
I guess language changes but it does seem imprecise.
I'd say one of the dangers history teaches is the mistake of painting the other tribe as a monster. When you no longer see them as human you become a monster yourself and can justify ugly behavior.
The other is a fellow human capable of change, of redemption.
“… it was exported from white supremacist America to Germany.”
Stumbling upon that particular panel in the permanent exhibit at the Dokumentationszentrum at the former Reichsparteitagsgelände (“Nazi Rally Grounds”) in Nuremberg was an eye-opener - I have a sharp memory of seeing it the first time. The Nazis borrowed heavily from the Jim Crow laws that were still in force in the US South.
Note: the Dokumentationszentrum is a completely different, though complementary museum to the Nürnberger Prozess Memorium (“Nuremberg Trials museum”). Though far less well-known, I think it’s the more important of the two (the other is worthwhile, don’t get me wrong!)
How does a “normal,” “cultured” Western country go from being a fragile democracy to Hell on Earth for many of its erstwhile citizens and neighbors? Relatively little space there is spent on post-1939; at that point, individual resistance was futile, and there are many other sites that cover the greater horrors of the second half of the Nazi regime, but focuses on 1931-1939, when it might have been possible to stop.
The display text is mostly in German, but the English language audio guide is good. If any of you ever visit Nuremberg, I will walk you through it.
>How does a “normal,” “cultured” Western country go from being a fragile democracy to Hell on Earth for many of its erstwhile citizens and neighbors?
This something that deserves more thought in the modern day. Not only did it happen in Germany, hell on earth broke out in the Soviet union and North Korea.
You are free to disagree, but that doesn't change the facts of the matter.
A youtube channel by Saint Andrewism is a wonderful educational source which covers all the matters at hand in detail.
In particular, you may be interested in the history discussed in "The case against the Gu!IIotine", as well as "Nonviolence, a path to freedom?"
I'd also suggest Beau of the 5th Column; he has bite-sized five minute "Let's talk about"s which address specific current events as they develop, and add context via a short history lesson.
I'd finally point out that the State Monopoly on Violence is inherent.
I'd also point out that MLK was white-washed, and that neoliberal white culture curated the parts of his speeches what suited it.
I'd love to tell people that violence isn't the answer, but I can't do that unless I'm ready to feed them.
This quote, too, also is logical to me:
Malatesta: "Violence .. is eminently corrupting." largely paraphrasing this one but it rings true to the authors original sentiment.
So, in short, you can feel lucky, because you have the privilege to take whichever side in debate you choose, and you don't have to feel the collective grief and anxiety [which comes with] being targeted for something as arbitrary as the amount of melanin in your epidermis.
I think the argument isn't generally that non violence is always the only option it's that the current situation doesn't warrant violence.
I understand this is a subjective point of view as it is in response to police violence.
If things are as bad as the media suggests, that racist cops are targeting and killing black men and getting away with it then yes they system needs to be over thrown and the argument to use violence is easy to make.
But many don't believe things are that bad. I don't know as I don't live in these neighborhoods. But I think it's valuable to examine why people disagree on the issue.
Of course! A random Medium post by "Officer A. Cab"! Anyone spreading a bet line on this being a Russian outlet or an antwinkfa member writing fan fiction?
>We are all affected, but some much more harshly than others.
Somethings affect children more harshly than adults, no doubt.
> Black people accrue psychic trauma every time another news story like this breaks.
> Being able to "examine the issue" without being at this disadvantage is a privilege.
Whenever I read something like this, the cynic in me wants to reply, "If <insert group> are really that psychologically fragile, clearly they're not ready to participate fully in a liberal democratic society, which necessarily requires being to separate oneself and one's emotions from the issues being discussed."
As a matter of fact, every <insert group> is really that psychologically fragile. No more so than a certain <insert group> that is too "psychologically fragile" to handle the terrible burden of having a really well paid, cushy, slack-happy desk job with great benefits and WFH freedom, without a new article about burnout reaching the HN front page every week.
