Most of my political info comes from non-social media outlets.

And I did not buy into the "Bernie Boy" BS or the Pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine crap posted here on DU.

Nope

Where was Agent Mike?

I wonder if we can try facing reality in these parts after today's indictments.

Or maybe Mueller is wrong and it's a hoax

Wasn't aware we had any here or that "warnings" we given out for posting.

In fact, I was frantic to vote and to get that motherfucker out of my life...and I was not alone, was I?!?

Oy

The claim ignored so much information that put that claim to bed.

I am disappointed that so many younger people bought into that nonsense.

Hillary. No way was I influenced by this bile propaganda. Hillary was robbed and so was the nation. To a certain extent the world was, too. I to the candidate that won the popular vote, by a lot!

But, I’m not one of the people who was susceptible to the propaganda.

There wasn't anyone else running that I would EVER consider voting for.

and as it turns out, I was correct in thinking that.

I would expect from sincere progressives. His base was infiltrated and acted like it.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

My friend was one of them.

Link to tweet

Why didn't I vote for her in the primary ?

It built up during her tenure as SOS.
After we clearly made a mistake of invading Iraq she pushed for aiding in the over throw of Gaddafi and his government in Libya, another fiasco that has caused unintended consequences. I was watching the news when Gaddafi was caught and they showed him getting his brains blown out on CNN. Then Hillary was interviewed and said "We came, we saw, he died, and laughed loudly with this maniacal look on her face.
That was major turning point for me. No more interventioness policies. There are around a million civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and around a half a million in Syria who are dead + millions of refugees from these.conflicts. The financial toll for them is also staggering and has hamstrung us for decades to come.

Her accepting a quarter of a million dollars for 40 minute speeches to Goldman Sach after she stepped down was another reason.

So were her stances while in office on global fracking, the Keystone Pipeline and a hoist of other issues.

Russian bots had no bearing my opinions.

That’s why Republicans targeted her with Benghazi. To drive those numbers down.

Anyway just adding that, because it is part of the history of 2016.

However Libya was a clusterf,ck and not a positive of her tenure for. me. The email server was unwise and it opened her up for scrutiny but I thought that there was nothing there and the republicans investigation coming up with squat appear to prove that out.

However what they were doing operating in a lightly guarded consulate near the border where known insurgent groups were know to operate after the fall of the Libyan government is hard to figure.

To the larger point, I agreed with Sanders that her foreign policy decision as a Senator and SOS were poor. Not just poor, catastrophic .

Heck Bernie was a Democrat for about only a year!!!

People who vote Democratic, may not be Democrats in the consistent sense of the word. I think a portion of Sanders supporters were independents.

Maybe they didn't know it, but these opinions were being echoed and magnified by the Russian bots.

for years, decades. Not into social media, no fool, longtime democratic voter, have seen both at events, the final choice was clear. Missed the 'Obama Boys,' whoa.

and voted for Bernie in this last primary and voted for Hillary in the general. I also voted for Jimmy Carter, Mike Dukakis, Bill Twice and John Kerry.

Russian influence had nothing to do with my vote at any time.

fan

I do not have any active social media accounts. I do have a Twitter account (viewing only), but I follow mostly mainstream sources (e.g. no Mensch-like nutters).

I try to make a point of calling out/alerting on right-wing sources, questionable sources and content farm sources on DU.

For transparency: voted for Bernie in the primaries, voted for Hillary in the general. No regrets.

I base my no response on knowing there was meddling and still have no doubt of my choices.

I'm certain I saw the divisive memes and quite possibly had interaction with some operatives in discussions at various websites. I base my decisions on platforms, speeches and so on, not memes or even advocates on DU

Why do people call these operatives bots? A bot is an automatically responding software driven thing.

After watching the first debate she declared she was going to vote for Hillary because she thought Trump came across as a buffoon. But she read posts and articles on Facebook, listened to her father who watched just Fox News and who hung around other older people who only watched Fox News and decided she couldn't vote for Hillary and was going back to voting for Trump. Now she's sorry she did so.

I was with Hillary all the way. In the primaries, here on DU and in the General.

so sorry

As for Facebook posts, some of them were probably genuine. Not every denunciation of Hillary Clinton came from a Russian troll.

It's hard to know how many votes were swung by Russian involvement -- at least, I haven't seen any good data about it, and I don't know how there could be.

