Knowing what we know now, about the Russian hacking, does that shed any new light on the DU

[Meadowoak]

Hack on election day? Was it directed by Putin? Any thoughts.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

1. Highly unlikely.

DU is a small blip and I can guarantee you it’s not on Putin’s radar.

[applegrove]

3. It was on someone's radar. That is for sure. We did get russian trolls all over

Discussionist in the lead up to the 2016 election. So little sites were on the Russia's radar.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

5. That's because DI is a RW cesspool.

ETA the hack wasn’t very sophisticated, and was quite juvenile. I’d suspect a jilted former user or some script kiddie from the cave/DI/freeperville.

[applegrove]

6. Could easily have been Russia. A good intelligence operation would look juvenile as cover.

We Don't know but the Russians were here. They just figured out that if they spoke like Russians or alt fighters or right wingers they would get booted off. Any idea who masterminded jackpine radical lemming march off the DU?

[Dr Hobbitstein]

8. Meh, we're a community of a couple thousand.

Yeah, 240,000 user registrations, but a SMALL fraction of them are active.

What they did with Facebook/Twitter/Reddit, that was their MO. A site with no real world impact? Why bother.

JPR was “masterminded” by a couple disgruntled BoBers who felt their right to call Hillary a c**t was being trampled on. Many were long time DUers.

Taking down our site for a couple days accomplished nothing.

[applegrove]

10. We get much busier when there is news or an election. No doubt the growth of

Facebook, Twitter and Reddit over the years has taken traffic that would have come to us. But we are important. I see lots of stuff on the MSM that DU talked about before hand. We are ahead of the news cycle and though that does not mean they are following us it does not mean they are not.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

11. I've been here awhile.

Facebook/twitter/reddit is where big political discussion happens. This is mostly an echo chamber for Democrats, which is cool. But it’s a handfull of people (in relation to the US voting populace) and skews towards older demographics.

We’re not that important.

[applegrove]

12. Stop saying that. We are statistically significant group of democrats

(with a few trolls).

[Dr Hobbitstein]

14. Saying what? That DU has no real world impact?

It’s true. I love this site, don’t get me wrong, but it’s no more influential on the real world than MyLesPaul.com

[applegrove]

15. Well you are wrong.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

16. Ok. nt

[bearsfootball516]

19. I have to agree with Dr here.

DU is a great place to talk, but it’s statistically irrelevant on a nationwide scale. Go ask 10,000 people if they have ever heard of DU and you’ll likely get 0 saying yes.

[applegrove]

32. Well we are ahead of the curb on the news. We'll have to disagree.

[LisaM]

26. DU is generally ahead of the curve.

I think it's often ahead of Twitter. I don't bother with Reddit.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

36. Ahead of what curve?

I’ve never ONCE come across breaking news on DU that was ahead of facebook/twitter/broadcast news.

This is a SMALL site of little consequence.

[LisaM]

38. It's a decent-sized site, and I always see things here ahead of Facebook.

Sometimes things come here via Twitter, but I don't love Twitter; would far rather read a whole article. I don't care for Reddit. But I almost always see things here first.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

39. No,it's a VERY small site that skews to an older demographic.

DU has never broken any major news. And I always find LBN to be at least an hour behind my facebook feed.

DU represents LESS than 0.1% (percentage based on number of registrations, not active posters) of the voting populace of the US. We are, statistically, insignificant.

[LisaM]

41. I get it, you find it irrelevant.

Enough to say it over and over!

[Dr Hobbitstein]

42. I don't find it irrelevant, it IS irrelevant.

Facebook/twitter/reddit have billions of users. We have thousands. Statistically irrelevant.

Like I said, I love this site, but it's a small echo chamber, nothing more. To pretend otherwise is dishonest.

[Hoyt]

27. Not sure about Russia, but definitely someone with the intent to disrupt Democrats.

JPRs, white wingers in DI, Russians are all about the same.

[Raster]

30. 4-chan script kiddies...

...there was actually bragging about the hack about a week or so afterward.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

37. Indeed there was...

But evidence is useless when you have a delusion of grandeur conspiracy theory.

[Hekate]

17. What I find interesting is that somebody cared enough to vandalize a well-constructed site...

...and all but destroy it. They tried hard to destroy us. Somebody had to care enough to do that--whether it was alt-right hatred or just a little demonstration on the side from one of Russia's hacking groups, I have no way of knowing.

It had the feel of someone saying: See how casually we can disrupt you?

Within the same period of time a Congressional hearing or meeting being broadcast on CSPAN was flipped to the RT newsroom. You know them, right? It happened the moment someone in the meeting said "Russia." How did that happen? Why? What earthly connection could there be between the two locations?

Again, that feeling of: See how easy?

It's not about inflating the importance of DU in the grand scheme of things, it's about America. All of our infrastructure is vulnerable. With apologies to John Donne, DU is only a part of the continent, a piece of the main -- but like CSPAN, the continent we are a part of is America.

[wishstar]

33. CSPAN flipping to RT happened right when Maxine Waters was warning about Russia

Seems like it stayed on RT for close to 20 minutes and was never satisfactorily explained and certainly deliberate mischief .

[Hekate]

34. Thanks for refreshing my memory. That was what made me believe DU's pain wasn't just mischief...

...or a bit of well-constructed vandalism by DU's opponents on the far-right.

[AlexSFCA]

2. it absolutely is on putin's radar

look at the recent DU wiki page hack. This forum has been discussing treason for well over a year. I see no reason to believe our weren't russian hackers who did it to us on election day. I remember that day clearly and when I tried to access DU and couldnt, I immidiatey had a gut feeling that the election is being hacked and trump is gonna win.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

4. What DU wiki hack?

You mean the wikipedia page that has been the same for the past 4 years?

The guitar message board I’m on has more users. We are a very small community with very little influence.

[applegrove]

9. The russians were here. They could have done it. DU is obviously an important

Democratic asset on election day, when there is a partial blackout on political information and sites like the DU can keep the Democratic message alive. Someone republican or Russian went to much trouble to attack us. We matter. That is the message we should take out of it.

[fierywoman]

7. me too -- same gut feeling.

[demmiblue]

21. It wasn't a hack... anyone can change a wikipedia page.

It was probably a knuckle-dragger from DI.

[Meadowoak]

13. I would definitely say that Russian intelligence used DU to find

Out what we were planning, what our fears were, and were we were vulnerable then took all that information and used it against us.

[Hekate]

18. I should have responded to you directly -- see my post #17

[demmiblue]

20. No, DU doesn't really have that much website traffic in order to be considered a good target. n/t

[PJMcK]

22. Who cares?

The real threat from Russia is if they can affect vote counting and voter registrations. This is to say that there could be other cyber targets such as airlines, power grids and other public services. Those would have a national impact.

Knocking DU offline for a few weeks didn't have any effect on the 2016 elections. After all, all of us voted for Democratic candidates, right?

[Meadowoak]

23. DU is. Certainly a good resource, if you wanted to learn about Democrats, get inside their heads

And see what we were up to. I know there are other, larger sites, but these are the smartest. The other sites seem kinda shallow in comparison. Just my opinion.

[applegrove]

24. Exactly. It is an insightful incubator of Democratic thinking. Otherwise why would it have

been targeted. Why are there troll armies here starting trouble all the time.

[red dog 1]

25. + 1

[red dog 1]

28. Anything's possible.

Putin is as evil as Spanky, and hacking into DU wouldn't have been hard to do.

For those who doubt this, go check other, smaller websites to see the activities of Putin's troll army.

For example:
https://www.similarworlds.com
[You can "browse" without joining]

[Raster]

29. DU was NOT a Russian hack...

...it was an effort by certain malcontents at 4-chan and Reddits the_Donald.

Sorry, DU conspiracy theorists... If it truly were Russian hacking, it would have been far more professional, which it was not. It looked like it was a product of a group of very smart 17-19-year-old script kiddies, little MAGA wannabes. Second, the professional Russian FSB/GRU hackers would NEVER hack something as insignificant (in the overall scheme of things) as DU. It would be a waste of Russian resources and leave the Russian infrastructure open to discovery.

Nope, that was a 4-chan special.

[MFM008]

31. You never know

But it was planned by someone.

[jpak]

35. To my knowledge, the admins have never commented on it.

Other than progress on restoring DU.

I will not speculate - but I would like to think "they did the right thing".

[Generic Brad]

40. We were micro-targeted

They stirred up all the Hillary/Bernie nonsense to divide us and discourage some of us from going to the polls.

We are still being micro-targeted by some of their tolls.