Twitter Suspends Hundreds of Accounts Linked To Russian Operatives (usatoday.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Twitter says it found some 200 accounts linked to the same Russian groups that bought $100,000 worth of ads on Facebook to sow political unrest and manipulate U.S. voters during the presidential election. The Twitter accounts, which were taken down over the last month, were linked to 470 accounts and pages that Facebook traced to the International Research Agency, a Russian troll farm. According to a blog post released by Twitter Thursday after briefing staffers on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the groups on Facebook had 22 Twitter accounts. Twitter found an additional 179 accounts connected to those 22. Twitter also shared information on Russian news outlet Russia Today, or RT, which has ties to the Kremlin, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Comments

As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of ads is to manipulate people into doing what you want. If Russians want you to vote for a certain candidate, why does this matter?

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Calydor]

I'm rather curious about this as well. I haven't been following this thing very closely, so in short: What did they do that was illegal or against the ToS? Am I, as a Danish citizen living in Germany, gonna get banned from Twitter if I post, with no context, that I think you should vote against Trump in 2020?

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

If Russians want you to vote for a certain candidate, why does this matter?

Because it's been illegal for almost half a century.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

Am I, as a Danish citizen living in Germany, gonna get banned from Twitter if I post, with no context, that I think you should vote against Trump in 2020?

"Post, with no context" is not the same as "purchasing an ad from a US media company".

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the no fly list. May we get you a beverage?

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Link?

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Calydor]

Okay. Am I prohibited from purchasing ads from US media companies? If so, why?

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, and when we manipulate other countries (from propaganda up to illegal wars), we only do illegal things for the purist of reasons. So it be okay.

Might makes right!
Freedom ain't free!

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends if the thing you're promoting is deemed unpopular at this point in time, and if you can be made a scapegoat.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[bobbied]

If Russians want you to vote for a certain candidate, why does this matter?

Because it's been illegal for almost half a century.

How so?

First, you cannot stop them. Our laws don't apply on foreign soil. What the Russians do from over there is not going to stop if we make it illegal.

Second, I believe that you are talking about foreign participation in our elections. Where candidates and campaigns may not knowingly ask for or accept *resources* (money, services) from foreign sources, that's about as far as the law actually goes.

The big problem for your "It's been illegal" is that you cannot curb free speech within the country, and that means you cannot stop foreign interests from supporting local causes THROUGH citizens any more than you can stop PAC's from buying ads.

So Accepting material support from foreign countries IS and has been illegal for campaigns and candidates, you cannot stop foreign involvement.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

Link?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The provision regarding foreign interference in elections was upheld by SCOTUS in 2012. See Bluman, et al., v. Federal Election Commission.

https://thecaucus.blogs.nytime...

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[AmiMoJo]

Many of them misrepresented their identity in order to deceive.

For excite, "AntiFa Boston" accidentally posted location data on a tweet recently (Moscow, Russia). The account is a troll stoking up division by pretending to be someone they are not, which is against the ToS.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

Okay. Am I prohibited from purchasing ads from US media companies?

Yes, if they are meant to influence an election.

If so, why?

Don't ask me. Ask Congress (who passed the law) and Richard Nixon (who signed the law) and the Supreme Court (who upheld the law's provisions regarding foreign influence in elections).

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[tsqr]

Here. Hint: scroll down to section c.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

Second, I believe that you are talking about foreign participation in our elections. Where candidates and campaigns may not knowingly ask for or accept *resources* (money, services) from foreign sources, that's about as far as the law actually goes.

We have at least two congressional investigations and an independent prosecutor who are looking into that "knowingly ask for" part, as we speak.

Stay tuned.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[tsqr]

Sorry; that should be section e.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Obfuscant]

If Russians want you to vote for a certain candidate, why does this matter?

Because it's been illegal for almost half a century.

Uhhh, no, it has never been illegal for any Russian to want me to vote for a certain candidate, any more than it has been illegal for any German or Brit or Canadian or South African or ...

It may have been illegal for that Russian to donate to specific candidates, or to buy advertising for specific candidates, but that's a lot more than just him wanting me to vote a certain way. And it is still a more than him tweeting his electoral preferences.

The twitter accounts that were deleted weren't buying twitter advertising, at least nothing like that was claimed in the summary. They were connected to Facebook accounts that may have bought Facebook advertising, but were any of those ads in violation of campaign finance laws? Isn't Facebook then liable for that violation, knowing those campaign finance laws exist?

Here's the kicker in this story: "Twitter also shared information on Russian news outlet Russia Today, or RT, which has ties to the Kremlin, according to U.S. intelligence agencies."

This is often hard for US residents to understand. We have VOA operated by the US government, but VOA is prohibited from operating within the US (as is Radio Marti aimed at Cuba). Other than that, there is no government operated radio or television (government funded, yes, but not operated). Other governments DO use radio and television as a way of spreading government propaganda on a regular basis.

It should be no surprise that Russia Today is a voice of the Russian government, as was Iraqi State TV, and many, if not all of the other "state TV" operations in the world. I swear, there were people during the lead up to the Iraqi operations that saw Iraqi TV and thought it was a true representation of the thoughts of the Iraqi people and not just the thoughts of Saddam.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

So as an American, if I spend a large amount on ads, it's okay? But wait, I was given money by Russians! So that's bad, right? But I developed websites for them, so is that okay, they weren't paying me for ads, they were paying me for my developer work! Still bad, or not? What if I did the work 20 years ago and the money accrued over time, then it is okay?

I feel like this is an extremely silly law to get around. If Russians can't donate directly, and they want to, they WILL find a work around...and worse, you won't know how much money they spent.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Jeremy Erwin]

If you are a foreign national you cannot legally contribute to a candidate for federal office.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

>accidentally

You're not very good at this "trolling" thing, are you?

Using fake geotags is simple. Pretending to be Russian to mock - or better yet, fool - deranged liberals is an ancient meme among right-wingers online. Just go on r/the_donald and see how many people have a russian flag for their flair. (Granted it used to be more popular back before the russia narrative wasn't such a tired joke)

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Obfuscant]

From the link: "In addition to limiting the size of contributions to candidates and political parties, FECA also requires campaigns and political committees to report the names, addresses, and occupations of donors of more than $200."

The last time I checked, a tweet costs exactly $0, and as such cannot be considered a donation to any campaign.

Should we also try to claim that it is illegal for any foreign press to publish any information that is detrimental (or supportive) of any US political candidate? It costs them a LOT more than $0 to do that, and if a free tweet is illegal, then a front page article in the Suddeutsche Zeitung must certainly be, as well. Does US campaign finance law apply to foreign companies and agencies operating outside the US? Wow.

