Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 years

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Common Sense 1 said:

The sky is falling, the sky is falling....

Never had or used a Facebook account.

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I finally broke down and got one. Near as I can tell most people I have friended post pictures of their kids. Since mine are adults I mostly post pics of beer bottles and food.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

cpwill said:

So.... 1796, then?



Well, it's a bit of a catch-22. If you don't operate like that, the feeling goes, you can't win.

Because that's what riles people up, gets them to vote for you, gets' them to vote against the other guy/gal. It gets them to volunteer for you, campaign for you, go door-to-door for you. Fear of the Other works. :shrug:



I'm not sure it's even that justified. I think tribal hatred is just... that.

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I seen civil elections, based on substance, ideas, visions with little to no personal attacks. I first became interested in politics watching the Democratic and Republican conventions on TV back in 1956. The 1956 and the 1960 campaigns were devoid of personal attacks. Although the 1964 election had Goldwater's flower girl. Perhaps the first negative attack ad that I can remember being sponsored by a political opponent. 1968 was a turmoil year. 1976 was a peaceful election. Although in 1980 Reagan was attacked as a war mongrel.

It all began going down hill from there. 1984 was civil, but 1988 and 92 turned to attack ads. 96 was once again pretty civil. Last year was the pits when it came to personal attack ads and name calling lacking almost any substance at all.

At least this is how I remember them.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

WCH said:

TX was going to vote for the GOP candidate no matter what. If it was directed there, what a waste of time and effort. Just like if there were pro-Hillary ads in CA.

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Yes, the tribal vote takes the thinking and the responsibility right out of voting. I understand that. But the wrench in the notion that Texas was going to vote GOP no matter what, is that the GOP begged you people not to vote for Trump. So, Texas cared less about the GOP and far more about Trump. Why? And we still haven't figured out why Russia targeted in on Texas in their support/bashing campaign.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Fenton said:

Lol ! This nonsense again ?

Which one of those Facebook adds forced Hillary Clinton to ignore Michigan and Wisconsin right before the election ?

Which one forced her to call millions of voters deplorable ?
Which one forced her to lie her way through press conferences about why she set up her rogue email server ?

And which one gave her the personallity of a door stop ? The likabillity of a used bandaid ?

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I think you may have missed the point here, but you do answer the question. The question is why Russia sees Americans, especially Texans, as a soft target for easy manipulation. Here, instead of addressing the Russian elephant in the room, you deflect and default to Clinton as if she has something to do with Russia's effort. It is this nonsense that the rest of the world sees and we are weak for it.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

MSgt said:

I think you may have missed the point here, but you do answer the question. The question is why Russia sees Americans, especially Texans, as a soft target for easy manipulation. Here, instead of addressing the Russian elephant in the room, you deflect and default to Clinton as if she has something to do with Russia's effort. It is this nonsense that the rest of the world sees and we are weak for it.

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Russia sponsored a 10k anti-Trump march just after the election. Clearly we are all weak( like the Ukraine )

Thousands attended protest organized by Russians on Facebook | TheHill

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Dittohead not! said:

If the Russian objective was to sow discord among US voters,
If the objective was to spread false news stories to influence voters,
If they wanted to further divide us, then

They succeeded.

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That means it went from 80,000 to 126 million thanks to those who passed them on and forwarded them. Making Russian trolls lift very light when the trump voting dupes did all the real work for them.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Gaius46 said:

Thank you. The biggest problem here isn't the Russians. It's the stupid Americans who believe everything they read.

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Worse, plenty don't believe it, but cling to it because they have become entirely tribal. Trump could decide tomorrow that we need to give Russia seventeen nuclear missiles and the right would support it. These are the people who prided themselves as anti-communist and historically declared the Left as weak on communism. The first thing they all do now is dismiss outright all of this Trump/Russian business as no big deal. They attend church and declare themselves beholden to family values, yet enthusiastically vote for a man who boasts about grabbing women's crotches. The guy who declared that he would "drain the swamp," immediately began populating the swamp with the kind of people who created the swamp. He has got have the most unstable cabinet in American history. Members quit or are fired. One became a rat (Poopypappyhippopotamus) to save his own skin. This all means that Trump is a bad judge of character and his cabinet is hardly loyal to him. He behaves like a teenage girl through his Twitter account. And the punchline is that the GOP actually begged people not to vote for Trump.

