• tyler@programming.dev
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    3 days ago

    I do not understand your point. Russia was intent on sowing discord and chaos, which they did. They spread millions of lies and disinformation, and succeeded in making people distrust the election system. A decade later and you can see the situation we are now in.

    And this is just the publicly known stuff.

    • plyth@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      The US pushed Jelzin’s election which led to Putin with the intent to avoid a Communist victory which is keeping Russia stuck where it is now since then. What Russia did was at most par for the course. However I think the influence is hugely exagerated. The claim is that Putin managed to compensate a $2 billion budget

      Trump had a budget of $500 million.

      but

      , he received free media attention valued at about $5 billion.

      https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00023864

      Those $5 billion are the elephant in the room. The election wasn’t won on the internet but by established media companies. Those 340 million shares aren’t worth that much.

      Voting machines, registration processes, weekday voting and gerrymandering - that all originated in the US. A Russian blogger who points that out is not to blame for the current mess.

      Russia was involved but that involvement is used to distract from who else was involved even more.