The Fallacy of "Election Meddling"

According to a joint statement from the ODNI, DOJ, FBI and DHS, the intelligence community is "concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies. These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections.”

Foreign influence in US Elections (or the media’s preferred phrase “election meddling”) consists of “using social media to amplify divisive issues, sponsoring specific content in English-language media like RT and Sputnik, seeding disinformation through sympathetic spokespersons regarding political candidates and disseminating foreign propaganda.”

According to the FBI, “Foreign influence operations have taken many forms and used many tactics over the years. Most widely reported these days are attempts by adversaries—hoping to reach a wide swath of Americans covertly from outside the United States—to use false personas and fabricated stories on social media platforms to discredit U.S. individuals and institutions.”

The DNI admits, however, that “we do not have any evidence of a compromise or disruption of infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt our ability to tally votes in the midterm elections”.

All this propaganda surrounding "election meddling" sounds like a ruse. Why should we fear any of this? These "influence campaigns" sound like any other thing on Twitter.

And foreign meddling? The CBC, Canada’s state news agency, was launching anti-Trump documentaries well into the election and beyond, and posting them to social media where any poor, easily-swayed American could come across them. The BBC, the UK’s state news agency, even portrayed Trump as someone who was picking fights with babies. Despite ticking off a few of the boxes on the checklist, for some reason the “election meddling” or “foreign influence” doublespeak did not apply to them. Never mind that nearly every politically active person on Twitter was in someway "meddling", whether they were directed by some state or not.

But all that’s fine because meddling on social media is not meddling in an election, full stop. Not a single election processes occurs on Twitter, Facebook or any other global social media platform, full stop. The fallacy inherent in much of the doublespeak describing “foreign influence in the US elections” and “election meddling” is that none of it involved any election.

As for foreigners, maybe if we reminded the intelligence community that Twitter and facebook are global platforms it wouldn't sound so nefarious.

None of this is stopping the FBI from taking a bureaucratic, three-pronged approach to combatting the “serious threat” of foreign influence, including private sector partnerships, intelligence gathering, and more investigations, all of which is sure to further limit our privacy and free speech. None of this is necessary and the danger of it all is egregiously overblown, because the “serious threat”, the “election meddling”, the “foreign influence”—all of it ends once you log out of Twitter. If this serious threat and attack on our institutions is avoided by logging out of social media once and a while, maybe foreign influence isn't the problem.

a reply to: NiNjABackflip

a reply to: NiNjABackflip

This is True , but Voter Fraud is Real , and Happens in Every State of this Union . Who are Crying the Loudest against Voter I.D. Laws ? ......Hmm.......

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit
a reply to: NiNjABackflip

This is True , but Voter Fraud is Real , and Happens in Every State of this Union . Who are Crying the Loudest against Voter I.D. Laws ? ......Hmm.......

Voter suppression, voter fraud, etc. actually involve elections.

Couldn't agree with you more.
Especially love this:

originally posted by: NiNjABackflip


But all that’s fine because meddling on social media is not meddling in an election, full stop. Not a single election processes occurs on Twitter, Facebook or any other global social media platform, full stop. The fallacy inherent in much of the doublespeak describing “foreign influence in the US elections” and “election meddling” is that none of it involved any election.

As for foreigners, maybe if we reminded the intelligence community that Twitter and facebook are global platforms it wouldn't sound so nefarious.

Just another non issue to avoid putting any real improvement into the candidate/platform. (looking back, not to the future is a mistake)

a reply to: zosimov

That means a lot, thank you.

When I first heard about Russian interference I thought, what, they messed up with the voting machines? Well, no...

Frankly, I find the whole idea insulting as if people , the ones that voted for Trump obviously, weren't smart enough to make up their own mind.

All the while, MSM, which is mostly owned by 6 companies, we're doing their best to bring down the opinion about him...but that wasn't considred meddling.

The worst meddling to me was the DNC asking Sanders to step down when he had chances to win...and now we hear their lamentations daily, dividing the American population.

I think it just shows how Hillary and the rest of her party doesn't care for the people or America, they only care about power.

a reply to: theMediator

That's another good point: any foreign meddling was immediately eclipsed by domestic meddling. There is evidence of one political party colluding with members of the press to engage in outright propaganda. But hardly anyone cares.

www.ozy.com...

Not to mention dead voters, now that's some heavy meddling to me.

The voting machines are allowing meddling.....voting place manager is the one to do the final numbers having been issued the port door, not to mention converting the decimal record vote count back to where he needs it