Voted for Bill, Al Gore, John Kerry, President Obama, and, our wonderful, Hillary.

isn't the point of ads, and messaging to be subtle enough that one thinks they were in charge of decision, and not that they were weak willed enough to be swayed by the advertising?

If not for a proven track record, all of those social psych studies, all those billions in advertising would be a waste. Trust me, if it didn't work, they wouldn't have been doing it. Interesting thing about on line social manipulation...for a person who may be teetering on a decision, or is uninformed, crowding and group think will often tilt the final decision.

I voted for Bernie in the primary because of a whole lot of things that are in the public record. I didn't need any Russians to tell me about aspects of U.S. politics that I'd been observing for years.

I'm not on Twitter and I seldom visit my Facebook account. On Facebook, I have some leftist friends who, in the general-election campaign, were denouncing Hillary Clinton and praising Jill Stein. I also have one right-wing friend who was posting a lot of pro-Trump stuff. I can be sure that none of these posts influenced my vote because I voted for Clinton.

There were lots of inflammatory posts here during the primary and GE.

Just wanted to know if anyone took the fetid Putin bait.

And back my opinions with verifiable facts. Led me straight to Hillary

And I know several women IRL who ended up believing the shit peddled about Hillary. I don't know who they voted for, because I stopped talking to them. It's heartbreaking.

I liked Bernie's platform. I still like it for the most part.

I prefer his platform over Hillary's platform.

However, I had to admit to myself in early 2017 that I fell for some of the fake news, and that I followed along with some of the totally baseless anti Hillary stuff and – to be honest – enjoyed some of the spectacle against Hillary with hopes to see Bernie win the primary. I feel really dumb and ashamed now, but: It was entertaining at the time.

Of course I was hoping for a Hillary win in the general election. Nobody in his right mind should be supporting Trump. I felt terrible once I realized that I was fooled into some Hillary bashing during the primaries. But I only realized that after the election. I do hope that didn't influence even a single US voter, since I only posted on German sites at the time.

Sorry. I hope I have learned my lesson and will try to be a responsible person when it comes to politics in the future. Fake news, disinformation and Internet propaganda in social networks is incredibly dangerous for the average "I'm interested in politics" voter like myself. I never expected to fall for those cheap tricks, but I did.

because of the persistent trolling and the toxic environment created by people responding to it and then getting paranoid about genuine differences of opinion.

So it didn't influence my vote but it limited the extent to which I was willing to invest time in political discussions.

have been revealed as indictable fact. Bunch of (B.S.) if you ask me!

were most certainly fucked with..we didn't go from blue blue to RED legally.....they have been cheating since 2010 here.

probably due to suppression and voting machines (and Scott Walker and all of his machinations) than it is anything else.

Voted for Clinton and know you can't believe something just because it shows up somewhere on the internet.

who definitely were affected by all their shenanigans and propaganda.

I almost wore myself out trying to counter their constant repetition and dissemination of what I thought were right wing talking points but now I know were pushed on them by Russian trolls.

Same here. 'No', that is.

However it is quite problematic.
Propaganda works. Vast resources and study dedicated to it.
The methods of modern influence campaigns are knowable.
Once known, in my opinion the OP's question reveals itself to be faulty.

I voted Bernie in the primary, Hillary in general.
I now am almost convinced the Bernie bullies were foreign operatives.
I also think it worked to divide.

Faulty?

No so much.

Good for you. I am too, so good for me.

I think I understand the purpose of the question now.
It is to pat ourselves on the back and say how smart we are.

Okay.

It is still just as faulty, if the query were to examine an honest appraisal.


Let me type plainly. By asking this question, it undercuts the overall argument that such a thing is possible.
Don't believe me? This is exactly the reply a Trumpet or Stein or 'Bernie Bro' might say. Heck it is standard.
I know a few people who bought into the bullshit. It works.

Faulty- save for back patting, and thats okay. Have fun.

How many voters were influenced? To vote one or another or not to vote at all. Impossible to say...SOME were influenced...no question.

And if 100,000 were influenced in 3 states we would not have Shitler.

And the narrow win for Shitler in FL...who knows?

Do not forget how Russian crimes influenced the polls, which influenced the voting!

