2024 ELECTION THREAD

So deep bro. You are trying to make it seem like getting AIPAC money is some type of foreign interference akin to the Russian interference. But in actuality everything AIPAC does is completely above board in terms of where they get their funding and how they donate to candidates. I mean we can talk about campaign finance reform or other issues, but you’re trying to move off to other topics without substantiating the original objection you had to AIPAC.

I would say a coordinated effort to try to influence election outcomes using cyberattacks, fake news, targeted propaganda campaigns, and no AI botnets is something we should be concerned with and try to prevent. I guess because you identify other problems in the world (pretty slipper false equivocations but still we’ll let it slide) that we should just let a sanctioned country in the midst of a violent annexation attempt who had just annexed Crimea and had invaded other countries in recent history get a pass. All because “zomg if we stop Russia we’ll have to enact full blown censorship regimes on everyone!” Really dude, that’s the argument you want to make?

Jesus anti-American shills are so lazy.

its not deep. its blatantly obv on the surface level. its my whole point. ya no **** AIPAC propaganda, and other propaganda is fine for #reasons while Russia propaganda is not. thanks for restating my entire point.

Blue MAGA is just a waste of letters and effort

I don’t remember anyone thinking russia changed votes or anything like that in 2016 but there was a clear effort by troll farms to spam social media sites with disinformation clearly favoring one candidate over the other on orders by the Russian government

Debate the extent it worked or mattered all you want but it was provably there

Ah yes, Americans campaigning for their favored foreign policy point is the exact same as a foreign government’s intelligence service leading a targeted campaign including illegal cyberhacks. Good one bro.

It's not troll farms, It's the silent majority. It's the people actually paying attention to what's going on, commenting on what's going on.

There's many that do not pay any attention whatsoever, and probably don't even care. Yet they'll spend all day arguing like children about politics in a poker forum.

In love with science, but can't/won't research anything they know they'll have trouble digesting

Perhaps why you're dissected ever so easily like the lab frogs you are

K

Don’t recall indicating I care, just stating a fact

ok well that was better directed at the guy acting like AIPAC isnt a part of doing all of the same ****.

I dont really care if Russia runs bot farms. they pale in comparison to probably at least a dozen other entities that do the same.

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/20/bots-social-media-pro-us-propaganda/

Geopolitical Economy Report

Bots are flooding social media with pro-US propaganda demonizing China, Russia & Iran, studies show

so it seems that Russian bot farms and disinfo pales in comparison. but ofc, that could just be my own pro-Western bias where I have internalized that the USA is superior and more well funded and better organized whereas Russia is a just a bunch of drunks on a shoestring budget with guns to their heads by blocking units if they dont churn out the right meme.

Don’t you love it how people that call others sheep who don’t know the science never actually want to have specific discussions about the issues that others are supposedly bots about?

This whole post was a bunch of rhetoric with no actual substance, but you think you actually did something with it.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/russian-bot-farm-used-ai-lie-americans-what-now

csis

A Russian Bot Farm Used AI to Lie to Americans. What Now?

They literally just caught a Russian bot farm using AI to spread misinformation/disinformation. I don’t know why people think this is so farfetched when it has been sketched out by people like Dugin and Russia has a long history of expert covert opps, including the very leader of their country being former KGB of 16 years!

If anyone understands the importance of propaganda wars it’s Putin. And we’re not exactly a country that’s difficult to manipulate.

Define "let". What do you mean by "let"? What's the alternative? You wanna invade Russia because they persuaded vulnerable American people to vote a certain way? Why not shut down Fox News, MSNBC, the Heritage Foundation, AIPAC, or the ACLU? The American government actually has jurisdiction over those entities' pathos.

Again, if you wanna better regulate social media to force them to vet content, fine, But until that happens, any unregulated source is free to spread whatever lies they want as a means to an end on social media and that content (and hosting that content) is protected speech.

Also, Russia's belligerence over Crimea is completely irrelevant. If France did the same thing as Russia in 2016, would it not be interference because they're a more virtuous state? No. It's interference or it isn't. I'm saying it isn't. It's just playing politics.

When a PAC launches a campaign, are they interfering with an election? When a news organization downplays the government's role in a genocide on the other side of the world, is that interfering with an election? Fake news is all over the place. It isn't more offensive when it's foreign.

by Victor k

ok well that was better directed at the guy acting like AIPAC isnt a part of doing all of the same ****.

I dont really care if Russia runs bot farms. they pale in comparison to probably at least a dozen other entities that do the same.

