Author Topic: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...  (Read 1308817 times)

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6650 on: March 27, 2019, 08:49:31 AM »
I was curious myself, and was reading this:  https://www.ajc.com/news/world/did-you-fall-for-these-fake-ads-how-russian-trolls-got-into-your-facebook-feeds/q1BxFh6iIfIb0SgxAutKcP/

Looks like the paid advertising portion was ~ 100 K clicks.  As an internet marketing professional, this is an unbelievably low number.  My own buying on google search, for example, generates far more clicks than this in a single day.  When I used to buy on Facebook, 100 K clicks was easily achievable in a single day.  And I'm just a guy on couch working for myself.

If you look at the ads that were run and the very small scale of it, this was nothing more than a very small political campaign and it must not have had much budget.  Not meaningfully impactful imo.  I suspect those who think it was large in scale don't have much understanding of the media space.  Even if you are able to "reach" 100 M people, that doesn't really mean much.  That's just an ad impression.  Hitting 100 M people with an ad impression is quite easy to do, and again isn't very impactful.  Actual clicks/engagement is what you want to look at, as that's meaningful exposure -- and the numbers of clicks is extremely small.  Just to give you an idea of how meaningless ad impressions are, my own ads have already reached 700 K people today, and its not even 8 AM here on the beach in sunny socal.  These russian ad campaigns were extremely small.  If I were employed to run their campaign, my goal would be to hit these numbers on a daily basis.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 09:07:47 AM by HBFIRE »

sol

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8433
  • Age: 47
  • Location: Pacific Northwest
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6651 on: March 27, 2019, 08:58:16 AM »
Not meaningfully impactful imo.  I suspect those who think it was large in scale don't have much understanding of the media space. 

The US intelligence services, and Congress, both disagree with you.

You probably shouldn't measure the impact just based on the number of clicks through to their websites, which may not even have existed.  The real value is in inserting the "Hillary is a criminal" mastermeme into the more wide-reaching right wing online space.  Those memes got reshared millions of times, by thousands of other accounts not run by Russian troll farms.  Just because a genuine American reshares Russian propaganda with his online friends doesn't mean the Russian account is off the hook, or was ineffective.  Quite the contrary, that's the whole point of a targeted political enterprise like this.  They genuinely don't care about clicks or revenues, only mental counterspace they can occupy in the population of real voting Americans.  They don't even want attribution as the originator of those messages, they just want others to pick them up and carry them forward.

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6652 on: March 27, 2019, 09:03:04 AM »
Those memes got reshared millions of times, by thousands of other accounts not run by Russian troll farms.

Luckily, this is easily measurable as Facebook provides engagement rate and share rate.  These numbers were also extremely small for these ad campaigns.  It was reported there was a grand total of 120,000 posts, including shares.  Again, not meaningful in scale -- this is an extremely small number from a media standpoint.  I, as a guy sitting on couch, can hit these numbers in a single day from my cheap laptop.

The US intelligence services, and Congress, both disagree with you.

Oh, I don't doubt that at all.  They are embarrassingly ignorant when it comes to online marketing.  Did you see the Zuckerberg fiasco?  That was embarrassing.  They had to ask very basic questions about how advertising works.  So yeah, not a shocker at how incompetent they would be at estimating impact and scale with an internet marketing campaign.  These are guys that routinely use 11 toolbars on their outdated version of IE.

Don't get me wrong, it's always fun to see geriatric dinosaurs who probably still have rotary phones in their offices and are worried Trump's border wall will potentially deport their friend Siri and s/he won't be able to assist them with pill reminders any longer discuss technical nuances on behalf of 'their constituents of the great state of ____" as if they know what anything they're asking actually means.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 09:32:49 AM by HBFIRE »

nereo

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 17472
  • Location: Just south of Canada
    • Here's how you can support science today:
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6653 on: March 27, 2019, 09:39:22 AM »
The US intelligence services, and Congress, both disagree with you.

Oh, I don't doubt that at all.  They are embarrassingly ignorant when it comes to online marketing.  Did you see the Zuckerberg fiasco?  That was embarrassing.  They had to ask very basic questions about how advertising works.  So yeah, not a shocker at how incompetent they would be at estimating impact and scale with an internet marketing campaign.  These are guys that routinely use 11 toolbars on their outdated version of IE.

Don't get me wrong, it's always fun to see geriatric dinosaurs who probably still have rotary phones in their offices and are worried Trump's border wall will potentially deport their friend Siri and s/he won't be able to assist them with pill reminders any longer discuss technical nuances on behalf of 'their constituents of the great state of ____" as if they know what anything they're asking actually means.

Are you talking about elected members of congress or about the US intelligence agencies here?  Because I can assure you that the latter does not fit the description you just gave. 

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6654 on: March 27, 2019, 09:44:12 AM »

Are you talking about elected members of congress or about the US intelligence agencies here?  Because I can assure you that the latter does not fit the description you just gave.

I'm referring to congress, as that was what was mentioned.  If there are actual facebook marketing experts in the US intelligence agency, would love to read their summation.  I have my doubts there as well.  Normally what happens is that they rely on the expertise of others.  Any FB marketing expert will confirm what I've already written, the engagement numbers from the Russian trolling campaign are insignificantly small.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 09:46:33 AM by HBFIRE »

nereo

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 17472
  • Location: Just south of Canada
    • Here's how you can support science today:
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6655 on: March 27, 2019, 09:50:19 AM »

Are you talking about elected members of congress or about the US intelligence agencies here?  Because I can assure you that the latter does not fit the description you just gave.

I'm referring to congress, as that was what was mentioned. 

no, they were both mentioned, see upthread.  You just seem to be ignoring half the post because it doesn't fit with your argument.  Regarding congress, while the elected members might not be the most technologically savvy that doesn't mean their entire office is the same.

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6656 on: March 27, 2019, 09:54:27 AM »


no, they were both mentioned, see upthread.  You just seem to be ignoring half the post because it doesn't fit with your argument.  Regarding congress, while the elected members might not be the most technologically savvy that doesn't mean their entire office is the same.