As for "being to separate oneself and one's emotions from the issues being discussed"...
- That would disqualify effectively much every participant in a modern liberal democracy, rendering it a non-democracy.
- That doesn't make much sense to begin with, as the impact of issues and policy on "oneself and one's emotions" is the fundamental measure of good/bad even if you're a robotic utilitarian.
>If you oppose the idea that Black Lives Matter, that's a white supremacist talking point.
No it's not. It's a factual, logical talking point. If you oppose the idea that Black lives matter, then you're being a racist. Black Lives Matter != Black lives matter
>If [anonymous, spontaneously organizing locals counter-protesting white supremacists aka] Anti-fascists oppose you...it's because you're being an asshole.
"We call ourselves the Anti-Bad Guy squad and we label our opponents Bad Guys. How can people not understand this? We can never be terrorists because we're fighting the Bad Guys. It's so simple to understand. Everything we do is justified because of our name."[0]
You've become so predictable (NPC) someone meme'd you years ago.
>Troll farms reached 140M Americans a month on FB before 2020 elections
I can imagine most of HN sees a headline that boils down to "lots of stuff on facebook is fake" and not care. A headline with a clear subject that people can love/hate is much better clickbait.
A little late here but just want to add, the original MIT article is paywalled if you’ve read more than your 2 free monthly stories there. The Relevant magazine story is not.
Also it is of interest that a Christian culture magazine is reporting on this, as that’s the kind of thing that needs to happen en masse to fix this problem. It needs to become a main topic of discussion in the communities being targeted by troll farms, and not just in tech circles.
That this article shows that is happening is newsworthy in and of itself.
Crucially, though, the report concludes that the farms’ motivations seem to be monetary. It points out that their content did not focus solely on divisive content, but on whatever generates clicks. Outrage bait is naturally a part of it, but the controversial content seems to be a means rather than the end goal.
If i remember correctly, the first thing I've heard about fake news were the farms over in Macedonia. Those guys realized in 2016 that you can make a pretty penny feeding Americans shit they wanted to hear, regardless of the truth.
Sometime in all of this, Russia must have taken notice (or was quietly in the picture the entire time) and started spreading misinformation for the purpose of division rather than clicks.
I have a few thoughts on all of this. First off in a way I sympathize with all the folks running content farms abroad. You have to respect the hustle and ingenuity. I also think that much of this fake news is on Americans for eating the shit up.
One thing that has always bugged me about the narrative of "fake news" and "disinformation" or "misinformation" online is that it always made the readers/consumers seem like helpless victims. It's always "we have to stop misinformation", "we have to stop these troll farms", never "we have to educate ourselves to be more savvy". The narrative seems to be that the readers of this crap have zero agency, and we have to go out of our way to protect them from his harmful information.
I see your point but I don't necessarily agree. A major aspect of a healthy society is trust. We need to be able to trust most of the informations that are fed to us in order to get information. Navigating a trustless information landscape is incredibly time consuming as looking for sources and invalidating information is much more time consuming than producing it.
Requiring people to stop acting on their "outrage" feeling is also extraordinary damageing to society as it also stops people from reacting to actual issues.
Finally, if you look at the savvy people do you really believe that they are actually better at detecting fakes? It seems that they are better at identifying information sources that can be trusted, but once trust is established I'm pretty sure they don't spend all their cognitive resources trying to disprove everything they read (well some probably are).
So a bit like with malware being more abundant on more popular OS, even if everyone moved to reputable sources, the trolls would move as well.
> A major aspect of a healthy society is trust. We need to be able to trust most of the informations that are fed to us in order to get information.
Another major aspect of a healthy society is distrust. People trusting anything they see written down is a major issue for a healthy society. This was rarely discussed when everything that was written down was controlled by the large media conglomerates, but it is becoming a huge point of contention today. Traditional media are furious that they are losing their unique ability to shape publish discourse, and are desperately lashing (there was a NYT article outraged that some site was permitting the creation of private rooms with no control of what is being discussed).
