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

I wonder

[jpwilliams]

Is Twitter going to be like Switzerland and stay neutral? Also, how well can this tactic work against a critical mass? And what is that critical mass? I can't read Russian, but I imagine it would be pretty easy to pull out fake comments from real comments.

Re:I wonder

[klingens]

If it's really a Botnet, then Twitter can't be inactive, or they risk botwars for all kinds of controversial topics in the future. Twitter will then very soon become a wasteland of botnet #topic wars and real humans will leave in droves since they can't get any useful info anymore and Twitter, the company, will crater.
As long as this presumable russian government botnet was not widely known, Twitter could have ignored it since the public didn't know that Twitter was gamed by special interests. Now however, they have to act or rather give the impression of acting. Acting in this case means to stop the Botnet of course, the other still existing botnets won't be affected since they've not been exposed (yet).

In Soviet Russia

[tokencode]

Twitter tells you what to think.

Seems dumb

[Rich0]

Why have those accounts all follow each other? It would make exterminating them trivial assuming twitter can be bothered to do so. Just implement any communications on the back end, or using less-obvious forms of communications.

Of course, with all the twitter spam out there it wouldn't surprise me if people just have these networks ready to go all the time and sell them to the highest bidder when the price gets high enough.

Twitter is obsolete in any case.

Re:Seems dumb

[AZURERAZOR]

Follower count for each would make each account look more popular. Follower count is used in some of the third party twitter searches to improve relevance... *fail*

#OccupyFEMAcamp

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Coming soon!

Astroturfing

[onyxruby]

This is just astroturfing. Pretty much any type of popular forum site is going to have large numbers for accounts that have been set up for astroturfing my third parties.

I recall a while back fark all of sudden got crapflooded by pro-chavez bots. Admins simply need to find astroturfing accounts and delete them. Nothing new here.

What happened to Russia?

[iONiUM]

I thought they were getting more progressive in the recent years? Is this not the case? It seems like it's just getting closer and closer to another dictatorship and extreme socialism.

Can someone more informed than me on the subject explain what's going on there? None of the sites seem to say more than "Putin is being an asshole."

Re:What happened to Russia?

[Nadaka]

There is very little socialist about Russia. It is basically a capitalistic authoritarian kleptocracy with a surging nationalist police state agenda.

Re:What happened to Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is very little socialist about Russia. It is basically a capitalistic authoritarian kleptocracy with a surging nationalist police state agenda.

Or in other words, converging to the same asymptote as the US...

Re:What happened to Russia?

[swb]

My unvarnished take on it is that when the USSR dissolved, Russia went from a totalitarian socialism to a kind of weak Democratic capitalism, dominated by organized crime and "the oligarchs". Most of the "backbone" Russian institutions like the KGB and the military (in particular) were significantly weakened, and all manner of social ills began to rear their ugly head.

Putin kind of stepped in and with something of an iron fist in a velvet glove began to kind of re-invigorate the institutions of Russia. A number of oligarchs who wouldn't toe his line (whether politically, financially, or both) were essentially stripped of their wealth, imprisoned and some even killed (cf. Kordokovsky, who ran Lukoil, is still in jail and Litvenenko was poisoned with Polonium, although he was ex-KGB/FSB, not an oligarch).

Publicly, Putin sort of created a new "strong" Russian image and with high oil prices was sort of able to create an improved economic climate and tamp down the chaos of Russian civil life.

That being said, Democracy took a back seat if not being reduced to a mere performance. Lots of suppression of the press, the opposition. He moved from President to Prime Minister, appointing a puppet President (they traded jobs in the most recent and probably rigged election).

My guess is that the global economic downturn has taken the shine off of living in his dictatorship (along with the corruption and everyday difficulties).

You would think he would either guide a more democratic transition and fade away to private life, but I think he's going to hold on to power until he gets clipped. I think too much of the top end of Russian politics is run like organized crime for anyone to get on top and stay on top to just say "game over, I'm done".

Re:What happened to Russia?

[wickerprints]

I thought they were getting more progressive in the recent years? Is this not the case? It seems like it's just getting closer and closer to another dictatorship and extreme socialism.

Extreme socialism? No, that's not correct. Russia is what one would legitimately call a plutocratic oligopoly, where control of the government and economy is tightly confined to those who became extremely wealthy after the disbanding of the Soviet Union opened up economic markets. Once that happened, various well-connected individuals were able to profit immensely from the sale of natural resources (i.e., Russian oil and natural gas) to Europe, and political corruption increased in direct proportion as these individuals leveraged their wealth to gain political influence in a freshly post-Communist country. What happened, basically, was a period of unrestrained capitalism culminating in monopoly power infiltrating a weak political system and the subsequent disenfranchisement of the vast majority of Russian citizens from actual political power. That is not "extreme socialism."

