You are really, truly, just a bizarre case. What a weirdo.
Wait until the people here get a load of the things you’ve written. This is InfoWars level shit you’ve put out into the world. And you keep injecting it here, too.
Dude, you’ve been asked by others here to stop trying to harass me like this, including by the site’s owner. I’ll send him another request to see if he can enforce that. It’s spam, and it’s really just so sad on your part. I hope you get some help.
Good luck with that. The only resolution I can think of is that you agree to never post on any political topics here, since you’re a professional right wing extremist writer. In fact, that’s what I thought the resolution was.
So, does Wumpus only dox gman in his spare time, or does he just sit around doxing everybody?
This is a good question. It’s really concerning what he does with poster’s private info, despite repeated warnings, and he should lose access he has to that. It’s also just, wildly off-topic in this thread.
I’m still interested in good data on the impact of Russian meddling, but I suspect the answer is that it’s just hard to measure something like that. Which is fine and reasonable. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to gauge its relative impact, or ask questions (as the Wired piece does) about its ability to actually change votes and minds.
wikileaks democratic emails
About 1,440,000 results (0.45 seconds)
There you go. Don’t worry, I wasn’t actually expecting to change your mind about google today. I just wanted to plant a seed. Someday in the future, you will be reading the Daily Stormer, or watching small penis humiliation porn, and you will think back to this conversation and try out google for the first time.
Those are descriptors of what happened with the leaked emails, but my point is that it’s hard to show the direct impact of those leaks, as opposed to, say, Comey’s decision to defy protocol on announcing the Clinton probe’s re-opening; or Clinton’s campaign decisions; or the media’s fawning coverage of Trump, etc.
Edit: Oops, I just saw the 538 link. It seems to establish definitively that precise impacts are hard to gauge, which is what I was looking for. This suggests to me it is reasonable to argue that the Russian meddling might not have swayed the election result one way or the other, but it’s a good analysis into how it might have. Again, I’ve never said that the meddling did or didn’t sway the election, but I do not think we can be so confident it was as major a factor as it might seem without better data.
It’s quite flattering you think I don’t write for them, based on Wumpus’ posts! :)
You do the investigation to find out what the meddling was, and thus the impact. The investigation comes before knowing what the meddling was. It’s the reason for the investigation. Investigations do not equal guilt, they are to find the facts and then a judge and jury take those facts and use them to assess guilt.
I’m explaining this as if to an eight year old, cause that’s the level of your professed ignorance. If you want to be treated like a big boy, you gotta start acting like one.
Actually, I’d argue it’s not unless it comes with extreme qualifiers, which in turn tend to not be reasonable.
It’s true the precise impact of any given facet of what went down in 2016 is impossible to specifically quantify due to a multitude of factors. However, in an election which was close enough for the loser to win the popular vote, I think it’s quite unreasonable to argue Russian meddling (which went WELL beyond hacked emails, and as noted pretty much everywhere had been ongoing for much longer than just a month or two before the election) didn’t play a decisive role.
What you bring up about Comey’s inane decision is spot on. Without that, she still may have won (I’d argue she probably would have). But these influences all combine. Imagine you’ve got a ladder to reach a high place. Neither the first nor last foot of that ladder is more important to reach its full height; they all stack together. They’re all “decisive” in that sense.
Now one could argue, “Well, I’ve got a 10’ ladder and I only need to reach an 9’ height, so that last foot doesn’t matter.” Which theoretically is fine, but doesn’t stack up to what happened in the election.
Consider the following states and their margin of victory for Trump:
| State | Margin | EC Votes | # changed minds needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| MI | .22% | 16 | 5,353 |
| PA | .72% | 20 | 22,147 |
| WI | .76% | 10 | 11,325 |
| FL | 1.2% | 29 | 56,456 |
Those states all needed less than 1% of their voters to have their minds changed between Trump and Clinton to have flipped their EC votes in the election (a switch from one candidate to the other essentially doubles the difference in a zero sum game). That would have been a swing of 75 EC votes, giving Clinton a 302-229 victory. Even if Florida didn’t switch and ONLY .39% of those voters changed their minds, Clinton still would have barely eked out a 273-258 victory (presuming faithless electors continued their faithless ways).
Another way of approximately saying .39% is 1/256.
So is it reasonable to say less than 1 out of 256 voters didn’t get their minds changed by all the Russian efforts leading up to the election? Think about all the actual fake news on Facebook, Twitter garbage, ad campaigns, etc… Then think about the actual American media that took those snowballs rolling down the hill and kept them rolling right along (fruit of the poisonous tree). Think about the talking heads, politicians, and advocates regurgitating it. Then think about the judgement of the electorate, and the bell curve of political understanding.
Can anyone really reasonably say less than 1 out of 256 voters had their minds changed by all that stuff? I’d say not.
