It's nasty out there already. Not looking forward to this.

If there is any foreign interference, it would be from britain, canada, israel, etc.

What russian or chinese interference is there when there is 24/7 anti-russian and anti-chinese propaganda?

Why not all of them? American politics have turned into a global influence game.

Yes, "propaganda" like information about the Uighur Genocide and facts about Ukrainian civilians fleeing a war-torn country (an undeniable reality irrespective of what Russia's reasons for invading Ukraine were to begin with).

Lmfao Rishi Sunsk and Justin Trudeau interfering to protect the rights of the oppressed moose minority, make English one of America’s official languages, and reclaim America for the Crown

I’m not even going to touch the thinly veiled antisemitic smear

Just mentioning Isreal is antisemetic now? Do you work for the ADL?

“Israel controls the US” fuck off lmao

Just like the Russian Disinformation™ about Joe and Hunter Biden accepting foreign kickbacks. Oh wait.

Nothing says "I am speaking the literal nonpartisan truth" like a burner account.

“All the ear marks of Russian Disinformation” - 51 Alphabet boys.

We can repeat the 2020 election the “most safe and secure” election ever. Funny how Russia and China sat that one out huh? Guess they’d let the other team win one.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that if Russia/China get involved they are guaranteed to decide the outcome of the election. That is absolutely not the case.

There are hundreds of factors that will ultimately decide who wins on the day.

Why do you think they didn't try to interfere in the 2020 election?

Neither Russia or China has ever interfered with vote totals. No one has ever claimed that

Well, someone did claim this during the 2020 cycle, but in a quite bizarre and totally unsubstantiated way: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/06/arizona-repu...

My understanding is in some states the laws are written with a Catch-22: you need evidence of hacking to kick off an investigation. So I wouldn’t be that confident.

If I were China I’d probably go with a hardware supply chain attack. These machines can sit around for years.

I think DARPA’s SSITH program is a step in the right direction. At the very least, I’d feel a lot better with bug bounties on publicly available demonstrators from all manufacturers.

The safe and secure claim was largely around the conduct of the election itself, whereas US adversaries largely deployed disinfo and propaganda tactics to interfere in the election.

So, not sure they sat it out as much as the U.S. was a little better prepared. For instance, social media platforms did a better job of not being completely owned as fire hoses for propaganda and disinfo.

Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms.

>Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms.

Literally, by definition, and extending well beyond just election topics.

> For instance, social media platforms did a better job of not being completely owned as fire hoses for propaganda and disinfo.

Better job by not cashing the adversaries checks?

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/...

> Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms.

Ah you mean the government going hunting and finding accounts that violated the ever changing ToS which was heavily influenced by the USG?

Yes and yes.

Safe to say that $46K ad spend was a drop in the bucket versus their overall effort, but sure, Facebook not accepting those rubles in 2020 counts as a small example.

I have no problem with the U.S. government working with American communications platforms to prevent adversarial propaganda, disinformation and disruption of US elections. These are foreign governments engaged in psyops against American citizens. Falls pretty squarely (and obviously) within government purview to defend against it.

The US government didn't stop there though. They used their influence to censor US citizens' tweets. That's censorship, and that's what happens when you give the government this power. Put censorship in quotes all you like, you support it.

Twitter is infested with trollbots and sock puppets, and can't even agree with itself on its count of real users. So, if some real user accounts that parroted disinfo were swept up in bans or whatever you're calling "censorship" during the disinfo fight, then so be it.

And, in any case, if they're parroting the same disinfo as foreign adversaries who are working to destroy us, then they don't get special dispensation just because they're U.S. citizens.

This is why the First Amendment famously has limits.

>Twitter is infested with trollbots and sock puppets, and can't even agree with itself on its count of real users.

You just described every social media platform.

"Most safe and secure" referred to the counting of the votes, in response Trump's claims.

"Interference" refers to China/Russia state-sponsored targetted propaganda on social media and the like.

Was it really the "most safe and secure" and is "interference" an accurate way to describe these type of activities? Well, one could argue about that. But you're mixing up two mostly unrelated things here.

The worst part is that X/Twitter is deliberately not trying to help this cycle.

They pulled out of the EU Code of Practice around disinformation back in May and they have been warned as recently as yesterday that the platform was the worst of all of the social networks at allowing Russian disinformation.

And I am sure everyone who used it has seen the massive uptick in bots and other coordinated activity.

We must censor this dangerous disinformation at once! Surely we also need to establish federal oversight commissions to determine what is or is not disinformation, we can't let citizens sort this out for themselves!

Fake news. I haven't seen any uptick in bots or coordinated activity. You might be following the wrong sort of accounts.

There are countless articles like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter...

I don't believe that article is accurate. It's more like some guy's biased opinion than a serious quantitative analysis.

You might be following the wrong set of accounts

The fact that this always surpises americans doesn't stop to amaze me. American politcs to some extent affects literally everybody on the planet. But only 300M of them are allowed to vote directly. I consider this situation unjust :)