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'Weaponized' Twitter Bots Spread Info From French Campaign Hack (recode.net)
"The French media and public have been warned not to spread details about a hacking attack on presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron," writes Slashdot reader schwit1, with the election commission threatening criminal charges. But meanwhile, "the leaked documents have since spread like wildfire across social media, particularly on Twitter," reports Recode.
Nicole Perlroth, a cybersecurity reporter with the New York Times, pointed out that an overwhelming amount of the tweets shared about the Macron campaign hack appear to come from automated accounts, commonly referred to as bots. About 40% of the tweets using the hashtag #MacronGate, Perlroth noted, are actually coming from only 5% of accounts using the hashtag. One account tweeted 1,668 times in 24 hours, which is more than one tweet per minute with no sleep... Twitter appears not to have done anything to combat what is obviously a bot attack, despite the fact the social media company is well aware of the problem of bot accounts being used to falsely popularize political issues during high-profile campaigns to give the impression of a groundswell of grassroots support.
The Times reporter later tweeted "This could be @twitter's death knell. Algorithms exist to deal with this. Why aren't you using them?" And one Sunlight Foundation official called the discovery "statistics from the front lines of the disinformation wars," cc-ing both Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg. In other news, the BBC reports France's president has promised to "respond" to the hacking incident, giving no further details, but saying he was aware of the risks because they'd "happened elsewhere"."
The Times reporter later tweeted "This could be @twitter's death knell. Algorithms exist to deal with this. Why aren't you using them?" And one Sunlight Foundation official called the discovery "statistics from the front lines of the disinformation wars," cc-ing both Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg. In other news, the BBC reports France's president has promised to "respond" to the hacking incident, giving no further details, but saying he was aware of the risks because they'd "happened elsewhere"."
They're already suppressing it. The various hashtags talking about this were artificially blocked from trending.
What is the next step they could take? Auto-hiding tweets talking about it? (They're already doing that.) Banning users for talking about it? Auto-removing discussion of his name?
At what point do calls for the blatant support for a single politician or suppressing support for others cross the line into political censorship and attempts at manipulating the election?
The bigger issues here are the overseas bank account he denied having and what's in the emails. Don't get distracted by who's releasing damning information, if the information is real the only issue is that it exists - of course corrupt people have dirt on them.
"Why aren't you suppressing information in order to allow our pre-selected candidate to breeze through to a state-approved victory!!!???"
As someone from, and living in, the EU. I'm worried much more about Russia than the US.
To be honest though, I'm not really worried about either, but if I had to pick...
The U.S. does. The EU is a big wall around the most lucrative market in the world, and there's no walking in and taking it as long as the walls are up. And of course it's very convenient to blame anything that happens on the Russians. Those evil Russians, who can hack into everything with a breeze just like in the movies, but at the same time are so bumbling and hilariously clumsy that they always leave a trove of clearly incriminating evidence behind. If you believe the U.S. outlets, that is.
The US made the EU in order to reduce the chance of them going to war with each other again. The US wanted an United States of Europe model to look at in the mirror. Dividing Europe again would be counter-productive to US policy.
No, Europe is undo-ing the EU all by themselves and it's just that the US isn't stopping them (not that we are trying as we have seemed to caught the nationalistic bug ourselves). Maybe you favor some sort of intervention policy? Sorry, that's not in the cards...
As to if Russia is behind the nationalistic bug that's going around? Don't know. But I suspect it has been festering for quite a while and this whole Syria event has some how created a snowball effect of this pent-up nationalistic energy. History has a way of working that way (see WWI as an example).
You can blame Russia for Syria, or maybe you can even blame the US for creating ISIL that triggered the situation in Syria. That might be fair, but as to some US conspiracy to break up the EU, hardly. The US isn't that smart about things. If the US proves to be ultimately responsible for the breakup of the EU, it was some unforeseen consequence of our intervention in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion of that country back in the '80s in a misguided attempt to regain some national pride after losing Vietnam, not some multi-national corporate conspiracy...
let the Russians totally pwn their electoral process with impunity. Putin has made you folks a laughing stock. Just sayin.
Tomorrow I expect the French people will give a big fuck you to Czar Vladimir
The bigger issue is "why are so many ACs suddenly posting 'what if' scenarios?".
You positively reek of troll factory.
Maybe the time has come to stop obsessing about whether our politicians are pure as the driven snow.
I've been thinking about this for a while, and while I don't like the idea of wantonly electing crooks, it strikes me that seeing as the general populace has no lack of shady people, I can't sort out why it is exactly we expect the political class to be paragons of virtue.