But campaign finance is a lot more than just a Russian wanting someone to vote a certain way.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump will be impeached any day now, says increasingly desperate man for 5,000th time this year.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Obfuscant]

If Russians can't donate directly, and they want to, they WILL find a work around...

If nothing else, they'll simply send Buddhist monks to Washington and throw an "outreach event".

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[AmiMoJo]

Great example of the kind of gaslighting I was taking about the other day.

Of course if it was a parody/troll their reaction, deleting the tweet and then their account, seems a little bit odd.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[sexconker]

It matters because Hillary lost.

If Hillary had won, nobody would care. Anyone crying about the Russians buying pro-Hillary, left leaning ads (which they did) wouldn't be given one second of airtime or one byte of blog space.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

From the link: "In addition to limiting the size of contributions to candidates and political parties, FECA also requires campaigns and political committees to report the names, addresses, and occupations of donors of more than $200."
The last time I checked, a tweet costs exactly $0, and as such cannot be considered a donation to any campaign.

If you read the article, these twitter accounts are connected to the accounts that bought facebook advertising (assumedly for more than $0). Since the Twitter TOS says that you can be suspended for engaging in criminal activity (not limited to activity on twitter), they were suspended.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you pretending to be 5,000 twitterbot "users" pushing paid-for 3rd party propaganda from a spoofed location? Or just yourself, from Germany, an actual person? Because nobody is accusing Russia's 9-5 state sponsored hackers of having a VALID interest in US politics.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

Uhhh, no, it has never been illegal for any Russian to want me to vote for a certain candidate,

Nobody said it was illegal for them to "want" you to vote for Donald Trump.

The illegal part comes if they actively get involved with the US election (usually via money). That's what seems to have happened here.

Isn't Facebook then liable for that violation, knowing those campaign finance laws exist?

Yes, that's why they're falling all over themselves cooperating with law enforcement and congressional committees.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

They could, for instance, donate obscene wads of cash to a charitable foundation that pays its directors, famous politicians and their families, lavish salaries for their work running the "non-profit". What these political families do with their hard-earned briefcases full of unmarked, non-sequential twenty dollar bills is their business.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It says 'suspended' for me, which would be hardly surprising given twitter's general attitude towards right-wingers, but whatever. Even if the parody account *was* Russian, I don't see the problem. @AntifaBoston wasn't #FAEKN00Z!!1, it was mockery and parody. If that's forbidden, then by extension no American comic should be allowed to make anti-Putin jokes.

Also, Trevor Noah is a foreigner and no liberal seems to mind laughing at his political humor. Viacom pays him millions for it, in fact.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Political ads, yes. The reason for that should be obvious.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[pushing-robot]

https://xkcd.com/1494/

Protip: Laws tend to target behavior but not exact actions; we employ judges and concepts like animus nocendi to decide if actions are criminal or innocent. Otherwise, just as you say, people would find 'workarounds' for every law and spend their days creatively robbing and killing each other.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany might be a bad example, since they are little better than a U.S. colony and U.S. law might well apply there. Goodness knows the U.S. has enough forces there or nearby to compel any specific behavior it might care about.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[bobbied]

Second, I believe that you are talking about foreign participation in our elections. Where candidates and campaigns may not knowingly ask for or accept *resources* (money, services) from foreign sources, that's about as far as the law actually goes.

We have at least two congressional investigations and an independent prosecutor who are looking into that "knowingly ask for" part, as we speak.

Stay tuned.

Knowingly ask for or receive MONEY or something having value (such as phone services or rent free office space) is what the FEC rules don't allow. Pretty much if money (or something with monitory value) wasn't asked for or received from the Russians by the Trump Campaign, there is nothing that violates the law. So far, I've not seen any hard evidence of money being asked for or received, but we certainly don't have all the facts.

Of course Mueller may have a different perspective after fully investigating all the facts, but I'd not hold your breath while you wait for that result. Until Mueller is done, neither you nor I know anything for sure...

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you have identified the problem - money in politics. That it opens up the country to foreign influence is only one of the problems it causes.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we also try to claim that it is illegal for any foreign press to publish any information that is detrimental (or supportive) of any US political candidate? It costs them a LOT more than $0 to do that, and if a free tweet is illegal, then a front page article in the Suddeutsche Zeitung must certainly be, as well. Does US campaign finance law apply to foreign companies and agencies operating outside the US? Wow.

No, but it does apply to Twitter and Facebook.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because no air time at all was given to Hillary's email server

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except I don't care what you think. I'm all for throwing political correctness, feminism, socialism, diversism, oh and faggotry out. If Russia werepaying to help make that happen, I'd say Amerika blagodarit vas, America thanks you. Spasibo bolshoy, Rossiya, thank you very much Russia.

However one thing is for sure, the Americans have plans for the coming presidential elections in Russia 2018 and are backing obvious scum like Navalny. They are well aware that the Americans will try to influence and manipulate the elections to get their homosexual into office.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pretty much how the US justice system works, whatever is expedient and fits our narrative and agenda best.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are putting out ads for both sides of hot button issues, so as to create division and chaos. The issue itself is not important to them. What is important is the disunity the two ads would produce.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[BitterOak]

I'm rather curious about this as well. I haven't been following this thing very closely, so in short: What did they do that was illegal

If they paid money for ads in support of or against a particular political candidate, they were in violation of Title 52 United States Code Sec. 30121. The constitutionality of this statute was challenged on First Amendment grounds, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in refusing to hear an appeal, let stand a ruling by a federal court of appeals that found the statute to be enforceable.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it is illegal, why should anyone other people who professionally act in the legal system care? Why should I care there is some nuanced difference only visible to legal specialists when Google does it and when the Russian Federation does it? Russia is not even a fraction of the threat the US government is to my life and well-being, and Google ranks right up there with them. Russia doesn't even have plans to impose taxes on me.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[rylyeh]

If you were proven to be spreading false political information (like Pizzagate) among multiple shadow accounts - that violates the terms for Twitter.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Obfuscant]

Nobody said it was illegal for them to "want" you to vote for Donald Trump.

Reread what you replied to, including the quotes.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[BitterOak]

Knowingly ask for or receive MONEY or something having value (such as phone services or rent free office space) is what the FEC rules don't allow. Pretty much if money (or something with monitory value) wasn't asked for or received from the Russians by the Trump Campaign, there is nothing that violates the law.

That's absolutely wrong. Title 52 U.S.C. 30121 (a)(1)(C) says "It shall be unlawful for a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication." It doesn't matter if Trump's campaign was involved or not. If the Russians bought ads that mention the names of either or both candidates for the purposes of supporting one of the candidates then they have broken the law.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we have an example of a typical technique used by Russian state-sponsored trolls: trying to divert the conversation on to a different subject. Note also the use of extreme language in an attempt to start a flame war.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If so, why?

