The Democratic Presidential Debates
Comments
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My theory on why Democrats will lose:mrussel1 said:
55% of Democrats, no less.Lerxst1992 said:Spiritual_Chaos said:34% =/= 50%
that tells me in his best state, there are still 55% of the voters rejecting socialist healthcare
1) The DNC has allowed for a plurality of viewpoints to form within the party (moderate and liberal) and will not provide leadership on which represents the desired direction for the party. In many cases, these viewpoints are fundamentally in juxtaposition with each other, and it reads as a lack of clearly defined vision
2) Distrust of moderates by liberals, and skepticism of the attainability of liberal pursuits by moderates, create 'stickiness' to voters' respective branch (moderate or liberal), potentially reducing number of general election voters from the Democrat pool
3) The signal-to-noise ratio in terms of chatter versus substantial political discussion leaves it hard for a unifying individual to stand out in the crowd and 'rally' everyone around him or her. I think Bernie has done this the best of all candidates, but this job is made far more difficult by the above two points (and that extends to all candidates)
4) The above points can easily be weaponized, and regularly are weaponized, both as mechanisms to keep Democrat voters home, and to pull Republican voters to the voting booths to protect from potentially-inbound Democrat boogeymen
With that said, wild cards seem to come every day, and as we have a more impulsive voting base that reacts so radically to TV soundbites and absorbs unvetted news like gospel, I'm curious to see the rate of change of voting opinions over time on this election compared to prior ones. My gut says that these races are due to become further and further unpredictable.'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 10 -
Do not underestimate what nerds can do. Sure, maybe they purchased 45k in Facebook ad buys, but maybe they spent $2 million on access to an AI/machine learning model that assured them a certain number of impressions in those 45k by hyper-targeting where those ads were placed and who saw them. Even in 2016, people had a tendency to look at these small ad spends and think they're trivial, but they're not. What I'm talking about is done regularly by large corporations who can buy or develop these hyper-targeting tools to assure ROI to produce multipliers that are sometimes shockingly high.pjl44 said:
If someone can swing an election with 45k in Facebook ad buys, those are the most valuable political consultants in the world and your preferred candidate should hire them immediatelybenjs said:
On the actors specifically - fair point. Also as far as that goes, who's to say how many foreign nations have been watching Trump invite foreign interference instead of criticize it?pjl44 said:
The thing that kills me most in all this is how much it requires the reader to connect dots. Because the hard evidence shows yeah, they're certainly making efforts, but the only real results are the ability to drive people crazy. People aren't being influenced by Facebook memes, they're allowing themselves to get hysterical over conspiracy theories. Interestingly, the person in question here is pointing to the Saudis and not the Russkies.benjs said:
Firstly, agreed on scope. 50K of funds injection would hardly be worth any candidate's time/effort/risk to pursue.pjl44 said:
What's the headline here? That he got 50k in fishy donations in 2016?CM189191 said:Big questions here about who is funding Bernie's campaign. This stinks to high heaven.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1227093037697896448.html
Khawaja claims the Saudis and the Emiratis illegally paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign in 2016. He says that to keep it secret, they disguised the money as small donations from Americans, using stolen identities and ‘virtual credit cards’ or gift cards — donations of less than $200 do not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made public. He claims the Saudis and the Emiratis were able to make thousands of such small donations at a time using the latest payment processing technology.
https://spectator.us/whistleblower-andy-khawaja-micropayments/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Next, we should recognize that the stink may be real, but may or may not be the candidates themselves. Bear in mind that Russia's strategy is to play both sides of the field to stoke the flames of division (even if having a preference towards one side winning and placing outsized efforts to make that happen), and to generally create distrust and confusion (especially to weaken American institutions). People who study Russia may be able to speak more to this, but my understanding is that this is a very typical Soviet-era propaganda approach.
