The General Election

[knapplc]

https://stream.org/astroturf-outrage-machine-of-paid-trolls-floods-social-media-to-counteract-negative-news-about-hillary-clinton/

 

Zoogs or Dude is that you? Couldn't resist.

If providing facts is "supporting Hillary" as the allegation appears to go, then the list of suspected paid trolls has to be much bigger:

 

dudeguyy

mrandyk

knapplc

BigRedBuster

JJHusker1

Landlord

zoogs

Thanks Tom

Red Five

NM11046

Moiraine

Guy Chamberlin

AR Husker Fan

QMany

ZRod

funhusker

Undone

 

And I'm sure I'm forgetting others. (forgive me)

[zoogs]

You know, I do have to say, that's a weird thing to do.

 

What a strange world we live in. PACs -- and foreign governments! -- sponsoring users to leverage new mediums in order to create the impressions they want online. People don't even have to be paid for this to be sufficiently motivated, and we've seen that, too. We, as Husker fans, are probably somewhat familiar with our practice of flooding internet polls. Sort of the same things, but in a far more serious way.

 

I think you have to judge the substance of the conversation, ultimately. There's a difference between arguments that add value to discussion, and (for example) spinning away Trump's sexual assault remarks by saying Clinton likes Beyonce.

 

But I also don't particularly like the sound of any of these efforts. Even if you're going around posting nice articles from the NYT, you ought to have to disclose if that's sponsored work. Do we not have such disclosure laws in place?

[knapplc]

The reason it's effective is that people don't think critically. They don't stop to wonder why they feel the way they do, they just feel it and because they believe they are good people, they inherently believe their "feelings" are real and come from a healthy, good place.

 

The art of trollery reinforces those feelings, giving people reassurance that what they feel is not only Real but Right.

 

Because those people will vote, it's very effective. It works in politics, advertising, all kinds of places.

[zoogs]

I had to go back and double check some stuff about this PAC, by the way.

 

From sounds of it, they manage a couple of official Twitter accounts that respond to Trump trolls online, retweet Clinton supporters, and create talking points. The strategy of confronting trolls seems dubious. And I'm skeptical of their claim that they can coordinate with the Clinton campaign because this "isn't messaging."

 

However, I've tried and struggled to hunt down concrete backup for the claim that they are engaging random individuals to post anonymously online, with monetary rewards for their labor. It looks like a coordinated media operation, with paid staff running official accounts. For better or for worse.

[BigRedBuster]

This is the kind of stuff that really bothers me. These are the types of people who flood social media with made up crap and the sheep just retweet or repost the crap as though it's reality and after a while, it DOES become reality in those people's minds.

 

THAT is a very dangerous issue in our political process and making wise decisions in our elections.

 

 

And...THIS is the type of stuff that EVERYONE needs to revolt against in their own political circles. Pointing fingers at the other side never works because all you do is demonize the other side when your side is just as bad.

Clean up your own house before you criticize others.

[zoogs]

https://twitter.com/nobarriers2016

https://twitter.com/correctrecord

 

^I don't see how this squares with that portrayal, BRB. It kind of looks like an official campaign Twitter account. Probably because that's more or less what it is. And it labels itself appropriately, and is fairly obviously an official campaign arm.

 

This is not to say I'm a fan of PAC messaging efforts. Or that there shouldn't be a conversation about the coordination of this one, in particular (that's odd, right?) But I can't begrudge a campaign from producing its own material. And yes, I do realize that just as easily it could be a pro-Trump PAC spouting their stuff. Of all the warts in our political process, campaigns spending effort to engage on social media seems ... kind of innocuous. They flooded newspapers. They flooded TV.

 

Again, please DO correct me if I'm just missing something. At present, it looks like the claims in The Stream are outright misleading.

[BigRedBuster]

It's dangerous not because campaigns are doing it. It's dangerous because people take what they see these people put out and believe it to be gospel. Let's look at this as compared to say....The Associated Press. With the AP (hopefully) you have someone at least attempting to be a third party person looking at what is published and making a decision if there is actual facts behind what is written.

 

With these groups, they are politically motivated to either shade things a certain way to make their side look rosy or just simply flat out make crap up.

 

The American public is losing the ability to distinguish between the two and to a certain extent, many don't give a sh#t because these groups spew out crap that reinforces their version of reality....instead of challenging people's version of reality which REAL news would do.

 

People become more and more polarized in their views and we end up with what we have now.

[zoogs]

I think you hit on a good point there. There has to be an ability to distinguish between things. That's up to us.

[Danny Bateman]

On the other hand, I follow the AP on Twitter. They've at times run stories about Trump and Clinton that had misleading headlines. Do you remember the one from a while ago about how "over half the non-government people Clinton met with as SoS were Foundation donors"? That was a horribly misleading headline, because the amount of people she met with as SoS that were NOT government officials was minuscule compared to the number of government officials, which made up the vast majority of her meetings. Essentially, they analyzed an extremely small sample size and then tried to frame it in such a way that it seemed super shady (and headline-grabbing).

It was very click-baity. A very good journalist I like a lot on CNN called them out on it on his show, and they basically said they screwed up the headline in the Tweet (to make it more appealing). But then they left it up for 2 weeks before officially changing it.

Now I get tweets from them all the time saying they've messed up another headline and will be reposting a modified version.