I saw a number of probably genuine new and/or young posters chased off DU by unnecessarily insulting, paranoid or condescending Hillary Clinton supporters. How many of those people concluded "Democrats are assholes" and voted for Trump, lost interest in politics or stayed home? Would the tone of those discussions have been the same if they hadn't also been responding to a surge of actual trolls?

It takes two to tango and people need to take a good look at how their own actions cause unnecessary strife and division. Just because you didn't switch your vote doesn't mean the influence operation didn't work on you.

I voted for Bernie in the North Carolina primaries, but the Bernie Sanders supporters on DU were far and away more vile toward dissenting opinions than the Hillary Clinton supporters on DU.

There are a mix of people who support Bernie Sanders. Some are genuine and some are trolls. When you assume they are all trolls, you drive the genuine people away. Some trolls were indicted, yes. What does that have to do with my point? I never denied that there were trolls supporting Bernie. But the response that they provoked was also directed unfairly at genuine supporters. And maybe people need to look at that response and take some responsibility for its effects (which are continuing to this day).

The point isn't "Person X's supporters are meaner than Person Y's supporters". The point is that the Russians set up a psy-ops campaign to sow dissent and I think it's naive to think that the tone of the debate on DU wasn't affected by it or that the impact was only on one side.

Nope.

to vote for Stein or sit it out. And it got much worse after the primary was over! A lot of people had this nutty idea that they’d overturn the will of the voters at thre DNC convention. It was bizarre!

Life-long Dem here.

against Hillary.. but I know a lot of people were.

There were multiple fronts of an anti-Hillary Hate Machine. And, now we find out for sure that one of them came from the Russians twitter bots. And, of course, FB

I did have a few suspicious people ask to follow me/follow them on Twitter, but I checked their profiles and they looked "not real".
I don't base my consumer choices on ads, so I surely don't do that with elected officials either.

I've been voting Dem. my whole voting life (okay, I did campaign for Ford in 7th grade, but only because he had a cute son!).

Even if I was not a die hard Dem. I have pretty much known trump was an ass the first time I heard about him in the 80s.

Bernie in the primary, Hillary in the general.

Nobody had to trick or deceive me into doing either.

And I'd cast the same votes in the same situations today.

A child trafficking operation run from a pizza parlor? Really? Nope.

I voted for President Hillary Clinton - the rightful President of the United States.

Don't do social media. And I'd wanted him to run for years before.

But nope.

But I could smell their interference from a mile away.

The very fact that some of the "usual suspects" here were* core Sanders supporters, while espousing purely anti-Sanders rhetoric belied belief. That BLM was being thrown under the bus, that Planned Parenthood literally had a boycott thread here, it was all mind numbing nonsense started by literal trolls.

*most have since been banned but a few fly under the radar and I won't name them.

Just curious. I think lots of posters have disagreed on some things (I think for instance we’ve perhaps disagreed) - how do you identify an agent versus just someone with a different viewpoint?

Backtrack the sources posted and if they have any link to Russian sources it becomes very clear that they are at least one or two steps removed from propagandists.

It's one thing to have a different viewpoint that is subtle, it is another thing entirely to throw Planned Parenthood under the bus.

The issues mattered to me, plus who most inspired me. Ads and social media had no impact.

There is too much obvious junk out there. I voted Bernie in the primary and Clinton in the general election based on the issues.

would never nor have never voted for a republican

I voted for Bernie in the primary and Hillary in the general

I was always a bernie fan from his appearances on Thom Hartman and want medicare for all.

After he lost I was behind Hillary because she was my party's nominee and eminently qualified.

I smelled a rat in the Bernie supporters, the Bernie Bro-bots made me very suspicious. So IF he had won the nomination, there was no way I would have voted for him in the general. So I was influenced, yes. Not in a good way. Their Hillary hate influenced me.

The question could be reframed: IF BERNIE had won the election, and these disclosures had come out about Russian influence in support of him in the primary, what would be ones response then? Would we all be defending President Sanders, or castigating him?

This is my old, 'the shoe is on the other foot' theory of politics.

Begs the question as well: If Bernie had won the primary, what would the Russians have done then?

Lots of hypotheticals in this post, I apologize

They expected Clinton to be Trump's opponent, so they attacked her and tried to persuade Bernie's supporters not to vote for her. If Bernie had been the nominee, they would have switched over to attacking him.

Bernie Sanders *may* very well be in the running for 2020......I hear polls are showing him beating Trump, along with random animals and ham sandwiches

We need to be hyper vigilant. I'm no Bernie fan and I have the hides to prove it for bashing him.