I feel the most appropriate thing to do when we know almost definitively that narratives are being skewed intentionally and that foreign influencers are playing dirty, is to remember to keep vigilant and skeptical, and predominantly focus on whether you believe in their vision for the future and in their ability to realize some portion of it.
On how influential the disinformation campaigns are, I don't feel you or I are necessarily the target audience. We have skepticism, basic logic comprehension, the ability to communicate with depth that extends beyond 140 characters at a time, etc. Sadly, I feel that these disinformation campaigns are targeting those without those abilities, and at the very least I don't feel comfortable surmising one way or another on how effective they are at swaying people. What I would say, is that these have been extremely effective campaigns in terms of the goal of creating distrust in institutions at large.'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 10 -
There are too many assumptions built into that theory for me to be comfortable applying it to the 2016 election. We both agree the Russians engage in this stuff to sow discord. I haven't seen any reporting to suggest they're executing with that level of sophistication.benjs said:
Do not underestimate what nerds can do. Sure, maybe they purchased 45k in Facebook ad buys, but maybe they spent $2 million on access to an AI/machine learning model that assured them a certain number of impressions in those 45k by hyper-targeting where those ads were placed and who saw them. Even in 2016, people had a tendency to look at these small ad spends and think they're trivial, but they're not. What I'm talking about is done regularly by large corporations who can buy or develop these hyper-targeting tools to assure ROI to produce multipliers that are sometimes shockingly high.pjl44 said:
If someone can swing an election with 45k in Facebook ad buys, those are the most valuable political consultants in the world and your preferred candidate should hire them immediatelybenjs said:
On the actors specifically - fair point. Also as far as that goes, who's to say how many foreign nations have been watching Trump invite foreign interference instead of criticize it?pjl44 said:
The thing that kills me most in all this is how much it requires the reader to connect dots. Because the hard evidence shows yeah, they're certainly making efforts, but the only real results are the ability to drive people crazy. People aren't being influenced by Facebook memes, they're allowing themselves to get hysterical over conspiracy theories. Interestingly, the person in question here is pointing to the Saudis and not the Russkies.benjs said:
Firstly, agreed on scope. 50K of funds injection would hardly be worth any candidate's time/effort/risk to pursue.pjl44 said:
What's the headline here? That he got 50k in fishy donations in 2016?CM189191 said:Big questions here about who is funding Bernie's campaign. This stinks to high heaven.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1227093037697896448.html
Khawaja claims the Saudis and the Emiratis illegally paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign in 2016. He says that to keep it secret, they disguised the money as small donations from Americans, using stolen identities and ‘virtual credit cards’ or gift cards — donations of less than $200 do not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made public. He claims the Saudis and the Emiratis were able to make thousands of such small donations at a time using the latest payment processing technology.
https://spectator.us/whistleblower-andy-khawaja-micropayments/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Next, we should recognize that the stink may be real, but may or may not be the candidates themselves. Bear in mind that Russia's strategy is to play both sides of the field to stoke the flames of division (even if having a preference towards one side winning and placing outsized efforts to make that happen), and to generally create distrust and confusion (especially to weaken American institutions). People who study Russia may be able to speak more to this, but my understanding is that this is a very typical Soviet-era propaganda approach.
I feel the most appropriate thing to do when we know almost definitively that narratives are being skewed intentionally and that foreign influencers are playing dirty, is to remember to keep vigilant and skeptical, and predominantly focus on whether you believe in their vision for the future and in their ability to realize some portion of it.
On how influential the disinformation campaigns are, I don't feel you or I are necessarily the target audience. We have skepticism, basic logic comprehension, the ability to communicate with depth that extends beyond 140 characters at a time, etc. Sadly, I feel that these disinformation campaigns are targeting those without those abilities, and at the very least I don't feel comfortable surmising one way or another on how effective they are at swaying people. What I would say, is that these have been extremely effective campaigns in terms of the goal of creating distrust in institutions at large.