Just a wild stab in the dark but it might have been because they didn't want their democracy subverted by foreign powers.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The best part of the VALID argument is you just say your opponents position is not valid no mater what they say. When did you stop beating your wife?

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Vladivostok, that well known home of parody.

I see a bit of a shift here, some trolls are pivoting from "Russians pretending to be Americans? How ridiculous" to "So what if they did help Trump?"

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

Even if it is illegal, why should anyone other people who professionally act in the legal system care?

That level of concern for the rule of law officially qualifies you to be a Republican congressman.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

So $100k in mostly pro-Hillary ads lost Hillary the election....?

You people are fucking retarded.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

> for the purist of reasons

*grammar nazi's eye twitching*

Of all the words, you had to stain that one.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

Reread what you replied to, including the quotes.

As I said, the "want" part is not illegal. The purchasing of campaign ads and providing material support to the Trump campaign is illegal. That was the "this" in his question, "why does this matter?"

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Obfuscant]

As I said, the "want" part is not illegal. The purchasing of campaign ads and providing material support to the Trump campaign is illegal.

That's what I said.

That was the "this" in his question, "why does this matter?"

It is pretty clear that the antecedent was intended to be "Russians want you to vote for a certain candidate", because that is the only thing that appears in the quote, both when you quoted it and when I did. I cannot assume mysterious invisible antecedents apply when there is a perfectly good one right there in the first clause of the sentence.

And when you argue with me about what I said and then claim that's what you said originally, you only highlight the problem. Why are you arguing with me if what I said is what you thought you said?

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Obfuscant]

If the Russians bought ads that mention the names of either or both candidates for the purposes of supporting one of the candidates then they have broken the law.

Oh my God, Russians living in Russia have broken US laws. Behead them. Oh, wait, they are Russians living in Russia. Doesn't matter, let's make sure US law is applied to everyone on the planet, it is, after all, our Manifest Destiny. To control the planet. Isn't it?

On the other hand, Facebook knowingly accepted the money for those ads, but they seem to still have their heads. Does taking the money for an illegal act and then giving the congress copies of the illegal ads let them off the hook?

And then, what do we do with all the foreign press that carried articles and other material either beneficial or detrimental to specific candidates? Do we behead the newspaper editors and publishers for violating US law? My goodness, how can we be decent people and allow all this lawbreaking to take place all over the world?

It doesn't matter if Trump's campaign was involved or not.

Of course it matters if the Trump campaign was involved or not. Here: "11 CFR 110.20(g) Solicitation, acceptance, or receipt of contributions and donations from foreign nationals. No person shall knowingly solicit, accept, or receive from a foreign national any contribution or donation prohibited by paragraphs (b) through (d) of this section. " "Knowingly" is a pretty relevant word there. And note that "electioneering communications" (i.e., ads) are prohibited by (e), while the prohibition on receiving "donations" covers only (b) through (d). It is thus not even a question whether Trump's campaign "knowingly" accepted the ads since they are not prohibited from doing so.

I'm wondering exactly what you expected the Trump campaign to do when Russians "bought ads" or tweeted stuff. Should the campaign be subject to prosecution for acts they do not and cannot control? Should someone in the campaign go to prison for things that they may never even see, much less have done?

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You first.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[wilec]

Classic, what is your wish young sir a dingbat pin or a bozo button ?

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

However one thing is for sure, the Americans have plans for the coming presidential elections in Russia 2018 and are backing obvious scum like Navalny. They are well aware that the Americans will try to influence and manipulate the elections to get their homosexual into office.

How's that any different from that faggot's dream-boat scum you've got in the Kremlin now, boychik?

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Zontar The Mindless]

... people would find 'workarounds' for every law and spend their days creatively robbing and killing each other.

They do a pretty good job of that already.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[BitterOak]

Oh my God, Russians living in Russia have broken US laws. Behead them. Oh, wait, they are Russians living in Russia.

You don't think the U.S. should investigate crimes against the U.S. just because they were committed abroad? It doesn't mean they'll ask for extradition or even lay charges, but if U.S. laws are broken, the justice department has an obligation to investigate. That's their job.

And then, what do we do with all the foreign press that carried articles and other material either beneficial or detrimental to specific candidates? Do we behead the newspaper editors and publishers for violating US law?

Don't know why you keep going on about beheading. The penalty is a fine. And there is an exception in this law for journalism.

It doesn't matter if Trump's campaign was involved or not.

Of course it matters if the Trump campaign was involved or not. Here: "11 CFR 110.20(g) Solicitation, acceptance, or receipt of contributions and donations from foreign nationals...

Yes, of course. What I meant was it doesn't matter for the purposes of deciding Russian culpability. Of course, if Trump or his campaign was involved it matters as far as his culpability goes. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Difficulty is discerning between a state-sponsored individual or entity and somebody that's just having a bad day/life, isn't getting laid, or any of the other variety of circumstances that make people feel the need to vent? Trolling: where an individual or State beats up a keyboard instead of a punching bag, tries to fry our brains with bullshit, and/or makes a futile attempt to find converts to a mix of ideologies that are full of disappointment and shame. Not all it's cracked up to be, but letting individuals say what the fuck is on their mind seems a lot better than asking them to bottle the fury only to see the alternative outcome.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[MightyMartian]

So if I post under a fake Twitter account that you're a raging pedophile and catfucker, calling you out by name and warning your neighbors to keep their kids and cats away from you, that's like totally just parody, right?

I've never people more dedicated to trying to avoid the obvious; that they were duped by a dedicated and elaborate propaganda campaign by Russia to assist Donald Trump in getting elected than the alt-right.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Obfuscant]

You don't think the U.S. should investigate crimes against the U.S. just because they were committed abroad?

When there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, why waste time? We aren't going to extradite the Russian government or anyone involved in buying the ads, the Russians aren't going to put them in prison. We're even less likely to get any action from anyone but the US press over tweets that Russians made -- and even that will be limited to faux outrage and foot stomping. And it is even a question whether we can make subjects of citizens of other countries while they live in other countries.

Do we silently accept other countries trying to enforce their laws against our citizens? What do you imagine the reaction would be were Germany to make it illegal for US citizens living in the US to tweet disparaging things about Merkel?

Don't know why you keep going on about beheading.

It's called "reductio ad absurdum". It means taking an argument to the absurd to show how absurd it is.

The penalty is a fine.

Oh, well then, let's fine the world for violating our laws. It is our Manifest Destiny to fine anyone in the world who breaks laws we create here. (Remind me, didn't we fight an entire war over the concept of 'no taxation without representation'? Is "legislation without representation" any better?)

