After hyping the Russia threat for four years, the New Yorker quietly wonders if the story might have been exaggerated:

afoaf

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I think you're missing the point of the article....almost as thought you did not read it

“It’s an issue of scale,” he told me. Russian-produced disinformation certainly exists; this spring, at the outset of the covid-19 pandemic, Russia-linked social-media accounts promoted a theory that the virus was a bioweapon invented by the U.S. Army in order to damage China. But compared with, say, Fox News pundits like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, let alone Trump himself, the perceived menace of Russian trolls far outweighs their actual reach. How audible, let alone consequential, are Russian efforts to boost claims that mail-in voting leads to fraud when the President regularly blares the thesis at deafening volumes?
When it comes to covid-19, the apparent result of the combined disinformation campaign of Trump and Fox News has been devastating. A working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research in May analyzed anonymous location data from millions of cell phones to show that residents of Zip Codes with higher Fox News viewership were less likely to follow stay-at-home orders. Another study, by economists at the University of Chicago and elsewhere, suggested a disparity in health outcomes between areas where Fox News viewers primarily tuned in to Tucker Carlson, who, among Fox hosts, spoke early and with relative urgency about the danger of covid-19, and places where viewers preferred Sean Hannity, who spent weeks downplaying its severity. The economists found that, in March, viewership of Hannity over Carlson, in the locales they studied, was associated with a thirty-two-per-cent increase in infections, and a twenty-three-per-cent increase in covid-19-related deaths.
I think he does a disservice to himself and the reader by not putting more emphasis on our
utter failure societally and at the individual level to fact check and filter out the wheat from
the chaff....so much of what I see going on is people propagating utterly asinine content just
because it comports with their own personal biases and agenda.

that's bankrupt sh!t
 
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afoaf

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The point stands

For all the whining about RUSHA RUSHA RUSHA, it is inconsequential

Exactly what I've been saying all along
but that's not what the article says

what the article says is that there is more dangerous/potent disinformation also afoot
 

manbearpig

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in the bathroom
The amount these clowns cherry pick the integrity of our election process is hilarious.

RUSHA?

na

Voter fraud?

MUH VOTIN RITEZ

it’s almost as if they do as they’re told
 

Phi1

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This is probably all just some big misunderstanding guys. Really, nothing to see here:

There are several QAnon supporting candidates for Congress in the general election.

The Acting head of DHS is alleged to have instructed his employees to downplay the Russian threat on the election.

Michael Caputo, the guy with no medical experience but was appointed to HHS, just went on some rant about deep-state boogeymen and told people to stock up on ammo. He’s also been accused of “manipulating COVID-19 data for political purposes“ and what do you know:

lived and worked as a public relations consultant in Russia in the 1990s and, after returning to America, he was hired to help improve Russian President Vladimir Putin's image in the U.S.
helped arrange a meeting between Trump ally Roger Stone and a Russian-born businessman offering dirt on Clinton, according to Mueller's report

:unsure:

And no, the Russians aren’t here with me in the room right now. But they all seem to be in the room with “the very best people”.
 

Autoprax

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I love stories about people wondering about stuff.

I wonder if there will be anymore from the usual suspects?
 
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Ifallalot

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This is probably all just some big misunderstanding guys. Really, nothing to see here:

There are several QAnon supporting candidates for Congress in the general election.

The Acting head of DHS is alleged to have instructed his employees to downplay the Russian threat on the election.

Michael Caputo, the guy with no medical experience but was appointed to HHS, just went on some rant about deep-state boogeymen and told people to stock up on ammo. He’s also been accused of “manipulating COVID-19 data for political purposes“ and what do you know:






:unsure:

And no, the Russians aren’t here with me in the room right now. But they all seem to be in the room with “the very best people”.
You just mentioned QAnon in one paragraph and then boogeymen in another one with not one shred of self-awareness
 
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Phi1

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You just mentioned QAnon in one paragraph and then boogeymen in another one with not one shred of self-awareness
Caputo seems like a stable genius. Maybe this explains his 60 day vacation.

"And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin," he said, according to the Times. "If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get."
Caputo said researchers "deep in the bowels of the C.D.C. have given up science and become political animals."

He added they "haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops" to plan "how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next," according to the Times. "There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president."


"I’m not going anywhere," he said, according to the Times. "I swear to God, as God is my witness, I am not stopping."

"You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going," he reportedly said.