Edit: And my previous point stands. If someone currently has a model that can swing an election with a 45k Facebook ad buy, your favorite candidate should be dumping half their war chest into that person's coffers.Post edited by pjl44 on0 -
Different topic, but this is one of the better map-my-politics tools I've seen. I had definite opinions on a lot of the questions and it allows for some nuance.
https://www.idrlabs.com/political-coordinates/test.php
Post edited by pjl44 on0 -
Lerxst1992 said:Spiritual_Chaos said:34% =/= 50%
that tells me in his best state, there are still 55% of the voters rejecting socialist healthcare
=/= ≠ ≠
"It's a sad and beautiful world"-Roberto Benigni0 -
My theory is based on the certain knowledge that businesses today are data mining extensively and algorithmically optimizing ad spends to exponentially multiply the value of an ad buy. In some cases, companies aren't doing direct buying, but instead managing entire AI platforms to tweak model parameters to inform a model what to bid on an active basis, rather than buying ads directly. That's not particularly sophisticated, nor beyond the reach of the Russian government for them to use with relative ease if they so desired. These efforts would stand out particularly strongly against DNC candidates who don't seem to have major technical savviness behind them, based on websites, cyber-presence, etc. On this front I think Sanders' is the strongest.pjl44 said:
There are too many assumptions built into that theory for me to be comfortable applying it to the 2016 election. We both agree the Russians engage in this stuff to sow discord. I haven't seen any reporting to suggest they're executing with that level of sophistication.benjs said:
Do not underestimate what nerds can do. Sure, maybe they purchased 45k in Facebook ad buys, but maybe they spent $2 million on access to an AI/machine learning model that assured them a certain number of impressions in those 45k by hyper-targeting where those ads were placed and who saw them. Even in 2016, people had a tendency to look at these small ad spends and think they're trivial, but they're not. What I'm talking about is done regularly by large corporations who can buy or develop these hyper-targeting tools to assure ROI to produce multipliers that are sometimes shockingly high.pjl44 said:
If someone can swing an election with 45k in Facebook ad buys, those are the most valuable political consultants in the world and your preferred candidate should hire them immediatelybenjs said:
On the actors specifically - fair point. Also as far as that goes, who's to say how many foreign nations have been watching Trump invite foreign interference instead of criticize it?pjl44 said:
The thing that kills me most in all this is how much it requires the reader to connect dots. Because the hard evidence shows yeah, they're certainly making efforts, but the only real results are the ability to drive people crazy. People aren't being influenced by Facebook memes, they're allowing themselves to get hysterical over conspiracy theories. Interestingly, the person in question here is pointing to the Saudis and not the Russkies.benjs said:
Firstly, agreed on scope. 50K of funds injection would hardly be worth any candidate's time/effort/risk to pursue.pjl44 said:
What's the headline here? That he got 50k in fishy donations in 2016?CM189191 said:Big questions here about who is funding Bernie's campaign. This stinks to high heaven.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1227093037697896448.html
Khawaja claims the Saudis and the Emiratis illegally paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign in 2016. He says that to keep it secret, they disguised the money as small donations from Americans, using stolen identities and ‘virtual credit cards’ or gift cards — donations of less than $200 do not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made public. He claims the Saudis and the Emiratis were able to make thousands of such small donations at a time using the latest payment processing technology.
https://spectator.us/whistleblower-andy-khawaja-micropayments/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Next, we should recognize that the stink may be real, but may or may not be the candidates themselves. Bear in mind that Russia's strategy is to play both sides of the field to stoke the flames of division (even if having a preference towards one side winning and placing outsized efforts to make that happen), and to generally create distrust and confusion (especially to weaken American institutions). People who study Russia may be able to speak more to this, but my understanding is that this is a very typical Soviet-era propaganda approach.
I feel the most appropriate thing to do when we know almost definitively that narratives are being skewed intentionally and that foreign influencers are playing dirty, is to remember to keep vigilant and skeptical, and predominantly focus on whether you believe in their vision for the future and in their ability to realize some portion of it.