Censorship with little justification, all on top of sneering mockery of everything you may believe in, doesn't exactly strike me as the best way to promote trust.
>A major aspect of a healthy society is trust. We need to be able to trust most of the informations that are fed to us in order to get information.
You missed the root cause. The mainstream media lost the trust of the people with their biased reporting. This leads people to look for alternate resources, which are being manipulated like this.
> "we have to stop misinformation", "we have to stop these troll farms", never "we have to educate ourselves to be more savvy"
Well, it's both:
* For misinformation spread through centralized media (TV, radio, newspapers, etc), we do need to stop it, because the privilege of running a media company comes with responsibility to not spread misinformation. The same applies to any official government channels.
* For misinformation that spreads person-to-person, we do need to address people's lack of ability to think critically and search for truth. This is a long-term goal that can be achieved by teaching critical thinking classes (like philosophy) in K12. Finland is taking this approach already[1].
Social media like Facebook falls somewhere in between. To the extent that Facebook can act as a media company (e.g. by providing a platform for groups with membership in tens of thousands), it should have the same responsibilities as TV stations and newspapers of comparable reach (in my personal, biased opinion).
While it doesn't make sense to stop people telling things to each other, it does make sense to go after the hubs where misinformation originates and spreads to many people at once (in my biased opinion).
When it comes to individuals, well, that's why we need educational reforms.
Side note: the entire point of Russian propaganda/misinformation campaigns is not to spread any particular viewpoint, it's to destroy people's ability to search for truth (everything is fake, might as well pick what resonates the most!), reason critically (bad faith reasoning 101), and hold a civil discussion to find common ground (any disagreement can be won by making the other person angry).
It is self-sustaining; affected people start coming up with their own alternative realities which spread like wildfire. Tribalism and fake news are the result.
> One thing that has always bugged me about the narrative of "fake news" and "disinformation" or "misinformation" online is that it always made the readers/consumers seem like helpless victims. It's always "we have to stop misinformation", "we have to stop these troll farms", never "we have to educate ourselves to be more savvy". The narrative seems to be that the readers of this crap have zero agency, and we have to go out of our way to protect them from his harmful information.
I agree with the "ought" here, but don't think it's practical.
I think it's more likely that "democratizing" misinformation/lies/propaganda, combined with online anon- or pseudo-nymity, is simply a (strong) net-negative for, especially, democratic states, as much as we really really want it to be net-beneficial, and as much as we can imagine a world in our heads where it's net-beneficial. I think it may simply not be what we hoped, and not be practically able to ever be that.
I wonder if this is a problem that fixes itself naturally generation by generation. There is a propaganda / propaganda immunity arms race that seems to always eventually favor the skeptic. I think advertising is a good example - when you look at advertisements in, say, the 1980s is would be immediately rejected by any young person today who has a natural 'inoculation' to blatant advertising like that. Instead we have more subtle paid product placements from influencers and the like. I feel like maybe the same is true of outrage pornography clickbait farms like this. I suspect the primary customers of this sort of content skew older and as those generations die off a more subtle form of divisive propaganda might emerge, or it might just become less effective over time.
> If i remember correctly, the first thing I've heard about fake news were the farms over in Macedonia. Those guys realized in 2016 that you can make a pretty penny feeding Americans shit they wanted to hear, regardless of the truth.
> Sometime in all of this, Russia must have taken notice (or was quietly in the picture the entire time) and started spreading misinformation for the purpose of division rather than clicks.
Not even. Russians noticed it and did the exact same thing, but everything that happens in Russia or is done by someone of a Russian ethnicity is connected to the Russian government when reported on in the US/UK.
Agreed. Everyone, regardless of their political leanings, tends to be ignoring the elephant in the room: why is there such an insatiable demand in America for conspiracy theories and white supremacy? It would serve all of us better to look at the root cause instead of getting hung up on the symptoms of the disease.