And there is an exception in this law for journalism.

11 CFR 110.20(a)(3) defines "foreign national" before using it in listing what they are prohibited from doing, and it does not exclude "journalism" in that definition.

What I meant was it doesn't matter for the purposes of deciding Russian culpability.

Oh my God, the Russians are culpable! Let's behead them. Oh, wait, they're Russians living in Russia ... been there, done that.

Of course, if Trump or his campaign was involved it matters as far as his culpability goes.

Trump cannot be involved in violation of the law we are discussing because he is not a foreign national prohibited from donating money to his own campaign. The law also does not cover "electioneering communications" when prohibiting what a US citizen is prohibited from knowingly accepting or soliciting.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

I cannot assume mysterious invisible antecedents apply when there is a perfectly good one right there in the first clause of the sentence.

That's why God invented threaded conversations. So you could follow along with the conversation and keep up.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Obfuscant]

That's why God invented threaded conversations.

And God invented "quoting" so you could quote the things that you are replying to, so that context would not be lost when parent articles are not easily tracked. Being explicit in what you are replying to is a skill, I know. Slashdot does very poorly at showing parents that are below threshold, and that should be considered, too. Sometimes parents are never shown, and are almost never shown in proper relationship when they are.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[PopeRatzo]

Slashdot does very poorly at showing parents that are below threshold

Real men set their threshold at -1.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but if you open 200 twitter accounts and spread false stories about candidates that could potentially affect public trust in candidates then you should get banned. What Russia did was not illegal at all, it was so smart that no law exists today to cover this situation yet. Democracy was not designed for the global flow of information.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[meglon]

It matters because Hillary lost.

If Hillary had won, nobody would care. Anyone crying about the Russians buying pro-Hillary, left leaning ads (which they did) wouldn't be given one second of airtime or one byte of blog space.

Citation needed from a reputable source, not some neo-nazi piece of shit that you've shoved your head up their ass. If there was even a slight hint of this with ANY credible evidence.... hell, even a remote sidewhisper from conspiracy theory dipshits on the right... it'd be all over fauxnews 24/7; BUT IT'S NOT.

So, lets be real clear here.... YOU find it perfectly fine for RUSSIA to UNDERMINE the USA. YOU are a FUCKING TRAITOR.... on top of being a worthless fucking liar.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the traitor! I'm telling Senator McCarthy right now!

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[meglon]

Ah yes, another stupider than fuck anon coward.

You're conflating government oppressing a political group for a speculative reason (mind you, literally like the NAZI's did in WWII. The first group of people Hitler had shipped to camps were the Socialists and Unionists), and the investigation of ACTUAL CRIMES committed by a non-friendly state sponsor.

I get it, you're just too fucking stupid to see the difference.

Russian apologists are traitors. You are assisting an outside state entity harming the USA. Stupidity isn't an excuse.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shortly after I started fucking yours.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great post, Wang. Keep up the good work for the Party.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kangaroo courts creating law FTW!

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Reverend Green]

Broham - look out! There's a Nazi hiding under your bed!!

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[AmiMoJo]

"Parody" is the default excuse for any and all bad behaviour now. Marching down the street with a swastika flag is just "parodying" Nazis and laughing at people who are upset over "just a symbol". Stealing cars is just a parody of stupid criminals, Trump is just a parody of the US president...

And if you question it, then you are the delusional idiot who can't take a joke, even though there is no joke and they are totally sincere.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro-Clinton ads could not have been "left-leaning", under any reasonable definition of "left".

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[sexconker]

I find it perfectly fine for Russia, or anyone, to tell the truth.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What did they do that was illegal or against the ToS?

Have your read the ToS?

I don't like registering accounts on social media so I haven't but form what I have seen most of them have clauses for terminating your account for any reason whenever they like to.
The reason could be that they just didn't like the content.
You can scream about free speech all you like, that doesn't give Twitter an obligation to spend sever space and bandwidth to help you get your message out.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Russians want you to vote for a certain candidate, why does this matter?

Because it's been illegal for almost half a century.

How so?

First, you cannot stop them. Our laws don't apply on foreign soil. What the Russians do from over there is not going to stop if we make it illegal.

It isn't the Russians that are suspending accounts. It is Twitter.
We can prosecute anyone that operates on US soil. That includes Twitter and it includes any Russians that hides money laundering schemes as real estate trading and American citizens who helps them with that.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure is great how much of public communication these days is on privately owned, monopolistic platforms with the right to ban you for any reason.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[houghi]

They didn't.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can purchase things with a Twitter account?

I thought Twitter was a social media thing, not a payment service.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[johanw]

You mean like the Saudies and the Clinton Foundation?

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they paid money for ads in support of or against a particular political candidate, they were in violation of Title 52 United States Code Sec. 30121

Which is only valid for people in the USA (and possibly US citizens living abroad).

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if they are meant to influence an election

Not as simple an answer as that. Under 52 US Code 30121 - Contributions and donations by foreign nationals the law states:

(a) Prohibition
            It shall be unlawful for—
    (1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
        (A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;
        (B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or
        (C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); or

The section that applies to taking out an ad would be (a)(1)(C) - electioneering communication. Note it says within the meaning section 30104(f)(3) which is a subsection defining Electioneering Communications. The parent is (f) Disclosure of electioneering communications says

(f) Disclosure of electioneering communications
    (1) Statement required
        Every person who makes a disbursement for the direct costs of producing and airing electioneering communications in an aggregate amount in excess of $10,000 during any calendar year shall, within 24 hours of each disclosure date, file with the Commission a statement containing the information described in paragraph (2).

So an individual taking out ads that total less than $10,000 may actually not be in violation of the US code, however the purported $100,000 definitely falls into that category and is prohibited.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the kind of gaslighting AmiMojo - and many on the left - does

"Parody" has been the weapon of the left for years, maybe decades. But AmiMojo gaslights as if it's only happening "now", spinning it as if the right were the initiators (ditto on fake news, post-truth, who is "triggered", who is demanding safe spaces, etc)

And if you question it, he accuses YOU of gaslighting (see a few posts above) and being delusional.

He basically makes it extremely difficult to have any meaningful mature discussion or dialogue on the issues... and then act like it's other people's fault there isn't any meaningful discussion or dialogue on the issues.

The funny (though sad) thing though, is that it's precisely tactics such as his that led to the conservative backlash that led to Trump, Brexit, the alt-right.

If Trump wins reelection, which is a real possibility if the left keeps their stupidity up, you can thank people like AmiMojo.

Re: As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol or you read the Declaration of INDEPENDENCE for the general IDEA.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[lexman098]

I believe a facebook ad campaign has monetary value.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[bobbied]

Perhaps, but this is only illegal if the campaign ASKED for this ad campaign on Facebook. The campaign is NOT liable for activities of others unless they are directly requesting such actions.