On how influential the disinformation campaigns are, I don't feel you or I are necessarily the target audience. We have skepticism, basic logic comprehension, the ability to communicate with depth that extends beyond 140 characters at a time, etc. Sadly, I feel that these disinformation campaigns are targeting those without those abilities, and at the very least I don't feel comfortable surmising one way or another on how effective they are at swaying people. What I would say, is that these have been extremely effective campaigns in terms of the goal of creating distrust in institutions at large.
Edit: And my previous point stands. If someone currently has a model that can swing an election with a 45k Facebook ad buy, your favorite candidate should be dumping half their war chest into that person's coffers.
And I'm not sure I understand your previous point. What I'm saying is that proprietary misinformation campaigns coming from abroad are often not for sale (if they're even identifiable at all); it's not like these would be services available to a Democrat if they so desired.'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 10 -
What I'm reading is that this ad optimization is not particularly sophisticated, currently used by traditional businesses, and relatively available to a foreign government and/or the DNC but the latter wasn't savvy enough to employ it.benjs said:
My theory is based on the certain knowledge that businesses today are data mining extensively and algorithmically optimizing ad spends to exponentially multiply the value of an ad buy. In some cases, companies aren't doing direct buying, but instead managing entire AI platforms to tweak model parameters to inform a model what to bid on an active basis, rather than buying ads directly. That's not particularly sophisticated, nor beyond the reach of the Russian government for them to use with relative ease if they so desired. These efforts would stand out particularly strongly against DNC candidates who don't seem to have major technical savviness behind them, based on websites, cyber-presence, etc. On this front I think Sanders' is the strongest.pjl44 said:
There are too many assumptions built into that theory for me to be comfortable applying it to the 2016 election. We both agree the Russians engage in this stuff to sow discord. I haven't seen any reporting to suggest they're executing with that level of sophistication.benjs said:
Do not underestimate what nerds can do. Sure, maybe they purchased 45k in Facebook ad buys, but maybe they spent $2 million on access to an AI/machine learning model that assured them a certain number of impressions in those 45k by hyper-targeting where those ads were placed and who saw them. Even in 2016, people had a tendency to look at these small ad spends and think they're trivial, but they're not. What I'm talking about is done regularly by large corporations who can buy or develop these hyper-targeting tools to assure ROI to produce multipliers that are sometimes shockingly high.pjl44 said:
If someone can swing an election with 45k in Facebook ad buys, those are the most valuable political consultants in the world and your preferred candidate should hire them immediatelybenjs said:
On the actors specifically - fair point. Also as far as that goes, who's to say how many foreign nations have been watching Trump invite foreign interference instead of criticize it?pjl44 said:
The thing that kills me most in all this is how much it requires the reader to connect dots. Because the hard evidence shows yeah, they're certainly making efforts, but the only real results are the ability to drive people crazy. People aren't being influenced by Facebook memes, they're allowing themselves to get hysterical over conspiracy theories. Interestingly, the person in question here is pointing to the Saudis and not the Russkies.benjs said:
Firstly, agreed on scope. 50K of funds injection would hardly be worth any candidate's time/effort/risk to pursue.pjl44 said:
What's the headline here? That he got 50k in fishy donations in 2016?CM189191 said:Big questions here about who is funding Bernie's campaign. This stinks to high heaven.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1227093037697896448.html
Khawaja claims the Saudis and the Emiratis illegally paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign in 2016. He says that to keep it secret, they disguised the money as small donations from Americans, using stolen identities and ‘virtual credit cards’ or gift cards — donations of less than $200 do not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made public. He claims the Saudis and the Emiratis were able to make thousands of such small donations at a time using the latest payment processing technology.
https://spectator.us/whistleblower-andy-khawaja-micropayments/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Next, we should recognize that the stink may be real, but may or may not be the candidates themselves. Bear in mind that Russia's strategy is to play both sides of the field to stoke the flames of division (even if having a preference towards one side winning and placing outsized efforts to make that happen), and to generally create distrust and confusion (especially to weaken American institutions). People who study Russia may be able to speak more to this, but my understanding is that this is a very typical Soviet-era propaganda approach.
