2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumRussian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election, experts say
The flood of fake news this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.
Russias increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human trolls, and networks of websites and social-media accounts echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.
Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on fake news, as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
UCmeNdc
(9,600 posts)They all came together to destroy her reputation and public image.
LisaL
(44,973 posts)And how about our own FBI? How can we guard against that? I think Comey's letter alone did more damage than all Russian hackers combined.
Horse with no Name
(33,956 posts)Hugin
(33,148 posts)And they still lost by over two million individual votes!
Who says HRC was a terrible candidate? She faced the largest concerted (8 years in the making) smear campaign in American history .
LisaL
(44,973 posts)Unfortunately it won't matter since electoral college rules apply.
Hugin
(33,148 posts)But, even on that... Just by the skin of his veneered teeth. (Frankly, this fact alone tells me all I need to know about the legitimacy of Nov 8th.)
It being his home state, he should have easily carried NY. He didn't. What a scumbag they picked.
Botany
(70,508 posts)add in "crosscheck" and electronic voting and you have the perfect storm.
But Trump needed to keep it close enough to steal it and Comey/NYC FBI, the media,
the unneeded and unending investigations into nothing about Hillary, and our national
hate talk right wing outlets and they kept it close enough.