Facebooks role in Trumps win is clear. No matter what Mark Zuckerberg says.

[Cattledog]

What a ridiculous notion, Mark Zuckerberg scoffed shortly after the election, that his social-media company — innocent, well-intentioned Facebook — could have helped Donald Trump’s win.

“Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook .?.?. influenced the election in any way — I think is a pretty crazy idea,” he said. “Voters make decisions based on their lived experience.”

In fact, voters make their decisions based on many factors, not just their “lived experience.”

...Would Donald Trump be president today if Facebook didn’t exist? Although there is a long list of reasons for his win, there’s increasing reason to believe the answer is no.

Read entire article at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/facebooks-role-in-trumps-win-is-clear-no-matter-what-mark-zuckerberg-says/2017/09/07/b5006c1c-93c7-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html?tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.a544744dcaa9

[SHRED]

1. He's a proven liar.

[pnwmom]

26. No, he just didn't believe it. It wasn't till they went through their data that they uncovered

who the Russian buyers were.

[SHRED]

29. ignorance is no excuse

Doesn't work with a speeding ticket does it?

Okay...I will admit he may not have intentionally lied but...

[pnwmom]

31. Do you think FB should be able to limit your speech? That's the issue FB is having to work through.

[SHRED]

32. They should not allow foreign money...

...to purchase political ads.

[pnwmom]

33. How do you know the foreign money wasn't concealed in some way? And most of these ads

didn't target or back particular candidates. They dealt with issues.

[SHRED]

42. How'd they find out now?

[leftstreet]

2. What did the ads look like?

I don't do Facebook

[FakeNoose]

5. It's the same thing we see everywhere

It's usually not an advertisement for a product like you would recognize as an "ad." It's made to look like a real news story so that you click on it and go to their website to read the story. I know you've seen those "ads" because sometimes they are (or used to be) on DU.

People who aren't sophisticated politically (i.e. they're not critical thinkers) were constantly being misled by these fake stories that were circulated about Obama, Hillary and the Democratic Party last year. Sometimes if you clicked on the fake story, it was about a movie star or celebrity, but once you got to their website, it was all right-wing BS. Those "stories" are actually advertising space that's paid for the companies who want your "clicks". Don't ever click on them, even if you see them on DU.

A lot of Facebook people were shown this stuff all last year, and they forwarded them around to each other like it was real news. There are some very clueless people on Facebook.

[leftstreet]

7. Ah

thanks, that makes sense

[Generic Other]

24. Oh yes, I clicked on one about Meryl Streep marrying Robert Redford

It was a lie. And clickbait.

[Johonny]

11. It's more than just the ads too

The Russians created bots that posted to liberal facebook news and personalities. They made sure to push Bernie versus Hillary, fake news like her emails etc... Then they commented on their own post to drive them to the top. Thus, if you clicked on any facebook article there's almost certainly a negative post about Hillary.

[pnwmom]

28. I do Facebook and didn't see them because I wasn't a target of them. They went after

particular demographics.

[FakeNoose]

43. The ads are everywhere, not just on Facebook

I see them on Yahoo and Google Chrome sites all the time.

Anytime you see a "news story" with the little text "Powered by Outbrain" or something similar, it's fake news and clickbait. It usually has some absurb headline that can't possibly be true, and a photoshopped fake picture of a celebrity.

Never click on these, if you do click you're just feeding the demon. They make money when you click on their "ads".

Plus they harvest your ID and start sending you spam emails. Most of this started back when the right-wingers and tea-party nuts were making up shit to discredit Obama. Now it's a whole industry unto itself and we cannot feed it with our clicks. Let the Republi-cons keep it going, I don't care about them. We have to be smarter than that.

[John1956PA]

3. Theresa Hong, the campaign's Digital Content Director, said Fb put them "over the edge."

However, when she said that the campaign would not have won without Facebook, she was not referring to the effect of fake news.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-40852227/the-digital-guru-who-helped-donald-trump-to-the-presidency

[.99center]

4. Facebook worked directly with Trumps digital operation during the election.

Link to tweet

[Wellstone ruled]

10. This is one of the key

stories that was exposed last fall by several Soft Ware people. They screamed about the BOT's and the Hackers in Eourpe who kept moving from country to country.

[hedda_foil]

16. This makes t sound like it was all about commercials on Facebook. That just part of it.

The bots were also posting stories based on Breitbart, or Alex Jonesian right wing sites that pushed email emotional buttons for narrowly targeted groups. Here on DU, for instance, they contributed sufficiently to drive a wedge between Hilary and Bernie voters that close to 500 mostly longtime DU Bernie supporters went to the brand new, DUer created, JPR. Then that site became the target for hugely pumped up anti-Hillary propaganda while the anti Bernie propaganda continued to be posted here. The beauty part is that once a bot-driven piece or meme got spread a bit by other bots, it got picked up and circulated by real people who were vulnerable to the info.