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/20/bots-social-media-pro-us-propaganda/

Geopolitical Economy Report

Bots are flooding social media with pro-US propaganda demonizing China, Russia & Iran, studies show

so it seems that Russian bot farms and disinfo pales in comparison. but ofc, that could just be my own pro-Western bias where I have internalized that the USA is superior and more well

Show More...

What’s the chance that you actually read the paper (which I just read) and can say anything meaningful about either the methodology or findings of the study? I’m guessing zero. You probably don’t even know what period of time they were analyzing. Hint: I wonder why in the first two weeks at the start of the war there might have been more Ukrainian use of bots and that Russian bot activity spiked around the capture of a city and the capture of critical infrastructure. Or do you know what the hypothesis of the authors about what the Ukrainian bot accounts were even tweeting about?

Also are you going to continue to lie about AIPAC being the same as Russia using cyberattacks and botnets to influence our elections? That Americans advocating for policies that they want in a legal way is exactly the same as the activities of Russian intelligence services?

Asked and answered 30 million times. Let me know when any of those organizations develop backdoors into our elections systems. Also, Americans advocating for government policy and using free speech is WAAAAAAY different than coordinated cyberattacks and using intelligence services to spread disinformation.

Wait, before I go any further than this argument, are you actually under the impression that there is no problem with anything that is not specifically illegal? Or that because someone is not specifically in our jurisdiction than anything bad that they do is ok? I'm seriously struggling to understand how anyone can make the argument you just made in good faith there.

Wrong, it is entirely relevant that they are our geopolitical enemy, are breaking international law, are trying to influence American elections in underhanded ways, and are currently in the process of invading a key international ally in the region. "It's just playing politics" is such a slippery way to phrase it, politics has such huge implications on everything. EVERYTHING is downstream of politics.

Are you seriously asking if people using legal and completely standard means to influence politics of their own country is the same as another country hacking into campaigns, finding backdoors in our election systems, and using misinformation campaigns to spread chaos? And this country is one of our largest geopolitical rivals headed by an evil dictator that poisons his dissidents and journalists with radiation and regularly assassinates/locks up people that undermine his authority?

You are trying so hard to move the issue into a terrain that it's simply not. We can talk about these other problems you're bringing up individually, but this whataboutism is so stupid to me.

advertising isnt a 300 billion dollar a year industry in this country because it doesn't work.

I'm not whatabouting. I'm saying there's a slippery slope between misinformation and free speech. Your campaign gets hacked? Secure it better. A backdoor is found into an election system? Close the backdoor. I'm not saying what Russia did was completely legal, but what was effective was largely fair game in the existential game of geopolitics. Again, I'm not whatabouting. I'm saying that states influencing foreign populations through misinformation isn't breaching a democracy, despite the hostility.

America and Russia were still at war in 2016 through soft power and America was ill-equipped to combat Russia's misinformation tactics because there's a legitimate distrust in America's so-called legitimate news sources and the state apparatus itself. That's America's fault. In a free and just society, Russia's tactics don't work. And their amplification in 2016 probably didn't sway the election, existentially speaking so much as Hillary Clinton running a bad swing state campaign lost the election. Maybe, just maybe, we're free and just enough to where such tactics were just noise.

But I digress, just as the persuading power doesn't matter -- whether it be Russia or France -- the outcome shouldn't matter. Washington has no jurisdiction over the Kremlin, but it does have jurisdiction over some of the social media that hosts the content. I'm not saying that things are only wrong when they're against the law. I've argued that right is right and wrong is wrong in this very thread wrt to slavery, immigration, and prohibition.

I'm saying that what Russia did wasn't immoral. They committed a victimless crime. If the people have a problem with it, the outlet is regulating the hosts of the misinformation content. Because I think (I hope) we agree that sanctioning a state for such actions to attempt to sway an election would be disproportional, let alone invading/bombing them.

What I'm asking is: if Russia did something wrong, what was wrong and what's a proportional punishment? Remove Putin. OK, how? Again, agreeing that a direct war with Russia is insane, we're talking about utilizing the Russian tactics in more effective ways to remove Putin from power. And if we're talking about using the same tactics, we're then consenting to the fair game of such tactics.

Are you saying that we should not be using tech, propaganda, and spies to try to remove Putin from power? If not, what makes us so special that we get to utilize these tactics, but Russian ought not be allowed?

And, again, I still don't know what you mean by "let" Russia do what they did without proposing how you prevent it and without replicating what they did. Therefore, the tactics should be legitimized as fair game.

America knows better than anyone that persuasion is mightier than the sword. The colored revolutions are a perfect example.

BLUE MAGA!!!

GENOCIDE!!!!

all i hear is..

