I think there's a reasonable distinction to be drawn between "friends with Republicans" and "friends with Peter Thiel", who is a very particular kind of Republican. I have a bunch of Republican friends. I don't think I have any Thielian friends?

What are, at a high level, the policy positions of a so-called "Thielian"?

Conservative libertarian populist nationalism. "Thielian" is much easier to type.

Is there something wrong with liking the US Constution?

that's someone whose job is on the line being polite about a board member's political activism.

the less polite way to put it would be that Peter Thiel is balls-deep in all kinds of dark-money republican activism and would really prefer to keep Russian propaganda all over facebook because it's advantageous for his tax rates.

The biggest problem I have with arguments like this is that it seems to take the extent of Russian influence out of context. In the Mueller report, it mentions that the IRA purchased ~$100,000 worth of ads on Facebook (pg. 25). In comparison, the Russian government has spend ~$40m lobbying the US government through legal channels.

We shouldn't be comfortable with Russian influence, but we shouldn't allow our political opinions to be so dramatically warped by something that seems so proportionately small. As far as the Russians go, I think characterizing Thiel as being part of some "dark-money" republican machine that supports "Russian propaganda" is not accurate (or to the extent to which it is accurate, it doesn't matter). Not defending his position on other things, though.

The dollar amounts don't reflect the impacts of what the Russians purchased. Conventional lobbying is to get specific bills passed. Social media propaganda can get a few high profile candidates elected, sway general attitudes to justice, liberal democracy, objective truth, etc. It just so happens that it's very cheap to sway some voters. If Russia could get a particular energy bill passed with $10k of Facebook propaganda, it would do that. That's not to say that the shiny new foreign policy tool of social media influence doesn't receive out-sized attention.

>It just so happens that it's very cheap to sway some voters.

You say this very matter-of-factly. Do you have any evidence to back that up? Could you isolate that audience? As someone that has run a lot of political and consumer ads over the last 10 years, I'd really like to figure out who those people I can get for 100k that I can't get for 81 million are.

Propaganda does work. Russian propaganda does not work nearly as well as Madison Avenue propaganda, and that's been shown for decades. I'll give the edge to the Madison Ave guys spending tens of millions, here, over the Russian troll farm and 100k.

>If Russia could get a particular energy bill passed with $10k of Facebook propaganda, it would do that

Sure. I don't believe it can, though, and nobody has provided evidence to the contrary. Attempts, sure, but no real success.

It is my belief that the US FBI had much more to do with swaying the 2016 election than Russia's $100k Facebook ad spend.

There was something in the neighborhood of one billion dollars spent on the 2016 election cycle. If Russia managed to significantly influence it by spending $100,000, they're far more effective than either the Democrat or Republican campaign machines.

So you're saying a billion dollars spent by the Hillary campaign couldn't compete with Russia's $100,000 in targeted ads?

Russia spent money on democrat positions too. Their intent was to sow discord in the US populace and increase polarization.

Measuring influence by spend might be misleading. The leverage they discovered on social media could have surprised even them.

I saw a lot of nonsense get spewed on Facebook- things that could be quite simply fact-checked, and people completely bought into them. Also, contradictory emotional appeals were spread (without, of course, the responders recognizing the contradictions). Finally, I was on a forum when someone gave stupid numbers concerning Obamacare, that I quickly checked and challenged (he left and never came back).

Having discovered that people by and large won't think critically about what you're saying, and using the viral nature of emotional appeals to create a general sentiment (which will later be rationalized) payed off for somebody. I don't know if it was the Russians or not.

The very nature that Facebook sold micro-targeted ads for pennies just because they were "only" for the smallest audiences, but yet these audiences were most likely to reshare the content virally, effectively whitewashing the "sponsored content" tag off it into a larger population of feeds, effectively created a scenario where ad spend on Facebook at the time must have been absolutely misleading.

None of that is the case. Microtargeting isn't cost effective and doesn't scale well, and it's usually more expensive, not less.

In 2013, I remember people were building Facebook audiences by ripping Facebook ID's from relevant open groups - that was insanely targeted audience, and while it wasn't general practice, it's definitely something advertisers were using. None of what comes from that is unexpected results. Your argument appears to be that Russian authorities with a $100k budget were 1000x better at manipulating Facebook's audience targeting tools than the people that had been paid to do just that for years - is that true?

I do not like Facebook, personally, and I don't like Trump. But this appears an unlikely scenario.

I'm not sure what you mean -- generally, the smaller the audience size, the higher the CPM.

He is saying that if an 'ad' hits the right person in the right way, that person will share it withing a large group. So you may pay more to reach the first, but after that the target audience does the work for you by sharing.

