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Did you change your vote based on Russian Interference?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by cml750, Feb 23, 2018.

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Did you change your vote based on Russian Interference

Poll closed Mar 2, 2018.
  1. Yes, Russian trolls convinced me to vote for Trump

    5 vote(s)
    25.0%
  2. No, I voted for the person I always planned to vote for

    15 vote(s)
    75.0%
  1. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    This poll is an absurd waste of time, with all due respect. I'm not voting.
     
  2. conquistador#11

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    to me that's not question. Having Hilary as a candidate lost the election. The more revealing thing is Trump's de$ire to be in comrade putin's circle. That's what everyone should be looking at.
    Comrade Putin doesn't allow any right wingers to sit at his lunch table, only the cool leftists kids get a seat.
    So why is Trump so eager and the republican party is more than o.k with it? By this logic, next time a republican politician talks arrogantly about Cuba or Venezuela I can throw a piece of beautiful clean coal at their face and they should like it! and ask me to do it again.
    speaking of which, have any of you guys had any machine gun fire bacon? It's all the talk.
     
  3. mtbrays

    mtbrays Contributing Member
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    How do you reconcile this with your faith? I'm asking as a fellow Christian, albeit a mainline Protestant, who is perturbed by evangelicals' whole-hearted embrace of President Trump.

    Additionally, your poll is disingenuous. Nobody saw a single ad that said "Please vote for Donald Trump. This ad has been paid for by the Russian Supporters of Donald Trump." The nature of online persuasion is that it happens gradually. The targeting tools that companies like Facebook and Twitter have given political actors allow them to seep into your consciousness slowly - reinforcing your existing biases and possibly convincing you of outright conspiracy - over time and with a "personal" touch that wasn't possible before. It's not a reporter or anonymous blogger sharing a clearly-false story about President Obama's birthplace in your news feed; instead, it's Rebecca Smith from Scranton, Pennsylvania and she looks like a sweet grandmother!

    I have an uncle who almost exclusively reads his "news" on Facebook. Many of the domains he is convinced are sources of truth are, clearly, outright conspiracy shops that exist to peddle nonsense for ad revenue and, perhaps, psychological discord. However, because he sees this "news" every day, and it's shared with him via friends who are also interested in having their pre-existing biases confirmed and strengthened, his perception of reality has shifted. The dopamine rush he gets for being "right" about politics, even as he's being pushed further and further to the fringe, outweighs his ability to truly judge reality. It's what keeps him logging on every single day.

    It's disgusting what Facebook has done to our collective ability to process information. It's tragic that fellow Americans like yourself don't seem upset that foreign actors, who want to drive us apart and have a better understanding of the social media we implicitly trust every day, have so effectively been able to exploit our self-driven turn into disparate echo chambers of own making.
     
    #43 mtbrays, Feb 23, 2018
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2018
    Xenon, CometsWin, bobrek and 3 others like this.
  4. Redfish81

    Redfish81 Member

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    I voted for him. I dislike him immensely. I just disliked Hillary more.

    When I left the house to go vote I was not going to vote for Trump. I was going to write in General James Mattis. After the grab her by the.... that was the end for me. Before that I might have held my nose and voted for Trump. I also had friends that served directly under Mattis and had nothing but great things to say. I figured Trump was winning Texas anyway so why not vote for someone I really like and respected.

    So I get to the polls and the line is out the door. It's not moving.... then like every 5 minutes we move up one person. Turns out nobody was voting. The machines kept breaking and the only time we were moving was when someone gave up and left the line. It was annoying to say the least to see people not being able to exercise their right to vote. They had to leave to get back to work since it was lunch time. Finally, they got ONE machine working. I said F it and voted for Trump.
     
    TheresTheDagger likes this.
  5. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    When did you dislike Hillary more? When she was first lady? Senator? Secretary of State? Presidential candidate?
     
  6. Redfish81

    Redfish81 Member

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    I was a teenager when she was first lady so didn't have much of an opinion at that time. I did not like that she voted for the Iraq war as a Senator. I would say when she ran against Obama in 08 and then when she was Secretary of State is when I really started not liking her. The way she treated Secret Service and DHS security details was awful. Her involvement with Libya. The whole Clinton Foundation was disgusting along with her "speaking" arrangements. Benghazi annoys me to no end. They had her emails... she was telling the public a different story about the video and telling her family another story about a planned terrorist attack. I don't know what her actual involvement was in the night of the attack The guys on the ground said they were told to stand down multiple times. When we have people working for the foreign service under attack the response should ALWAYS be help is on the way and as fast as possible. Maybe they don't get there, but we need those people out there and they need to know if something happens we are coming ASAP. I did not like that they rigged the primary against Bernie. I did not like that she was given the questions for the debates ahead of time and didn't say anything. The email server was stupid to say the least.

    Those just come off the top of my head. Trump is also gross. I mean.. Trump built a lot of his real estate empire when Gotti and crew were running NYC. They ran all the construction back then...... speaks for itself.
     
