> I don't get why they're to blame for Russia's meddling in the election
Bad things happened through their products that would not have been possible, or at least as undetectable, without their products. "Bad things" refers to a foreign power running political ads to influence our democratic process. This is provoking a backlash.
I find analogy in the financial services industry's response to the 2008 crisis. Let's zoom in on Goldman Sachs creating structured products with hedge funds betting against said products [1].
Goldman created a product referencing an index. This is like an ETF [2] referencing the S&P 500 except the relationship isn't 1:1 and the index isn't the S&P 500. Goldman asked a hedge fund to help it build the index because (a) the hedge fund knew the market well and (b) Goldman hoped to sell the risky part of the product to the fund. (The risky part bet on things going down. In every trade you need a buyer (long) and a seller (short). In every structured product you need parties betting up (long) and betting down (short).)
TL; DR the hedge fund bought the risky part, Goldman marketed the other part, Goldman got paid its fee and the hedge fund made its money.
"But these were sophisticated parties!" "But Goldman were acting as a market maker! They didn't have a fiduciary obligation to anyone and their counterparties knew this!" "But the hedge fund is an independent agent!"
Doesn't matter. There was popular consensus that everyone looked like shit. If you don't say "that was shit, we won't let it happen again" you're in trouble. Society will create the laws and regulators to ensure it for you. Remember: laws are codified social constructs. The rule of law means codification precedes enforcement. But the social construct --> law process, the legislative process, is political. It's animalistic because we're animalistic.
The counter-arguments I presented above are technically correct. Just like it's technically correct to claim Facebook doesn't manually review its ads. Or like it's technically correct to say said ads probably didn't sway the outcome of the election. It doesn't matter. Russia would not have been able to micro-target fractures in American society with the precision, and without detection, from afar as they did with the algorithmically- and selectively-deployed ad platforms Facebook, Google and Twitter built. That the negative effect is an inherent consequence of the system doesn't help. In fact, making that claim is counterproductive since it implies an independent outsider, i.e. a regulator, is needed to help rebuild the system.
Bad things happened through their products that would not have been possible, or at least as undetectable, without their products. "Bad things" refers to a foreign power running political ads to influence our democratic process. This is provoking a backlash.
I find analogy in the financial services industry's response to the 2008 crisis. Let's zoom in on Goldman Sachs creating structured products with hedge funds betting against said products [1].
Goldman created a product referencing an index. This is like an ETF [2] referencing the S&P 500 except the relationship isn't 1:1 and the index isn't the S&P 500. Goldman asked a hedge fund to help it build the index because (a) the hedge fund knew the market well and (b) Goldman hoped to sell the risky part of the product to the fund. (The risky part bet on things going down. In every trade you need a buyer (long) and a seller (short). In every structured product you need parties betting up (long) and betting down (short).)
TL; DR the hedge fund bought the risky part, Goldman marketed the other part, Goldman got paid its fee and the hedge fund made its money.
"But these were sophisticated parties!" "But Goldman were acting as a market maker! They didn't have a fiduciary obligation to anyone and their counterparties knew this!" "But the hedge fund is an independent agent!"
Doesn't matter. There was popular consensus that everyone looked like shit. If you don't say "that was shit, we won't let it happen again" you're in trouble. Society will create the laws and regulators to ensure it for you. Remember: laws are codified social constructs. The rule of law means codification precedes enforcement. But the social construct --> law process, the legislative process, is political. It's animalistic because we're animalistic.
The counter-arguments I presented above are technically correct. Just like it's technically correct to claim Facebook doesn't manually review its ads. Or like it's technically correct to say said ads probably didn't sway the outcome of the election. It doesn't matter. Russia would not have been able to micro-target fractures in American society with the precision, and without detection, from afar as they did with the algorithmically- and selectively-deployed ad platforms Facebook, Google and Twitter built. That the negative effect is an inherent consequence of the system doesn't help. In fact, making that claim is counterproductive since it implies an independent outsider, i.e. a regulator, is needed to help rebuild the system.
[1] https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/regulators-tackle-co...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange-traded_fund