And still, conservatives worship him. The identity crisis among conservatives could not be any clearer. You see it all over this site. All they see is "not Hillary." Conservatives have allowed their blind hate and allegiance to ideals that even Trump shrugs at to betray them. It is truly sad that they can't see that they are better than the orange buffoon who used their blind hate to con them.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Litwin said:

terrible news , Muscovite inflation over the USA media is much bigger than i thought ... what Trump is gonna do with this information?




"Facebook has said as many as 126 million American users may have seen content uploaded by Russia-based operatives over the past two years....Facebook says hundreds of accounts backed by Russian trolls filled news feeds with inflammatory messages....
What about other social networking sites?
Google also revealed on Monday that Russian trolls had uploaded more than 1,000 political videos on YouTube on 18 different channels. The company said they had very low view counts and there was no evidence they had been targeting American viewers.

Meanwhile, Twitter found and suspended all 2,752 accounts that it had tracked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, Reuters quotes a source as saying.

These accounts, which have now been suspended, posted about 131,000 tweets between September 2016 and November 2016.

All three companies are also due to testify on Wednesday at the Senate and House intelligence committees.
"
Facebook page


Russia-linked posts 'reached 126m Facebook users in US' - BBC News

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Link to videos and channels?

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Litwin said:

and where do you think the Journalists (who you like) are finding new information ? not on social media ?

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First, I don't really like Journalists as a whole. Second, if the get their info from Facebook, then they are not real journalists.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

MSgt said:

It is truly sad that they can't see that they are better than the orange buffoon who used their blind hate to con them.

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But are they?

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

MSgt said:

I think you may have missed the point here, but you do answer the question. The question is why Russia sees Americans, especially Texans, as a soft target for easy manipulation. Here, instead of addressing the Russian elephant in the room, you deflect and default to Clinton as if she has something to do with Russia's effort. It is this nonsense that the rest of the world sees and we are weak for it.

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That Russian elephant only exist as part of partisan driven delusion cooked up people who lack the maturity and integrity to accept a election loss.

Texans ( Yay Texas !! ) are not as naive as you think we are. We saw through this Russian collusion tin hattery immediately, but we're not without a sense of humor.

Watching the Left devolve into a bunch of crying and whining conspiracy theorist is one of the most pathetic and HILLARIOUS things Texans like me have ever seen.

It couldnt happen to a bunch of nicer people

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Samhain said:

Russia sponsored a 10k anti-Trump march just after the election. Clearly we are all weak( like the Ukraine )

Thousands attended protest organized by Russians on Facebook | TheHill

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Despite being pathetic, it is fascinating. It's been a roller coaster ride...

1) June 18, 2013: "Will he [Putin] become my [Trump] new best friend?"

2) March 21, 2104: "I believe Putin will continue to re-build the Russian Empire. He has zero respect for Obama or the U.S.!"

3) July 31, 2015: Trump says he'd "get along very well with Vladimir Putin."

4) Dec. 17, 2015: “He’s a very lively man, talented without doubt,” Putin told reporters in Moscow, referring to Trump as the “absolute leader in the presidential race.”

5) Dec. 17, 2015: "It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond," Trump said a few hours later.

6) April 28, 2016: "Maybe we will, maybe we won't," Trump says when asked by Bill O'Reilly about whether he and Putin would have a nice relationship. "He's been very nice to me."

7) July 25, 2016: "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me."

8) July 27, 2016: “I never met Putin, I don’t know who Putin is.”

In the mean time, conservatives went from embracing Putin as the commie, to being alright because he and Trump like each other, to appreciating Putin for attacking the DNC (fellow Americans, by the way) on Trump's behalf, to supporting Trump as he disowned Putin in order to make Putin/Russia a Clinton/Democratic thing.

In the mean time, Putin went from engaging with Trump and sharing nice things about him, to creating Facebook websites to urge Americans to hate Clinton and support Trump, to organizing an anti-Trump rally. At least Liberals are going from an anti-Trump stance to an anti-Trump stance.

