How political data teams game Google to fool people(pastemagazine.com)
pastemagazine.com
How political data teams game Google to fool people
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/how-the-trump-russia-data-machine-games-google-to.html
76 comments
> As someone who has been on the publication side of digital media: Never ascribe to propaganda what you can explain by greed.
It's been pretty crazy to see how many of the frothing right-wing fake-news sites are created by (nominal) leftists. Humankind's a real piece of work.
It's been pretty crazy to see how many of the frothing right-wing fake-news sites are created by (nominal) leftists. Humankind's a real piece of work.
>As someone who has been on the publication side of digital media: Never ascribe to propaganda what you can explain by greed.
A great documentary on the interplay between investigative journalism, government lies, and infotainment (greed based media guised as "news" or "journalism" is
All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of IF Stone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_cKC0_sGu0
A great documentary on the interplay between investigative journalism, government lies, and infotainment (greed based media guised as "news" or "journalism" is
All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of IF Stone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_cKC0_sGu0
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Lies in the service of greed are a form of propaganda.
Lies in the service of getting an extra 10 seconds of viewer engagement aren't.
Propaganda and greed are hardly mutually exclusive.
So ..... regulation? That;s going to be an uphill struggle given how international the industry is.
I suppose that's a variation of Hanlon's razor, but this isn't a rule of thumb situation. They are winning at gaming the biggest source of information, which shouldn't be hapenning regardless of their motivations.
Who is "they"? The people who own the top slots of the news today aren't the ones who did 6 months ago. The sites I was running are making less than $20 a month, at their best they were making $500 a day (lasted all of one week during the primaries) and even then I make more at my day job. I'll never do it again because I have better options, but it was an education to see my bullshit stories picked up by top shelf news organizations.
How do you propose to stop people like me from taking over the news? Rely on someone like Murdoch to keep us safe from fake news? Have an official news network from the US government that only publishes verified news? One from Google? Facebook? Comcast?
Let the bullshit bubble and froth, it's sound and fury signifying nothing. Any cure I've ever herd put forward is worse than the disease.
How do you propose to stop people like me from taking over the news? Rely on someone like Murdoch to keep us safe from fake news? Have an official news network from the US government that only publishes verified news? One from Google? Facebook? Comcast?
Let the bullshit bubble and froth, it's sound and fury signifying nothing. Any cure I've ever herd put forward is worse than the disease.
Your points are valid, but I'm not sure about the strategy. It would definitely make sense for left wing adversaries to use the same techniques, ending in total media pollution. Even if that helps everyone distinguish fact from spin, Google's mission would inevitably have to shift towards estimating the credibility of such organized mis-information.
> Why aren’t Democrats paying people to do this kind of thing with the truth? No idea. None. They can do it, just like that other company crushed us, but they haven’t learned.
As a casual observer, it certainly does seem like the political right in America has consistently been more willing and eager to bend the rules of the information game - up to and including willfully propagating falsehoods. This has at a minimum been repeatedly evidenced over the last 20 years, first in cable news and now online.
Is the solution - as the OP implies - for the left / center left to adopt the same dirty tactics as their counterparts? Is there any alternative? I'm sure every rational individual (a group in which I hope to include myself), would really just prefer if everyone started behaving like adults and returned to discussing issues in what at least looks like good faith. Is that at this point a pipe dream?
As a casual observer, it certainly does seem like the political right in America has consistently been more willing and eager to bend the rules of the information game - up to and including willfully propagating falsehoods. This has at a minimum been repeatedly evidenced over the last 20 years, first in cable news and now online.
Is the solution - as the OP implies - for the left / center left to adopt the same dirty tactics as their counterparts? Is there any alternative? I'm sure every rational individual (a group in which I hope to include myself), would really just prefer if everyone started behaving like adults and returned to discussing issues in what at least looks like good faith. Is that at this point a pipe dream?
If you really think the right-wing republican community is the only group spreading distortions/falsehoods then I'd say youre less casual of an observer than youre claiming.
> If you really think the right-wing republican community is the only group spreading distortions/falsehoods
First of all, you mis-read my comment. At no point did I claim the political right had a monopoly on disseminating misinformation.