Hey, I'm open to that idea.  Please provide some intelligent commentary from congress on the scale of the Russian FB marketing.  Would love to read for myself.  Also, you're right these were just elected officials.  Presumably, they had time to prepare and have their "team" provide them with the needed research and questions to ask Zukerberg.  Did you watch it?  It was beyond embarrassing.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 09:58:37 AM by HBFIRE »

sol

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8433
  • Age: 47
  • Location: Pacific Northwest
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6657 on: March 27, 2019, 10:12:01 AM »
Regarding congress, while the elected members might not be the most technologically savvy that doesn't mean their entire office is the same.

I used to interact with congressional staffers with some regularity, in my professional capacity, and I was shocked at how consistently expert-level knowledgeable their staffers were even in cases where the congressperson they worked for was a geriatric boob.  You don't get to work on capital hill by being a hack.

On the issue of the true scale of the Russian interference campaign, US intelligence agencies have estimated that 126 million US citizens were exposed to election-related content originating from Russia on facebook alone.  If even one half of one percent of those people had their vote swayed by facebook posts, that's still hundreds of thousands of votes.  Let's not forget that the 2016 election was determined by approximately 77,000 votes cast, in a few key states where this sort of online campagin was targeted.  It's hard to know just how much people base their votes on their facebook exposure, but it's not hard to imagine one in 200 people use facebook as their primary means of getting news.

Further reading: 
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/shocking-scale-of-russias-sinister-social-media-campaign-against-us-revealed
or
https://intelligence.house.gov/social-media-content/
or
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

And this very thread is a good example of the efficiency of online messaging. HBFIRE is an anonymous internet account created approximately one year before the 2016 election.  By some metrics, it has only made a few hundred posts total in all of it's existence, a vanishingly small number in the grand scheme of things.  Yet this forum has tens of thousands of users and this thread has over a half million page views, and HBFIRE was able to insert a counterfactual narrative into it for free, for a few minutes of effort.  If HBFIRE was a member of the GRU, his superiors would congratulate him for sowing division in the US political debate by introducing Russian propaganda as facts that are now part of the reason why Americans argue amongst themselves.  How can you possibly measure the "reach" of the HBFIRE account in swaying political opinion?

Glenstache

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3493
  • Age: 94
  • Location: Upper left corner
  • FI(lean) working on the "RE"
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6658 on: March 27, 2019, 10:13:48 AM »


no, they were both mentioned, see upthread.  You just seem to be ignoring half the post because it doesn't fit with your argument.  Regarding congress, while the elected members might not be the most technologically savvy that doesn't mean their entire office is the same.

Hey, I'm open to that idea.  Please provide some intelligent commentary from congress on the scale of the Russian FB marketing.  Would love to read for myself.  Also, you're right these were just elected officials.  Presumably, they had time to prepare and have their "team" provide them with the needed research and questions to ask Zukerberg.  Did you watch it?  It was beyond embarrassing.

First link from:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=congress+on+scale+of+russian+facbeook+marketing

Is:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/16/new-report-russian-disinformation-prepared-senate-shows-operations-scale-sweep/?utm_term=.57f3034e1b11

which includes the quote:
Quote
Together, the 20 most popular pages generated 39 million likes, 31 million shares, 5.4 million reactions and 3.4 million comments. Company officials told Congress that the Russian campaign reached 126 million people on Facebook and 20 million more on Instagram.

Davnasty

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2793
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6659 on: March 27, 2019, 10:19:20 AM »


no, they were both mentioned, see upthread.  You just seem to be ignoring half the post because it doesn't fit with your argument.  Regarding congress, while the elected members might not be the most technologically savvy that doesn't mean their entire office is the same.

Hey, I'm open to that idea.  Please provide some intelligent commentary from congress on the scale of the Russian FB marketing.  Would love to read for myself.  Also, you're right these were just elected officials.  Presumably, they had time to prepare and have their "team" provide them with the needed research and questions to ask Zukerberg.  Did you watch it?  It was beyond embarrassing.

Looks like this was covered pretty well while I was typing but I'll leave the link to add little more fuel for the fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections#Targeting_of_important_voting_blocs_and_institutions

Quote
30 Facebook pages targeting black Americans and 10 YouTube channels that posted 571 videos related to police violence against African-Americans.)[131] The covertly Russian Instagram account @blackstagram had over 300,000 followers

Quote
25 social media pages drawing 1.4 million followers were created by Russian agents to target the American political right and promote the Trump candidacy

ETA: it's a bit of a shame how big of a deal the media has made over the dollars spent by Russia on advertising. I guess the relevance there is that Facebook allowed it to happen and accepted money from a hostile government, but it has little to do with Russia's overall social media campaign.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 10:22:03 AM by Dabnasty »

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6660 on: March 27, 2019, 10:37:24 AM »

On the issue of the true scale of the Russian interference campaign, US intelligence agencies have estimated that 126 million US citizens were exposed to election-related content originating from Russia on facebook alone.

See, this is where the problem is.  Being "exposed" can just be an ad impression, which is meaningless.  As mentioned, I had already "exposed" 700 K people to my ads before 8 AM PT.  It's now 9:40 AM, and I've reached over 1 M people.  Me, a guy on a couch, on a cheap laptop.  Ad impressions aren't meaningfully impactful.  What you want to look at is engagement/click rate, and as you mentioned, share rate.  These numbers are easily accessible and fortunately Facebook provides incredible detail on these statistics.  The numbers provided on these statistics weren't noteworthy.  Context matters a lot when it comes to media.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 10:39:07 AM by HBFIRE »

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6661 on: March 27, 2019, 10:50:49 AM »
This really hits the nail on the head:

"Anyone who’s worked in online advertising or social-media management, the $100,000 spent by the Russian government is laughably small, no matter how precisely targeted. In contrast, the official Trump campaign spent $90 million on digital ads — and, unlike the Russians, had assistance from Facebook employees to target and deploy them effectively. “There’s no way $100,000 in ad budget impacted the election. It’s ridiculous,” García Martínez said.