Compounded with the fact that Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania we’re collectively decided by less than 100k votes, and Florida was also within 1%.
It played a role. Undeniably it altered the outcome due to these narrow margins. Coupled with things like vote suppression in Wisconsin etc. it inverted the binary outcome.
What the primary factor, and the total shift, was are impossible to determine. But to say that the Russian actions altered the outcome is not just plausible, it is a factual certainty.
Your post mentions:
It’s interesting that your analysis focuses on changing minds of just the 1 out of 256, when I feel a key motivation for the Russian meddling – just like domestic misinformation – is to inspire, or depress, turnout. Adults are mostly very partisan, and it’s rare to find a Democrat who suddenly becomes inspired by Sean Hannity and Trump-style rhetoric. However, you can certainly depress turnout by reducing already paper-thin enthusiasm for a candidate by, say, dumping out embarrassing DNC emails involving her, or re-opening a criminal probe into her email a week before the election. Similarly, you can motivate pro-Trump voters to stop being lazy and head to the polls if you really rile them up with ad campaigns about their guns being taken away, or Black Lives Matter saying dumb things about cops.
Otherwise, your assessment makes sense to me, and of course I doubt Russian intelligence services, which are far smarter than I am, would bother trying to help Trump if they felt certainty that it would make no meaningful difference. I just would emphasize again that combating misinformation is a much bigger problem than just dealing with Russia, and the good news is that now that Russia’s tactics are revealed, everyone (including the DNC) will be wiser in future elections.
Color me beyond skeptical that the base to which you belong, which according to a recent U of Oxford study consumes and disseminates more fake news across social media than all other political groups in America combined by several orders of magnitude, will magically learn how to engage in logic and reason because of reporting by media they consider to be fake news. They’re trapped in a negative cognitive feedback loop that was engineered by their ideology’s monied interests. The Russians and Trump have merely tapped into it.
I am familiar with the study you mention, and I would take issue with its classification of what conservative sites are “junk.” For instance, it classified National Review as a “junk news” site:
The study also somehow missed very popular, hyperpartisan liberal sites like DailyKos/Salon/Democracy Now! while calling Mediate, a blog about media appearances, junk. I do not find the Oxford study credible, based on its erroneous, apparently biased classification of legitimate sites as junk.
But I am willing to admit that the study might be right that a lot of the “fake news” it did identify had nothing to do with Russian news sources. That would imply outing Russia doesn’t solve the whole problem because they are simply tapping into the existing feedback loop, as you said. The kind of pot-stirring disinformation you linked is also very commonly organized by domestic groups like the one I mentioned (Berman & Co.). Not so much the dueling rallies per se, but the fake facebook groups, fake articles, fake studies that actually look legitimate.
Anyway, when I hear all the concern about Russia, which is legitimate, I think it’s important to focus on all the domestic actors doing such similar stuff. Tapping into the feedback loop, as you put it.
Thats another thread fucked up by this troll then.
Sometimes, people will disagree with you. You don’t have to respond to them with profanity or harassment, even if other posters seem to think that’s appropriate. I also don’t see how I’ve fucked up anything by pointing out clear errors in “Oxford studies” people are citing, or pointing out that Russian meddling also affected turnout (which actually helps the argument that Putin influenced the outcome of the election).
But you lie, and you do so intentionally.
As an example, you attempt to argue that Trump doesn’t deny that Russians attacked our election, by presenting cases where he admitted they did.
But this is inherently dishonest, hinging upon Trump’s own constant dishonesty. Sure, Trump has made such admissions, but he also does not care about consistency. He says the opposite all the time.
Trump and his supporters, like you, attack Mueller’s investigation on a daily basis, calling it a witch-hunt. He did this on the same day that they indicted 12 Russian military officers, by name.
Trump supporters attack Mueller’s investigation, in it’s entirety. Even though there is absolutely no basis for such an attack. His investigation has already resulted in dozens of indictments, including multiple people pleading guilty. In no reasonable world can anyone say that it is operating without cause.
It clearly has a solid basis for proceeding, and is turning up real results.
And yet it is attacked by Trump and his supporters.
The only people who benefit from such attacks are criminals and the Russians.
Well I think the Mueller investigation is a good thing, and if there was an attempt to remove Mueller that would be good grounds for impeachment. And I certainly don’t attack his investigation on a daily basis. I do still struggle to understand what exactly Paul Manafort is charged with, and if it’s an effort to flip him, I think that might raise some concerns about the probe’s scope, so to speak. But I’m not really shedding any tears for the guy, he seems corrupt.
Just fucking leave dude. You dont like this site, we dont like you. Why the hell are you here? Surely the “lets go troll a community I hate” gag has run its course at this point? How many actual respected posters have you enraged at this point? Just fucking go already.