Twitter Bots Drown Out Anti-Kremlin Tweets

tsu doh nimh writes "It appears that thousands of Twitter accounts created in advance to blast automated messages are being used to drown out Tweets sent by bloggers and activists this week who are protesting the disputed presidential elections in Russia. Trend Micro first observed on Wednesday the bogus tweets flooding popular hashtags being used by Russians protesting the election and the arrests of hundreds of protesters, including prominent anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny. Today, blogger Brian Krebs posted evidence that thousands of accounts apparently auto-created in mid-2011 were being used to flood more than a dozen hashtags connected to the protests, and appear to be all following each other and one master account, presumably the botnet controller."

Comments

Re:False equivalence lately?

[WillAffleckUW]

*Sigh* here we go again with the false equivalence squad.

If you can't see why your "hurr durr so is amerikuh" statement is a bunch of crap, let's make the following deal: I'll go stand in an anti-government protest here in the States, and you go stand in Red Square with those protesting Putin's latest power grab.

If we're lucky, you'll be able to write letters from prison telling us how it went.

Unlike you, I actually served. Mostly here.

After you, Gaston.

They used to require us to do pre and post briefings before we traveled to places like Russia, if we held clearances, which I did.

So, you can man up when you want. I'll still be here, having done more than you probably ever will.