Some might argue that much the same will happen, is happening, or has already happened, in the United States--just with less flagrant violence and impunity, but that is a topic for another thread.

This is why the Communist Party is seeing a revival in Russian politics. Not because the voters actually wish for a return to communism--after all, they know full well what it was like to live under that failed system--but because things have gotten so horrifically bad and obviously corrupt under Putin's effective dictatorship, that a vote for the Communists is basically like giving Putin's party the middle finger.

Re:What happened to Russia?

[roman_mir]

1. Russian mafia-government buys the votes with promises of the dole.

2. The only thing 'capitalist' about it is that a limited number of people are making a capital for themselves alright.

3. The mafia-bosses on the top of the political pyramid are making sure that nobody knows or hears about any viable alternatives, the 'Channel 1' is bought and paid for (and the rest of the channels are heavily monitored and censored, maybe even self-censored). Only a small percentage of the country is on the Internet, and it's mainly the younger people. The majority of folks don't know that there are alternatives, that's how successful the mafia-bosses on top are at what they do.

4. The nationalist agenda is just a cover to create a false sense of 'unity'. For example Putin and Medvedev love to talk about USA and other Western nations trying to undermine the Russian government in order to take over and give Russia to some nefarious people.

It's really a mafia-ran state right now.

Re:What happened to Russia?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

So Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev are sitting in a bathtub . . .

Putin: "Dmitry, which one of us is President today?"

Medvedev: "Which day of the week is it today?"

Putin: "Friday."

Medvedev: "That means that you are President, Vladimir."

Putin: "Ok, that means that you must get out of the tub to fetch us another bottle of vodka from the kitchen."

Re:What happened to Russia?

[petsounds]

You're missing a bit there. "Organized crime" IS the KGB. When the KGB was disbanded, those guys no longer had jobs. Some now work for the Russian security forces, but most seem to have gone into the underworld in those chaotic post-USSR years. And let's not forget that Putin is ex-KGB. There's not much difference between the Russian mafia and the Russian government. Similar to America's corporatocracy, but more brutal.

Re:What happened to Russia?

[roman_mir]

Nonsense. Ron Paul is the exact opposite of what US government and Russian government represent today - lack of law. Lawlessness on the government level.

The laws must apply to the government just as well as they apply to individuals and the government must not be allowed to do things that individuals cannot do by law.

USA and Russia have similar problems, however what you call '1%' in USA consists of all sorts of people - mostly owners of businesses. Those are the people who actually run the economy. The MAKE the products that everybody wants and they profit in the process.

The problem in USA of-course is that a small number of the very rich (maybe 0.01%) found ways to subvert the law that applies to the government and they found a way to give themselves all sorts of privileges nobody should have.

However OTOH the about 50% found a way to give themselves something they didn't earn in USA as well, and it's paid by the top 50%.

USA has a problem, it's a different problem. USA can in fact return to the Constitution and can again have a government that lives by the law. It's going to be hard, but it does not have to be violent.

In Russia it will likely be violent before it gets better, and the problem with Russia is that since 1917 the working class the real 1% and the top 50% were systematically destroyed by the state, making sure that the population has little initiative by design and cannot imagine how not to be poor, how to work for themselves, how to start and run businesses.

People in Russia are learning this again, but it's a tiny percentage of people who are learning and are successful, and it's all despite the government, not because of it.

Of-course USA had the right idea and since about 1913 it also turned to the wrong side, but it can rediscover the right idea if it wanted to and it would take much less work to do it, because the initiative and self reliance haven't been bred out of people, so there are much fewer mental blocks.

But there are mental blocks, many are created by these false idea that socialism is good for economy and society. It's a false idea and it's slowly failing everywhere today, where it has been implemented.

Re:What happened to Russia?

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, that would be a concise but broadly correct summary. The only thing worth noting is that the sets of "Yeltsin's cronies" and "Putin's cronies" partially intersect.

The main hope is that, if the next government comes to power as a result of honest elections - and especially as a result of a vote recount demanded by citizens - they will have to play it more careful than the thugs currently in power, because the viability of kicking them out next elections would have been demonstrated. But then, that's also what Ukrainians hoped in 2004, and they were proven wrong.