Secondly, even though this (and just about everything else) can be spun as a case of "both sides do it / both sides are bad / all sides are bad / etc", there is an obvious difference of scale & magnitude - and scale matters. In modern political American discourse it's clear who more consistently disseminates misinformation, and - as this piece indicates - who is more effective at doing so.
First of all, you mis-read my comment. At no point did I claim the political right had a monopoly on disseminating misinformation.
Secondly, even though this (and just about everything else) can be spun as a case of "both sides do it / both sides are bad / all sides are bad / etc", there is an obvious difference of scale & magnitude - and scale matters. In modern political American discourse it's clear who more consistently disseminates misinformation, and - as this piece indicates - who is more effective at doing so.
Scale matters for results not morality.
Cool- I suppose dropping a 1 kg object on someone's head is morally equivalent to dropping a 1000 kg object on someone's head. It's really only a matter of scale.
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If you tell a big enough lie often enough, people start to believe it.
Maybe you didn't do it on purpose, but yours is a "Straw man argument": "A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man"."
The original comment never claimed that "the right-wing republican community is the only group spreading distortions/falsehoods". As far as I understand, it claims that it is the right-wing that has embraced it to a wider extent. And that is something that we have seen in late elections and referendums.
The original comment never claimed that "the right-wing republican community is the only group spreading distortions/falsehoods". As far as I understand, it claims that it is the right-wing that has embraced it to a wider extent. And that is something that we have seen in late elections and referendums.
Maybe you didn't do it on purpose, but what you are doing is called nitpicking.
> nouninformal > fussy or pedantic fault-finding. > "nitpicking over tiny details"
> As far as I understand, it claims that it is the right-wing that has embraced it to a wider extent. And that is something that we have seen in late elections and referendums.
The original paragraph: "Is the solution - as the OP implies - for the left / center left to adopt the same dirty tactics as their counterparts? Is there any alternative?"
Clearly implies that according to the op, the left have yet to adopt the "dirty tactics".
> nouninformal > fussy or pedantic fault-finding. > "nitpicking over tiny details"
> As far as I understand, it claims that it is the right-wing that has embraced it to a wider extent. And that is something that we have seen in late elections and referendums.
The original paragraph: "Is the solution - as the OP implies - for the left / center left to adopt the same dirty tactics as their counterparts? Is there any alternative?"
Clearly implies that according to the op, the left have yet to adopt the "dirty tactics".
The problem is that the tactics work best for fake stories, because they can be pre-loaded and coordinated. True news is worked out between competing outlets and breaks messily.
Fake stories are also quicker to write. Truth requires careful research, which takes time. Fake news can be written as fast as fingers can strike the keyboard.
Fake stories can be tuned for maximal appeal to people's existing opinions, preconceptions and prejudices. Truth has a habit of telling us things other than what we want to hear.
Fake stories can be tuned for maximal appeal to people's existing opinions, preconceptions and prejudices. Truth has a habit of telling us things other than what we want to hear.
Like the gender wage gap? (invented by the left, turns out to be a conscious misinterpretation of statistics)
whitemale(1)
A lot of the right wing "propaganda" is not coordinated by any central apparatus. The people running many of these sites are opportunists who understand that the "alt right" is a firehose of traffic, and set up sites purely to make money from ads.
The idea that there is some evil mastermind group behind the media blitz is laughable and only further demonstrates the misunderstanding the democrats have. ("The Russians hacked the election!!11!!") Fact is, where there's traffic, there's advertising revenue. Setting up a "news site" and blasting it across twitter, The_Donald, etc can be very profitable. Profit is the main incentive here.
The idea that there is some evil mastermind group behind the media blitz is laughable and only further demonstrates the misunderstanding the democrats have. ("The Russians hacked the election!!11!!") Fact is, where there's traffic, there's advertising revenue. Setting up a "news site" and blasting it across twitter, The_Donald, etc can be very profitable. Profit is the main incentive here.
"Left wing media" lost me a few years ago to no credit of "Right wing media". They're shamelessly embracing polarization and every time I decide to take another peek at it, it seems it's sunken further.