BENGHAZI!!!!

BUT HER EMAILS!!!!

it sounds like the rants from a ****ing idiot in both cases

Odds on polymarket still a pure coin flip, even if various models are slowly increasing Harris chances.

Money making opportunity, or betting market know something models aren't capturing?

Tell me you're not paying attention to Gaza without telling me.

well stated

Keep in mind that there will still bets for Trump to win after he already lost the election in 2020.

My view is that betting markets have the opposite inflationary effect as polling does. Most polls likely inflate the support for the Democrat against Trump and most betting markets probably inflate the line on bets for Trump.

I think this is partially due to Trump supporters being more likely to place bets on Trump than Harris supporters, and then smart money that is nihilistic to politics placing bets on Harris to win due to favorable factors for her winning the election counteracting that inflationary effect.

Betting markets aligned with well crafted models more until 7-10 days ago though.

It’s good that you do believe that Russian propaganda— if you don’t want to call it interference— is at least a factor, in the sense that you acknowledge that it is happening and we should try to address whatever issue it is causing. But now I think you are playing both sides of the issue. At the same time that you accept my epistemic claims, when before it seemed like you rejected those issues or at least downplayed them, you also talk about various things you can do to shore up the issues that I’m talking about.

Absolutely these things are not hard to respond to, even if the lack of foresight that it would happen is problematic. Indeed, if you have backdoors, close them. If you have hacks on a major presidential campaign, future presidential campaigns should secure their data.

But we also have people that say any of those issues don’t actually exist, or aren’t impactful. I might agree with you that the net impact of Russian disinformation isn’t enough to change the results of the election, because despite how close it is we can’t get a counterfactual of how much that was Russian disinformation and cyberwarfare and how much that was Clinton’s poor campaign strategy. However we shouldn’t purely judge the severity of an action simply by its impact.

But let’s not forget that what I’m doing is talking about how AIPAC and Russian interference is not morally equivalent at all. And let’s not lose the forest for the trees here. It’s hilarious that Israel gets painted as some nefarious influence, even when it’s our own citizens advocating for them, while the influence of Russia is completely downplayed, while they want to destroy American hegemony by attacking global stability. Meanwhile what does the Israel lobby advocate for? The inclusion of Israel in America’s alliance and the defense of Israel against its enemies in the region, oftentimes America’s preexisting enemies. Not only is the method a false equivalence, because we’re talking about Americans going through the constitutionally affirmed channels versus foreign actors trying to manipulate us with cyberwarfare, but the notion that we should just analyze who is trying to influence us rather than looking at if our goals are aligned or even fundamentally opposed and if they want to hurt us is the complete wrong approach to me.

As far as the “let” part, I’m talking about people who think we should do absolutely nothing about it, not more reasonable people like you that are open to fixing the issues.

I also think, to be more critical of your response, that the idea that a free and fair society would not be affected by this stuff is probably the most dangerous notion you have presented so far. We can’t just let foreign actors that want to see us destroyed or damaged do whatever they want because it shouldn’t matter in an ideal society. It’s very naive to think that we shouldn’t take national security seriously because in a more educated society it wouldn’t be a problem. Guess what, we don’t respond to things based on what the ideal society looks like. This type of moral relativism is contradictory anyway because in that case people should absolutely see different countries in different lights based on how they treat us.

I'm not downplaying what Russia did. I'm saying that it's common practice in geopolitics. Russia just happens to be more nefarious. I'm, by no means, a moral relativist. I'm more of an absolutist, saying that: if Russia shouldn't be allowed to persuade foreign citizens to decide who leads them, we shouldn't practice those strategies ourselves. That such strategies are necessary in spreading democracy that we will have to find an acceptable degree of accepting that our enemies will also use those tactics and it's America's jobt o be better at it.

As for AIPAC, I think you're being a bit naive. In practice, AIPAC demands loyalty to Israel, as is their right as an advocacy group. This is inherently antithetical to the interests of the United States, no matter what the country, but especially a country so belligerent as Israel. Osama bin Laden didn't attack this country because women show their tits. He attacked this country because of its relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia. He didn't attack centers of sin like Vegas or New Orleans or Hollywood. He attacked the financial and political centers for that reason.

Our relationship with Israel isn't without merit, altogether, but it's a net-negative, and AIPAC is actively working to further this negative relationship that makes America less safe. Washington should take national security more seriously and start placing conditions on our relationship with Israel, as it does with every other country in the world. Conditions which AIPAC actively and successfully fight with every ounce of capital at their disposal. Is this an interference in our democracy? No, it's a part of the process. An ugly one. A dangerous one.