So the fact that a Facebook campaign was purchased by some foreign entity is not prima facie proof of an illegal activity. You MUST also prove that the campaign asked for this to be done.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are valid reasons for investigating. First knowing what happened and identifying who was responsible helps determine how to defend against it. There are many ways to punish foreigners, the USA has the most powerful extradition apparatus in the world. For instance, perpetrators will not be able to travel to any county with US extradition agreements and they can be banned from international banking. If these individuals are found to be linked to the Russian gov then we can also choose to punish Russia directly through sanctions. Putin seems to think sanctions targeted at Russian individuals are effect as it seems to be one of his motivations for meeting with Trump officials, changing RNC platforms, not to mention bitching and moaning about "adoptions".

A problem with using "reductio ad absurdum" is that you look plain absurd if there is no basis to your argument.

Although this particular law isn't a problem for Trump directly it does have implications for Trump as the special counsel has to prove Russia interfered before they can prove Trump colluded. Step 1 is NOT detached from step 2.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[MightyMartian]

Unless Trump figures out a way to bump up his popularity, I'd say it's unlikely he even win his own party's nomination. With a few exceptions, Republican lawmakers and Republican governors view the man with disbelief and contempt, and despise the fact that a shrinking Trumpian base still represents a threat to many of them in the 2018 and 2020 elections. They are politically forced to stand with the President for the most part (though they clearly no longer view him as any kind of leader in the sense of policy and legislation), but if he can't start acting like a president and not picking idiotic fights with the NFL even while a humanitarian disaster is occurring in Puerto Rico, then I'd say there's a good chance he's going to be given the boot by his own party.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Russians want you to vote for a certain candidate, why does this matter?

1. Russians will support a candidate that serves their interests, not necessarily the interests of the American people.

2. It is illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to the campaign efforts of American politicians.

3. If you couldn't figure out the first two points by yourself, maybe you should keep your thoughts to yourself while the adults are speaking.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not being popular never stopped Trump. Trump was never popular in the first place. He wasn't popular even before running for president. Remember the thing with Obama's birth certificate? The left, again, was using the shield of parody to mock him and those on the right for a long time.

All the polls showed he would lose. The polls were wrong

Hillary won the popular vote. That didn't matter.

See, winning elections is a bit like running away from a bear (not about being absolutely fast, but being relatively faster than the other guy). Trump doesn't have to be popular. He just has to be relatively less repugnant than the alternative.

And like I said, if the left keeps up its antics like AmiMojo does, the left will make itself so repugnant that Trump will win again.

As to the Republicans despising him, that may or may not be true. But you know what Republicans, like almost all politicians, adore? Staying in power.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The short answer is: No, that is not a problem under American law.

While you are OK with America legally, bear in mind that Twitter is a private company and they can ban you any time they feel like it.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[MightyMartian]

Which is while they'll dump Trump. Unless he can change course and actually learn what his job is, he's simply going to be ignored for the most part in the halls of power. The bill killing his ability to tamper with the Russian sanctions is only the beginning as Congress ringfences what it views as important policies from the seemingly mindless tampering of the current Administration.

If his overall popularity stays in the mid-to-high 30s into 2020, how is it you imagine he can win, particularly if the Democrats field a less problematic candidate than Clinton? For goodness sake, Trump's popularity is falling even in red states, so the idea that he somehow is an unstoppable force seems hard to imagine.

Still he has three years to prove himself, and maybe at some point he will start acting like a POTUS, but for now, it's hard to imagine him achieving 2020 victory.

Re:As opposed to others who do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying Trump is unstoppable. I'm saying IF the left keeps doing what AmiMojo is doing, the left will ruin their chances of beating Trump, and Trump (or any Republican) will win.

Whatever positive traits of the Democrat candidate would be ruined if the left keeps on antagonizing and pissing people off instead of trying to win them over.

As for being ignored, I don't see it. Congress is working on health care and DACA just as Trump asked. That's what supposed to happen. The POTUS doesn't make laws. Congress does.

That Trump isn't as interfering or trying to sidestep Congress isn't him being ignored. It's just him staying within his bounds as head of the executive... which would suggest he may actually know more about being POTUS than you think.

Putin is your friend

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Russian apologists coming up in 3... 2... 1...

Re:Putin is your friend

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could be that informed people will respond, but to the uninformed they look like Russian apologists?

Re:Putin is your friend

[Anonymous Coward]

Liberal "Russians did it" horse-beaters in 3... 2... 1...

Re:Putin is your friend

[Jaegs]

I believe that would be tree... dva... a-deen...

(for some reason, Slashdot doesn't like Cyrillic, so I had to transliterate)

Re:Putin is your friend

[rtb61]

American propaganda about Russian click bait, this from a click bait article. Everyone does it, it is really annoying and this click bait rubbish should be kerbed but the bullshit propaganda and the silly modding, is too much fun to just let go. They are convincing no one of nothing, only the idiots who already buy into it and accept it, one great big ole circle jerk. Hey propagandist idiot, you know what the number one biggest indicater of a government propagandist is, FIRST POST MORON, yeah your are sitting their waiting as a professional propagandist to get first post because it makes you stand out and look fucking stupid. You are meant to be more subtle, you know trying to trick people, use guile and not be idiotically arrogant.

It's de rigueur for paid PR twonks to camp out forums and be first posters, no one buys it, it is super recognisable, only arrogance and stupidity keep it going. Owhhh look, we got first post, everyone will believe what we say, ohhh ahhh. Lets see the ads and who paid for them, the lame arse click bait stories about lame arse click bait ads. That the US government now plays the click bait game is just pathetic but too be expected and it just makes the US look worse and worse. The whole world sees this, not just the idiotic US market and the US is losing support globally as a result but keep playing your idiot games, it is really fun to poke holes in it and in the US deep state and shadow government egos.

Re:Putin is your friend

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I like Putin in the way I like lions and bears and war: on the other side of a screen. Having said that, I find it so deliciously ironic that USA people are pissed about him (allegedly) trying to influence public elections when the US regime is on record as having overthrown and helped overthrow at least 2 democracies so far.

Come on, cry me some more :).

Re:Putin is your friend

[ohnocitizen]

The Russian trolls and their desperate Trump allies have taken a giant shit over slashdot. Glad there are at least some good people left.

Re:Putin is your friend

[meglon]

It's amazing that these conservatives still have the audacity to call themselves Americans.... they're all acting like fucking traitors.

"Rise your hand"

[PopeRatzo]

My favorite Russian Facebook accounts are the ones promoting the secession of Texas. Seriously, they're hysterically funny.

https://extranewsfeed.com/how-...