Journalism is broken, completely broken, and as long as people are trying to figure out how to fling mud at other publications rather than rise above the sea of trash they'll keep losing to ever less credible sources.
Journalism is broken, completely broken, and as long as people are trying to figure out how to fling mud at other publications rather than rise above the sea of trash they'll keep losing to ever less credible sources.
> as long as people are trying to figure out how to fling mud at other publications
And that's half of what this article boils down to, "as if these websites are above these". Google rankings for one story - the author is very specific in fetching that story - aren't going to strictly follow alexa rankings of entire websites. I can see pro-trump users clicking "No evidence of trump-russia collaboration" much more commonly than people who don't want to believe it is true. The author is onto something very believable, but he doesn't so much have evidence as whining.
And that's half of what this article boils down to, "as if these websites are above these". Google rankings for one story - the author is very specific in fetching that story - aren't going to strictly follow alexa rankings of entire websites. I can see pro-trump users clicking "No evidence of trump-russia collaboration" much more commonly than people who don't want to believe it is true. The author is onto something very believable, but he doesn't so much have evidence as whining.
From TFA:
> Now let’s see exactly what’s up here. Together, we’re going to Google the phrase “trump no evidence collusion.” (And because Google searches change over time, I’ll drop screenshots of my results here.) What will emerge is a picture of an invisible hand writing a specific argument, over and over and over. That hand belongs to Robert Mercer, Trump’s data man, who gamed Google and fake news during the campaign and whose return to the scene is heralded by Trump’s war room and bot boom. If you want, you can read more about this crazyAF, richAF, crackpot genius with a heart of shit.
> Before we begin, though, we need to establish the fact that this statement is a lie: “There’s no evidence of collusion!” The reason I’m using this specific example is because this highly nuanced claim is the perfect loophole to exploit for misinformation, to shade the truth as lie and get away with it clean.
> The truth: no one in the intelligence community and no one on any of the Congressional committees looking into this thing, be they Democrat or Republican, none of them have said categorically, flat-out, “There is no evidence of collusion.” Period. People investigating the case will only go so far as to say they haven’t seen any evidence. Or that there hasn’t been any evidence made available to them yet. But they don’t ever say there flat-out isn’t any evidence of collusion. Ever. Read this if you don’t believe me.
Maybe I misread/skimmed the article, or misunderstood the premise, but are these statements not more or less guilty of the same thing? Most any left-leaning (or at least anti-Trump) person I know is highly certain that Trump/Russia collusion is a fact, despite (as far as I know) no hard evidence being found. So to my mind, accusing pro-Trump people of being intellectually dishonest by saying "There’s no evidence of collusion!" is at least as great of a crime as whatever it is the pro-Trump side is doing. When we have reporting 24x7 on numerous news networks and casual news shows like the Daily Show repeating the Trump-Rusia story ad nauseum, stating the correct (is it not?) fact that no hard evidence of Trump/Russia collusion has so far at least been found seems like the lesser of two crimes. (Being pedantic, it is actually a true statement as far as the public record is concerned, based on my understanding).
But them maybe I'm misunderstanding.
If one wants to see something truly illuminating, set aside a few hours some evening, go on YouTube and watch some Noam Chomsky interviews, especially the more recent ones. Indeed I'm sure my mind is biased, but what you will see, albeit skewed by Noam's political leanings, is pretty damning to both sides. The hypocrisy of Americans being so incredibly morally outraged at election tampering is probably one of the biggest recurring gems you will come across, this whole thing borders on hilarious if you take off your partisan hat and actually think about it.
About the only thing I feel quite confident about, is that anyone who has very strong leanings to one side or the other is likely wrong (compared to the actual omniscient truth).
> Now let’s see exactly what’s up here. Together, we’re going to Google the phrase “trump no evidence collusion.” (And because Google searches change over time, I’ll drop screenshots of my results here.) What will emerge is a picture of an invisible hand writing a specific argument, over and over and over. That hand belongs to Robert Mercer, Trump’s data man, who gamed Google and fake news during the campaign and whose return to the scene is heralded by Trump’s war room and bot boom. If you want, you can read more about this crazyAF, richAF, crackpot genius with a heart of shit.