I feel the most appropriate thing to do when we know almost definitively that narratives are being skewed intentionally and that foreign influencers are playing dirty, is to remember to keep vigilant and skeptical, and predominantly focus on whether you believe in their vision for the future and in their ability to realize some portion of it.
On how influential the disinformation campaigns are, I don't feel you or I are necessarily the target audience. We have skepticism, basic logic comprehension, the ability to communicate with depth that extends beyond 140 characters at a time, etc. Sadly, I feel that these disinformation campaigns are targeting those without those abilities, and at the very least I don't feel comfortable surmising one way or another on how effective they are at swaying people. What I would say, is that these have been extremely effective campaigns in terms of the goal of creating distrust in institutions at large.
Edit: And my previous point stands. If someone currently has a model that can swing an election with a 45k Facebook ad buy, your favorite candidate should be dumping half their war chest into that person's coffers.
And I'm not sure I understand your previous point. What I'm saying is that proprietary misinformation campaigns coming from abroad are often not for sale (if they're even identifiable at all); it's not like these would be services available to a Democrat if they so desired.
If all of that is true then the real story is malpractice on the part of the Clinton campaign for not taking advantage of digital marketing campaigns that produce massive results for such little spend. Especially when 8 years earlier, the Obama campaign was lauded for their shrewd deployment of that strategy. So I guess some institutional knowledge should have been passed along? Or all that work got permanently shelved?
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html
0 -
In my opinion, I do feel what you're writing is correct for better or for worse. Obama really did something revolutionary in using social media as effectively as he did when it wasn't expected that he would, but there's been no talk of digital innovation beyond basic social media usage from any of the candidates this time around as far as I know, and we're four years later. I hope at least in the smoke-filled rooms, some spend has gone into doing these kinds of AI initiatives, but the DNC is the same group that can't test a caucusing app properly, so I'm not sure they could adequately direct the creation of an effective model.pjl44 said:
What I'm reading is that this ad optimization is not particularly sophisticated, currently used by traditional businesses, and relatively available to a foreign government and/or the DNC but the latter wasn't savvy enough to employ it.benjs said:
My theory is based on the certain knowledge that businesses today are data mining extensively and algorithmically optimizing ad spends to exponentially multiply the value of an ad buy. In some cases, companies aren't doing direct buying, but instead managing entire AI platforms to tweak model parameters to inform a model what to bid on an active basis, rather than buying ads directly. That's not particularly sophisticated, nor beyond the reach of the Russian government for them to use with relative ease if they so desired. These efforts would stand out particularly strongly against DNC candidates who don't seem to have major technical savviness behind them, based on websites, cyber-presence, etc. On this front I think Sanders' is the strongest.pjl44 said:
There are too many assumptions built into that theory for me to be comfortable applying it to the 2016 election. We both agree the Russians engage in this stuff to sow discord. I haven't seen any reporting to suggest they're executing with that level of sophistication.benjs said:
Do not underestimate what nerds can do. Sure, maybe they purchased 45k in Facebook ad buys, but maybe they spent $2 million on access to an AI/machine learning model that assured them a certain number of impressions in those 45k by hyper-targeting where those ads were placed and who saw them. Even in 2016, people had a tendency to look at these small ad spends and think they're trivial, but they're not. What I'm talking about is done regularly by large corporations who can buy or develop these hyper-targeting tools to assure ROI to produce multipliers that are sometimes shockingly high.pjl44 said:
If someone can swing an election with 45k in Facebook ad buys, those are the most valuable political consultants in the world and your preferred candidate should hire them immediatelybenjs said:
On the actors specifically - fair point. Also as far as that goes, who's to say how many foreign nations have been watching Trump invite foreign interference instead of criticize it?pjl44 said:
The thing that kills me most in all this is how much it requires the reader to connect dots. Because the hard evidence shows yeah, they're certainly making efforts, but the only real results are the ability to drive people crazy. People aren't being influenced by Facebook memes, they're allowing themselves to get hysterical over conspiracy theories. Interestingly, the person in question here is pointing to the Saudis and not the Russkies.benjs said:
Firstly, agreed on scope. 50K of funds injection would hardly be worth any candidate's time/effort/risk to pursue.pjl44 said:
What's the headline here? That he got 50k in fishy donations in 2016?CM189191 said:Big questions here about who is funding Bernie's campaign. This stinks to high heaven.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1227093037697896448.html
Khawaja claims the Saudis and the Emiratis illegally paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign in 2016. He says that to keep it secret, they disguised the money as small donations from Americans, using stolen identities and ‘virtual credit cards’ or gift cards — donations of less than $200 do not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made public. He claims the Saudis and the Emiratis were able to make thousands of such small donations at a time using the latest payment processing technology.
https://spectator.us/whistleblower-andy-khawaja-micropayments/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Next, we should recognize that the stink may be real, but may or may not be the candidates themselves. Bear in mind that Russia's strategy is to play both sides of the field to stoke the flames of division (even if having a preference towards one side winning and placing outsized efforts to make that happen), and to generally create distrust and confusion (especially to weaken American institutions). People who study Russia may be able to speak more to this, but my understanding is that this is a very typical Soviet-era propaganda approach.
I feel the most appropriate thing to do when we know almost definitively that narratives are being skewed intentionally and that foreign influencers are playing dirty, is to remember to keep vigilant and skeptical, and predominantly focus on whether you believe in their vision for the future and in their ability to realize some portion of it.
On how influential the disinformation campaigns are, I don't feel you or I are necessarily the target audience. We have skepticism, basic logic comprehension, the ability to communicate with depth that extends beyond 140 characters at a time, etc. Sadly, I feel that these disinformation campaigns are targeting those without those abilities, and at the very least I don't feel comfortable surmising one way or another on how effective they are at swaying people. What I would say, is that these have been extremely effective campaigns in terms of the goal of creating distrust in institutions at large.
Edit: And my previous point stands. If someone currently has a model that can swing an election with a 45k Facebook ad buy, your favorite candidate should be dumping half their war chest into that person's coffers.
And I'm not sure I understand your previous point. What I'm saying is that proprietary misinformation campaigns coming from abroad are often not for sale (if they're even identifiable at all); it's not like these would be services available to a Democrat if they so desired.
If all of that is true then the real story is malpractice on the part of the Clinton campaign for not taking advantage of digital marketing campaigns that produce massive results for such little spend. Especially when 8 years earlier, the Obama campaign was lauded for their shrewd deployment of that strategy. So I guess some institutional knowledge should have been passed along? Or all that work got permanently shelved?
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 10 -
pjl44 said:
What's the headline here? That he got 50k in fishy donations in 2016?CM189191 said:Big questions here about who is funding Bernie's campaign. This stinks to high heaven.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1227093037697896448.html
Khawaja claims the Saudis and the Emiratis illegally paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign in 2016. He says that to keep it secret, they disguised the money as small donations from Americans, using stolen identities and ‘virtual credit cards’ or gift cards — donations of less than $200 do not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made public. He claims the Saudis and the Emiratis were able to make thousands of such small donations at a time using the latest payment processing technology.
