Doc7505
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- Feb 16, 2016
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Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/u...es-russia.html
As Russia’s online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results.... The secret project, carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race, in which the Democratic candidate it was designed to help, Doug Jones, edged out the Republican, Roy S. Moore. But it was a sign that American political operatives of both parties have paid close attention to the Russian methods, which some fear may come to taint elections in the United States.... One participant in the Alabama project, Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.... Watson noticed one other oddity. The day after the vote, the Facebook page that had taken such an interest in him had vanished. “It was a group that, like, honest to God, next day was gone,” said Mr. Watson. “It was weird,” he said. “The whole thing was weird.”
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This is a very disappointing story. Why can't politicians run on their own merits anymore but instead try to trick voters into voting for them? I would have thought better of the Democratic Party in this regard. I see I was wrong. They are all crooks.
Obviusly Democrats attempted to use the same technique against Kavanaugh and failed.
Politicians especially the Progressive Marxist Socialist/DSA Democrat Left have always been dishonest. But at NO other time have so many Americans seen SO MUCH lying and criminality from SO MANY Democrat politicians. They go unpunished. Obama's Fundamental Transformation of America has created One Country with two systems of Justice.
What will stop them from using these techniques in future elections? Regulation. Not necessarily regulating the speech itself, but just making clear who the author of the page is and where their funding comes from. Whether foreign or domestic, we need complete transparency as to the author(s) of misinformation on social media. When we get to a point where we trust nothing we see or hear, and have no idea who to believe, authoritarianism will flourish. We're already seeing that now, as Russia clearly hoped.
This is a clear reason for regulating social media. Regulation doesn’t have to be onerous, plumbers have more regulation than people looking to influence elections and that’s not right. People who use social media for personal reasons ought to be exempt from regulation but others who intend to spray paint the Internet should have to identify themselves and demonstrate adherence to a set of ethical and professional standards.