> Before we begin, though, we need to establish the fact that this statement is a lie: “There’s no evidence of collusion!” The reason I’m using this specific example is because this highly nuanced claim is the perfect loophole to exploit for misinformation, to shade the truth as lie and get away with it clean.
> The truth: no one in the intelligence community and no one on any of the Congressional committees looking into this thing, be they Democrat or Republican, none of them have said categorically, flat-out, “There is no evidence of collusion.” Period. People investigating the case will only go so far as to say they haven’t seen any evidence. Or that there hasn’t been any evidence made available to them yet. But they don’t ever say there flat-out isn’t any evidence of collusion. Ever. Read this if you don’t believe me.
Maybe I misread/skimmed the article, or misunderstood the premise, but are these statements not more or less guilty of the same thing? Most any left-leaning (or at least anti-Trump) person I know is highly certain that Trump/Russia collusion is a fact, despite (as far as I know) no hard evidence being found. So to my mind, accusing pro-Trump people of being intellectually dishonest by saying "There’s no evidence of collusion!" is at least as great of a crime as whatever it is the pro-Trump side is doing. When we have reporting 24x7 on numerous news networks and casual news shows like the Daily Show repeating the Trump-Rusia story ad nauseum, stating the correct (is it not?) fact that no hard evidence of Trump/Russia collusion has so far at least been found seems like the lesser of two crimes. (Being pedantic, it is actually a true statement as far as the public record is concerned, based on my understanding).
But them maybe I'm misunderstanding.
If one wants to see something truly illuminating, set aside a few hours some evening, go on YouTube and watch some Noam Chomsky interviews, especially the more recent ones. Indeed I'm sure my mind is biased, but what you will see, albeit skewed by Noam's political leanings, is pretty damning to both sides. The hypocrisy of Americans being so incredibly morally outraged at election tampering is probably one of the biggest recurring gems you will come across, this whole thing borders on hilarious if you take off your partisan hat and actually think about it.
About the only thing I feel quite confident about, is that anyone who has very strong leanings to one side or the other is likely wrong (compared to the actual omniscient truth).
You pay for your news, though, right? Like, you subscribe to publications whose reporting meets your standards, and you don't run an ad-blocker when reading them online?
Because if you aren't willing to pay for responsible news, you shouldn't be surprised when it stops appearing.
Because if you aren't willing to pay for responsible news, you shouldn't be surprised when it stops appearing.
It's not like CNN is getting money from cable companies and enjoys highly monetizable audience attention, right?
I agree. They have been "post-truth" long before they labeled their rivals with it.
> Trump gets two scoops of Ice Cream
> Anderson Cooper reads best covfefe tweets
> HowAreWeLosing.png
The country has recently elected who's arguably their most controversial president ever, who is making fishy weapons deals with the only country in present day to prohibit women from driving and putting guys like Rothschild's Wilbur Ross in his cabinet, and we're talking about FREAKING ICE CREAM SCOOPS and TYPOES?
> Anderson Cooper reads best covfefe tweets
> HowAreWeLosing.png
The country has recently elected who's arguably their most controversial president ever, who is making fishy weapons deals with the only country in present day to prohibit women from driving and putting guys like Rothschild's Wilbur Ross in his cabinet, and we're talking about FREAKING ICE CREAM SCOOPS and TYPOES?
Why does Google prioritize freshness so much? In some domains (i.e. Tech developments), freshness is very important.
But in most, old content (the classics) is likely to be better than most new content.
But in most, old content (the classics) is likely to be better than most new content.
To me, this seems like one of those issues that's easy for a human to parse, but hard for a computer. For example:
* Terrorist attack in London
* Terrorist attacks in London
The only difference is the plural. However, the first is probably time-sensitive, looking for the most recent attack that's in the news right now. The second is more general.
* Terrorist attack in London
* Terrorist attacks in London
The only difference is the plural. However, the first is probably time-sensitive, looking for the most recent attack that's in the news right now. The second is more general.
