Hey, lar, it just occurred to me that a Forum like this would be a good place to infiltrate. Hummmm.

what goes on here,  on this forum, is a reflection of what goes on in the giant forums, such as Facebook. If an agent of another country posted his opinion here, or even posted false information, there would be heated exchanges by the active forum members... and in the end, nobody would change their opinion.

I have never met anyone who changed their votes in 2016, because of a facebook post by a disguised Russian meddler.

IMHO, all these claims about Russian meddling are nothing but a desperate attempt to divert blame. 

And now they are blaming the Russians for unrest in Europe.

When a situation is bad (as it is in Europe), when you don't like what you see in your country when you step out of your house, you don't need a Russian blogger to point that out to you.

The ironic feature in the linked article is the fact that the data for their conclusions were provided by Facebook, Twitter and Google! Hah! By now, everybody knows that our beloved tech-companies are nothing but extremely biased information peddlers. It's like asking the fox to do a study on who is killing the chickens.

On the other hand, why did nobody complain about real foreign meddling in 2016, when the Mexican president urged all Latinos in the US to vote for Hillary?

And I don't even want to get into what's going on  here, on a domestic level.... where a great effort is being made to control the thinking of the masses, by silencing opposing views. But that's not the subject of this thread.

post of the day, post the week, post of the month......you said it all gunter

"I have never met anyone who changed their votes in 2016, because of a facebook post by a disguised Russian meddler."

Exactly why I don't like to engage in opinion threads.

In the unlikely event that their mind was changed, how would they know if it wasn't changed by a disguised Russian meddler ?

".....In the unlikely event that their mind was changed, how would they know if it wasn't changed by a disguised Russian meddler ?........".

quite right! They would not know whether the poster was Russian or not.

Yet, the odds of an election being shifted by those who are influenced by a facebook post, is, IMHO, microscopicly low. There are plenty of public debates to give voters a glimpse at their candidates... enough for them to acquire a like or dislike for any of them. And, applicable to 2016, you had plenty of opportunity to watch CSPAN, or Youtube (referring to the Congressional hearings and Mr. Comey's testimony about Hillary C.) to decide who you want in the WH 

Gunterk,

I agree this propaganda didn’t target changing people’s minds. It seemed/seems most targeted towards A) the undecided and B) to expose and exacerbate the divisions already lurking in the american psyche. I know the article was kinda long but I’d be willing to wager most Republicans would have a near impossible time reading the whole thing. I’d be surprised if you read the whole thing. I myself struggle with digesting the conservative stuff in a similar way.

The divisions already there were ripe to deepen into more of an us vs them with this external propaganda.  Now Americans see “the other side” as more evil and unreasonable than ever before. Now the internal American propaganda machine is at full tilt too.

There was a time when most voters thought “the other side” was mostly misinformed, misguided or stupid even. Conversations were difficult but possible. Now it’s thought evil to support Obama or Trump if your political views conflict. This is the divide most exploited and extended by Russian propaganda campaigns. Their propaganda effort could just as easily moved to support a liberal side if it best served to disrupt our discourse.  I believe Trump was simply an easier target to exploit than Clinton in the 2016 elections because he was already actively engaged in an attempt to extend his business interests in Moscow.

People are hard wired to be vulnerable to this. The only way to beat it individually is to openly expose our consumption of news and information to include all slants... especially those which conflict with our preexisting viewpoints. That is part of the reason I returned to Marketforum. This is a pretty hard thing for me to do as I flat out shudder at some of the extremely conservative views expressed as self evident here. 

Almost half the country views the world as conservatives do and the other half as liberals (or some versions of them). Both differ on what it will take for our future to be a better one. Both sides express truths, exaggerations and fabricated lies. Both selectively focus on things which confirm or further their preexisting beliefs. 

Politics has become even more like a religion which  honors the faithful and punishes the blasphemers... each according to their political faith.

That is what this Russian propaganda has done. It has made it even tougher for us to coexist. 

lar, thanks for a very  thoughtful post, which I nominate for Post of the Week.

Thanks Carl,

Thinking about our own thinking