Ain't gonna carry water for the Russians though

I made absolutely certain I voted for HRC because I knew she wasn't compromised. This was out in summer of 2016 - we just are getting the details now.

I actually voted in the GOP primary. I'm in one of those places where it was the only chance I was going to get to vote against my Congressman, and I really wanted to vote against my Congressman.

volunteer for and proudly vote for Hillary!

...

But we, 15+ year denizens of Democratic Underground, are outliers. We are compassionate high-information voters, not low-information and this easily fooled bottom dweller, not greed filled country club fat cats.

I hope you’re not implying that few were fooled, because I think you’d be wrong. First of all, the Republican Party has been fooling the easily led low information voters since 1980. The Russians just put the nefarious social engineering in overdrive, and I believe the Republican leadership were complicit.

The question is, where do we go from here? How do we right this sinking ship of a country?

I was on the fence and voted for Bernie. I might have been swayed by trolls on this forum. Of course, I supported and donated to Hillary in the general.

Some stranger's opinion on facebook isn't going to sway how I vote.

I looked into a candidate's record and what they said at press conferences, rallies, public appearances, etc.

Also, I watched how the rethugs treated HRC and how she acted since the early 90s. There isn't an ignorant, hate-filled tweet in the world that can change my mind on her. My vote for her was as enthusiastic as my votes for Obama.

(and please note that I live in Texas) were swayed.

I heard comments from some the week before the election that indicated Trump's loss was fait accompli. Does anyone remember hearing that?

There were very, very few people who were undecided about who to vote for a year before November 2016 (when all those GOP debates with 20 candidates, like Michele Bachmann and Carly Fiorina, were happening).

I saw essentially no ads on social media -- I have adblockers aggressively employed, and this was before FB adjusted their algos to embed more of them in the side panel and in the timeline -- and the premise that anyone could influence political opinion, or have their own influenced, by Facebook posts or Tweets is something I just find laughable. Especially given that it was Trump who emerged as the nominee, a notion most Republicans simply weren't accepting as late as spring of 2016.

The memes, bots, group pages, etc. hardened political opinions. They did not change them. I believe the most influence they could have possibly had was on suppressing voter turnout with the various firehoses of negativity spewing all around. But even that does not explain why black voters stayed home.

In sum: the Russians tried to influence the election. They did not succeed. Even the indictments themselves do not connect those dots. The AP likened it to a burglar jiggling your doorknob.

In this analogy, the suspect gets arrested and charged with attempted burglary. But he didn't steal anything (fortunately).

Ask yourself this: if we are so concerned about the government spying on our online activities, wiretapping our phones, etc. then why didn't some federal law enforcement agency intervene and stop the Russians? Did they fail, as with the FBI not acting to stop the Parkland shooter?

Remember also that GWB received much rightful blame for failing to act to stop the 9/11 hijackers, at a time when there were not so many of these terrorism "safeguards" (sic) in place as today.

Yes, Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for election meddling in December of 2016. If you accept the premise that the Russians hack -- err, influenced the election in some significant way (but like Bigfoot, there's still no solid proof) ... wouldn't you also have to conclude that Obama's DOJ or FBI or CIA or someone should have moved faster to stop them?

Such as before November of 2016?

If the Russians have been doing this stuff since 2014 ... why weren't they arrested, charged, and indicted years ago? Did our government look the other way because of not wanting to rock the boat diplomatically with Putin? "Diplomatic immunity"?

I don't know the answers here. Maybe they were no more interested in starting a New Cold War than the rest of us. Buy what's been going on in Syria and other places around the world seems to undermine that logic.

Ask yourself this: if we are so concerned about the government spying on our online activities, wiretapping our phones, etc. then why didn't some federal law enforcement agency intervene and stop the Russians? Did they fail, as with the FBI not acting to stop the Parkland shooter?

Remember also that GWB received much rightful blame for failing to act to stop the 9/11 hijackers, at a time when there were not so many of these terrorism "safeguards" (sic) in place as today.

Yes, Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for election meddling in December of 2016. If you accept the premise that the Russians hack -- err, influenced the election in some significant way (but like Bigfoot, there's still no solid proof) ... wouldn't you also have to conclude that Obama's DOJ or FBI or CIA or someone should have moved faster to stop them?