https://spectator.us/whistleblower-andy-khawaja-micropayments/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Tip of the iceberg
ftfa: "The Department of Justice tells a different story about why Nader gave Khawaja $5 million. In December 2019, the DoJ jointly charged Nader and Khawaja with making $3.5 million in illegal campaign contributions"
0 -
Lerxst1992 said:Spiritual_Chaos said:34% =/= 50%
that tells me in his best state, there are still 55% of the voters rejecting socialist healthcare
"Mostly I think that people react sensitively because they know you’ve got a point"0 -
benjs said:
In my opinion, I do feel what you're writing is correct for better or for worse. Obama really did something revolutionary in using social media as effectively as he did when it wasn't expected that he would, but there's been no talk of digital innovation beyond basic social media usage from any of the candidates this time around as far as I know, and we're four years later. I hope at least in the smoke-filled rooms, some spend has gone into doing these kinds of AI initiatives, but the DNC is the same group that can't test a caucusing app properly, so I'm not sure they could adequately direct the creation of an effective model.pjl44 said:
What I'm reading is that this ad optimization is not particularly sophisticated, currently used by traditional businesses, and relatively available to a foreign government and/or the DNC but the latter wasn't savvy enough to employ it.benjs said:
My theory is based on the certain knowledge that businesses today are data mining extensively and algorithmically optimizing ad spends to exponentially multiply the value of an ad buy. In some cases, companies aren't doing direct buying, but instead managing entire AI platforms to tweak model parameters to inform a model what to bid on an active basis, rather than buying ads directly. That's not particularly sophisticated, nor beyond the reach of the Russian government for them to use with relative ease if they so desired. These efforts would stand out particularly strongly against DNC candidates who don't seem to have major technical savviness behind them, based on websites, cyber-presence, etc. On this front I think Sanders' is the strongest.pjl44 said:
There are too many assumptions built into that theory for me to be comfortable applying it to the 2016 election. We both agree the Russians engage in this stuff to sow discord. I haven't seen any reporting to suggest they're executing with that level of sophistication.benjs said:
Do not underestimate what nerds can do. Sure, maybe they purchased 45k in Facebook ad buys, but maybe they spent $2 million on access to an AI/machine learning model that assured them a certain number of impressions in those 45k by hyper-targeting where those ads were placed and who saw them. Even in 2016, people had a tendency to look at these small ad spends and think they're trivial, but they're not. What I'm talking about is done regularly by large corporations who can buy or develop these hyper-targeting tools to assure ROI to produce multipliers that are sometimes shockingly high.pjl44 said:
If someone can swing an election with 45k in Facebook ad buys, those are the most valuable political consultants in the world and your preferred candidate should hire them immediatelybenjs said:
On the actors specifically - fair point. Also as far as that goes, who's to say how many foreign nations have been watching Trump invite foreign interference instead of criticize it?pjl44 said:
The thing that kills me most in all this is how much it requires the reader to connect dots. Because the hard evidence shows yeah, they're certainly making efforts, but the only real results are the ability to drive people crazy. People aren't being influenced by Facebook memes, they're allowing themselves to get hysterical over conspiracy theories. Interestingly, the person in question here is pointing to the Saudis and not the Russkies.benjs said:
Firstly, agreed on scope. 50K of funds injection would hardly be worth any candidate's time/effort/risk to pursue.pjl44 said:
What's the headline here? That he got 50k in fishy donations in 2016?CM189191 said:Big questions here about who is funding Bernie's campaign. This stinks to high heaven.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1227093037697896448.html
Khawaja claims the Saudis and the Emiratis illegally paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign in 2016. He says that to keep it secret, they disguised the money as small donations from Americans, using stolen identities and ‘virtual credit cards’ or gift cards — donations of less than $200 do not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made public. He claims the Saudis and the Emiratis were able to make thousands of such small donations at a time using the latest payment processing technology.
https://spectator.us/whistleblower-andy-khawaja-micropayments/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Next, we should recognize that the stink may be real, but may or may not be the candidates themselves. Bear in mind that Russia's strategy is to play both sides of the field to stoke the flames of division (even if having a preference towards one side winning and placing outsized efforts to make that happen), and to generally create distrust and confusion (especially to weaken American institutions). People who study Russia may be able to speak more to this, but my understanding is that this is a very typical Soviet-era propaganda approach.