Those categories are fast whittling down, as the terrorist attacks are now apparently a weekly occurrence.
The thing that scares me the most, let's say Trump IS impeached. Not outside the realm of possibility. This group of people, they literally live in a different reality, and in their reality this impeachment would be a coup.
People don't just silently stand by when that happens. This is a heavily armed group of people, who's been "riled" up for literally years. Go to their discussions about the "free speech rallies" online. Look up based stickman. A lot of people are eager.
When the stakes reach the climax, we could see this "information" war turn into a real life war. Conspiracies, whether right or wrong, play HUGE roles in significant parts of history.
People don't just silently stand by when that happens. This is a heavily armed group of people, who's been "riled" up for literally years. Go to their discussions about the "free speech rallies" online. Look up based stickman. A lot of people are eager.
When the stakes reach the climax, we could see this "information" war turn into a real life war. Conspiracies, whether right or wrong, play HUGE roles in significant parts of history.
This is not new or unique. According to Wikipedia, "Google bomb" was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2005.[1] The first instance I remember was "miserable failure" linking to Bush 43's biography.. so probably not Republicans.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb
The UK has the concept, at least for televised news, of "Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy and Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions" [1]. I know the US loves its first amendment, but such a law could really help to have better televised debates and opinion programs on cable news (I'm obviously thinking of Fox News, but the problem exists for the other news channels). Other European-inspired laws like no political ads or limited amount of money spent during the campaign [2] would also help to have a better political environment.
[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/86307/b... [2] Still can't understand Citizens United with my European point of view
[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/86307/b... [2] Still can't understand Citizens United with my European point of view
I am wondering why for factual statements like X is Y that are provable as false can't the entity damaged by the publication ask for a retraction and/or damages ? As a person if you denigrate other person you are in trouble.
Mechanisms exist - they just don't work.
For one thing, you can convert any false story into a not-provably-false story by appending 'a twitterstorm has erupted over' or 'a highly placed anonymous source has claimed'
You can also host false info with impunity by allowing user-submitted content, and ensuring users can recreate deleted content faster than you respond to complaints.
Another option is to run a story 'giving both sides of the controversy' but giving the false info 95% of the airtime.
Yet another is to simply not run stories on up-to-date facts you don't like, in favour of restating old-but-true stories that fit the narrative you prefer.
For another thing, even if a story is provably false, forcing someone unwilling to retract or pay damages can be extremely time-consuming. Court cases can go on for weeks and months; the stories about Clapper the article mentions have most of their impact while they're only a few hours old.
For another, thanks to the Streisand effect, if Joe sues Newsco over their false claim that X, he can look forward to several months of stories about "Joe sues Newsco over X claims"
I'm not sure there are any easy solutions here - ain't many people going to be coming out in support of making it easier for politicians to muzzle the press.
For one thing, you can convert any false story into a not-provably-false story by appending 'a twitterstorm has erupted over' or 'a highly placed anonymous source has claimed'
You can also host false info with impunity by allowing user-submitted content, and ensuring users can recreate deleted content faster than you respond to complaints.
Another option is to run a story 'giving both sides of the controversy' but giving the false info 95% of the airtime.
Yet another is to simply not run stories on up-to-date facts you don't like, in favour of restating old-but-true stories that fit the narrative you prefer.
For another thing, even if a story is provably false, forcing someone unwilling to retract or pay damages can be extremely time-consuming. Court cases can go on for weeks and months; the stories about Clapper the article mentions have most of their impact while they're only a few hours old.
For another, thanks to the Streisand effect, if Joe sues Newsco over their false claim that X, he can look forward to several months of stories about "Joe sues Newsco over X claims"
I'm not sure there are any easy solutions here - ain't many people going to be coming out in support of making it easier for politicians to muzzle the press.
Daily Mail and its ilk often write statements like "Twitter users were outraged after reports that Mr Celebrity X shoved a hamster up his arse". They don't say Mr Celebrity X actually did it, just that Twitter users were outraged over reports that he had done so. I'm sure there's a legal distinction in there that means they're still in the wrong, but I don't know how the consequences differ.
