The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President (opens in new tab)

It is very interesting, but has enough fundamental factual errors I am disinclined to take any of it seriously.

For example, the article cites discredited bot research.

https://michaelkreil.github.io/openbots/

I was also expecting to find concrete examples of disinformation in the article. For most of the article, the writer does not go into any detail, and simply explains that they personally found these nebulous videos disturbing. But when we do get concrete examples, they fail to prove much. For example, when the writer cites an alleged attempt to suppress voter turnout by claiming Clinton called a voting demographic 'super predators', I expected to find that this was either not true or taken out of context. Instead, I found that it was true and not out of context: in fact BLM had criticized her for these comments.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/aug/28/reince-pri...

I don't find microtargeting true facts to be 'disinformation.'

There are a few verifiable examples, but most of them are not nearly as black-and-white as the writer pretends.

This reads as essentially a hit piece against Parscale. This isn't a surprise, since it begins with the framing of Internet advertising being 'used by dictators', whereas it is also of course used worldwide by non-dictators, where it passes mostly without comment, or sometimes with laudatory comments. Even in US eelctions this has been the case - campaigns have done their best to use all the technology available to them at the time on both sides, and will do so for the indefinite future.

The complaint appears to boil down to 'a politician I don't like used technology, so we should shut it down.' I think it deserves flagging. A more thoughtful and substantive article on the same subject might not.

I'd agree it is an interesting topic, but I suspect an article about misinformation originating from the left would be flagged quickly, also.

In the end, 'no politics' is a great rule for HN.

I agree it’s interesting but I’m guessing the flagging is because this cuts too close to the no politics rule for submissions. Even quite neutral posts often turn into political argument in the comments, so one that could easily be seen as anti-Trump is going to attract too much mud slinging.

How so?

It really is.

Censorship through noise is not a conspiracy theory.

The case of Li Wenliang is really sad. He knew about the Corona virus epidemic at an early stage and tried to raise the alarm. He posted about it on social media. Police showed up and arrested him for spreading "false" rumors.

After a while he was released but it was too late. The situation was out of control. He got the virus himself and died.

It really scares me that increasing numbers of developers write software enabling tyranny and abuse like this.

We must not censor the rumors, but give people the tools to evaluate for themselves what the truth really is.