As was highlighted in yesterday's indictment, there is a lot of attention being paid to Russian actions on Facebook, giving a false impression that this was the deciding factor in the election. As I pointed out again yesterday, the evidence presented in the Congressional testimony regarding Russian actions on social media showed that their actions, such as purchasing $100,000 in Facebook ads were very trivial considering the vast amount of activity on social media and other campaign advertising. The Congressional testimony revealed that information from Russian Facebook pages accounted for “less than 0.004 percent of all content — or about 1 in 23,000 news feed items” on Facebook. Over half the ads were not even seen until after the election, and many had nothing to do with promoting Trump over Clinton. The Russian purchased Facebook ads also targeted deep blue states over battleground states or the rust belt states which cost Clinton the election.
While the overall influence of Facebook on the election is unknown, if Facebook did influence the election there were factors far more important than the Russian activities. Both sides had many supporters who posted substantially far more on line for their candidate than anything coming from Russia. The Clinton campaign and its allies also utilized an army of paid trolls which were more prevalent on social media than the Russians. The Trump campaign effectively used social media in a manner which was totally legal and had nothing to do with Russia--Facebook employees embedded in the campaign to instruct them in the most effective way to use social media.
The Guardian looked at how the Trump campaign used the Facebook embeds, based upon a story on CBS News:
The Trump presidential campaign spent most of its digital advertising budget on Facebook, testing more than 50,000 ad variations each day in an attempt to micro-target voters, Trump’s digital director, Brad Parscale, told CBS’s 60 Minutes in an interview scheduled to air on Sunday night.“Twitter is how [Trump] talked to the people, Facebook was going to be how he won,” Parscale said...
Parscale said the Trump campaign used Facebook to reach clusters of rural voters, such as “15 people in the Florida Panhandle that I would never buy a TV commercial for”.
“I started making ads that showed the bridge crumbling,” he said. “I can find the 1,500 people in one town that care about infrastructure. Now, that might be a voter that normally votes Democrat.”
Parscale said the campaign constantly tested minute variations in the design, color, background and phrasing of Facebook ads, in order to maximize their impact. Typically 50,000 to 60,000 variations were tested each day, he said, and sometimes as many as 100,000.
But Parscale’s comments highlight how actively Facebook has pursued election advertising as a business strategy, even as its platform has come under attack as a fertile ground for Russian-backed political propaganda, conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation.In the realm of digital campaign advertising, micro-targeting of voters and constant testing of the effect of minute differences in ads are not new or innovative actions.Among other services, Facebook’s elections advertising allows campaigns to take lists of registered voters drawn from public records and find those people on Facebook.
Parscale said he asked the Facebook “embeds” to teach staffers everything the Clinton campaign would be told about Facebook advertising “and then some”...
Parscale told CBS he was told the Clinton campaign did not use Facebook employee embeds. “I had heard that they did not accept any of [Facebook’s] offers,” he said.
While Clinton did not take advantage of this opportunity, there are other ways in which Facebook has been biased towards Clinton which might have offsetted this potential advantage for Trump.Yesterday's indictment by Robert Mueller was about violations of federal election laws by Russians. As Rod Rosenstein verified, it was not about altering the election result. It is less clear how much legal activities on Facebook contributed to the ultimate result.
13 Russian nationalists... ooo, scary!
And what were they doing? Posting ads on the year long biggest story in America.
Are international ads illegal and "acts of war"? "Threats to the US"? Seems a little weak, to me.
Hillary's _multi-million dollar_Troll farm, IMO, was far more damaging to Democracy and to the chances of Democrats winning.
David Brock's trolls relentless attacked Bernie supporters and pushed bullshit racial and misogynistic arguments. It's kind of hard to come back from "You're a racist misogynist!" Hell of a way to earn a vote, eh?
But that's cool. Good ol' Caving Chuck Schumer's quote on tactics is one I'll always remember:
Smart guy, that Chuck Schumer. I can see why he's still the "Leader" in the Senate.
Thanks for sharing this. More of us need to step up and challenge the psyops campaign that is being waged against our country.
The ads were technically illegal because of reporting requirements. Beyond that, they were not an act of war, they are not evidence of collusion with the Trump campaign, and they had nothing to do with the election result.
I wrote more on the indictment yesterday:
http://liberalvaluesblog.com/2018/02/16/todays-indictments-do-not-support-narratives-of-either-republican-or-democratic-partisans-regarding-russia/
I don't even know if they were technically illegal. I would imagine that the courts would have to weigh in on this. Seems like fairly uncharted territory.
Buying an ad as an individual or boosting a post on Social Media is against the law? And the intent seems rather scattershot; like social media marketers trying to make a few bucks.
And I do understand the foreign national part, but it still seems shaky to me. Especially given that China and other countries drop serious coin on our pols and electoral system.
Laws are for little people. BIG "people" have a different track of justice.
And what about Hillary's pilfering of State Party cash? That was a big fear coming out of Citizen's United (or McKutcheon). Of course it was considered conspiracy theory at the time...
And Brooklyn's scrubbing of the voter roles. SO much electoral malfeasance in 2016, and we're pointing the finger at 13 dipshits who tried to use dogs and pokemon to affect the election.
It's completely absurd.
Nice piece... Nice Drupal site.
Nope, but they sure do keep Russia on the brain.
AFTER the election. No FEC requirements, right?
There is the money quote. This has far more to do with hobbling the internet for citizens and yoking it to BIG Money than it does electoral integrity.
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