The classic tabloid approach is, blatant lie on the front page, followed by small print retraction a week later on page 17. That's assuming that someone is libelled; a lot of media lying doesn't libel anyone. For instance, "no evidence of global warming" is obviously a lie, but no one is libelled.
Some media (many British tabloids, for instance) essentially considers being sued for libel part of the cost of doing business; they make more money lying than they're forced to pay out over lies.
Some media (many British tabloids, for instance) essentially considers being sued for libel part of the cost of doing business; they make more money lying than they're forced to pay out over lies.
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." -Mark Twain
"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after" - Jonathon Swift
http://www.bartleby.com/209/633.html
http://www.bartleby.com/209/633.html
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Well if you google for "no evidence collusion", and if you get evidence for collusion there is something wrong with the algorithm don't you think?
>the way those results are ordered isn’t exactly organic. Alexa ranks the NYT at 120 globally; WaPo at 190. Now, what about the illustrious townhall.com, which had not one but two hits on page one? It’s ranked at 9,109. In other words, those first four pages (four full pages of synchronized bullshit) are evidence of a massive and centrally managed strategic misinformation campaign being waged on your brain.
Granted.
>These dozens of sites are all peddling the same lie...
Uh, the headlines provided range from "No evidence of trump-russia collusion" (page 1) all the way to... "lack of evidence on trump-russia collusion" (page 4).
>If you read closely (which they’re betting you won’t) they all include the proper, honest caveats: no evidence YET; no one says they’ve SEEN evidence; etc.
The jump from that, to "No evidence" in the headline, is the most humdrum of spin used in every media article written every day, it's the background noise of journalism.
You're onto something big, don't mire your articles in blue tribe whining.
Granted.
>These dozens of sites are all peddling the same lie...
Uh, the headlines provided range from "No evidence of trump-russia collusion" (page 1) all the way to... "lack of evidence on trump-russia collusion" (page 4).
>If you read closely (which they’re betting you won’t) they all include the proper, honest caveats: no evidence YET; no one says they’ve SEEN evidence; etc.
The jump from that, to "No evidence" in the headline, is the most humdrum of spin used in every media article written every day, it's the background noise of journalism.
You're onto something big, don't mire your articles in blue tribe whining.
[deleted]
maskirovka has been used for centuries. The fact is, the internet makes it as easy for someone with a youtube channel on the other side of the world to be more effective at disseminating disinformation as a state sponsored newspaper in the 1920s.
If the WWW is to remain unregulated, then get used to it.
If the WWW is to remain unregulated, then get used to it.
It was used to great effect after the American Revolutionary war. Competing presses would print all manner of slander against monarchist and anti-monarchist factions, seeking to impact public opinion.
I hope everyone is keeping in mind that constant conversion + more traffic = more users.
Yep. This is no different than any marketing campaign. Trump builds the product, and people set up websites "selling" it.
I've been in marketing a long time, and everything I've seen reinforces my cynical view that people are nothing but a bunch of sheep waiting to be herded. As a convoluted example, consider the fact that simply changing the color or position of a button on a webpage can measurably alter the rate of people who click on it. Looking at it this way, one begins to wonder when free will ends and conformity begins.
I've been in marketing a long time, and everything I've seen reinforces my cynical view that people are nothing but a bunch of sheep waiting to be herded. As a convoluted example, consider the fact that simply changing the color or position of a button on a webpage can measurably alter the rate of people who click on it. Looking at it this way, one begins to wonder when free will ends and conformity begins.
Nigritude ultramarine, but for control of the United States of America.
the only thing Russia hacked was how stupid Americans are and how addicted they are to using quick quotes to signal a false intelligence... so that's on us. As far as the DNC... those emails should be public from the moment they are sent. All government emails should reside on a public searchable database... content is king.
from Australia, I'm seeing the credible results on the first page (both logged in and incognito), how does it look from elsewhere? Has Google already tweaked their algorithm?
Why has the title been changed from the original "How the Trump-Russia Data Machine Games Google to Fool Americans"?
