The election was won by a very slim margin. The core of Trump's support may have been with him regardless but they weren't enough to win. It's the actions on the margin that matter here.
Also, as other's have pointed out, there are a lot of other problems with social media in general and Facebook in particular. Russian meddling in the election is the spark that is lighting the fire but the fuel was already there. (That last sentence optimistic to an extent that might not be warranted).
Even applying such retroactive analysis to determine the smallest set of people who could change their votes so as to alter the election result, that doesn't imply anything about why Trump voters voted for Trump. That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc.
> That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc.
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.
This should probably be a response to fareesh's top-level post. My comment was just to say that Trump's margin of victory -- however you want to analyze it or state it -- doesn't have any bearing on what motivated Trump voters and isn't even relevant in the context of fareesh's comment.
Your comment doesn't actually add anything to this conversation, so regardless of one's position on Trump vs. Hillary, the downvotes are justified. All you said was a vague commonplace sentiment that has very little to do with the topic at hand.
Additionally, “at least it’s not Hillary” is a pretty baseless reason without supporting arguments. The majority of Americans would vastly prefer her, so please explain your point if you aim to be taken seriously. This isn’t reddit.
Actually, he won thanks to ~63,000,000 votes. You’re also trying to make it sound like there was something uniquely nefarious about his campaign. He used the same marketing tactics that all recent campaigns have used. The same tactics that Obama was widely praised for in 2012. He won because voters liked him more.
Neither candidate was campaigning for a popular vote, they were both campaigning to win the electoral college. Which Trump did because ~63,000,000 Americans decided, purely of their own free will, that he was the better candidate. No matter how much you try to retroactively gerrymander the outcome, both candidates were playing on a level playing field, one of them won and one of them lost. It’s really a testament to democracy that an outsider candidate can prevail over the amount of establishment support Hillary had.
There's so much wrong with this comment. Correct, he received ~63m votes. Hillary received 65.85m votes. He won because our presidential election system is based on an electoral college (which may be debated as a plus or minus). But that also means certain states have a disproportionate amount of representation with respect to their population.
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."
Nobody complains about the electoral college when their candidate wins. But when they do complain about it, you’ll notice they tend to only mention the shortcomings that support their point of view. For instance, you’ll never hear a Democrat talk about all of the Republican votes that are suppressed in the large liberal states.
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.
I always love people who tout the "how could those feeble minded simpletons be so easily swindled; I would never fall for that" slogan.
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.
Note that you are attributing to me a sentiment that I don't hold. Rather, the argument that a significant number of voters were swayed to vote for Trump through targeted ads on Facebook, if taken to be fact, must imply such a state for the average voter. Not a very kind argument to be making.
Your comment adds nothing but a personal attack on me where one is not warranted.
...or it's not that voters were swayed by anything at all, and lots of people voted for an unproductive celebrity for their own reasons.
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.
Ah yeah, totally. I feel similarly to you. I was talking about a smaller contingent of voters who might have been caught in the middle. I should have made that more clear.
There was no “Russian meddling” in the election. Stop parroting nonsense without evidence.
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!
We've established beyond a doubt by now that there was, in fact, "Russian meddling" in the election. It's incredible that someone could still deny this.
I'm a strong Trump, and even more so Putin, hater, but I don't really get why Russian "meddling" is so bad. I kind of expect them to do this. I am sure the US is supporting candidates it wants to win in other places.
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.
> I don't really get why Russian "meddling" is so bad. I kind of expect them to do this.
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.
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.
When all the stories first started coming out about U.S. torture around 2005 the first stage was denial by supporters of Bush. The number of intelligence officials, the number of investigative reports, etc. is such that someone denying Russian influence is being willfully naive. The question isn’t if they did influence the election it’s just how much the influence really was. It is beyond question that the Russians were involved in shenanigans. The U.S. has regularly unduly influenced elections in other countries so I don’t begrudge the Russians for what they did. I do begrudge those of our leaders who don’t care.
Are you just not paying attention to the Mueller investigation? There's like five guilty pleas by now. Is that just a nothing burger? Seriously, what do you think that's all about?
If you want a timeline of events you can go here[0] or here[1], but something tells me you won't accept these...
The timeline contains confirmed events which are in fact evidence. They're not accusations; the point of the timeline is that these are things we know happened.
Crossing into personal nastiness will get you banned here regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.
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."
"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."
People can say anything. Anything proven in the court? To me all this sounds like partisan activities against the President. I skimmed both documents, but couldn't find any proven fact. Only allegations. Did I miss something?
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.
I provided those two documents because they currently bookend official public activity on the subject.
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.
Also, as other's have pointed out, there are a lot of other problems with social media in general and Facebook in particular. Russian meddling in the election is the spark that is lighting the fire but the fuel was already there. (That last sentence optimistic to an extent that might not be warranted).