In the French election, there's a choice between a center-left politician and a hard-right politician. Now neither are ideal, and neither in fact really are what one would classify as the best representatives of their particular parties, but they're the ones that have made it to the top. So rather than obsess about some rather peculiarly-timed leaks, maybe you just take them for what they are, and what they represent and go from there. If in the end, they prove to be crooked, well, either it's so severe that it drives them from office, or you use the next election to punish them.
The reality is that for anyone who is on the left, or is a progressive, or even a moderate right winger, Le Pen and the Front National are a nightmare; the party itself has a pretty dire history of being anti-Semitic and anti-European and highly xenophobic, and while Le Pen, perhaps sensing she's heading for defeat precisely because of her and her party's intemperate declarations, is now suddenly trying to portray a softer, gentler image, I simply cannot imagine even a right-minded individual who may not be a big fan of immigration thinking that electing the head of a party of virulent hate-mongers is the answer.
Frankly, French politics has a pretty long history of pretty dodgy figures, to suddenly decide that Emmanuel Macron isn't worthy of the job because of some last-minute releases of allegedly hacked files, and that a bigot like Le Pen is the one deserving of the presidency, it just boggles my mind. Even if some of the alleged leaks suggesting some dodgy tax avoidance are true, what of it? For chrissakes, what do you imagine a leak of Front National's servers would produce?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's awful curious how there are no major leaks against right wing candidates who are friendly with the Russians.
As it is, it's no secret that Le Pen and Moscow are on very friendly terms. This is getting to be a familiar tune. Political candidate has close ties to Russia, opponent suddenly faces major email hack and release of lots of allegedly damning documents.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think this is because the "elite" fell asleep in their comfortable places and forgot the people.
For me and my country, the EU is great, but I can see how that may be annoying to the people in richer countries.
Another problem is the refugees. Now, I do not think that they all should be shot for illegally crossing the border etc, however, I remember Germany inviting them to come (instead of reluctantly accepting them) causing more refugees to come. It turned out that Germany cannot handle them all, so it forced other countries to accept them. This highlighted a few problems:
1. Germany has too much control in what is supposed to be a union, as opposed to the other countries being colonies of Germany. Kinda like the USSR where Moscow had all the power (though EU is not communist and is not so obsessed with military as the USSR was). It may not matter to my country - as we would have to obey someone anyway - be it Russia, Germany, the US or some other powerful country. But, I can understand why the people of the UK or France may not like that.
2. The EU has essentially no external border security. Before my country joined the EU, there was doubt on whether it should be accepted because it may have leaky external borders (with Belarus etc). It turns out all external EU borders are leaky. It may be OK if everyone who is coming is not a criminal, but if I was in control of ISIS I would send quite a few members disguised as refugees.
There also has been too much looking out for the interests of banks and big corporations over the interests of the people and small businesses.
"Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre."
Translated: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
There's certainly something to be said about the truth coming out. What we're seeing lately is not that, however. It's deliberate, one-sided, theft and carefully timed release of one side's information for specific political advantage. The concept isn't new, either - it was tried before and wound up becoming a scandal called Watergate.
What's different now is that the internet makes it so much easier to do, both because everyone uses it for communication and coordination on pretty much everything, but you don't need to even be close by to steal it, either. And even when you get caught red handed because all the digital evidence points right back to Russia, you've still got tons of useful idiots who'll throw up their hands and claim "it could be anyone else, we can never know, false flag, etc etc", never-mind the bots and sock puppets you can make to do the same.
It's doubly hilarious because they're copying Hillary's losing response to this, right down to the attempts to sow doubt about the docs while admitting there are true ones in there. Or how they think that censorship is the answer, lest someone find "inaccurate" information. Best to stick to fact-free news, I guess?
Ask Donna Brazille how well that strategy works. The funniest part is that it appears that Kim Dotcom got his revenge on Hillary in the end and they can't even get him for it now without admitting the whole charade.
There's only one piece of information that matters about Le Pen: She and her party are fucking neo-nazis.
I expect different things in the age of the internet. I expect all people seeking public office to have equal access to a public information distribution system to provide details of their policies and an end to private for profit advertisements. I expect that once they throw their hats in the ring, that all party communications are to be made publicly, live in order to prevent two faced politics. I expect a record to be kept of campaign promises and should the individual be elected by held accountable for those promises unless they are able to substantiate why they were not able to fulfill them. I expect all individuals seeking public office should be tested in the exact same manner as all other government employees are subject to, publicly audited and controlled tests for intelligence, knowledge and psychological evaluation (keep in mind modern psychopathy tests can not be cheated) and the public to have access to those results.
Provide those and elections will produce much better results, done and finished.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Nah, it's just internal campaign emails of little importance that the leakers mixed in with transparently forged documents about foreign bank accounts. I have friends who'll be voting FN & even among them nobody believes that the bank account dumps are true. Putin's overuse of the same tactics are wearing thin.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue