Cont: All things Trump + Russia Part 3

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Hasn't Clinton been going to gaol for at least 2 years, now?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Hasn't Clinton been going to gaol for at least 2 years, now?

Yes, but she only has to stay there at night: during the day, she is running the administration: just ask Fox.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Congressman Matt Gaetz Leads 65 Lawmakers in Push for Release of Intelligence Committee’s FISA Memo

Can you explain what, specifically, is hampering this release effort ?

 

[jimbob]

This seems as good a thread as any

A series of tweets describing how Russian troll accounts were active on both sides of divisive issues, strengthening the echo chambers

https://twitter.com/katestarbird/st...880a6077&fl=4&uid=625736107&nid=244+272699400

ETA:

In other words, there are paid trolls sitting side by side somewhere in St. Petersburg hate-quoting each other’s troll account, helping to shape divisive attitudes in the U.S. among actual Americans who think of the other side as a caricature of itself.

the other tweets and graphics are interesting too

 

[Aridas]

Can you explain what, specifically, is hampering this release effort ?

That it includes some rather classified things, apparently. What things? Well, they're classified, so...

Either way, given Nunes' (and the rest of the House Republicans who have been involved) stunning showcase of integrity and interest in truth over partisanship so far, I sincerely think that he (and them) has quite earned the privilege of being simply ignored.

 

[beren]

https://theconservativetreehouse.co...tz-discusses-releasethememo-laws-were-broken/

Looks like Hillary and Obama will both be going to jail.

No.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Can you explain what, specifically, is hampering this release effort ?

Don't "worry", everything is moving as planned.

An excellent German youtube channel I'm subscribed to has interviewed Aaron Maté (the guy who made Luke Harding look like what he is) about Russiagate in their "know your stuff" series. Part 1 just published:

Part 2:

 

[Oystein]

Argumentum af YouTubum = CE cannot explain it.

 

[Mumbles]

https://theconservativetreehouse.co...tz-discusses-releasethememo-laws-were-broken/

Looks like Hillary and Obama will both be going to jail.

Are people still taking that crappy site seriously?

Meanwhile, according to a site that didn't claim that Skittles candies turn black men into violent supercriminals, turns out that the House refuses to even let the Trump-appointed FBI head see their supposedly devastating report.

 

[a_unique_person]

Are people still taking that crappy site seriously?

Meanwhile, according to a site that didn't claim that Skittles candies turn black men into violent supercriminals, turns out that the House refuses to even let the Trump-appointed FBI head see their supposedly devastating report.

I will ask them to pray for you.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I will ask them to pray for you.

Every time I see or hear someone say something like this I'm reminded of something I read somewhere once (perhaps on this board) where someone pointed out that to an atheist the word "pray" in those sentences could be replaced with the word "fart" and still have the same meaning.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

This seems as good a thread as any

A series of tweets describing how Russian troll accounts were active on both sides of divisive issues, strengthening the echo chambers

https://twitter.com/katestarbird/st...880a6077&fl=4&uid=625736107&nid=244+272699400

ETA:

the other tweets and graphics are interesting too

Ooo, ooo, she gave an incredible lecture last Oct at U of WA. It might be up on their website by now, I'll go look.

It was absolutely fascinating. I thought I was going to hear more of the psychology that I am already familiar with but I went anyway. Lo and behold it was all about data mining exposing all these trends and connections. It was soo good. She's great.

Everyone should start familiarizing oneself about our new world.


Here it is, well worth 53 minutes of your time: Finding "Fake News" in Times of Crisis: Online Rumors, Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation

 

[Childlike Empress]

This seems as good a thread as any

A series of tweets describing how Russian troll accounts were active on both sides of divisive issues, strengthening the echo chambers

https://twitter.com/katestarbird/st...880a6077&fl=4&uid=625736107&nid=244+272699400

ETA:


the other tweets and graphics are interesting too

Lol, social "science" in 2018, gotta love it. KListen, I'll make it short as I think the audience of people who are both willing and capable of understanding is pretty small.

The orginal study is a "throw visualization software at mildy interesting data" exercise. It contains a total of 8,524 twitter accounts who have

1. posted word(s) related to gun violence
2. posted tag(s) related to blacklivesmatter at least three times

About that group some more or less obvious truisms are found (groups on both sides of the issues, with higher counts of common followers, similar use of hashtags, etc).

Now comes the additional work about "Russian Trolls".

They took the list of 2,752 accounts twitter says are "related" to Putin's fabulous troll farm (without saying why), and looked if they show up in their total group of 8,524 accounts.

And yes, 29 (it says 96 in the introduction but that seems to be a "typo") of them are there in their data set of 8,524. Of those, 22 in their "left-wing" group, and 7 in their "right wing" group. All catered to their own audience, i.e. behaved like almost all other accounts did as well.

Of the 29, 6 had no reweets at all. Not a single one. They list the "top ten" of the troll accounts - of which five have two tweets (not retweets) in total, and two have a single tweet. Top tweet count is 18.