Well. Given their circumstances. There are relatively few resources where these folks are and little opportunity. If it's either work in the farm or factory and make $1/day or work online generating fake content and make $5/day, I totally get why those guys are flocking to the latter. For them it's a pretty simple choice. Work here and struggle to feed your family, or work there and don't struggle to feed your family.
I don't know if this is actually the case everywhere, but I would assume it's the case in many places.
> Sometime in all of this, Russia must have taken notice (or was quietly in the picture the entire time) and started spreading misinformation for the purpose of division rather than clicks.
Whenever they started doing that specifically through false-front Facebook groups, Russia has been doing that to the West nonstop, through most media that it could conceivably be done, since it became an independent country, taking over from the USSR which had been doing it for generations previously.
You are presenting this as if this is somehow unique to Russia. This is true of every large country against all of its rivals. Anything Russia is doing on this front is dwarfed by what the US, UK, France, Germany etc. are doing.
Somehow things like Russia Today are presented as blatant propaganda, while Radio Free Europe is neutral reality. Both are propaganda.
One way or the other, Facebook now seems to be a pipeline for spreading propaganda: for ad clicks (marketing), ideological reasons, or worse.
It’s social utility seems to have dwindled to almost zero, while its negative effects are worse than ever.
> It’s social utility seems to have dwindled to almost zero
Unless you live entirely in their Messenger app, which I do. The timeline is full of contraganda, spam, and things like `Tell me your favorite color without saying it` bullshit
Just hide every content farm I find, and my feed is my old school friends day to day lives, local marketplace ads, and DnD Mini-painting groups. The worst thing I see are ads that are irrelevant, or my uncles deranged rants about his local politics.
Took me about 2 weeks of hitting hide from content farms to train the algo to steer me away from that junk.
Hmm, I wonder if Facebook could do that automatically? Like, write an algorithm to detect content farms and automatically hide them from your newsfeed.
They have that kind of algorithm, but most people want, or at least behave as though they want, outrage bait, and cute content farm affirmations. The moment you take a moment to be proactive and have ownership over your experience the algorithm happily shows you less crap and more people.
I'd argue that the only meaningful benefit (to me at least) of Facebook is as a contact list and finder. I would delete my Facebook instantly if I felt fairly confident that I wouldn't lose out on any outreach from less-than-weekly acquaintances.
"Reply to this post" things only exist because if lots of people reply, the algorithm thinks you're popular, and thus will show your posts more often without you having to pay.
> social utility seems to have dwindled to almost zero
That's not true. It's actually the most effective grassroots-politics tool out there, for "regular people". Everyone has an account already, so signing up to this or that group takes seconds and you can get down to the business of actually organising.
I saw it recently in my neighbourhood: local authority wanted to push a stupid change in road layout, a couple of guys set up a FB group, and in less than a month it had hundreds of members - the road change was protested so vigorously that it had to be scrapped, something rare around this town.
Am I annoyed by this state of things? Heck yeah, I hate FB, but realistically, it's often a force for good for "normal people".
Oh, no argument there. And the report does point out potential relationships with political actors. I’m just amused by the irony of these types of articles making exaggerations and unfounded conclusions.
> One way or the other, Facebook now seems to be a pipeline for spreading propaganda:
Facebook's overt business model is to be a platform for advertising (not just via overt ads, but also through paid reach of what looks like organic content). “Advertising” is just another word for “propaganda”.
So, you've noticed that Facebook “now seems to be” exactly what Facebook overtly is.
I don't mind ads interspersed with content. Like, I google something, I get some outright ads, and some higher-placed, paid-for links. But it's still a useful service for finding things.
Facebook appears to be nothing but clickbaity ads, which if I'm lucky, is trying to get me to buy something I don't need. If I'm unlucky, it's ideological poison for hire fueling culture wars or foreign agents meddling in elections.
I basically never use Facebook now, except if a friend asks me to post something, but whenever I do, and scroll through the timeline, I always end up depressed. Oh and yes, bombarded with all the weird stuff discussed in this thread.