The real question anymore is what do conservatives even believe in anymore. They were anti-Putin, pro-Putin, and anti-Putin again. It would be funny to find out in three years that Trump has been in on a scientific experiment on the American population this whole time. Americans appear to be very weak.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

BSB1 said:

But are they?

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I think so. They have just been led down a path of so much hate over the last nine years that they are lost. I blame the GOP and Fox news. And now they are too bitter and disappointed in what they did last year (along with the extremists and supremacists) to admit a few things to themselves.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

WCH said:

Right....because people in TX and elsewhere might like or share any of these.

Here's what fake Russian Facebook posts during the election looked like

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Here's a story for you:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/magazine/how-fake-news-turned-a-small-town-upside-down.html

"fake news" can actually f'k peoples lives up. Remember the guy who took his AR15 to investigate the fictional events at the pizza place in DC...that ended a lot better than it might have.

I stay off of FB. It's mostly garbage and always has been. Not only are they feeding you lies they think you want to hear, they are tracking everything you do and figuring out how to monetize the info.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Fenton said:

That Russian elephant only exist as part of partisan driven delusion cooked up people who lack the maturity and integrity to accept a election loss.

Texans ( Yay Texas !! ) are not as naive as you think we are. We saw through this Russian collusion tin hattery immediately, but we're not without a sense of humor.

Watching the Left devolve into a bunch of crying and whining conspiracy theorist is one of the most pathetic and HILLARIOUS things Texans like me have ever seen.

It couldnt happen to a bunch of nicer people

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Nice of you to make his point for him with the HILLARIOUS comment. Sad. It really is sad.

Well Papadapoulis is probably singing like a canary right now and I'd bet wore a wire at some point.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

MSgt said:

I think so. They have just been led down a path of so much hate over the last nine years that they are lost. I blame the GOP and Fox news. And now they are too bitter and disappointed in what they did last year (nest to extremists and supremacists) to admit a few things to themselves.

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I used to think Limbaugh started this downward spiral, now I'm not sure.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Fenton said:

That Russian elephant only exist as part of partisan driven delusion cooked up people who lack the maturity and integrity to accept a election loss.

Texans ( Yay Texas !! ) are not as naive as you think we are.

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Well, first of all, it's the Russians who believe that Texans, especially, are naive and weak. Hence, Heart of Texas. Again, there was no Heart of Idaho, Heart of California, or Heart of Washington. Texas was perceived as a source for manipulation. It's not about what I think. I didn't target Texas. Putin did.

Second, deflecting to people who "lack the maturity and integrity to accept an election loss" only serves to make yourself feel better. It is a tough accusation to make when we are talking about Trump supporters who flipped from being anti-Putin/Russia, to pro-Putin/Russia, to anti-Putin/Russia again. Perhaps if you actually looked at the man you elected, rather than relying on old hat as an avoidance, you could rise above the tribal mentality of the average American today. You do not deserve Trump. You deserve better. Pretending you don't, just to continue this absurd blind allegiance at all costs, is not constructive.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

<alt>doxygen said:

I used to think Limbaugh started this downward spiral, now I'm not sure.

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I'm sure one could make the argument.

- It started with Limbaugh (I actually liked him in the 1990s).

- It started with Iraq, when conservatives supported Bush at all costs and liberals criticized Bush at all costs.

- It started with the GOP loss to Obama, because they forced McCain to stupidly take on Sarah Palin. That pissed me off. Then eight years of "not American," "secret Muslim," and whatever else, became a never-ending bombardment from Fox news as the GOP encouraged conservatives to cling to conspiracy theories and fiction as absolute truths.

Along comes a man who figured out that if he personified all that hate against Obama and Hilary that he could become President. Conservatives ate it all up. I would have thought that as supremacists and extremists came out from under their rocks to cheer and applaud the man that the average conservative would step back and say "wait a minute." But they didn't. Instead they embraced that hate even more and cheered louder as Trump got nastier. This was the man that they enthusiastically decided represented them. Now, conservatives are entirely lost in what they even believe in.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

MSgt said:

I'm sure one could make the argument.

- It started with Limbaugh (I actually liked him in the 1990s).

- It started with Iraq, when conservatives supported Bush at all costs and liberals criticized Bush at all costs.