100 K is a daily budget for any large-scale ad campaign, just to give an idea of scope.  People want to claim it's impactful because it's a dramatic story.

That doesn't mean we don't need to regulate advertising platforms.  If Russia really wanted to sway the election, they could have run a budget several orders of magnitude larger, which would have been impactful.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 10:56:48 AM by HBFIRE »

sol

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8433
  • Age: 47
  • Location: Pacific Northwest
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6662 on: March 27, 2019, 10:58:45 AM »
Context matters a lot when it comes to media.

Of course it does, and the number of people exposed isn't a terribly useful metric by itself either.  If you're sitting on a couch reaching a million users this morning with paid ads in the sidebar, you're not swaying opinions in the same way as my 65 year old father's facebook feed being 90% Hillary memes.  He's only one user, but virtually 100% of his online news was about Uranium One and Benghazi and the Muslim Brotherhood.  "Hillary eats babies!  She's killed Vince Foster in a BDSM role play gone wrong!  George Soros is running a pedo ring in the basement of a pizza parlor!"  If that's all you see all day, it's easy to stay home on election day even if you don't particularly like Trump.  All it took is for a tiny fraction of a percent of geriatric white facebook users to buy into that bullshit, in a few key districts, to hand Trump the oval office.  They probably didn't move the needle very much in absolute terms, but the election was so close that it was more than enough.

If you still have doubts, I suggest you read some of those reports linked above for the context you seek.  You asked for sources, we provided them.  I look forward to your analyses of those sources.

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6663 on: March 27, 2019, 11:10:48 AM »

If you still have doubts, I suggest you read some of those reports linked above for the context you seek.  You asked for sources, we provided them.  I look forward to your analyses of those sources.

I read them.  Same conclusion, the numbers are not meaningfully large.  The campaign was incredibly small in scope.

sol

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8433
  • Age: 47
  • Location: Pacific Northwest
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6664 on: March 27, 2019, 11:14:45 AM »
I read them.  Same conclusion, the numbers are not meaningfully large.  The campaign was incredibly small in scope.

That's just what a member of a Russian troll farm would say, isn't it?

Sometimes I wonder if Americans who parrot Russian propaganda even stop to consider whether or not they still have America's best interests at heart.  Other times, I wonder if internet posters are really Americans.

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6665 on: March 27, 2019, 11:26:59 AM »


That's just what a member of a Russian troll farm would say, isn't it?

Sometimes I wonder if Americans who parrot Russian propaganda even stop to consider whether or not they still have America's best interests at heart.  Other times, I wonder if internet posters are really Americans.

You got me, I'm a Russian Spy Troll.  Busted.

Like I said, we do need to regulate Ad platforms.  I'm skeptical, as I think only so much can be done on that front, but we should attempt to regulate it.  A good book to read on the damage that can be done is "Trust me I'm Lying". 

But the amount of ad spend by the Russians was very negligible. How effective their viral attempts is a little bit harder to gauge and anyone claiming they can is lying -- I admit that, but at least the numbers that came out of Facebook were extremely small.  It’s easy for journalists to spin up numbers that seem impressive to the layman like the people on this thread but actually aren’t impressive at all in the context of Facebook.

Facebook is ~ 2.4 billion users. Every user sees an average of ~ 200 to 300 posts a day, so trillions of pieces of content a day. When somebody says, “Oh, the Russians produced 100 million posts over the course of the election,” that’s a meaningless tiny fraction of content on Facebook.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 11:31:35 AM by HBFIRE »

JLee

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7509
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6666 on: March 27, 2019, 11:31:07 AM »


no, they were both mentioned, see upthread.  You just seem to be ignoring half the post because it doesn't fit with your argument.  Regarding congress, while the elected members might not be the most technologically savvy that doesn't mean their entire office is the same.

Hey, I'm open to that idea.  Please provide some intelligent commentary from congress on the scale of the Russian FB marketing.  Would love to read for myself.  Also, you're right these were just elected officials.  Presumably, they had time to prepare and have their "team" provide them with the needed research and questions to ask Zukerberg.  Did you watch it?  It was beyond embarrassing.

Why are you so entrenched in the idea of paid marketing?  There were literally troll factories employing real people who were actively trolling away.  This irrational fixation on paid marketing alone misses the bigger picture entirely.

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6667 on: March 27, 2019, 11:32:41 AM »

Why are you so entrenched in the idea of paid marketing?  There were literally troll factories employing real people who were actively trolling away.  This irrational fixation on paid marketing alone misses the bigger picture entirely.

My fault, I wasn't trying to limit this in scope to just paid advertising.  The numbers that came from facebook include organic.

JLee

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7509
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6668 on: March 27, 2019, 11:43:02 AM »

Why are you so entrenched in the idea of paid marketing?  There were literally troll factories employing real people who were actively trolling away.  This irrational fixation on paid marketing alone misses the bigger picture entirely.

My fault, I wasn't trying to limit this in scope to just paid advertising.  The numbers that came from facebook include organic.

944 Russian troll accounts were banned from Reddit:
https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-russian-trolls-ban-photos-examples-posts-2018-4

That gives them the opportunity to issue enough upvotes/downvotes to drive the narrative in whatever direction they want.  That's enough to kick a post onto the 'hot' and/or 'rising' and/or controversial front pages.

Imagine the disruption to this forum if even 50 coordinated trolls showed up.

Lews Therin

  • CMTO 2023 Attendees
  • Magnum Stache
  • *
  • Posts: 3883
  • Age: 34
  • Location: Gatineau
  • Fee-only Financial Planner
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6669 on: March 27, 2019, 12:01:22 PM »
If JLee? :(

Noticeable difference in Off-Topic since... maybe 2-3 months ago?

THEY ARE ALREADY HERE!