This is pretty interesting. We should all know this by now, but it's a nice reminder. Outrage sells, and when sites must increase clicks and "engagement," they will necessarily be generating outrage.
Did these websites and social networks just discover that "outrage sells" or they've conditioned us to get more and more outrageous?!! It's kinda hard to tell!
This really does show something though, namely how financial motives drive outrage and polarization as much if not more than political ones.
On the YouTuber front there were more than one who jumped on the alt-right shock jock bandwagon back then for the same reason. It brought clicks both from the people attracted to that stuff and from the people outraged by it or just gawking at it.
Unfortunately I don't find that FB is in decline. I've found that groups organized on FB on any particular hobby topic are much more successful and active than on other platforms. Recently formed a group for discussion of DIY electric farm equipment. 70 members joined in 1 day.
FB feels like it should be a public utility. It is clearly filling a niche that people feel is needed. The barrier to entry to use is very low. I've encountered so many people who simply don't use other parts of the Internet much at all, and expect almost all content to be mediated through Facebook.
The thing is, because of Facebook's algorithm, even a hobby DIY group doesn't get treated as a completely-neutral public utility space.
FB will still prioritize things that generate interactions. So if little bits of controversy slip into the DIY discussions, that's still what bubbles to the top of everyone's feed.
It hasn't necessarily happened to your group, it may not necessarily happen, but the point is that this is what the algorithm was optimized to do.
I looked at the original report. Here are some quotes:
“The content isn't violating or borderline. It does skew very hard towards clickbait and engagement bait, however.”
“The religious pages tend to be a mixture of the heavy engagement bait like the meme from “Light of the World” and sensational click bait stories about children, animals, and police officers.”
“Why Do They Do It? Money is definitely a big reason. There are a few ways to monetize an FB page.
1. Link to a domain where you show ads
2. Enter into our partnership programs
1. Instant Articles
2. Ad Breaks
3. Do sponsored posting and sharing
4. Sell the Page after it reaches a large size.”
“Mostly, they seem to want to skim a quick buck off of their audience. But there are signs they have been in contact with the IRA... If the Troll Farms are reaching 30M US users with content targeted to African Americans, we should not at all be surprised if we discover the IRA also currently has large audiences there.”
The last quote is the one talking about potential political links. There are some serious concerns, but not as concrete as the claims made by the article.
True, I guess my interpretation also erred in favor of the other explanation, but the political motivations as interpreted by the article are far from clear-cut.
> Crucially, though, the report concludes that the farms’ motivations seem to be monetary. It points out that their content did not focus solely on divisive content, but on whatever generates clicks.
And who would be behind it if they followed the money? My money is on parties like the Heritage Foundation, which is a quite open front for rich conservatives to pump money into certain goals, and I'm sure there's plenty more that have escaped the spotlight for now.
I mean yeah it's a conspiracy, but since it's in broad daylight nobody cares - it's not shady if it's out in the open.
> And who would be behind it if they followed the money?
Advertisers, probably. I worked in adtech doing fraud detection back in ~2013 and “fake news” sites were already prevalent, but their business model was usually boring old advertising. They were also big on ad fraud (e.g. serving ads in hidden iframes).
That’s not to say that the Kremlin/IRA were not behind some of it, but Occam’s razor is that most fake news is just a result of sites with no incentive to do honest journalism trying to drive clicks.
I don’t think Heritage Foundation is nearly hip enough or digitally savvy enough to make money this way. Their business model is to spend money on digital platforms like Facebook, fundraise from rich conservatives to enable that, and take a cut to pay for staff and overhead.
This is more likely Eastern European scammers who are just looking to build an audience any way they can.
Have you ever heard of the Vault 7 WikiLeaks release? You should look into it. In sum: You can't make any assumptions about where anything is emanating from because all of it can be spoofed.
> A surprising number of Black Americans are Christians, too.
Why's does that surprise you? Christianity is most popular in poor black southern regions. Black people are more likely to be Christians than white people.
