Daily Mail: Facebook says 126 million Americans may have seen Russia-linked political posts over a two-year period - far more than previously thought
* Facebook Inc said Monday Russia-based operatives published about 80,000 posts on the social network over a two-year period
* It's estimated that 126million Americans saw posts that were an effort to sway U.S. politics
* New data was included in written testimony to lawmakers ahead of key hearings with social media and technology companies about Russian meddling
* Twitter Inc separately has found 2,752 accounts linked to Russian operatives
* Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, said in a statement on Monday it had found $4,700 in Russia-linked ad spending during the 2016 U.S. election cycle
Facebook Inc said Russia-based operatives published about 80,000 posts on the social network over a two-year period in an effort to sway U.S. politics and that about 126 million Americans may have seen the posts during that time.
Facebook's latest data on the Russia-linked posts - possibly reaching around half of the U.S. population of voting age - far exceeds the company's previous disclosures.
It was included in written testimony provided to U.S. lawmakers on Monday ahead of key hearings with social media and technology companies about Russian meddling in elections on Capitol Hill this week.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: I for one am scratching my head right now on this Facebook claim. I have spent the past decade trying to understand the art of doing legitimate posts that will generate legitimate web traffic to WNU (and to some other web sites that I have an interest in). During this time I also talked and shared notes with others who have succeeded in generating significant traffic to their site .... and I always asked the same question .... how did they do it. Their answers have all been the same .... patience, hard work, luck, unique content, a search engine friendly site, and a little advertising. But with the exception of Instapundit .... no one has come close to achieving the results that Facebook is claiming that these Russian sites received in two years. I know in the case of WNU .... this site has been online for 10 years, and during this time I have done 86,701 posts. (this post will be 86,702). In terms of traffic .... according to Google .... there has been 78 million page views (which I estimate came from about 50,000,000 real visitors). In the beginning I had maybe 2 or 3 page views a day .... today I will probably hit 30,000 .... and that is the recipe for growing a website. But as for these Russian posts on Facebook .... I have seen some of these posts .... and they are junk. But this junk resulted in 126,000,000 Americans seeing it!?!?!?! And without the benefit of Google and other search engines?!?!?! As I said .... I am scratching my head. The numbers simply do not make sense. In closing .... sorry for going into the weeds on what is involved when it comes to web traffic. But if someone has a better explanation on how Facebook got this number as well as explaining to me how did these Russian operatives accomplished this .... I am all ears.
Hat tip to Fred for this post.
Update: Zero Hedge is also dismissing this claim .... Russian Content May Have Reached 126 Million Facebook Users, There Is Just One Catch (Zero Hedge).
6 comments:
Fully agree, absolute BS. Tip for you: the "may" is a powerful word, it let's you/the daily mail state the craziest stuff, get the attention or clicks or whatever they wanted and get away with you being technically correct - the best kind of correct ;) media publishers love any statement they can report on that includes a "may" ;)
CNN is king of may and maybe and perhaps and possible and so on
Anon,
You MAY be right.
:)
1) WNU does not have a captive audience - we need to come to you. Facebook is an addictive place that a huge number of Americans go to as a source of entertainment - when there (as many frequently are, periodically, throughout each and every day) they are a captive audience.
2)Goebbels once said something to the effect: Effective propaganda appeals not to the intellect but to emotion. WNU appeals generally to intellect NOT emotion. Mainstream media and new alternative media (like MSNBC, Fox News, The Young Turks, Info Wars, Hannity, Rush, Maddox, Blah, Blah, Blah...) are commentary and entertainment that appeal to biased emotions; that is why they are so beloved by their followers. Facebook is even worse; it is intentionally designed to appeal to socially driven emotions, and memes and simple advertisements that do just that can have a profound and addictive effect on feeding a desire. There is a reason Carls JR uses half-naked women to sell cheeseburgers...WNU does not appeal to our lizard brain.
3)Algorithms used by Facebook all but guarantee that if one "friend" likes or comments on something in their newsfeed then there is a very high chance their "friends" will see it too. Again Facebook brings the content to the person - they don't have to search it out like like those of us who read this blog. All that hard work, advertising, patience...is done by Facebook. The publisher of the content only has to feed it into the stream and it will take on a life of its own. This blog - for better or worse - (I think better) is trapped on shore.
I am not shocked one bit by those numbers - I saw some pretty wild and inflammatory things over the past year and a half on Facebook that were posted and re-posted like gospel by throngs of "true believers" who seemed to thoroughly enjoy being so stirred up. They relished in the incitement and were happy to spread it around - and all the publisher had to do was feed it into a receptive stream and sit back and wait for it to spawn a monster.
Personally, I'm surprise this blog hasn't already moved to Facebook. Though I'm glad it hasn't.
Matthew,
Thank you for your comment.
I know what you mean by staying away from emotions.
I know Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/about/
He is use to have a good and balanced conservative blog .... and a few thousand readers. Now .... he runs an emotional hard-core conservative site that is quoted by Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report .... and he gets about 600,000 visitors per day.
I have thought about going to Facebook and YouTube. But time constraints (I am involved in other things) makes it impossible.
I might have seen them, but l am 100% sure that l saw Hilary describe half the electorate as deplorable! What a Dotard.
What class of people were influenced to change their votes?
Liberals?
Conservatives?
Unwashed Moderate Fence sitters?
You would have to make a claim on the latter. Then you would have to simply assert (lie), analyse (lie), survey (lie with statistics) that these waivering, quavering know nothings until the last minutes changed their vote.
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