I was just thinking about the hack. I missed part of what Ari Melber said but far right sites were

[Horse with no Name]

used during the election by Russia.

Almost at the precise moment of the hack, I was renewing my membership so that I could watch election results. We all knew this was going to be an historic night--at the time, we didn't realize HOW historic. Point was, I didn't want to miss a thing.
I had just entered my credit card information as the hack occurred. I hit "Enter" and this is what I saw:



I immediately emailed Skinner about it--to his credit, he assured me that my credit card info was secure.

So as this unfolded....someone on my Facebook page posted an eerily similar banner on a website called "The Daily Stormer" (no link).

I alerted Skinner to this to check out because it was very coincidental.

So this cyberwarfare and the participation of the far right sites leads me to believe that YES....our website was hacked by Russia.

[hlthe2b]

1. I haven't been able to let that suspicion go, either

All I do know is that they did succeed in making a horrendous event even more so for all of us....

[Horse with no Name]

2. we weren't able to piece together abnormalities as a community and log the theft

we have some members that are amazing at this type of investigative work.

[hlthe2b]

3. Yes, indeed

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Yes, it was just cruelty. Denying DU to us did not affect the election.

That kind of cruelty is what Right Wing Authoritarians specialize in.

[LisaM]

8. Except that it's a large community that would be on the lookout

for irregularities and things going on at the polls, shared information about moved polling places, etc.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Good point. . . . nt

[mopinko]

4. the fact that the guys have not talked about what happened next

reeeeeally make me go hmmmm.

i have asked in ata for them to tell us what they know. those questions dont get answered.
i have zero doubt, zero, that we were silenced because we would be watching and telling. maybe the average joe doesnt know about us. but those who would hide their trails would know.

[CousinIT]

6. I mentioned back then when DU finally got online again . . .

that it was probably hacked by Russia -- and got laughed at. Hard.

So....this no longer a silly suggestion?

[Pachamama]

14. You and me both...

But I think sometime in future there will be answers and it will show that it was linked and coordinated and that DU was particularly targeted for both the goal to gloat at our agony, but also to stop those of us on DU that pay attention...

And I assume that threat still exists and DU has trolls that are not even of the past we knew from FR, but Russian trolls targeting any site that opposes their goals.

[byronius]

7. To anyone with any familiarity of Russian media styles -- it was obvious.

Clear as a bell. And nobody laughed when I said it, as soon as the site was back up.

They like bad metal. And they're not much for smooth video editing. And they dig those Macho Symbols.

Stuck in the eighties, those Vlads.

[mwooldri]

9. Could have been Russia.

Or anyone or group within the former USSR. Could have been someone in the C.A.R.or D.P.R.K. for all I care. The hack of DU is inexcusable.

But if it is agents of the Russian Federation then this gets interesting.

However if a similar hack page is shown elsewhere, shows me one thing... hack was by same group.

[Quanta]

10. Yep

DU's hack was part of the operation, for sure. Crippled a very important group of independent investigatory minds...

[Honeycombe8]

12. Well it wasn't hacked by a Democrat. Someone who wanted HRC to lose....

and therefore Trump to win, hacked it. DU is the largest online Democratic website, to my knowledge. Taken down the day of the election? Hacked by a pro? Of course it was hacked by whoever was influencing the election.

(I also don't think he won the election. I have no proof! That is just my belief, based on the fact that historically our country's pollster have never been that wrong before. There were maybe 13 polls running polls daily. I thought to myself, what are the odds that 12 of those polls were completely wrong? If I were a gambler, I would've made a million dollars betting on odds like that. That just wasn't likely to happen. Esp. when taken in conjunction with the tampering we thought at the time that Russia was doing with cyberhacking. It's possible he won legitimately. But I thought it was "likely" that election results in a few key districts were tampered with in some way. AND considering how SURE Trump was he'd win PA, when he was a full 6 points behind...that was when he said something like "There is no way I'm going to lose Pennsylvania. If I lose, then the election is RIGGED!" I thought when he said that, that that made no sense because there was no indication that he was going to win PA. None. But that's what I thought. There was no proof. And it was not a refusal to accept results; I really thought the odds were that the results in a few places were tampered with in some way. But no proof, so I am not saying we shouldn't have faith in our election system. But now that we know what Russia did, I hope we protect ourselves for the next election.)

[Catherine Vincent]

13. Yeah, it's no coincidence

Btw, did Skinner and company ever find out who did this or how it happened?