Zamboni

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3879
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6670 on: March 27, 2019, 12:16:33 PM »
Yep, they are here.

I know the mods had to deal with them on an anti-vax thread or two already.

Lews Therin

  • CMTO 2023 Attendees
  • Magnum Stache
  • *
  • Posts: 3883
  • Age: 34
  • Location: Gatineau
  • Fee-only Financial Planner
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6671 on: March 27, 2019, 12:29:29 PM »
Also here, United states of Russia, and Liberals Vs conservative. (At least those ones that I know of.)

JLee

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7509
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6672 on: March 27, 2019, 12:32:23 PM »
If JLee? :(

Noticeable difference in Off-Topic since... maybe 2-3 months ago?

THEY ARE ALREADY HERE!

Fair enough - and that's dramatically fewer than 50.

Throwing 900 of them at Reddit? Chaos...

scottish

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2716
  • Location: Ottawa
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6673 on: March 27, 2019, 03:30:07 PM »
Yep, they are here.

I know the mods had to deal with them on an anti-vax thread or two already.

sorry I'm lost, was it congress or the USIA on the anti-vaxxer thread?   :)

vern

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 592

ReadySetMillionaire

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1688
  • Location: The Buckeye State
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6675 on: March 27, 2019, 08:16:12 PM »
Context matters a lot when it comes to media.

Of course it does, and the number of people exposed isn't a terribly useful metric by itself either.  If you're sitting on a couch reaching a million users this morning with paid ads in the sidebar, you're not swaying opinions in the same way as my 65 year old father's facebook feed being 90% Hillary memes.  He's only one user, but virtually 100% of his online news was about Uranium One and Benghazi and the Muslim Brotherhood.  "Hillary eats babies!  She's killed Vince Foster in a BDSM role play gone wrong!  George Soros is running a pedo ring in the basement of a pizza parlor!"  If that's all you see all day, it's easy to stay home on election day even if you don't particularly like Trump.  All it took is for a tiny fraction of a percent of geriatric white facebook users to buy into that bullshit, in a few key districts, to hand Trump the oval office.  They probably didn't move the needle very much in absolute terms, but the election was so close that it was more than enough.

If you still have doubts, I suggest you read some of those reports linked above for the context you seek.  You asked for sources, we provided them.  I look forward to your analyses of those sources.

As a small business owner myself who also runs ad campaigns, I get a very strong sense that you guys have no idea about the scope of social media advertising.

Going back to that TENGOP Twitter account, 130k followers is a decent amount, but it is one account in literally thousands of tweets you would see in a single day. The odds that one account tweeting memes on your feed would in any way affect you is just not how Twitter works. It would be like saying a forum poster in the Book Club thread is having a huge impact on my overall experience on this forum.

Regarding Facebook, I’m glad HBFIRE chimed in, because 130 million impressions is NOTHING on Facebook. It is a thousandth of a percent, if not smaller, of overall impressions in a day. I think you guys also fail to see that the Hillary memes originated here and then were latched onto by the troll farms. It was like shit being thrown on top of shit.

Honestly, I think the biggest thing I think you fail to see is the self selection of following these accounts and sharing these posts. Do you honestly think someone following a Facebook account that regularly accuses Hillary Clinton of running a child molestation ring out of a pizza shop were independent voters that could have been swayed? Of course not. They were diehard R’s that listen to Rush Limbaugh when they go to bed at night.

Putin is laughing and stroking himself knowing we are giving him this much credit.

BRB though, have to go to my mailbox to get my paycheck from the Kremlin.

JLee

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7509
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6676 on: March 27, 2019, 08:26:20 PM »
Context matters a lot when it comes to media.

Of course it does, and the number of people exposed isn't a terribly useful metric by itself either.  If you're sitting on a couch reaching a million users this morning with paid ads in the sidebar, you're not swaying opinions in the same way as my 65 year old father's facebook feed being 90% Hillary memes.  He's only one user, but virtually 100% of his online news was about Uranium One and Benghazi and the Muslim Brotherhood.  "Hillary eats babies!  She's killed Vince Foster in a BDSM role play gone wrong!  George Soros is running a pedo ring in the basement of a pizza parlor!"  If that's all you see all day, it's easy to stay home on election day even if you don't particularly like Trump.  All it took is for a tiny fraction of a percent of geriatric white facebook users to buy into that bullshit, in a few key districts, to hand Trump the oval office.  They probably didn't move the needle very much in absolute terms, but the election was so close that it was more than enough.

If you still have doubts, I suggest you read some of those reports linked above for the context you seek.  You asked for sources, we provided them.  I look forward to your analyses of those sources.

As a small business owner myself who also runs ad campaigns, I get a very strong sense that you guys have no idea about the scope of social media advertising.

Going back to that TENGOP Twitter account, 130k followers is a decent amount, but it is one account in literally thousands of tweets you would see in a single day. The odds that one account tweeting memes on your feed would in any way affect you is just not how Twitter works. It would be like saying a forum poster in the Book Club thread is having a huge impact on my overall experience on this forum.

Regarding Facebook, I’m glad HBFIRE chimed in, because 130 million impressions is NOTHING on Facebook. It is a thousandth of a percent, if not smaller, of overall impressions in a day. I think you guys also fail to see that the Hillary memes originated here and then were latched onto by the troll farms. It was like shit being thrown on top of shit.

Honestly, I think the biggest thing I think you fail to see is the self selection of following these accounts and sharing these posts. Do you honestly think someone following a Facebook account that regularly accuses Hillary Clinton of running a child molestation ring out of a pizza shop were independent voters that could have been swayed? Of course not. They were diehard R’s that listen to Rush Limbaugh when they go to bed at night.

Putin is laughing and stroking himself knowing we are giving him this much credit.

BRB though, have to go to my mailbox to get my paycheck from the Kremlin.

You appear to be entirely unaware (or deliberately ignoring, which is even worse) of the fact that Russian trolls targeted members of both major political parties. 