[Gothmog]

6. Russia used facebook to elect trump

[LanternWaste]

38. More accurately, Russia used U.S. voters to elect Trump.

More accurately, Russia used U.S. voters to elect Trump.

[Hoyt]

8. I'm not sure there is any hope for people who can't wade through media reports, Facebook,

Twitter, Jackpine Radicals, Rush Limbaugh, NRA pages, even DU, etc., and figure out the truth or at least enough of the truth to avoid being coerced into voting for Trump or most GOPers.

[Johonny]

13. It would help if Dems were smarter about their ground game on social media

they were faster on the moving on to it, but they clearly failed to realize how to use it effectively. Their 25 years late on cable news, 35 on radio, and now are failing to understand how to utilize social media to effectively push poll people. It's a problem. You can't win if you spend 2 billion dollars in a presidential election but don't leave any media infrastructure in place and have to rebuild every 2 to 4 years. It's beyond time the Democratic party got media savvy.

Meanwhile the Russian facebook bots are out there still everyday pushing Trump's message and starting liberal fake news hot fires.

[Hoyt]

17. I agree with that completely. Instead, we'll gripe about the Ruskies like that will solve anything.

[JoeStuckInOH]

9. Facebook and twitter are merely tools. Mass media tools, but tools nonetheless.

That the trump campaign used them and cornered those media tools while the people running the democratic campaign did not is quite savvy. And was certainly a failure by the democrats in undervaluing that segment of the campaign front.

I personally don't think there was anything inherently wrong about the use of Facebook/Twitter in this manner... even if I don't necessarily agree with the political stances they favored. Until there is codified regulation of that kind of media with agreed upon standards, then it should be fair game for whomever to utilize how they wish.

I mean what if in the early 1900's during the dawn on modern aviation, Germany paid pilots and planes to sky-write political messages or fly aerial banners over cities during to influence an election. Is it OK for the losers to cry foul that the winners had an unfair advantage in tapping a new method of propagandizing?

The only real difference is that in the 21st century everyone has mass media devices in their pockets and the republican campaign figured out how to more effectively saturate everyone's personal media consumption. It was a truly a game-changing election and the new tactics leave a lot to think about in future campaigns. From an academic standpoint, it really is quite interesting.

[emulatorloo]

14. the focus on Facebook now is because they admitted selling ads to the Russians, who planted lies

about Democrats in order to help elect Trump.

Several Dems and Dem orgs have strong presence on social media, however they don't use social media to lie or make up fake stories.

[.99center]

15. Ads or Russian politcal propaganda?

It appears that they were working with the Trump campaign while helping RU spread disinformation about Hillary. Oh, they also fired their human editors responsible for removing fake news as all this was going on.

If Facebook worked with the Trump campaign as BBC has reported, was it legal for them to hand over their users data to Trump?

[emulatorloo]

18. Yeah you nailed it, so called "Ads"

[JoeStuckInOH]

39. But is all of that illegal? I'd think not.

There is Libel/Slander laws, and perhaps Hillary's team can pursue damages along those lines. But as far as actual election laws and regulations, do they apply to ads displayed on social media websites?

As far as actual regulations are concerned, Facebook and Twitter are just private websites. There's no law requiring websites to publish the truth or receive advertising money that publishes false information either. I also don't think there's laws that limit a particular website's participation and affiliation with specific candidate.

I admit I'm not a lawyer and perhaps someone can dig up some laws pertaining to this. But I'd be surprised if Facebook's content and ads aren't 100% covered under basic free speech.

[rockfordfile]

19. The companies that did this are un-American. pure and simple. This isn't rocket science

They are gonna try to weasel and lie just like traitor Trumpf.

[pnwmom]

30. It wasn't inherently wrong for the Rethugs to do it. It would be wrong and illegal for them

to conspire with Russia in doing it -- for example, for them to give Russia help in targeting their ads. No campaign is allowed to take foreign donations.

[JoeStuckInOH]

40. Is it considered a "foreign donation", though?

The interaction of social media giants with political parties as well as the relative ease of access directly into an individual's digital-life is fairly new territory, as far as election regulations may be concerned. 12 years ago Facebook was college-students-only and 8 years ago it wasn't even a shadow of the giant it has become.

Social media sites have thrived off selling information and data mining in the past decade as well as providing ad space intimately targeting audiences via users' data. There's nothing new about that and it's pretty standard practice for large sites like facebook, twitter, amazon and google. In this instance... Facebook's buyer happened to be Russian interests.

So at what point does normal business for websites become "accepting foreign campaign donations"? Should social media sites never be allowed to deal in ad space or user data with foreign entities? Perhaps no dealing with foreign buyers during election years?

To me it's a pretty gray line. What they did was shitty. But even if Facebook, or some other website, knew completely what was happening and what they were involved in, how do you legislate against something else like this happening on a digital landscape that is largely unregulated?

Keep in mind, that DU is a website with extremely specific/partisan political leanings. Like Facebook, DU also sells ad space and disseminates news ... and I feel it's every bit DU's RIGHT to have a say in what sort of advertisements and news stories that are allowed to exist here. Are actions like what Facebook is capable of simply the price we must pay for a free and open internet?

[pnwmom]

41. It wouldn't be a gray line if the Rethugs and Russia assisted each other in purchasing or

targeting the ads. If Russia paid for ads connected with an election, then they would be violating campaign laws and so would anyone who cooperated with them on that.

It wouldn't be that FB was accepting a Russian donation. It would be that the Rethugs accepted a donation, if they were aware of and cooperated with the Russians in placing the ads. And many people think it is unlikely the Rethugs would have known where to target their ad placements, if they didn't have help from the digital people in the Trump campaign.

[Orrex]

12. Even if exactly true as stated...

the fault ultimately lies with the idiot racist fuckheads who voted for Trump.

These are the people who said "Trump may be a bigoted, incompetent racist sex offender with no experience doing anything, but he's still the best candidate."

I don't care if Zuckerberg personally reprogrammed every FB user's mind: you don't leap from "I'm undecided" to "I'm voting for the pussy-grabber."

Even if the absolute worst claims about Clinton were true (that she personally killed Vince Foster with her HAARP satellite, or whatever), the idiot racist fuckheads still chose to prostrate themselves before the orange supremacist.

On his own, Trump is so obviously and disastrously unfit for the office that any other candidate would be superior, short of a child murderer actively engaged in bestiality, and even then it would be a close race.


Trump's enablers claim that FB put them over the edge. It's at least equally plausible that FB provides a smokescreen to draw attention from their more overt collusion with Russia.

[John1956PA]

20. Facebook may have reprogrammed some "I'm leaning to HRC" voters to "F&*% it! I'm not voting!" voters

I'm not arguing with what you write, but a recent post here on DU laid the blame for Hillary's defeat to low voter turnout. I am thinking that the Facebook-borne voter-reprogramming engineered by the Russians and/or 45's Digital Content team may have discouraged a significant number of Hillary-leaning voters from voting.

[Orrex]

21. Possibly true, but hard to quantify

Judging from a number of annoyingly dedicated non-voters that I know, they love to tell people that they don't vote, and they resent people for calling them out for it. But if they can blame Zuckerberg's media platform, then they're basically off the hook.

I suspect that a lot of it would amount to "I totally would have voted for her, but I read that she did that thing that one time, so fuck it! I'm staying home!"

Disclaimer: "hard to quantify" doesn't mean "we should ignore it." It just means that we shouldn't rely on speculation at the expense of factors that we can actually identify and address.

[msongs]

22. any articles on how the democrats advertised on/used facebook effectively? nt

[SunSeeker]

23. Anyone who logged onto Facebook during the 2016 campaign knows this.

[ileus]

25. I hid fake news sites the whole election.

[ancianita]

27. Not sure how Zuckerberg will ever live this down. He's presently on a fact-finding tour.

[TeamPooka]

34. Facebook sold out America for $100K in Russian ad money. Because they are scum.

period.

[matt819]

35. Read Flashmob by Christopher Farnsworth

It's a novel about the illicit sale of an "algorithm" that can exploit social media damn near instantaneously to cause flash mobs, riots, attacks, etc. Highly targeted by demographics and location of users. In one scene, the bad guy prompted a riot in an airport by posting photos of his target and calling him a terrorist (he wasn't - he was the good guy). The caused the expected riot and detention of the good guy. You get the idea. Looks like it's not so fictional, hey?

[Not Ruth]

36. Facebook is the only big social media company that wants you listed under your real name!!!!!

(Not counting LinkedIn and job related companies)

They insist on it and ban you for non compliance.

Now I know why.

[Initech]

37. We need to get as outraged at this as the right is about George Soros.

[Baitball Blogger]

44. I saw too many people I once thought were friends spreading the bullshit memes.

Some still are doing it.