They even paid for a pro-secession delegation from Texas to go to Russia, where they could learn about true political freedom.

So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[bobbied]

It's like McCarthy is back to switch the lights on and the cockroaches are running for cover. We've got to find and exterminate the Russians!

Are we SURE we want to do this folks? This kind of thing really doesn't work out so well... The Salem witch trials, McCarthy's search for communists, they all turned into blots on our history. If we are really out there shaming anybody and everybody who has any kind of real or imagined connection to the Russians, we will find that anybody and everybody will be subject to scrutiny. Is that where you want to go?

Also, be warned that this is how the Nazi's got started politically and turned the whole "protect us from the Russians" idea into a cottage industry that brought us into WW2. Think long and hard about the politics in play here and who keeps pushing this. We are on dangerous ground when Twitter and Facebook feel it necessary to do this kind of thing to save face.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh jesus the country is fucked already and it's not like putin didn't interfere.
Just kys

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice I found Putin's backup cock holster. Yes fuckhead im gonna take it your young but for those of us that were around for the cuban missile crisis we know the russians are not our friends.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[known_coward_69]

No it's illegal to influence elections

I've had trump loving friends reshare all kinds of weird Facebook pages that seemed to have popped up out of nowhere with stupid names like American Patriot Mom.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious question: were you the kind of person who laughed at conservatives and said "derp, the cold war's over!" whenever they brought up Russians?

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope never trusted them since then so not sure why they seem so popular now.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

>You think having hundreds/thousands of fake fraudulent profiles spam a political message for a 3rd party is a legitimate use of the system?

Honestly - and probably sadly - yes. This is social media and internet advertising we're talking about here. Using herds of bots to push an agenda and take advantage of gullible people is literally the entire modus operandi.

If you're going to get outraged about the moral state of internet advertising, you should've spoken up 30 years ago when idiots first started handing over their credit card numbers for herbal viagra and cock lengtheners.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[bobbied]

No it's illegal to influence elections

I've had trump loving friends reshare all kinds of weird Facebook pages that seemed to have popped up out of nowhere with stupid names like American Patriot Mom.

Depending on what you actually mean by "influencing elections" this is way too broad to be technically true. It is NOT illegal for them to do exercise influence (you couldn't enforce such a law anyway). Russia could start a conflict or propose a treaty that favored one candidate or another if they wish, the USA could make that illegal but there is no way to enforce that law, so it's worthless.

What IS illegal is for foreign entities to directly support a candidate, campaign or party or more to the point for candidates, campaigns and parties may not knowingly accept money or services from foreign sources. (I believe that PAC's and SUPER PAC's also have similar restrictions). The election laws prevent foreign funding of parties, campaigns or candidates but they cannot (and do not) prevent foreign influence in our elections.

So let's be precise here.....

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cuba? What about U.S. bases around the globe, some across the border from Russia. And while at it - what about 2 million people killed by americans in Vietnam. Were they threatening you in any manner so you had to run full Hitler genocide on them?

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice distraction! "Oh it's like the Salem witch trials!" Yeah, the FBI and the other 16 agencies just "made it up for shits" right?

MORON. Wow BobbieD what does Putin's dick taste like you fucking bearfucker?

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[CanadianMacFan]

The Americans only think it's bad if foreigners influence American elections. Those in charge especially feel it's perfectly okay to go around and influence elections in other countries. God forbid if someone does to them what they routinely do to others.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Xylantiel]

Nice strawman. No, it is against the ToS to create and use fraudulent spam accounts. It may also be illegal to spend (or accept) money in particular ways related to politics, especially without disclosure or while intentionally attempting to obscure or mis-attribute the source. For example, I believe being paid to shill (which typically involves some deceptive aka fraudulent actions) in US national politics by a foreign government has been illegal for quite some time, and twitter has an obligation to do their best to prevent their system from being (ab)used for this illegal activity.

Finally, I don't think the US has a bone with the Russian people, just the current Russian dictator and the bad-faith actions of his security and propaganda apparatus.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Ryanrule]

Fuck you

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like McCarthy is back to switch the lights on and the cockroaches are running for cover. We've got to find and exterminate the Russians!

Are we SURE we want to do this folks? This kind of thing really doesn't work out so well... The Salem witch trials, McCarthy's search for communists, they all turned into blots on our history. If we are really out there shaming anybody and everybody who has any kind of real or imagined connection to the Russians, we will find that anybody and everybody will be subject to scrutiny.

You do realize, of course, that the intent here is not to purge Americans with Russian sympathies here.... we aren't doing that... we're electing those guys run the country. What we're doing here is specifically targeting astroturfing accounts that are specifically purposed with giving Putin puppet strings on American elections.

If you can't see the difference, then your partisanship is blinding you.... or you have a hard time reading languages that aren't spelled with Cyrillic characters.

*** Former US Army Ranger here from the Cold War days, who voted for both Reagan, Bush... thoroughly disgusted with the WILLFUL ignorance and gullibility of the American voting public.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

How are the gays working out in Chechnya?

Re: So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

At your age you should have learnt to distinguish between "the Russians" and Putin's corrupt and deadly mafiocracy.

You must remember Gorbachev?

Re: So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a Russian troll, bobbied so you would say that.

Re: So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

The gays in Chechnya work out the same way gays in the rest of Russia do: to pictures of Vladimir Putin, stripped to the waist. He's a fabulous role model. All those muscles and that cute little Dobby face.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[epine]

What crazy people moderated this post +5 interesting?

The Internet Research Agency trades in weaponized speech.

This is a new road, on a new technology, for a new era.

New. And bad.

ET is not going to send a spaceship to demolish our planet. They are merely going to transmit a Breitbart 3K feed (this particular alien 'K' has four zeros) and we're going to do it ourselves.

We won't all fall for it, but the signal will be extremely powerful, and any boy scout with half a dish will be able to pick it up, to try out the "Amazing" science experiments, as described by the very model of lucid science exposition (brought to you by extensive A/B trials conducted throughout the galaxy).

Buh bye, harmless words.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[johannesg]

No it's illegal to influence elections

Does that include buying the support of super delegates? Or does the law only apply to normal people?

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

About the same as the ones in Afghanistan and Syria. Don't pretend Russia's the only country that looks the other way when it comes to "their" Islamists.

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[bobbied]

The technology used might be new, but the technique is not. It's called propaganda and it's been used since the dawn of time.

The defense for propaganda is not to suppress it (because you really can't), but to educate the people targeted by it in the truth so they recognize propaganda when they see it. The problem we face is that we've been fighting propaganda with propaganda of our own and now the masses don't understand what the truth is. It's so bad that the media in our country, the very institution that's supposed to be speaking truth, has largely become full of propaganda and bereft of facts and critical thinking.