OP here. I didn't submit this because of politics, but because the validity of Google's search engine results is something that may concern the community. The takeaway here might be that until Google does something about this, you are being overtaken by the competitor with more recent updates, spread through a number of online properties. For instance: Hashicorp could try to improve traffic by moving all their product blogs to their respective domains. I'll add that despite Google's attention to Black hat SEO throughout the years, identifying these types of affiliations is an open problem, perhaps not that critical for a functioning search engine (until gaming starts to skew the results). So maybe that's somehing we'll have to take into consideration for years to come.
Fair enough. Underneath the political slant it sounds like there is a good SEO article trying to get out.
Because it implies that Trump and Russia are somehow parts of the same evil rightwing-shilling machine. That meme is getting ridiculous.
It was ridiculous to begin with.
How about accepting that a good 20% of the population are religious republican nuts, and a good 20%+ were not particularly feeling like voting for the established candidates once more (because of lost jobs, prospects, the feeling of a country changing in ways the don't like, etc), but rather vote Trump and see the world burn? And that they were distributed in a winning way, even if some "full democratic" states had a few million more Clinton supporters?
Whether Russians leaked the emails (which is quite unlikely), that is inconsequential as far as the vote is concerned. The momentum was there from a year before, and Trump had marched on and on already (not to mention few even heard or cared about those).
Now, if Trump's circle tried to make some bucks with Russian deals (like e.g. Bush Jr. made with Saudi deals and connections before and after the elections), that's something else.
The most hopeful thing from a Trump presidency (since obviously in internal affairs he would be a republican wrecking ball) was whether he would stop the warmongering and interventionism that's been a constant for decades. And of course, established Democrats and Republicans only push him towards not doing that, to keep the military machine going, and even applaud him whenever he puts his marching boots on.
How about accepting that a good 20% of the population are religious republican nuts, and a good 20%+ were not particularly feeling like voting for the established candidates once more (because of lost jobs, prospects, the feeling of a country changing in ways the don't like, etc), but rather vote Trump and see the world burn? And that they were distributed in a winning way, even if some "full democratic" states had a few million more Clinton supporters?
Whether Russians leaked the emails (which is quite unlikely), that is inconsequential as far as the vote is concerned. The momentum was there from a year before, and Trump had marched on and on already (not to mention few even heard or cared about those).
Now, if Trump's circle tried to make some bucks with Russian deals (like e.g. Bush Jr. made with Saudi deals and connections before and after the elections), that's something else.
The most hopeful thing from a Trump presidency (since obviously in internal affairs he would be a republican wrecking ball) was whether he would stop the warmongering and interventionism that's been a constant for decades. And of course, established Democrats and Republicans only push him towards not doing that, to keep the military machine going, and even applaud him whenever he puts his marching boots on.
There doesn't have to be an organized conspiracy between them for there to be a problem. There is a suggestion that both have used similar tactics to gain power [1] and that this is the kind of thing showing up in the Google results.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation#A_World_Wit...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation#A_World_Wit...
Given that it's under active investigation, "meme" might be wrong word.
Like WMDs were under active investigation, with agencies checking on them, the NYT, CNN and other "serious" outlets informing the public about them, and even a whole war (and tons of lives lost, not to mention a trillion dollars spent) was justified on their presence?
Yeah, "BS excuse of large part of the establishment for their own incompetence and disconnect" would be a better moniker.
Yeah, "BS excuse of large part of the establishment for their own incompetence and disconnect" would be a better moniker.
Which investigation?
Oh you mean the investigation that hasn't found one shred of real evidence after spending untold millions basically as a Trump witch-hunt?
there sure are a lot of very vocal people who seem to wish it was a meme.... hmmm....
Yeah, I've flagged the story.
News is fundamentally broken, all those sites linking to each other are probably doing it to increase the "trending" part of the news which will push all of them up the google rankings.
The reason why Russians, and Eastern Europeans in general, are more highly represented as owners of these places is because the cost of living is so low there. That you make $2,000 from add revenue in the US would mean you can afford to eat out a few more times a month. When you can do the same thing in a country where this is double the average wage you can spend all your time doing it and be better off than if you tried doing anything else.