I feel the most appropriate thing to do when we know almost definitively that narratives are being skewed intentionally and that foreign influencers are playing dirty, is to remember to keep vigilant and skeptical, and predominantly focus on whether you believe in their vision for the future and in their ability to realize some portion of it.
On how influential the disinformation campaigns are, I don't feel you or I are necessarily the target audience. We have skepticism, basic logic comprehension, the ability to communicate with depth that extends beyond 140 characters at a time, etc. Sadly, I feel that these disinformation campaigns are targeting those without those abilities, and at the very least I don't feel comfortable surmising one way or another on how effective they are at swaying people. What I would say, is that these have been extremely effective campaigns in terms of the goal of creating distrust in institutions at large.
Edit: And my previous point stands. If someone currently has a model that can swing an election with a 45k Facebook ad buy, your favorite candidate should be dumping half their war chest into that person's coffers.
And I'm not sure I understand your previous point. What I'm saying is that proprietary misinformation campaigns coming from abroad are often not for sale (if they're even identifiable at all); it's not like these would be services available to a Democrat if they so desired.
If all of that is true then the real story is malpractice on the part of the Clinton campaign for not taking advantage of digital marketing campaigns that produce massive results for such little spend. Especially when 8 years earlier, the Obama campaign was lauded for their shrewd deployment of that strategy. So I guess some institutional knowledge should have been passed along? Or all that work got permanently shelved?
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html
I was hoping we'd convince pjl by now that it was a heck of alot more than 45k in facebook ads.0 -
Spiritual_Chaos said:Lerxst1992 said:Spiritual_Chaos said:34% =/= 50%
that tells me in his best state, there are still 55% of the voters rejecting socialist healthcare
I thought that we agreed people do not differentiate between M4A and M4A with options in poll responses?0 -
SC called using only exit polls.Gender2,018 total respondentsMale43%Female57%
Biden 43% 46% Buttigieg 8% 9% Gabbard 3% 1% Klobuchar 2% 3% Sanders 27% 17% Steyer 10% 14% Warren 6% 10% 0 -
mcgruff10 said:
Man I hope this holds up.mrussel1 said:SC called using only exit polls.Gender2,018 total respondentsMale43%Female57%Biden 43% 46% Buttigieg 8% 9% Gabbard 3% 1% Klobuchar 2% 3% Sanders 27% 17% Steyer 10% 14% Warren 6% 10%
It's good to see Biden with a big win. Up 52-17 right now. Very nervous about Cali and super tuesday
Its ironic the Sanders and warren supporters hate Bloomberg. He is probably the biggest reason Sanders is polling so well in super Tuesday states.0 -
Steyer out.0
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"It's a sad and beautiful world"-Roberto Benigni0
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brianlux said:maybe. he kept his focus on defeat of trump. and will continue to do so I believe by continuing to spend to that end.he has shown himself to be a man of character imo...._____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '140 -
mickeyrat said:brianlux said:maybe. he kept his focus on defeat of trump. and will continue to do so I believe by continuing to spend to that end.he has shown himself to be a man of character imo....
I like some of what he is about, certainly wish him well, and glad he is focused on beating Trump. I just think he would have done well to drop out a little earlier and save that money for better use. But who am I to say. Decent enough fellow that Steyer.
"It's a sad and beautiful world"-Roberto Benigni0 -
mickeyrat said:brianlux said:maybe. he kept his focus on defeat of trump. and will continue to do so I believe by continuing to spend to that end.he has shown himself to be a man of character imo....
I like him, although not thrilled with the impeachment efforts he started on day one. His lack of traction with the voters shows that US voters need someone with very high charisma in front of the camera to win the presidency, or be a household name like Bush.0
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