- It started with the GOP loss to Obama, because they forced McCain to stupidly take on Sarah Palin. That pissed me off. Then eight years of "not American," "secret Muslim," and whatever else became a never-ending bombardment from Fox news encouraged conservatives to cling to conspiracy theories and fiction as absolute truths.

Along comes a man who figured out that if he personified all that hate against Obama and Hilary that he could become President. Conservatives ate it all up. I would have thought that as supremacists and extremists came out from under their rocks to cheer and applaud the man that the average conservative would step back and say "wait a minute." But they didn't. Instead they embraced that hate even more and cheered louder as Trump got nastier. This was the man that they enthusiastically decided represented them. Now, conservatives are entirely lost in what they even believe in.

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I enjoyed Limbaugh some in the early days, right after he went national. He had a sense of humor. Then the internet came along and fact checking him was easier, the cult of "dittoheads" formed, and I left.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Gaius46 said:

Nice of you to make his point for him with the HILLARIOUS comment. Sad. It really is sad.

Well Papadapoulis is probably singing like a canary right now and I'd bet wore a wire at some point.

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Lol !! He's singing like a canary ? How long has this investigation been going on ?

Starting under the Obama administration and extending a year into Trumps Presidency and all you people have is FARA, tax and money landering investigations that have nothing to do with Trump or his campaign.

Hey, where's that " obstruction " charge you people were carrying on about ?

Like I said, pathetic and HILLARIOUS

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

apdst said:

And the Left wing served as their useful idiots.

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It was mostly the right wing that elected the Russian's favorite candidate despite his not being a right winger himself.

Republicans were fooled into not only nominating, but electing, a Democrat to the White House! How rich is that?

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

<alt>doxygen said:

I enjoyed Limbaugh some in the early days, right after he went national. He had a sense of humor. Then the internet came along and fact checking him was easier, the cult of "dittoheads" formed, and I left.

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I lost site of him in 2000. I shifted from the east coast, where my commute to the base was 45 minutes, to the west coast where my commute was just five minutes. My radio time had come to an end.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

Perotista said:

We've been divided long before last years election. It began when political parties, candidates saw that personal attacks, digging up dirt, mud slinging works. Our elections have boiled down to divide and conquer, pitting on group against another group with the idea of making the voters hate the other guy more than they hate you. All in search for votes without a thought of how one is going to govern or even try to unify the nation.

Our problem today is Democrats and Republicans see each other as the number one threat to the United States. The USA's worst or number one enemy to the Republic. More than North Korea, Russia, Iran, ISIS, terrorists, the debt, political discord or anything else one can think of.

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All true, unfortunately, but we're more divided now than at any time since the late '60s, the Vietnam and hippie era.

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

MSgt said:

Well, first of all, it's the Russians who believe that Texans, especially, are naive and weak. Hence, Heart of Texas. Again, there was no Heart of Idaho, Heart of California, or Heart of Washington. Texas was perceived as a source for manipulation. It's not about what I think. I didn't target Texas. Putin did.

Second, deflecting to people who "lack the maturity and integrity to accept an election loss" only serves to make yourself feel better. It is a tough accusation to make when we are talking about Trump supporters who flipped from being anti-Putin/Russia, to pro-Putin/Russia, to anti-Putin/Russia again. Perhaps if you actually looked at the man you elected, rather than relying on old hat as an avoidance, you could rise above the tribal mentality of the average American today. You do not deserve Trump. You deserve better. Pretending you don't, just to continue this absurd blind allegiance at all costs, is not constructive.

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Look, Im not going to be part of your lunacy, this delusion totally motivated by butt hurt and the inabillity to accept a election loss with grace, dignity and maturity
Im far too pragmatic and intelligent to buy into that nonsense.

Trump won fair and sqaure, and you and every other Trump obsessed sore loser do not get to shred the Constitution and deny 10s of millions of voters their rights because you didnt get your ****ing way.

Grow the **** up

Re: Facebook: 126 million American users saw content uploaded by "Russia"-based operatives in 2 yea

holbritter said:

If you believe what you read on facebook without checking it, that's on you.

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or the blogosphere, or rant radio, but people do. It's called "confirmation bias."