https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...

At the risk of engaging in a debate I don’t want to participate in, is this not building a strawman?

When I purchase a product after viewing a targeted advertisement for that product, no reasonable person would claim I’d been brainwashed. One might, however, claim I’d been influenced by the advertisement.

Your original post was nothing as it is now.

You are being grossly deceptive, and this is coming from a guy who loves to play devils advocate on hn

Please don't delude yourself or at least attempt to be honest. Races at the county and state level matter a lot. It matters that outside of a couple of states, the winner take all electoral system can have a significant impact on elections.

Yes, those are the rules that have been established, that both parties are privy to when developing their campaign strategy.

But let's not reduce that to "oh, one person won because people liked them more."

Both candidates entered a race to win the electoral college. The race was fair and one of them won. You can’t claim some moral victory by counting the popular vote, because every candidate would campaign very differently to contest a popular vote.

I think you’re correct about one thing though, it is an oversimplification to say that people liked him more. It would be more accurate to say that they thought he would be a better president.

Just think of what this whole story (Foreign meddling) says about these marginal voters in that case: That they were so easily swayed, that they decided to vote ostensibly against their own better judgement simply by being shown a series of ads to influence their emotions.

Something is very wrong with voter education if it's that easy to sway a certain influential population of voters.

Have you considered it might be happening to you, right now? How would you tell, if by definition we are talking about pressing unconscious psychological buttons?

You may be very well educated, but you've never the less the same monkey brain as everyone on this earth.

Your comment adds nothing but a personal attack on me where one is not warranted.

It's pretty difficult to make meaningful wide-ranging inferences about the voter populations this way.

In the months and weeks approaching election day, I was struck numerous times by the reality that each political faction was profoundly disconnected from the other, in media consumption silos so different that if you happened to drift from one conversation to another, it felt like crossing an ocean and entering a distant country.

And to me, it was obvious that this social rift had calcified during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Somehow, amid the victory of the Obama presidency, left wing democrats simply felt as though their job was done, they could die happy, and anything else they imagined as natural was a foregone conclusion of the retirement they were set to sail into.

I don't think the media silos I noticed are the root of the problem. You cannot blame cartoons, talk radio and memes. I strongly believe that complacency, assumption and tone deaf, willful blindness among democratic party consituents led to the results we have watched unfold. I don't think it was New Media manipulation, and I don't think "fixing social media" will solve for the chaos we now see.

Hillary did cheat though. Her campaign directly collaborated with correct the record - last time I checked coordinating with a super pac was illegal. She also directly worked with the media to spread progaganda.

Thank god Trump won. Hillary would have been more of the same.

Also, it’s hilarious that we’ve all stopped caring about Citzens United now. Corporations influencing our elections is A-OK!

Also, this is a completely different claim, separate from the “Russia interferes with our election” claim.

If it is hacking polling stations or other illegal activities, that is pretty bad. But still the responsibility is on the harmed country to make that harder, detect it and show proof.

Of course it would make Trump appear illegitimate, but I don't think it should be unexpected by Russia. Can't really expect them to be silent and do nothing when they know Hillary has strong negative views (for good reason!) of their country.

Here's an analogy: We expect belligerents to kill each other's soldiers during war. It's the responsibility of each side to minimize their own losses. That doesn't mean that war isn't bad.

FREE JULIAN!

Also, I’m not alone in this, notable journalists such as Glenn Greenwald are also asking for evidence.

There is enough evidence to substantiate beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia deliberately interfered with the 2016 presidential election. It is hard to determine the degree with which that interference influenced voters.

If you want a timeline of events you can go here[0] or here[1], but something tells me you won't accept these...

[0]: https://www.politico.com/trump-russia-ties-scandal-guide/tim...

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/05/a...

More importanly: why should I care about Russians interfering with elections when we let corporations do that to a far greater extent?

I assume you don't mean in the P(A|B) > P(A) sense?

All: Please keep garden-variety partisan flamewars far away from this site, too.

"From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016."

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments."

Also the DNI report is too generic. They literally have screenshots of Russian news channels. This is bordering on cold war era style propaganda.

PS: thank you for taking the time and effort to have a conversation. I haven't seen anything convincing me that Russia meaningfully interfered in the election. And I'm wary to jump to conclusions since there are a lot of people who seem to be hell bent on undercutting the President using any means.

The indictment I provided is from the investigation headed by Robert Mueller, special counsel, former FBI director, and Republican. Dismissing it as "partisan activities" suggests either that you are extremely uninformed on this subject (in which case you should do your own research) or that you've already decided in advance to dismiss the results of a nonpartisan investigation.

Even the highly contested House Intelligence Committee report acknowledges that there was Russian interference in the election (they simply claim that there is no proof the Trump campaign was involved). There is a bipartisan consensus on this subject.