Such as before November of 2016?

If the Russians have been doing this stuff since 2014 ... why weren't they arrested, charged, and indicted years ago?

to the answer you want. That’s the whole point. If you know people are attempting to manipulate you it won’t work.

An intelligence driven campaign like this would have begun by attempting to amplify and exploit existing questions, concerns or prejudices that groups of people already had against Hillary. It would then continue to exploit and amplify them until the distrust of her was at an extremely high level, then it might try to add some additional concerns and questions about her that erstwhile would have seemed ridiculous, like that she ran a pedophile ring out of a pizza store, or that she was so sick she was about to die, or that her foundation was corrupt or that she was in bed with Wall Street just because she gave paid speeches to them.

There is an immense amount of.nonsense that many anti Hillary people on the progressive left bought into that was undoubtedly a product of the Russian meddling efforts.

So...no. I liked Bernie a lot and was going to vote for him, but in the end Clinton won out for me because of her experience.

Looking back on it now, I definitely feel I made the right choice.

I voted Sanders in the primary and Clinton in the general.

For my own history, see #97. My reasons for my votes, if I bothered to elaborate them, would be along the lines stated by others in #56, #64, and #68.

a lot of my online friends on a different forum are still suckers for a lot of the propaganda that was out there.

Oh well.

around the web, Facebook for sure and here it was the worst. I doubt that much here was Russian meddling, it is always nuts around elections although there sure was a lot of pushing of issues that barely related to anything, speculation ruled the day.

I listen and I read what the candidates have written or said. I had good, solid reasons for how I voted. None of it came from anywhere but the candidates themselves and they both had long track records to learn from.

Until people learn to check the real, true source they will vote stupidly. Until they learn to read the truth and then vote their conscience it will be a mess. I think it will always be a mess and maybe it always was.

As soon as I knew I would be able to. I was always a fan of his years before he ran for president (2005), and knew that if he ever ran he had my vote.

Our running joke was 'Hills it...unless somehow Sanders or Warren jump in.' When Bernie did I was with him, when he lost I went for Hill.

Not sure where the Russians were in that choice, but I'm sure someone will take the time to tell me

I love Bernie, always will, was always going to vote for him as I've been following him closely for decades. My wife fell for the Hillary is as bad as Trump tripe and voted for Bernie here in MI.

Now my friend group on Facebook is very liberal so I'd expect a ton of Bernie fans. But I saw maybe a hundred fake Hillary stories posted by the Libs on my feed. It was relentless during the primaries.

Not a big Hillary fan, but the others weren’t even an option.

I didn't bother coming to DU during the primary and got most of my info from the WaPo and Politico.

I didn't like the way the Bernie fans were behaving on DU.
Was relieved to find they found their own group.

Unless the WaPo and Politico was influenced by Russians, then I wasn't.

among other things. My GE candidate b/c I'm a Democrat.

HRC both times and I'm on social media quite often.
It's not that difficult to filter out propaganda. We didn't need to look further than DU for these trolls. Thank goodness for the HRC group here on DU, it kept me sane throughout the election. My ignore list is filled with accts that have been pprd, ffr or didn't agree to terms of service.

Fuck Trump and the republicans!

nt

I voted for Sanders in the primary and Hillary in the general.

Most people on here will say, with absolute certainty, that they were not influenced. The truth is, people don't know what they don't know. That includes me, given that I am also a person.

One of my college professors did an experiment. He asked a large class, probably over 100 people, to fill out a survey asking if they had a below average IQ. He did this for my class and as well as his other classes. Miraculously, despite all odds, not one single person had a below average IQ. Nearly everyone thought they had an ABOVE average IQ. Mathematically impossible!

Why did this happen? Because people don't know what they don't know. People don't WANT to know what they don't know. People want to always believe that they are special and above the fray.

That is what is going on right now. Cognitive dissonance and the Dunning–Kruger effect prevents anyone from wanting to question their own motives.

In our own minds, we are all intelligent, rational, moral, autonomous human beings.

None of us bought a Pepsi because we saw an ad for a Pepsi, we bought a Pepsi because we wanted a Pepsi.

who has half a brain.

Which I guarantee you makes folks where I live pissed as hell when we see our turnout blamed on us falling for obvious bullshit.

I already knew enough about the candidates from paying attention for the past 20 years, to be able to sort through the bullshit.