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Russian Propaganda Effort Helped Spread 'Fake News' During Election, Experts Say (usatoday.com)
According to the Washington Post (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternate source), the "fake news" phenomenon that circulated thousands of phony stories during the election was aided by a sophisticated Russian propaganda effort that aimed to punish Democrat Hillary Clinton, help Republican Donald Trump and undermine faith in American democracy. Slashdot reader xtsigs shares with us an excerpt from the Washington Post's report: The flood of "fake news" this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation. Russia's increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery -- including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human "trolls," and networks of websites and social-media accounts -- echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia. Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House.
Enough with the Red Scare.
Paul Horner isn't a Russian and was paid $10k to write fake stories
The Macedonian kids aren't russian either.
Aside from them holding clandestine events with the DNC their own lawyers said they couldn't do?
Note the email subject is "WaPo party" (i.e. Washington Post) and in response to the statement "They aren't going to give us a price per ticket and do not want their party listed in any package we are selling to donors. If we let them know we have donors in town who will be at the debate, we can add them to the list for the party." we get the reply "Great - we were never going to list since the lawyers told us we cannot do it."
Also, we're totally ignoring that Hillary had her "nerd virgins" (their own words for these people) from Correct The Record doing this.
Except it's not BS. I'm multilingual and follow some main online news publications of different European countries. What the US has witnessed now has been happening in Europe since Russia annexed Crimea. Russian government trolls are flooding discussion forums with pro-Putin and anti NATO / western propaganda, linking to phony stories on Russian news websites for "proof". They try to undermine trust in our democratic institutions spreading all kinds of wild conspiracy theories while accusing others of conspiracy theories when they are called out.
Russia is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, trying to change public opinion while funding far-right groups across Europe. They are basically trying to destabilize us. It's no joke:
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
http://www.businessinsider.de/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
I guess Russia has recently extended its operations to the US and has been disturbingly successful. The weakest candidate - Trump - became president, and the Duma applauded and cheered:
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...