What evidence do we have of this? The most current example is how the last presidential election was being forecasted on November 8th. NOBODY though Hillary would/could lose. Why is that? Where the polls wrong? Yes they were, very wrong in some cases. Even the exit polling was wrong. Think about why this was and tell me the media was doing it's job with a straight face....

Re:So It's now illegal to deal with Russia?

[bobbied]

LOL.. Really? The USA is a bad actor? I think history has another view of this.

Think about it. What *could* the USA do if it wanted too? We spend more money on our military than more than half the world does. We can literally project military power *anyplace* we choose for any reason we want. Now tell me again how the USA is a bad actor in the world...

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that we've always done the right thing by everyone, we haven't, or that we've not inserted ourselves into local and regional conflicts where we've not really belonged, but I AM telling you that our intentions are NOT to do harm, but good. We are not always successful, but we mean well.

IF we really wanted to do bad things or act selfishly, there would be little to stop us. We could own all of Japan, most of Europe, and any place we wanted to acquire. But that's not what we do. Historically, we have shed our own blood for the cause of freedom for others, and after conquering territory on behalf of others, promptly returned it to it's previous owners asking for nothing in return. No other country in history has been so dominate, yet so willing to live and let live.

Misleading Blurb

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Twitter press release:

Of the roughly 450 accounts that Facebook recently shared as a part of their review, we concluded that 22 had corresponding accounts on Twitter. All of those identified accounts had already been or immediately were suspended from Twitter for breaking our rules, most for violating our prohibitions against spam.

In addition, from those accounts we found an additional 179 related or linked accounts, and took action on the ones we found in violation of our rules. Neither the original accounts shared by Facebook, nor the additional related accounts we identified, were registered as advertisers on Twitter. However, we continue to investigate these issues, and will take action on anything that violates our Terms of Service.

https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2017/Update-Russian-Interference-in-2016--Election-Bots-and-Misinformation.html

Re:Misleading Blurb

[skids]

So, for a person who pretty much boycotts both services and so honesty does not know, are these services barring the viewing of the content posted by these accounts?

Personally I think once something like this is found out, the services should keep most of the content up, mark the content as fraudulent with big red overlay images, put litte red warnings on the avatar of every comment ever posted by them on a page, and undelete any posts they still have that the account posted and then deleted. It's in the public interest to be able to examine the activity of these accounts in detail, and make up their own minds.

Re:Misleading Blurb

[Anonymous Coward]

ersonally I think once something like this is found out, the services should keep most of the content up, mark the content as fraudulent with big red overlay images

Problem is, it's not the content of the posts some people have a problem with, it's the political ads they are suspected of having bought. Do we mark all fraudulent political ads as such? That would be every political ad I've ever seen.

Wake me up when we start seeing political ads that go "I'm a politician and a liar[1], and I'm just as bad as the other guy, but I would really like if you vote for me".

[1] Same thing.

Are there any Republicans with spines/balls left?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like they're willing to disregard what is tantamount to treason as "the cost of doing conservative business" now. There's no truth too big to lie about or FUD/obfuscate/troll-drown.

This is a fundamental weakness of any Democratic system and it's being actively exploited. You would think people "patriotically minded" would put that before party.

We're seeing otherwise for 1/3 of America. That's a problem.

It sounds bad because it's Russia

[rmdingler]

Although the ability to manipulate public opinion through social media is, on its surface, a disheartening trend, there are some encouraging takeaways. The Russian attempts to influence the election outcome were neither extremely expensive, nor reliant upon technology unavailable to the common man.

Formerly, winning the hearts and minds of the populace at election time was the prerogative of the wealthy and influential, as powerful media barons and political machines dominated the landscape.

What we could be witnessing is the democratization of propaganda.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[AmiMoJo]

Do we really want our democracies decided by memes and whoever trolls the hardest?

It's nothing new of course, politics has always been dominated by ignorance, prejudice and bullshit. It's just so much more efficient now.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[rmdingler]

Do we really want our democracies decided by memes and whoever trolls the hardest?

It's nothing new of course, politics has always been dominated by ignorance, prejudice and bullshit. It's just so much more efficient now.

Well, we want our democracies, so we have to give a little bit in the manner they are are administered.

If you let everyone vote as an equal participant (and that's pretty much the only way to go) you stipulate that a portion of the votes will be significantly influenced by the loudest, most oft-repeated, campaign message.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[AmiMoJo]

Seems like a few critical thinking and rhetoric classes at school would make a huge difference.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

>What we could be witnessing is the democratization of propaganda.

Unless you're working under the assumption that all (or even a significant percentage of) political messaging prior to 2016 wasn't absolute horseshit already, I fail to see how this is a bad thing. That is, of course, if you're not just simply worried that the other side's bullshit artists are more talented than yours. Maybe instead of freaking out over some fucking facebook ads you should go tell your armies of loyal celebrities and media pundits to step their game up.

I see no reason to be more outraged about some random russian twitter account pushing bullshit than about a million-dollar paid advertising campaign by some giant American corporation pushing bullshit. Quite the opposite, actually.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, it does require significant outlay of the only currency that really matters: people's time. Putin employs a non-trivial number of agents who spend all day, every day, working on these projects. Their salaries must dwarf the actual money spent on ads, and they'd be significantly more expensive to employ in civilized countries.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

What we could be witnessing is the democratization of propaganda.

You say this as if it was a good thing.

Propaganda is disinformation, regardless of who does it. It is inherently evil.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we really want our democracies decided by memes and whoever trolls the hardest?

That IS democracy.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[rmdingler]

You say this as if it was a good thing.

Propaganda is disinformation, regardless of who does it. It is inherently evil.

I'm making observations, not value judgments, but for the sake of argument let's say your designation of inherently evil is an accurate one. It just indicates that the process may exclude those who can't stand the stink of it, not that its implementation isn't an effective way to influence the outcome of elections.

You know what saves democracy, with all its blemishes? Just enough people eventually do right (voters & candidates) despite their baser nature.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

No, trolling and Democracy are different things AND WE LIVE IN A REPUBLIC, UNDER-EDUCATED TRUMP BITCHES. Sorry for yelling but you deserve it.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, sure, everyone has 600 foreign workers in their pockets ready to mobilize whenever they want to speak up about something. because everybody's opinion counts, right? but certain foreign government's opinions count 600x more than the average american.

Re: It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

By a hostile foreign actor...

Re: It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

With deep pockets...

Re: It sounds bad because it's Russia

[wilec]

Yes the democratization of propaganda, just want we need. Can't believe anything because it's all a lie. Add ready sources of unbelievably stupid things being done in plain view & nothings too crazy to believe either. Not a country for old men....