I do love the AP. But even they're not infallible-- they appear to suck at tweeting in an objective way, sometimes. And I guess that's another issue with social media... people tend to flock to the sensationalist stuff and elevate it to gospel when sometimes it isn't.

 

So... yeah. Critically think about the media you're consuming.

[zoogs]

Every media company seems to have adopted an element of clickbaitism. It's a little depressing. I visited the Washington Post homepage recently to be treated to a headline along the lines of "Donald Trump tried to call out Warren Buffet. He didn't expect this."

 

I mean, oh my god. In the olden days, a proper headline for that story might be "Buffet responds to Trump on tax returns". Something descriptive.

 

What's happening to us?

[Moiraine]

Every media company seems to have adopted an element of clickbaitism. It's a little depressing. I visited the Washington Post homepage recently to be treated to a headline along the lines of "Donald Trump tried to call out Warren Buffet. He didn't expect this."

 

I mean, oh my god. In the olden days, a proper headline for that story might be "Buffet responds to Trump on tax returns". Something descriptive.

 

What's happening to us?

 

 

 

Another thing I've noticed is sometimes on cnn.com you don't have to scroll down very far before you see ads, and a lot of them are ridiculous. I saw one on there several times about Melissa McCarthy being dead.

[Moiraine]

I read up on the LA Times/USC poll since it consistently has Trump in the lead. An answer from an LA Times employee:

 

The poll asks a different question than other surveys. Most polls ask people which candidate they support and, if they are undecided, whether there is a candidate they lean to. The Daybreak poll asks people to estimate, on a scale of 0 to 100, how likely they are to vote for each of the two major candidates or for some other candidate. Those estimates are then put together to produce a daily forecast.

 

 

My guess here is Trump supporters are much more often close to 100 on the scale, whereas Clinton supporters might be less enthusiastic. Luckily ardor for a candidate doesn't increase how much a vote is worth.

[zoogs]

I've read a few things from The Hill but don't have a lot of context for what it is. They're...a fairly reputable paper, right?

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/300445-exclusive-trump-campaign-ceo-wanted-to-destroy-ryan#.V_1FoXRqh10.twitter

 

^I post this not to try and shame an organization for internal dialogue, which would probably embarrass almost anyone if it went out unfiltered. But some of this is extraordinary:

 

First, this guy was the chairman. And while we know a lot about Breitbart already, this is not a good look for a "news" organization:

 

On editorial conference calls, the Breitbart chairman would often say “Paul Ryan is the enemy,” according to a source who worked with Bannon at the news organization.

And second, this guy is now in charge of Donald Trump's campaign. And so stuff like this, even if not new or stunning, is illuminating:

 

Bannon views Ryan as a leader of an elite globalist cabal determined to sell out America by opening its borders on immigration and trade.

 

“Bannon has Alex Jones-level paranoia about Paul Ryan,” the source said, referring to the right-wing radio host and conspiracy theorist who runs the pro-Trump website Infowars.

 

“He goes on these amazing rants,” the source added of Bannon. “He thinks Paul Ryan is part of a conspiracy with George Soros and Paul Singer, in which elitists want to bring one world government.”

[Danny Bateman]

I read up on the LA Times/USC poll since it consistently has Trump in the lead. An answer from an LA Times employee:

 

 

 

The poll asks a different question than other surveys. Most polls ask people which candidate they support and, if they are undecided, whether there is a candidate they lean to. The Daybreak poll asks people to estimate, on a scale of 0 to 100, how likely they are to vote for each of the two major candidates or for some other candidate. Those estimates are then put together to produce a daily forecast.

 

 

My guess here is Trump supporters are much more often close to 100 on the scale, whereas Clinton supporters might be less enthusiastic. Luckily ardor for a candidate doesn't increase how much a vote is worth.

 

That's really interesting.

 

From what I've gathered from a few poll discussion areas of Reddit, there is a singular young (18-21 YO) AA w/ very high income that votes Trump that is weighted so heavily he skews the AA vote by a large degree toward Trump and the overall support his way by about 2 points.

 

Here's a better breakdown:

 

 

230 African Americans in this poll, but there are two very young (18-21) AA supporters, with very high incomes (75k+) and no highschool/college education. These two are weighted very heavily (0.7% of total weight each) and one of them supports Trump causing the African-American vote to shift 16 pts towards Trump and the whole by about 2 points.

Look at the periods when the margin of error seriously widens in the African-American vote, those days are also the days with the biggest moves in this poll. And all the microdata is available so you can look exactly what happened.

 

I'm assuming he's one of those high enthusiasm voters you were talking about too.

 

The funny part? They've taken to calling him Carlton, because he profiles as a very wealthy, young, black Republican.

[Moiraine]

The Onion's state by state election guide:

Nebraska

Most critical issue facing this state this election cycle:

Economy: Nebraska lives in a perpetual state of terror that people will stop liking corn.

 

Biggest race in the state:

Various Candidates (Cullman County School Board): Hundreds of thousands of Americans fighting for democracy apparently lost their lives for Gene Sullins, Heath Albright, and Wayne Myrex to waltz into the Dawson County School Board unopposed.


Fun fact:

There are no fun facts about Nebraska.

 

 

http://www.theonion.com/interactive/state-by-state-election-guide/