-> I sponsor an ad targeting a certain audience

-> Byron Shifflett comments on the sponsored content in a way that makes it clear I reached him

-> Under another account, I reply to his comment

-> I send a friend request

-> He accepts

-> Now I can reach him just by posting my nonsense on my second account

-> He shares. That's what I like about him.

Exactly. The use of ad spend to talk about Russian influence in 2016 is negligent in focusing on a metric of convenience. I suspect the real channels through which they exert influence don't lend themselves to easy quantification.

Indeed, the fake news being parroted on the most watched TV channels, and the most listened to talk shows has far, far more reach (like orders of magnitude).

These guys didn't have the clout they have now when broadcasters and content-owners were not allowed to monopolize the market.

"Russian propaganda" is all over facebook? This has never been substantiated.

We had 3 years of the mainstream media networks pushing the Russian-Collusion narrative and how Trump is going to be impeached for it.

Then the narrative get's utterly dismantled. It's such a farce at this point that the DNC didn't even list Russian collusion in it's articles of impeachment against the President.

Still, as this circus continues, very smart people still believe that Trump was elected because of Putin, and is in fact an agent of Russia.

It's mind blowing.

The Mueller report is pretty clear the Russian government tried to interfere with the investigation and that individuals close to Trump coordinated with the Russians.

> The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. Evidence of Russian government operations began to surface in mid-2016. In June, the Democratic National Committee and its cyber response team publicly announced that Russian hackers had compromised its computer network. Releases of hacked materials—hacks that public reporting soon attributed to the Russian government—began that same month. Additional releases followed in July through the organization WikiLeaks, with further releases in October and November.

>Dozens of IRA employees were responsible for operating accounts and personas on different U.S. social media platforms. The IRA referred to employees assigned to operate the social media accounts as “specialists.”42 Starting as early as 2014, the IRA’s U.S. operations included social media specialists focusing on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.43 The IRA later added specialists who operated on Tumblr and Instagram accounts. 44 > Initially, the IRA created social media accounts that pretended to be the personal accounts of U.S. persons.45 By early 2015, the IRA began to create larger social media groups or public social media pages that claimed (falsely) to be affiliated with U.S. political and grassroots organizations. In certain cases, the IRA created accounts that mimicked real U.S. organizations. For example, one IRA-controlled Twitter account, @TEN_GOP, purported to be connected to the Tennessee Republican Party.46 More commonly, the IRA created accounts in the names of fictitious U.S. organizations and grassroots groups and used these accounts to pose as antiimmigration groups, Tea Party activists, Black Lives Matter protestors, and other U.S. social and political activists. The IRA closely monitored

"https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf"

Or Thiel is a malicious libertian and wants to tear our republic apart to rebuild it in his image

I don't see how you get "what he really means is ... all kinds of dark money republican activism" from "Mark is friends with Peter Thiel and a lot of Republicans". This seems like baseless conspiracy theorism unless you're privy to more information.

really?

yup.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/press-release/crew-exposes...

Can you tell me where the money from Colbert's Americans for a Better Tommorow SuperPAC has gone? He's not legally required to tell us, yet a revelation that a political group receives money from people with money to spare is framed as shocking... I don't know what is interesting about this story.

I was one of Colbert's biggest fan, I'm aware of the point. The point that was apparently unclear was that superpac's have famously been the norm. I would not change an ounce of the facts about what Crew and Ajs have done together, including the revealing of said funding streams. The political rigmarole of sensationalizing 'dark money' which is already famous and being shocked by something people cheered for in a joke comes across as too blatantly political and boring.

You're right, once corruption becomes pervasive enough, addressing it becomes way too boring and obvious. Better to do nothing.

You're telling me a public republican investing in republican political parties through a famous and legal method is now corruption? This story is just some politician deciding this kind of payment system needs to go and making it so. The salesmanship of dem vs rep is boring.

I think this is an unfair characterization of his political views.

This is my understanding of how Peter Thiel views the world:

- Our entire economic system is structured for growth. With growth things are good and everyone can share in a piece of an ever-growing pie. Without growth you get a zero sum game and collapse.

- We are in a 'great stagnation' where growth is stalling in most industries. Every industry outside of tech (and arguably tech now too).

- The 'Neoliberals' (Obama and Clinton types, liberal centrists) don't see this stagnation as the existential threat it is and the institutions in place can't make the changes necessary to help correct for it.

- Without correcting for this problem you get an apocalyptic scenario and collapse of society.

- There's a dash of fair trade protectionism and an anti-immigration view somewhere in this that I don't totally understand (this is my weakest understanding of his politics, but it comes up when he talks and in his donations).