I'm sure as a small business owner who runs ad campaigns, you'd love to match your research and experience against this research from the University of Washington:

In this paper, we have located RU-IRA-affiliated troll accounts in the retweet network of a politically polarized conversation surrounding race and shootings in the United States. Our findings suggest that troll accounts contributed content to polarized information networks, likely serving to accentuate disagreement and foster division. Furthermore, our findings imply that the troll accounts gained a platform in a domestic conversation, suggesting a calculated form of media manipulation that exploits on the crowd-sourced nature of social media.

We note that this work only examines troll activity in the context of one conversation and does not investigate the content broadcasted by troll accounts or the "real" accounts who interacted with the trolls. Further research using discourse analysis of tweets and
more in-depth social network analysis will provide greater insight into the interactions and impact summarized in this paper. While
retweets provide understanding of scale of distribution, further analysis might better elucidate other metrics of influence.

Or 9 million tweets. 

Or 944 Reddit accounts.

Perhaps you'd prefer an official US Government website?

“[H]ad a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (“Trump Campaign”) and disparaging Hillary Clinton. Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities. Defendants also staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities and U.S. persons, and without revealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates. Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”

Given the evidence we have, it's rather arrogant of someone to think their passing impression of what they think happened is more accurate than the United States' intelligence agencies.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 08:36:17 PM by JLee »

ysette9

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8930
  • Age: 2020
  • Location: Bay Area at heart living in the PNW
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6677 on: March 27, 2019, 08:29:23 PM »
Switching topics briefly to chime in from the land of loose environmental regulation. I’m on business travel to China and being here is a strong reminder of why strong environmental regulation is so critical. Here is an entire country that has put business interests and growth over environmental protection and the results are stark.

The air quality today is as bad as it was on the worst days of our California wildfires late last year, the worst fires to ever ravage our state. I haven’t seen a single bird yet in five days I have been here so far.

I think it is easy for us to talk about deregulation being good for business in the abstract. Breathing the results is a very different matter. I can’t tell you how depressing it is to literally be unable to go outside without a face mask without endangering my health. I’d be willing to sacrifice a good bit on a personal level, whether that be making it more expensive to drive or higher taxes or limiting my product choices as a consumer, to avoid this fate.


JLee

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7509
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6678 on: March 27, 2019, 08:37:36 PM »
Switching topics briefly to chime in from the land of loose environmental regulation. I’m on business travel to China and being here is a strong reminder of why strong environmental regulation is so critical. Here is an entire country that has put business interests and growth over environmental protection and the results are stark.

The air quality today is as bad as it was on the worst days of our California wildfires late last year, the worst fires to ever ravage our state. I haven’t seen a single bird yet in five days I have been here so far.

I think it is easy for us to talk about deregulation being good for business in the abstract. Breathing the results is a very different matter. I can’t tell you how depressing it is to literally be unable to go outside without a face mask without endangering my health. I’d be willing to sacrifice a good bit on a personal level, whether that be making it more expensive to drive or higher taxes or limiting my product choices as a consumer, to avoid this fate.



Oh wow...that's awful.

I read the other day that the vast majority of the plastic islands in the ocean are from countries with poor regulation on waste...it's incredibly sad, and unless something gets done soon it's not going to end well for anyone.

ReadySetMillionaire

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1688
  • Location: The Buckeye State
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6679 on: March 27, 2019, 09:17:22 PM »
Context matters a lot when it comes to media.

Of course it does, and the number of people exposed isn't a terribly useful metric by itself either.  If you're sitting on a couch reaching a million users this morning with paid ads in the sidebar, you're not swaying opinions in the same way as my 65 year old father's facebook feed being 90% Hillary memes.  He's only one user, but virtually 100% of his online news was about Uranium One and Benghazi and the Muslim Brotherhood.  "Hillary eats babies!  She's killed Vince Foster in a BDSM role play gone wrong!  George Soros is running a pedo ring in the basement of a pizza parlor!"  If that's all you see all day, it's easy to stay home on election day even if you don't particularly like Trump.  All it took is for a tiny fraction of a percent of geriatric white facebook users to buy into that bullshit, in a few key districts, to hand Trump the oval office.  They probably didn't move the needle very much in absolute terms, but the election was so close that it was more than enough.

If you still have doubts, I suggest you read some of those reports linked above for the context you seek.  You asked for sources, we provided them.  I look forward to your analyses of those sources.

As a small business owner myself who also runs ad campaigns, I get a very strong sense that you guys have no idea about the scope of social media advertising.

Going back to that TENGOP Twitter account, 130k followers is a decent amount, but it is one account in literally thousands of tweets you would see in a single day. The odds that one account tweeting memes on your feed would in any way affect you is just not how Twitter works. It would be like saying a forum poster in the Book Club thread is having a huge impact on my overall experience on this forum.

Regarding Facebook, I’m glad HBFIRE chimed in, because 130 million impressions is NOTHING on Facebook. It is a thousandth of a percent, if not smaller, of overall impressions in a day. I think you guys also fail to see that the Hillary memes originated here and then were latched onto by the troll farms. It was like shit being thrown on top of shit.

Honestly, I think the biggest thing I think you fail to see is the self selection of following these accounts and sharing these posts. Do you honestly think someone following a Facebook account that regularly accuses Hillary Clinton of running a child molestation ring out of a pizza shop were independent voters that could have been swayed? Of course not. They were diehard R’s that listen to Rush Limbaugh when they go to bed at night.

Putin is laughing and stroking himself knowing we are giving him this much credit.

BRB though, have to go to my mailbox to get my paycheck from the Kremlin.

You appear to be entirely unaware (or deliberately ignoring, which is even worse) of the fact that Russian trolls targeted members of both major political parties. 

I'm sure as a small business owner who runs ad campaigns, you'd love to match your research and experience against this research from the University of Washington:

In this paper, we have located RU-IRA-affiliated troll accounts in the retweet network of a politically polarized conversation surrounding race and shootings in the United States. Our findings suggest that troll accounts contributed content to polarized information networks, likely serving to accentuate disagreement and foster division. Furthermore, our findings imply that the troll accounts gained a platform in a domestic conversation, suggesting a calculated form of media manipulation that exploits on the crowd-sourced nature of social media.