Christianity is also much stronger in Africa than in the West.
I think it's possible in the near future Christianity will become a predominantly black 'thing' worldwide.
Yes! One interesting phenomenon is that the churches originally set up by British missionaries in Africa are now establishing African missions in Britain.
It’s not exactly “surprising” but the New York City stereotype of a Christian anti-abortion voter is a rural white guy in Alabama but the statistical reality is that it’s a rural black guy in Alabama.
Just a reminder that that magazine has no connection to MIT. It simply licenses the name from the alumni association (which is how the association funds itself).
From what I gather, there was a relaunch in 1998, and MIT has owned it since 2001. In general, I’d be extremely surprised if MIT ever just licensed its name out.
> In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook’s most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms.
It's also interesting that these are the groups that have been identified as the best targets for a propaganda campaign. (Edit: You would think this would be successful for a wide variety of groups across the political and social spectrum.)
Do you think it's a coincidence that this article is getting clicks on HN specifically?
It is implausible that people have noticed that serving "Christians" and "African Americans" content they want to click on is profitable, but nobody has put the data together to realize that they can do the same thing to "Liberals" and other favored groups here on HN.
It's just, those articles won't get upvoted and clicked on here. Nobody wants to talk about themselves or their favored groups getting targeted like this.
There's plenty of people here reading this and congratulating themselves on how they aren't stupid like those groups, and then rolling straight over to their own content-farmed, clickbaited news solely posted for ad revenue that fits their own ideology one browser tab over.
"Those groups are the stupids! Not like imtelligent youse!" is one of the perennial clickbait stories. It's part of the reason why clickbait is so dangerous; a certain amount of division is inevitable, but people deliberately deepening the divisions just to make .0001 cents per view is not!
It is implausible that people have noticed that serving "Christians" and "African Americans" content they want to click on is profitable, but nobody has put the data together to realize that they can do the same thing to "Liberals" and other favored groups here on HN.
> 3 Only one of those groups helped elect a Russian asset
I dont usually care for politics but nobody has given me any convincing arguments on the matter. I have seen Russia gain more with Biden shutting down the pipeline. If someone is colluding with you what have they gained thus far? I just don’t see it at all.
I don't think our power is any weaker if you're talking about military power. Is the perception around the world about America different? Sure, but we're definitely nowhere near weaker, although now the Taliban has some high tech equipment, let's hope they don't figure out how to maintain and recreate any of it.
I was mainly talking about soft power and our alliances.
I'd say we are worse off militarily though, in a relative sense as other powers are rising, eg NK has nukes, China is flexing its muscle _much_ more, Russia's position is better, Iran is largely unchecked.
Our military and weapons development strategy is showing its weaknesses as well though. When exactly is the last thing we actually "won" ? How many places did we spend years/decades with our thumb up our ass, while bleeding lives and money?
Other articles have mentioned this before, but in reference to the second half of the entire decade.
Almost all "Black Lives Matter"[1][2] and anti-police[3] brutality, and pro-police status quo pages[3] on Facebook were run by foreigners residing in other countries. Some foreigners are firms and keeping score on how many in person protests and counterprotests they can accomplish.
That wouldn’t feed the narrative of conservative Christians being idiot rubes controlled by Russian disinformation and those on the left as being highly educated purveyors of truth.
We’re twenty- and thirtysomething Christians seeking God and striving to impact the world around us. We are people who want to live well—outwardly, creatively and intentionally. We are pro-Church and want to love our neighbors as ourselves. We serve the Creator, so we love great art—whether that be redemptive music, movies, books or design. We are daily seeking to show how God is at work in the world and in our generation.
Or because it’s not the focus of this website. Either way, you showed your true colors by using a biased assumption to accuse others of using biased assumptions.
> In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook’s most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms.
Why wouldn’t this article mention the Black American content as well? Certainly this is newsworthy, given the crucial implication here: foreign actors were pushing opposite views on many topics in order to manufacture division.