The lowest retweet count in the top ten is 23, meaning 19 of the 29 had less than that.

The top three retweeted accounts (the only ones with three-digits): 235 (right-wing), 585 (left-wing), 702 (left-wing).

Say the authors:

While this is might be explained by one viral tweet, this suggests that troll content was relatively widely broadcasted in the contexts of this network.

In other words, even if we believe these accounts are really operated out of the building in St. Petersburg you all have looked up in Google Maps, their influence on that topic is zilch. A total nothing burger. But a good publicity stunt and will have generated some nice third-party-funding for the next colourful "science" project.

 

[Childlike Empress]

I recommend the lecture "Social Bots, Fake News und Filterblasen (English Translation)" from the recent Chaos Communication Congress for a more serious approach to that broader topic (German original here).

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Every time I see or hear someone say something like this I'm reminded of something I read somewhere once (perhaps on this board) where someone pointed out that to an atheist the word "pray" in those sentences could be replaced with the word "fart" and still have the same meaning.

Oh, I don't know. As an atheist, I think farting would mean more to me. There's an infinitely greater likelihood that farting would have an actual effect, even if it's only limited to the person's immediate surroundings.

 

[Trakar]

I recommend the lecture "Social Bots, Fake News und Filterblasen (English Translation)" from the recent Chaos Communication Congress for a more serious approach to that broader topic (German original here).

Difficult to listen to in the translation, and my deutsch is not good enough to listen solely in German without a lot of pausing and rewinding, but from what I do get out of this talk, it is very interesting. Thank-you for sharing.

The Russian meddling in foreign elections issue is a problem, but (so far) I haven't seen evidence that it was as big an issue as some Democrats seem to desire it to be. I'm more concerned about money laundering, back door business deals, organized crime connections, porn star payoffs and blackmail issues, but that's just me.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Difficult to listen to in the translation, and my deutsch is not good enough to listen solely in German without a lot of pausing and rewinding, but from what I do get out of this talk, it is very interesting. Thank-you for sharing.

The Russian meddling in foreign elections issue is a problem, but (so far) I haven't seen evidence that it was as big an issue as some Democrats seem to desire it to be. I'm more concerned about money laundering, back door business deals, organized crime connections, porn star payoffs and blackmail issues, but that's just me.

Did you get notified or seek out just how much Russian troll contact you had that you didn't know about? They were big on feigning Bernie support while the goal was simply to defeat Clinton.

 

[Trakar]

Did you get notified or seek out just how much Russian troll contact you had that you didn't know about? They were big on feigning Bernie support while the goal was simply to defeat Clinton.

No, I haven't been notified of any contact, nor did I seek out any such information. I don't surf the internet for sensationalist "news" and almost exclusively stick to the same mainstream sources of information I have used since the '80s.

Regarding the objective of Russian operatives, I'm pretty sure they were probably trying to disrupt smooth US governance and domestic/foreign policy operations, regardless of who won in 2016.

I am concerned about all foreign operations and interferences in elections around the world, but I haven't seen any compelling evidence indicating that the Russian impact on the 2016 primaries and election was near as important to the outcome as the decisions and actions of the US candidates and campaigns in 2016.

The potential for blackmail and political intrigue post election have not been fully revealed yet, and may well be an ongoing issue that needs to be carefully explored, evaluated and responded to, but for now this is mostly tentatively evidenced speculation and an area of growing concern more than something I am outraged about.

 

[quadraginta]

Are people still taking that crappy site seriously?

Meanwhile, according to a site that didn't claim that Skittles candies turn black men into violent supercriminals, turns out that the House refuses to even let the Trump-appointed FBI head see their supposedly devastating report.

Nunes and Gaetz aren't spreading that around too much.

This, either;

The House intelligence committee decided against letting Democrats release a minority report characterizing the intelligence underlying the memo.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, I haven't been notified of any contact, nor did I seek out any such information. I don't surf the internet for sensationalist "news" and almost exclusively stick to the same mainstream sources of information I have used since the '80s.

And which sources are those? Your FB friends? The Twitter regulars you are sent links to?

... I am concerned about all foreign operations and interferences in elections around the world, but I haven't seen any compelling evidence indicating that the Russian impact on the 2016 primaries and election was near as important to the outcome as the decisions and actions of the US candidates and campaigns in 2016.

This is very telling and doesn't surprise me. You are echoing the Trump wagon, no evidence it affected the election.

The potential for blackmail and political intrigue post election have not been fully revealed yet, and may well be an ongoing issue that needs to be carefully explored, evaluated and responded to, but for now this is mostly tentatively evidenced speculation and an area of growing concern more than something I am outraged about.

Of course you're not outraged. You just said you don't believe anything of consequence happened.

Your posts give you away, you have a made-up mind. Let me guess, the DNC anointed Clinton and that's why Sanders lost (despite evidence that is complete bull). And Clinton was so horrible (despite evidence that is complete bull), no wonder Trump won.