We note that this work only examines troll activity in the context of one conversation and does not investigate the content broadcasted by troll accounts or the "real" accounts who interacted with the trolls. Further research using discourse analysis of tweets and
more in-depth social network analysis will provide greater insight into the interactions and impact summarized in this paper. While
retweets provide understanding of scale of distribution, further analysis might better elucidate other metrics of influence.

Or 9 million tweets. 

Or 944 Reddit accounts.

Perhaps you'd prefer an official US Government website?

“[H]ad a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (“Trump Campaign”) and disparaging Hillary Clinton. Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities. Defendants also staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities and U.S. persons, and without revealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates. Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”

Given the evidence we have, it's rather arrogant of someone to think their passing impression of what they think happened is more accurate than the United States' intelligence agencies.

You’re proving my point.

9 million tweets since 2009 (according to your article)?!?! That’s a lot, right???

There are 500 million tweets PER DAY. That’s 182 BILLION tweets per year. That’s more than a TRILLION tweets between 2009 and 2016.

And you honestly want me to believe 9 million, or .00000007% of these tweets, had some major impact?

***

944 reddit accounts??? Reddit has 542 MILLION active users per month. You want me to think .00002% of reddit accounts affected the site?

***

This is all basically why Nate Silver has looked at the numbers and calls himself an “agnostic” about whether Russian trolls actually affected the election —
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-did-russian-interference-affect-the-2016-election/

Kyle Schuant

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1314
  • Location: Melbourne, Australia
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6680 on: March 27, 2019, 09:26:24 PM »
And you honestly want me to believe 9 million, or .00000007% of these tweets, had some major impact?
If you are infected with ebola, what fraction of your bodyweight becomes ebola virus?

If you are kicked in the back of the knee, how hard do you have to be kicked, in proportion to the total force generation ability of all your muscles, before you fall over?

When Iraq fell to coalition forces, what fraction of the Iraqi population had been killed or made prisoners of war before "Mission Accomplished"?

Small things can have an impact out of proportion to their size, if carefully targeted.

the_fixer

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1252
  • Location: Colorado
  • mind on my money money on my mind
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6681 on: March 27, 2019, 09:40:38 PM »
Switching topics briefly to chime in from the land of loose environmental regulation. I’m on business travel to China and being here is a strong reminder of why strong environmental regulation is so critical. Here is an entire country that has put business interests and growth over environmental protection and the results are stark.

The air quality today is as bad as it was on the worst days of our California wildfires late last year, the worst fires to ever ravage our state. I haven’t seen a single bird yet in five days I have been here so far.

I think it is easy for us to talk about deregulation being good for business in the abstract. Breathing the results is a very different matter. I can’t tell you how depressing it is to literally be unable to go outside without a face mask without endangering my health. I’d be willing to sacrifice a good bit on a personal level, whether that be making it more expensive to drive or higher taxes or limiting my product choices as a consumer, to avoid this fate.


Not sure it is even possible to overcome these gross polluters around the world no matter how hard we try to change emissions on our end.

All because we want everything cheaper and I do not see it changing in my lifetime.

Honestly it makes me want to just say fuck it why even try!

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk


ysette9

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8930
  • Age: 2020
  • Location: Bay Area at heart living in the PNW
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6682 on: March 27, 2019, 09:42:15 PM »
But we have to try. The alternative is leaving a shit hole for our kids to inherit. That isn’t an acceptable option in my book.

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6683 on: March 27, 2019, 09:58:41 PM »

If you are infected with ebola, what fraction of your bodyweight becomes ebola virus?


If you really believe a few troll accounts have the power of ebola, then we're all screwed, doesn't matter what we do.  People way overblow this as I mentioned before, because it sounds dramatic -- "The Russians are brain washing Americans!".  The reality is that it's really not that impactful.  Russian trolls are  heavily dwarfed by people who troll social media naturally, and they have much more of an impact.  People aren't basing their votes on some random troll on reddit. 
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 10:01:23 PM by HBFIRE »

JLee

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7509
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6684 on: March 27, 2019, 10:06:28 PM »
And you honestly want me to believe 9 million, or .00000007% of these tweets, had some major impact?
If you are infected with ebola, what fraction of your bodyweight becomes ebola virus?

If you are kicked in the back of the knee, how hard do you have to be kicked, in proportion to the total force generation ability of all your muscles, before you fall over?

When Iraq fell to coalition forces, what fraction of the Iraqi population had been killed or made prisoners of war before "Mission Accomplished"?

Small things can have an impact out of proportion to their size, if carefully targeted.

One of the things being missed in RSM's assessment is they're distributing these users across the entirety of their social media networks.  There's no point in troll farm people posting in r/thingsyoudidntknowaboutsquirrels (or whatever) -- they're going to be focused where they can have the most impact.  With several hundred coordinated accounts, you can bury or promote content on Reddit - it's how the upvote/downvote system works.  It doesn't take anywhere near a million upvotes for something to be trending.

Also, Twitter had ~2.5 mil posts per day in 2009, not 500 million as claimed.

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6685 on: March 27, 2019, 10:15:51 PM »

Also, Twitter had ~2.5 mil posts per day in 2009, not 500 million as claimed.

Source?  The only data i could find goes back to january 2010.  Current tweet numbers are approx 500 M/day.  In Jan/2010 they were at 50 M/day.  The only thing I could find says "Tweet growth shot up by 1,400% in 2009, reaching 35 million tweets per day by the end of the year."  So I guess at the beginning of the year, the numbers may have been low.  I forget why we're looking at 2009 though, shouldn't we look at closer to the presidential election?  Edit:  I see, the article says "since 2009".  So looking at just 2009 stats is not meaningful.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 10:21:27 PM by HBFIRE »

JLee

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7509
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6686 on: March 27, 2019, 10:27:58 PM »

Also, Twitter had ~2.5 mil posts per day in 2009, not 500 million as claimed.