##

Then with this framing Trump in this context:

- I think Peter Thiel thinks Donald Trump is an idiot, but his administration's willingness to ignore precedent may allow them to break out of some of the existing constraints that prevent large change.

- Focusing on anything except the stagnation problem is meaningless in the long run.

- The push back against China IP issues is good and something others were afraid to do.

- He thinks the immigration push back and protection of American workers is necessary for political stability.

##

The questions I have with this view:

- He often asserts this stagnation problem exists, but without any real evidence (he just acts like it's obvious). I'd want some reason to think that now is different than historically - is it just a comparison to low hanging fruit in scientific discovery of the last couple hundred years? Something else? I think there are problems in academia, but I'm not sure I buy this 'great stagnation' argument up front.

- Trump seems like killing the patient to cure the disease, Peter Thiel would argue that actually things are mostly the same and Trump hasn't really changed day to day life for people. Currently this is largely true (unless you're an undocumented immigrant that had your children taken from you). This is playing with fire though and collapses of democracy are real - Putin was elected before becoming a dictator. I think he's playing dangerously here with his assumptions of what is possible.

- Continued support after this first term I just can't accept - it seems pretty clear at this point that Trump is a bad/criminal actor that only has his interests in mind with his actions.

What is "dark money"?

No, it has a pretty precise definition. It's money spent on political activism that isn't publicly reported, typically through a specific category of non-profit organization.

Are you being facetious?

Definition here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dark_money

Money spent by non-profits that don't have to report their donors (hence "dark")

money that moves through PACs/SuperPACs and thus doesn't have to be disclosed and is not subject to campaign finance limitations, as opposed to direct spending by individuals or campaign funding.

HN is becoming pathetic.

Everyone knows that Democrats don't propagandize, maneuver, or move money at the outer limits of what is legal. Not once ever.

Pro tip: If you find that the only argument you can make is whataboutism, then you're probably defending something that you shouldn't be defending. It's fine to talk about the political influence of Zuckerberg's friends (and board members) and the implications of that without having to resort to arguments about "both sides".

> the less polite way ...

No - that's the highly editorialized, average "opinion" of Maddow, Lemon,... PBS is much better at not indoctrinating their audience on conspiracies

Did Russia hack the British elections recently?

Did Russia plant Tulsi into the DNC as a Trojan horse. Clinton seems to claim so.

Edit: The Russians have caught wind of this comment, and frantically down voting it, lest the media uncovers them lurking on HN

Wow, you should watch less CNN.

Edit: there's nothing to dispute in his post, it's all conspiracy theory and talking points barely strung together.

"Dark-money Republican activism" Lol.

Post some sources and I will show you the other side, as a bonus I'll give you a similar "dark-money" event from the Democrats.

That is one of the milder critiques of Thiel, considering some of the stuff Palantir gets up to.

Not political activism, but Peter Thiel was also doing research into using the blood of the young to rejuvenate himself and prolong his life.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to...

(Wanting to live forever seems to be a not-uncommon desire among the hyper-rich. Larry Ellison's only known voluntary charitable contribution is similarly to a foundation he set up for researching the prolonging of life... specifically, his.)

Which now has ads on TV make me more than a bit uncomfortable.

What do they get into?

What do you dispute in his post?

it's easier to dismiss the totality of an argument if you manufacture some level of aggrievement

That which has no source, takes no source to dismiss. The "Dark money in the republican party" claim was not substantiated. I can say there is a unicorn on the moon that shoots candy out of it's butt, how would you dispute it?

More like, being friends with a known crank and general creepo. Seriously, if Zuckerberg was friends with say George Will that would be one thing but Thiel is just a flake with too many dollars in his pocket than he deserves.

Sure, you can be friends with bigots and authoritarians. It shouldn't be surprising it is a cause for concern for many people.

You want them to only be friends with Democrats? That's the future we want right, only one-sided? I'm sure Mark is friend with people from both parties, that quote needs a citation. Hell the guy has met with other world leaders before. I'm not a Mark Zuckerberg fan mind you.

They have too much influence to be 'friends' with anyone to be honest.

We can all complain about it, nothing will change, but there is no denying, that such a big fish shouldn't have such a big influence on things because of their 'friends'.

But whatever

This is true, it's more like just political connections at this rate.

The Dem, Republic split is a tool for getting things done. They can be friends with whoever they want. It's better for Steve Jobs that Bill Gates is his main rival, rather than a German, British or Chinese tech company. A democrat can play off a republican to force through change or achieve goals. We get herded into the middle of a story by real world details being politicized. Republicans and dems will control the internet news stream by killing off fake/Russian news. They'll clean up areas of money flow with 'shocking' exposes. You can see it coming if you remember the patterns over time. It's getting boring to watch..

rayiner was being sarcastic.