It should be noted that Newsweek is not your daddy's Newsweek, for whatever that name was worth -- after the old Newsweek crashed, the name was acquired by the then "International Business Times", which is a media outlet that takes direction from cult slash religious leader David Jang.

Propaganda bots are probably bad, and we should probably do something about that, but it's not like Americans dumb enough to be swayed merely by a swarm of bots pointing to shiny object suddenly appeared in the 21st century. We are a country dumb enough to fall for Iraq WMD hoax, or the Tonkin Gulf hoax, or the hoax of Japanese-Americans so loyal to the Emperor that we had to build concentration camps. Americans are gullible fuckers. If it weren't legal for Fox News to lie so blatantly, and if it weren't treated as basically a legitimate news outfit, the Facebook and Twitter propaganda wouldn't have so much fertile ground to grow in.

Regardless of who or how or why, Ijeoma Olou's Al Franken essay is a fucking masterpiece and always will be.

Also: what the fuck is so sinister about publicizing an opinion essay that makes no bogus claims at all? Russian intelligence spreading the pizzagate lies and slander of Barack Obama and all that heinous shit are in no way comparable to saying, "hey go read this opinion piece with this person Ijeoma Oluo's personal perspective on Al Franken". What the fuck, dudes.

Too long, didn't read. Al Franken got screwed.

Wow, this is a tough one. On the one hand, we have a topical conspiracy theory, and on the other, we have the Democrats screwing themselves over politically, sacrificing real political power for fluffy talking points.

Well, since we had eight years of Obama trying to work with the Republicans so he can appear "bipartisan" and getting screwed over & over again, along with the previous twenty years of rolling over, working the "once the Republicans have destroyed America, they'll *beg* for us!" strategy, I'm going to go with option two. Yep. The Dems shooting themselves in the foot is far more likely than wild stories of social media manipulation.

@9: Words have meaning.

He wasn't "lynched":
This is "lynched"
verb
(of a mob) kill (someone), especially by hanging, for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial.
synonyms:execute illegally, hang, kill; i
"he was lynched by the mob"

Due process is part of criminal or civil court proceedings and involves a crime. Not an ethics or HR violation.

And finally, all the LOLs that you give a crap about the fate of Al Franken.

"On Monday, Newsweek and Raw Story reported that a network of Japanese-appearing Twitter bots helped force the resignation of former Sen. Al Franken. Both reports relied heavily on a February 9 blog post from Mike Farb, who runs a website called Unhack the Vote, which is dedicated to tracking foreign influence on U.S. politics."
--
The first question any REAL journalist would have asked was: "Who the fuck is Mike Farb, and why would anybody believe anything he said, much less write a story based on it, without first verifying every one of his statements independently?" Or, at the very least, reporting them as unsubstantiated allegations?
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As for Nina Burleigh's statement:
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"There are tectonic plates of political and social change crashing the old order and we don’t know what is coming,” she said. "The discourse is degraded. Lies are the coin of the realm.”
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Here's some helpful advice for you, Nina: Maybe selling time-share condos is a more suitable line of work for you. Clearly journalism isn't.

@11: It encapsulates modern journalism very well. To paraphrase: "We had heard the story, but could never actually verify it. But we ran it anyway, because it seemed to confirm things we wished were true, and we know it would get attention."

Modern "journalism" is basically just propaganda.

@12:

There's real journalism out there. But this isn't it. The real stuff is obscured by all this crap. We need to restore the Fairness Doctrine. Sad to say, a couple of generations have grown up without it, and might not even be aware that such a thing even existed, or even what it was.

Over the years, I have probably seen dozens of stories in the Stranger about corporations or billionaires influencing legislation and referendums by hiring signature-gatherers or P.R. firms. I'm sure that if Amazon was using "a social media marketing campaign with 90 people, a couple million dollars behind it", to secretly influence a workplace-safety bill, the Stranger would put that on the front page.

The influence of social media manipulation on the presidential election cannot be "proven" or quantified in the same sense that the influence of racism cannot be "proven" or quantified. But it would be childishly naive to dismiss that influence, or to require an unattainable standard of evidence from those journalists who are covering it. Bear in mind that Trump won the election by a margin of less than 1% in 3 key states. That means that if Russian manipulation moved the needle by just one percent - increasing Trump's vote count by .5% and decreasing Hillary's turnout by .5% - the twitter-bots flipped the election

I quit Twitter, Instagram, and all other social media but Facebook that I now look at about once a week, after pairing down my "friends" list and liked pages to fewer than 10, combined.

Haven't you started growing bored with social media? I sure have. It was a fun novelty that became an annoying distraction. I just don't have the time for it.

I expect that in the near future social media will be strictly a venue for marketing bots. It seems well on its way in that that direction now. There are better ways to keep up with people you really care about.

@16: Thank you for taking the time to do the research and demonstrate that you realize that you were in error, as Franken is hale and hearty with nary a bruise, splinter nor sticky feather to his name, and serenaded only by whatever XM radio station he prefers.

I don't care what they say about you Bub, your ability to admit you were wrong does you credit.

Tina Smith is going to serve Minnesota well, help Democrats in the Senate, and get re-elected. All Franken will go back to his wealth and enjoy his freedom and live a long life. He chose to give up the privilege of serving in the Senate rather than serve under a cloud and harm his party.

Al is fine. The Democrats are fine. Minnesota is fine. What's the problem?