Source?  The only data i could find goes back to january 2010.  Current tweet numbers are approx 500 M/day.  In Jan/2010 they were at 50 M/day.  The only thing I could find says "Tweet growth shot up by 1,400% in 2009, reaching 35 million tweets per day by the end of the year."  So I guess at the beginning of the year, the numbers may have been low.  I forget why we're looking at 2009 though, shouldn't we look at closer to the presidential election?  Edit:  I see, the article says "since 2009".  So looking at just 2009 stats is not meaningful.

RSM calculated the overall number of tweets starting at 2009, using 500m/day for years:
Quote
There are 500 million tweets PER DAY. That’s 182 BILLION tweets per year. That’s more than a TRILLION tweets between 2009 and 2016.

http://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/

It shows 35 million per day for 2010, so presumably there's a ramp and it's not a straight 2.5 - but either way, it's a long distance away from 500 million.

For someone claiming to be an authority on social media marketing, that was quite the error. :P
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 10:31:37 PM by JLee »

HBFIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1311
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6687 on: March 27, 2019, 10:44:20 PM »

It shows 35 million per day for 2010, so presumably there's a ramp and it's not a straight 2.5 - but either way, it's a long distance away from 500 million.

For someone claiming to be an authority on social media marketing, that was quite the error. :P

Meh, it was at 500 M/day years before the presidential campaigns per  your source, that's whats relevant.

sol

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8433
  • Age: 47
  • Location: Pacific Northwest
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6688 on: March 27, 2019, 11:16:04 PM »
And you honestly want me to believe 9 million, or .00000007% of these tweets, had some major impact?

Seems pretty obvious to me, but you keep repeating it like it's not.

Just as an example, there are precisely TWO posters in this thread who are saying "Russia is innocent!  Russia did nothing wrong!"  They are a tiny fraction of the the total users, or the total posts, but their voices absolutely have an impact.  You're bringing people around to the opinion that Russia wants us to have, with your tiny fraction of our total posts, because you're not throwing out random posts but rather targeting a specific discussion about Russian interference, to people who are reading along because they want to learn about it and form an opinion, and you are giving them one that Russia supports but the United States intelligence services do not.  The total number of posts on the forum does not matter, in determining how much impact you can have for your few hours of typing away from Moscow.  You have absolutely swayed this discussion, literally with just two accounts, to exonerate the Russians for their interference in the US election, in less than 48 hours.  You may have already convinced hundreds of US citizens, lurking in this thread, that Russia is innocent.  See how easy it is, when you target your messaging?

Now imagine there were 900 of you on Reddit, overtaking every Reddit thread about Hillary or Trump as they came up, to set the narrative there.  Seems totally easy, to me, to believe that interference was effective.

LennStar

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3672
  • Location: Germany
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6689 on: March 28, 2019, 01:12:45 AM »

If you are infected with ebola, what fraction of your bodyweight becomes ebola virus?


If you really believe a few troll accounts have the power of ebola, then we're all screwed, doesn't matter what we do.  People way overblow this as I mentioned before, because it sounds dramatic -- "The Russians are brain washing Americans!".  The reality is that it's really not that impactful.  Russian trolls are  heavily dwarfed by people who troll social media naturally, and they have much more of an impact.  People aren't basing their votes on some random troll on reddit.

Maybe it's futile, but I tell you again what other people have told oyu already a dozen times.

As long as it's random people trolling randomly, you may even be right.
But the troll farms are not random. They are in the opposite very targeted. And if they were trained right, they know very well what to do.
If a few lobbyists are generelly enough to decide on which way a well-informed body of thousands of generelly very intelligent people (the staffers of congress etc.) vote in the end, deciding a countrie's way, why should that not work the same way for normal people who are already swaying?

And you also ignore that change the vote of a few hundred of their readers isn't even the target. It is the amount of work people have to do to correct that, the frustration of the "enemy" that goes out of political activity as a result, the division created.
If you throw a few Molotov Cocktails around and burn down 10 houses, do you measure the damage on the costs of the cocktail or the amount of works it takes to repair those houses? Same principle.

nereo

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 17472
  • Location: Just south of Canada
    • Here's how you can support science today:
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6690 on: March 28, 2019, 05:22:47 AM »
Trump's wading back into the healthcare space, saying he is optimistic that the 5th district courts will strike down the ACA and then the supreme court will concur.
He's promising that the GOP will have an 'incredible plan' this time, but of course he gives no specifics.

Given the GOP couldn't get a repeal bill through with control of both chambers of congress this seems like a tall ask. Seems more designed to pander and divide than improve overall opinions of this administration.  I'm guessing this pushes infrastructure bill(s) off the burner (again).

ysette9

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8930
  • Age: 2020
  • Location: Bay Area at heart living in the PNW
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6691 on: March 28, 2019, 06:13:46 AM »
Trump's wading back into the healthcare space, saying he is optimistic that the 5th district courts will strike down the ACA and then the supreme court will concur.
He's promising that the GOP will have an 'incredible plan' this time, but of course he gives no specifics.

Given the GOP couldn't get a repeal bill through with control of both chambers of congress this seems like a tall ask. Seems more designed to pander and divide than improve overall opinions of this administration.  I'm guessing this pushes infrastructure bill(s) off the burner (again).
I suppose I’ll take comfort in his inability to act like a statesman and garner support for his political ideas. I’ll have to trust that the courts can be independent enough to hold up the ACA. Sigh.

EscapeVelocity2020

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 4811
  • Age: 50
  • Location: Houston
    • EscapeVelocity2020
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6692 on: March 28, 2019, 07:23:37 AM »
It's quite a thing that Trump wants the FBI to investigate the Smollett case.  Never would I have imagined a President would be so petty and politically motivated to steer the country toward one individual who made a really bad judgement call.  Of course, the whole thing fits Trump's narrative perfectly - that someone staged a MAGA race crime in order to make Mr. President look bad.  Guess it helps distract from Trump removing new sanctions on North Korea and the fact that Mueller's report did not, in fact, fully exonerate Trump from Obstruction of Justice.