Re:What happened to Russia?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Classic Friedmannite failure. Post Soviet Union, the Free Marketeers went in and got them to follow the IMF/WTO playbook on "developing" a nation. That entails cutting taxes on the rich, eliminating social commitments, and selling off government assets. You end up with a wealth transfer to the top, and government with only one tool in its toolkit (the military) to deal with domestic strife, organized crime where government no longer can protect the people, and a whole lot of mega-rich bureaucrats who took the bribes to sell of government assets at cut-rate prices.

Re:What happened to Russia?

[mirix]

Do you know what Socialism is? It's not what Putin is after, and it's not the boogeyman either.

I'll give you dictatorship though. Seems some folk (particularly Americans) have some sort of mix-up between authoritarianism and socialism.

Those poor Scandinavians, living under their evil totalitarian socialist regimes... better liberate them.

Re:What happened to Russia?

[hitmark]

Given that post-soviet Russia was basically guided into much the same shock treatment that Iraq has been going thru in recent years by US economists sent over to "help" a former enemy become capitalist, it should not be a surprise. There is a religion masking as science out of Chicago called neo-classical/monetarist economics that is the source.

Re:What happened to Russia?

[hitmark]

And this has been basically the status quo in Russia since day one. Russian communism basically replaced one despot with another, and even Yeltsin ran the place like some fiefdom.

Reverse Effect

[Kamiza Ikioi]

This will ensure the hashtags make it to trending topics. If the hashtags in question are something like #FuckingLiarPutin, doesn't really matter what they add to it. Let's hope the hashtags themselves say enough, like Jeff Jarvis' #fuckyouwashington that went viral quickly.

Re:Figures.

[tripleevenfall]

In Soviet Russia, tag hashes YOU!

Terms of Service Enforcement?

[El Fantasmo]

Aren't situations like this when Twitter should, at the very least, temporarily suspend the obvious, automated "spam" accounts? All they need to do is quote some vague line in their "terms of service," which I haven't seen (I don't have a twitter account) but I would be surprised if it doesn't exist.

False equivalence lately?

[jensend]

*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.

Re:False equivalence lately?

[NeutronCowboy]

What the hell does your dick-waving have to do with the fact that you are indeed comparing apples and oranges? Yes, the US isn't the shining beacon of hope, freedom and liberty it thinks it is. But it is still a very, very far cry from the autocratic and kleptocratic country that is Russia. Comparing the two and implying that the US is somehow on the same level of government mismanagement, anarchy and oligarchic abuses of power makes me think you haven't spent enough time in Russia.

Re:False equivalence lately?

[jensend]

Look, having been in the military has nothing to do with anything. Sure, you may have taken some risks, but those risks have nothing to do with the risks taken by Russian protesters (likely to be jailed just for showing up in a public square) and opposition figures (likely to be assassinated by grotesque means like Politkovskaya or Litvinenko).

Thanks for your service and all, but I'm sorry if what you learned from it was to be a total jerkwad.

Re:So are you saying I shouldn't have friended the

[shutdown -p now]

But us calling them a dictatorship? Please, have you looked in the mirror lately?

Have you looked at the videos documenting widespread electoral fraud?

It's an open question whether U.S. has free elections or not, but I'm pretty confident that one thing that you don't have in your election is things like ballot boxes pre-stuffed with ballots with the "right" vote marked already. Or, even more bluntly, counting the ballots, and then changing the numbers in the protocol before it is submitted (and kicking out any observers that protest or try to photo it).

Re:Figures.

[tomhudson]

No no, comrade. In Soviet Russia, hash tags YOU!

Funny how the governments and the political chattering class put more importance on twitter than the average person does.

I can't remember the last time I even looked at twitter.

Re:Figures.

[Karl Cocknozzle]

This.

Twitter: Yawn. It's millions of idiots blathering on senselessly. For every pithy, funny, legible tweet, there are half-million messages that are just dreck. I had some fun impersonating a politician on Twitter for a while... but he didn't run for President, and I let it die... Nobody offered me a book deal. ...Not yet, anyway.

Correction

[slonik]

... Tweets sent by bloggers and activists this week who are protesting the disputed presidential elections in Russia.

It was Russian parliament elections. Presidential elections are in March 2012.

so

[unity100]

Yes, the US isn't the shining beacon of hope, freedom and liberty it thinks it is. But it is still a very, very far cry from the autocratic and kleptocratic country that is Russia.

is that why police departments all over usa had beaten down occupy protesters in a move coordinated by FBI ?

http://www.examiner.com/top-news-in-minneapolis/were-occupy-crackdowns-aided-by-federal-law-enforcement-agencies

talk about democracy.