    JuanValdez likes this.
  7. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    What a great post. Couldn't have put it better myself, and I wish I could "like" it twice. Personally, I've never had an interest in getting involved with Facebook because I value my privacy. You illustrated very well that there are other reasons not to engage with the site. The only time I see anything on it is when we're visiting friends and they want to show us something. Usually, it's images of old friends they're "in communication" with via Facebook, which can be quite shocking. Why? Because they look old as dirt. One friend from the past, who was a girlfriend back in the day, was an exception. She looked surprisingly good, which was fun to see, but overall, I just don't think it's worth it. I think a letter or a phone call is more personal, myself, but what do I know.
     
    mtbrays likes this.
  8. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    I don't think starting to hate Hillary Clinton circa 2008-2012 could be the result of a Russian influence campaign. But may be the result of a domestic Republican influence campaign. I don't like Hillary either and I voted third party despite Trump (I know, I know, everyone blame me for Trump winning). But, I also recognize that the astroturf stuff we villainize the Russian trolls for doing is the same stuff we do to ourselves in regular course of business. And Hillary has been a target for literally decades. Which I guess has me looking on the charges thrown on the Russian trolls with a bit of a jaundiced eye. Of course, we don't want foreigners warping our public discourse. But between free speech (including anonymous speech) and the internet, how could you expect anything else? We have ATW here, a foreign national, contributing to our political debate and it's fine. If he's paid by Volkswagen to say how great their cars are, that's marketing; if I, a US citizen, am paid by the Koch Brothers to say how great Trump is, that's astroturf; but if ATW is paid by Russia to say how great Trump is, that's conspiracy. It's a goofy world.
     
  9. Bobbythegreat

    Bobbythegreat Member
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    The exact way they did. She had ridiculously low likability numbers to begin with and she was having to admit incompetence in order to excuse criminal behavior while Secretary of State....The Russian leaks that showed the DNC rigged the primary was the least of her worries.
     
    cml750 likes this.
  10. bobrek

    bobrek Politics belong in the D & D

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    I liked it on your behalf...:)
     
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  11. CometsWin

    CometsWin Breaker Breaker One Nine

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    This is about the only reason I use Facebook, to giggle about the garbage I see friends re-posting.
     
  12. Sweet Lou 4 2

    Sweet Lou 4 2 Contributing Member
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    Weak minded isn't changing your mind... Is the inability to listen and change ones mind that makes you weak minded
     
  13. mick fry

    mick fry Member

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    [​IMG]
    Post second term election.
     
    cml750 likes this.
  14. Nook

    Nook Member

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    LOL at the gif.

    Trump certainly could win re-election. It is years away and perceptions can change quickly. Still he has alienated a lot of people and the baggage of surrounding himself with scumbags and criminals is going to take a toll on his credibility.

    It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
     
  15. fchowd0311

    fchowd0311 Contributing Member

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    I think Trump benefited from a lack of turnout. That isn't happening again. Far more people are getting more politically involved after this 1+ year of embsrestment.

    Let's see how these midterms play out. I'm predicting unprecidented turnout for midterms. High turnout usually has favored Dems in recent history .
     
  16. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    It’s both. The constant and negative attacks worked to influence perception. The constant and large volume of negative “news” during the election had an impact. And these impacts nearly shaped everyone perception to some extent. Because the russian effort actually heavily impacted the “news” reporting, they had an impact, and probably a large one.

    If VW, or any individual company or foreign civilian, has an effort on the level of the Russian, then you start to worry about them. Thats not happening. Russian interference has happen and continues to happen.
     
  17. JumpMan

    JumpMan Contributing Member
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    This. The Russian anti-Clinton interference, whether pro-Trump or pro-Bernie, didn't need to change anyone's vote if it desuaded enough likely Democrat voters to go out and vote for her. Additionally, it made a Trump vote much more palatable to likely Repubilcan voters.

    I think that we need to call the 2016 election as it is, which is fraudelent, and declare that the Russians did swing the election to Trump. All of this, if, if, if stuff is stupid and cowardly. If you truly believe that the Russians intefered with the election and you truly believe that it had a significant impact, then you have to admit to believing that the Russians handed the election to Trump. Whether or not anything serious happens to him now as a consequence is irrelevant. I would, for one, admit to believing that Trump's campaign worked with the Russians. To me, there's no doubt about that considering all the circumstantial evidence that has mounted so high that we long ago lost track of it all.
     
  18. Sweet Lou 4 2

    Sweet Lou 4 2 Contributing Member
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    Ah, so that's what you are like at home.
     
  19. Dairy Ashford

    Dairy Ashford Member

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    If anything, the one issue I have with the Russian coverage is wondering if it can be credibly tethered and contained to Trump's team and time in office, or if this will become a standard accusation and recurring investigation of whatever party or person is in the White House by opposing legislators. Or worse still it becomes political stickem the way Hoover used Soviet communism against just about any social movement starting from '20s labor unions, and onward to and through civil and women's rights.
     
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  20. Space Ghost

    Space Ghost Contributing Member

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    The issue with this logic is its so slanted. You're upset over facebook and Twitter. You're upset certain people you know blindly believe false and misleading news. However you're completely ignoring the grand scheme.

    Both sides have their fringes. Both sides have narrow minded people who only believe thing that reinforce their beliefs and reject anything else. Facebook and Twitter are not the problem. When was the last time you've seen the National Inquirer? Were you upset when you saw the outrageous headlines plastered in the grocery lines, which nearly every American was subjected to? If one is gullible enough to fall for conspiracy theory nonsense w/out doing their own investigating, they will find a means to reinforce their beliefs. Stop blaming Facebook and Twitter. Next election it will be something else. Nobody is forced onto Twitter and Facebook.

    Its hard to get upset about any of this. Our options were Trump and Hillary. They both were shitty candidates. Stop chastising people for picking one over the other. When both parties put their worst popular candidates on the ballot, everyone loses. The parties are the ones who set this mess up, not the people who voted. But yet most of you still blindly follow your parties.

    Then we have this 'Im right, you're wrong' mentality. Whatever happened to 'this is my belief, I am a citizen, and this is how I am going to vote'. There is no longer respect for other peoples belief and politicians take advantage of this.
     
    cml750 likes this.

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