GuitarStv

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 23048
  • Age: 42
  • Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6693 on: March 28, 2019, 07:56:45 AM »
It's quite a thing that Trump wants the FBI to investigate the Smollett case.  Never would I have imagined a President would be so petty and politically motivated to steer the country toward one individual who made a really bad judgement call.  Of course, the whole thing fits Trump's narrative perfectly - that someone staged a MAGA race crime in order to make Mr. President look bad.  Guess it helps distract from Trump removing new sanctions on North Korea and the fact that Mueller's report did not, in fact, fully exonerate Trump from Obstruction of Justice.

He knowingly did a terrible thing, was caught, and admitted his guilt.  What is there to investigate at this point?

FIPurpose

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2059
  • Location: ME
    • FI With Purpose
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6694 on: March 28, 2019, 07:57:19 AM »
Trump's wading back into the healthcare space, saying he is optimistic that the 5th district courts will strike down the ACA and then the supreme court will concur.
He's promising that the GOP will have an 'incredible plan' this time, but of course he gives no specifics.

Given the GOP couldn't get a repeal bill through with control of both chambers of congress this seems like a tall ask. Seems more designed to pander and divide than improve overall opinions of this administration.  I'm guessing this pushes infrastructure bill(s) off the burner (again).
I suppose I’ll take comfort in his inability to act like a statesman and garner support for his political ideas. I’ll have to trust that the courts can be independent enough to hold up the ACA. Sigh.

I don't understand this strategy. The 5 judges that upheld the ACA are still on the court, and I don't think they're likely to see the removal of the individual mandate as a good faith change. There's a deeper question here. Can a law found constitutional be purposefully changed so that it is unconstitutional and struck down by a court?

The GOP were literally unable to repeal the ACA, so now they want the courts to do it for them. I don't see how that wouldn't be insulting to Roberts intelligence and make him want to flip his vote. The GOP who are the major complainers about legislating through the courts are blatantly using the courts to drive their legislative agenda.

arebelspy

  • Administrator
  • Senior Mustachian
  • *****
  • Posts: 28444
  • Age: -997
  • Location: Seattle, WA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6695 on: March 28, 2019, 08:45:18 AM »
At what point do we allow people who refuse to listen to logic keep trolling under the idea of allowing diverse viewpoints, and how much do we let them ruin forum threads?

Asking for a friend.

I found the point.

It was somewhere up there. ^^^

I am a former teacher who accumulated a bunch of real estate, retired at 29, spent some time traveling the world full time and am now settled with three kids.
If you want to know more about me, this Business Insider profile tells the story pretty well.
I (rarely) blog at AdventuringAlong.com. Check out the Now page to see what I'm up to currently.

Lews Therin

  • CMTO 2023 Attendees
  • Magnum Stache
  • *
  • Posts: 3883
  • Age: 34
  • Location: Gatineau
  • Fee-only Financial Planner
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6696 on: March 28, 2019, 08:52:49 AM »
At what point do we allow people who refuse to listen to logic keep trolling under the idea of allowing diverse viewpoints, and how much do we let them ruin forum threads?

Asking for a friend.

I found the point.

It was somewhere up there. ^^^

before the single person who`s personal AD experience means he knows better than the government intelligence agencies?

nereo

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 17472
  • Location: Just south of Canada
    • Here's how you can support science today:
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6697 on: March 28, 2019, 09:12:05 AM »
The commerce department has revised last quarter's growth down to 2.2% (from 2.6%).  This puts the 2018 GDP at +2.9%, a touch shy of the 3-4% target the WH had forecasted, but up from 2.2% the year prior.

More worrisome is that growth slowed for the third straight quarter. The next few quarters' growth will likely influence how many candidates will structure their campaign.

sherr

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1541
  • Age: 38
  • Location: North Carolina, USA
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6698 on: March 28, 2019, 09:19:00 AM »
Trump's wading back into the healthcare space, saying he is optimistic that the 5th district courts will strike down the ACA and then the supreme court will concur.
He's promising that the GOP will have an 'incredible plan' this time, but of course he gives no specifics.

Given the GOP couldn't get a repeal bill through with control of both chambers of congress this seems like a tall ask. Seems more designed to pander and divide than improve overall opinions of this administration.  I'm guessing this pushes infrastructure bill(s) off the burner (again).
I suppose I’ll take comfort in his inability to act like a statesman and garner support for his political ideas. I’ll have to trust that the courts can be independent enough to hold up the ACA. Sigh.

I don't understand this strategy. The 5 judges that upheld the ACA are still on the court, and I don't think they're likely to see the removal of the individual mandate as a good faith change. There's a deeper question here. Can a law found constitutional be purposefully changed so that it is unconstitutional and struck down by a court?

I'm not a lawyer or anything, but I expect the ACA to be upheld again. "Yeah okay the penalty was a constitutional tax, but then we set it to $0 so now it's not a tax any more and that invalidates the whole law" is just... not very convincing. If it's "not a tax" just because it's $0 then it's also "not a penalty" for the same reason and there is no problem. Also even if there is a problem there's no reason they have to strike down the whole law for that reason, just remove the bit about the penalty which has been completely neutered anyway.

As far as strategy goes I don't think there's much to understand. They failed to actually legislate, so now they're grasping at straws with a vague hope of fulfilling campaign promises.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2019, 09:23:10 AM by sherr »

JLee

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7509
Re: So Let's Speculate about the Future of a Full Trump Presidency...
« Reply #6699 on: March 28, 2019, 09:19:51 AM »
https://np.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/b5yr21/george_conway_mueller_report_must_have_something/ejhapfj/

That is an interesting read - I thought Barr had used quite specific wording, so I'm glad to see an analysis by someone more articulate than myself.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!