Do they not understand how boring this nonsense is?
How Russia, China and Iran Are Interfering in the Presidential Election (archived) – New York Times
Eight years after Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, foreign influence with American voters has grown more sophisticated. That could have outsize consequences in the 2024 race.
Written by three ‘journalists’ and published at the top of the NYT‘s homepage the intro reads:
When Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, spreading divisive and inflammatory posts online to stoke outrage, its posts were brash and riddled with spelling errors and strange syntax. They were designed to get attention by any means necessary.
“Hillary is a Satan,” one Russian-made Facebook post read.
Posts like that ‘one Russian-made Facebook post’ (seen by how many?) ‘interfered’ in the 2016 election and were the reason for Hillary’s loss?
Now, eight years later, foreign interference in American elections has become far more sophisticated, and far more difficult to track.
Disinformation from abroad — particularly from Russia, China and Iran — has matured into a consistent and pernicious threat, as the countries test, iterate and deploy increasingly nuanced tactics, according to U.S. intelligence and defense officials, tech companies and academic researchers. The ability to sway even a small pocket of Americans could have outsize consequences for the presidential election, which polls generally consider a neck-and-neck race.
U.S. presidential election campaigns spend billions of dollars on fine tuned advertisements aimed at carefully targeted micro-audiences. It isn’t even plausible that social media posts by this or that foreign actor could have comparable effects.
Russia, according to American intelligence assessments, aims to bolster the candidacy of former President Donald J. Trump, while Iran favors his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. China appears to have no preferred outcome.
Should we not be especially afraid of the ‘sophisticated’ and ‘difficult to track’ foreign interference by China because it has no preferred outcome?
Here is the NYT‘s example for it:
This year, a deepfake video of a Republican congressman from Virginia circulated on TikTok, accompanied by a Chinese caption falsely claiming that the politician was soliciting votes for a critic of Beijing who sought (and later won) the Taiwanese presidency.
How could a fake video of a Republican congressman with Chinese caption that was used to discredit a Taiwanese politician influence a U.S. election in which China has ‘no preferred outcome’? What is the logic therein?
I have no idea. Nor has the New York Times. It just claims that it does.
Whoever works in western media which carries nonsense like the above should contemplate how much they are contributing to this:
For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.
Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.