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[guacamole]

the democratization of propaganda

I think you made a brilliant observation. These days, the information flows on the internet through a million streams in blogs, microblogs, social networks, and also lots of news sites you could consider "non-mainstream". No longer the likes of the NYT, Washington Post, and the cable news channels serve as the gatekeepers to the news or information. As a result, the mainstream media loves spinning the stories because "fake news". They're like "beware of getting any news or information from any outlet that's not a news source established at least half a century ago. it could be FAKE NEWS. BEWARE OF FAKE. Only our news is true" Right...

After the American media helped to drum up preparation for the war in Iraq, completely spun up and twisted upside down most issues related to say war in Syria, and took decisively the side of the Democratic presidential candidate last year, I sure can certainly trust our mainstream media a whole lot these days.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not democratization.

Russia is doing it on a massive scale - this particular thing may not be expensive but I am sure this is not the only effort in US.

And same things are happening all over Europe.

So Russia is doing it on a massive scale and succeeds in man6 cases: Trump. Brexit. National socialists ruling in Poland. 10% for nationalists in Germany. Etc etc

And in all these cases you had assive troll operations with ties to Russia.

And to make matter worse - China is watching and learning.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrelevant

First, democracy is just letting "everyone" have a say. It says nothing on how each individual will formulate their vote. It could be based on science and logic. It could be based on trolling and memes. It could be based on whether they liked a candidate's hair. In a free society, we don't force people on how they make their decisions.

Second, being a Republic is not mutually exclusive with having democratic elements. It's not a complete democracy but it is far far FAR from a tyranny. And within its democratic elements, people are, as above, free to vote however they like.

Democracy doesn't guarantee good outcomes. It just gives people the government they deserve. If people vote wisely, they get the government they deserve. If they vote stupidly, they still get the government they deserve.

So sorry fellow AC, it's not that Trump voters deserve the yelling, but you (addressing not just you specifically, but to all Americans) deserve Trump.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a bigger difference removing the groupthinking and indoctrination classes at school.

The gap in voting preferences between those with college education and those without has been widening.

It used to be that uneducated and educated folks can have civilized disagreements and discussions. By understanding each other's views and arguments, you had more people switching parties, on both sides.

What changed? The uneducated didn't change. They are just as poor and uneducated as before. What changed was that the so called educated have been brainwashed to believed that their ideas are just so damn good, they don't need to have dialogue with the uneducated. Instead of dialogue, they just insult, and shame, and sometimes even resort to violence.

Some of the educated might even rationalize that they're doing a good thing to be so militant, that being strong and forceful is what works. But as the backlash of Trump and Brexit has shown, no, it doesn't work. In fact, it does the opposite as the polarization gives the really extreme groups on both sides to come to the forefront, distracting us from having meaningful conversations again.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[lexman098]

Do we really want our democracies decided by memes and whoever trolls the hardest?.

That's up to the voters. The real story in all of this is that so many people get their "news" from facebook ads.

Re:It sounds bad because it's Russia

[rmdingler]

After the American media helped to drum up preparation for the war in Iraq, completely spun up and twisted upside down most issues related to say war in Syria, and took decisively the side of the Democratic presidential candidate last year, I sure can certainly trust our mainstream media a whole lot these days.

I think in the not to distant past, the fourth estate could get away with influence-peddling without too much effort. When the wealthy & powerful began consolidating marginally profitable news outlets, it should've been clear to even the casual observer there was possibly some ulterior benefit.

Has the 4th estate lost power to the 5th estate because of their complacency? Traditionally successful periodicals seemed slow on the uptake; "This internet thing will never catch on."

They certainly didn't diversify the information delivery method as fast as their competitors.

Re: It sounds bad because it's Russia

[rmdingler]

Yes the democratization of propaganda, just want we need. Can't believe anything because it's all a lie. Add ready sources of unbelievably stupid things being done in plain view & nothings too crazy to believe either. Not a country for old men....

Perhaps it just comes down to whether we're better off being guided by a few powerful elite influences, or by the multitude of opinions available by virtue of your friendly neighborhood spiderne..., er, internet.

Caveat: It's now super-easy to scroll down a search engine's information return interface to find a viewpoint that agrees with your settled belief set.

200 Russian Bots

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of 68 million twitter accounts?

Those must be some pretty awesome tweeters if 0.003% of the accounts on Twitter can actually have some sort of perceptible influence on an entire US election...

Re:200 Russian Bots

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they're all out of good excuses.

Re: 200 Russian Bots

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, that was the extent of the Russian trolling, 200 Twitter bots. Everyone relax, FBI relax, Mueller go home, it's all under control, nothing to see here.

I'm no fan of many thing

[hattable]

I'm not a fan of the government pressuring companies to do things. But in this case, Twitter does not seem to be "complying with USG desires." Despite the message or the actual groups behind any campaign, they abused Twitter and violated the TOS. It certainly looks shady. However, if you appropriately weigh both sides, twitter isn't acting outside of the scope of their TOS and how they have chosen to enforce it.

I am interested to see how this pans out.

Mindless Citizens

[sdinfoserv]

Unfortunately, as dollars have been ripped away from historical news organizations where educated professionals vetted sources, researched stories and were held accountable; we now throw billions at the immediate gratification "like" without a clue to what's true and false - only what "feels good". Critical reasoning is for the most part a thing of the past...wait, who predicted this?

oh, ya... this was written in 1995 - 32 years ago:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
---Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Re:Mindless Citizens

[Anonymous Coward]

He described Democrats perfectly. Thank God for the Republican Party.

Re:Mindless Citizens

[sdinfoserv]

It's also unfortunate that a few jack offs have to reduce everything to "us vs them" tribal mentality. You're part of the problem drinking the fauxnoise coolaid.

Re:Are there any Republicans with spines/balls lef

[Anonymous Coward]

If a foreign government opposed a Democrat it's a problem. But if a Democrat accepts millions of dollars from foreign governments it's fine. And if you think the Clinton Foundation was about philanthropic work I have a bridge in New York for sale.

Operatives?

[freeze128]

Engadget is calling the accounts "bots". Do you consider a bot to be an operative?

Witless Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

So weak and witless are the Americans that you can get them to change their minds, get them to do your bidding, and get them to completely f*ck up their country and freedoms. All it takes is a few well-placed advertisements and tweets.

Re:Witless Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

That's certainly Hillary's narrative. But the truth is far more horrifying--and most of us already faced it on election night.

Now if they could only...

[ckatko]

...do that to all the ISIS ones.

Re:Now if they could only...

[Ryanrule]

They do now cockweasle. Stop deflecting ivan.

Re:Now if they could only...

[ckatko]

Ivan?! I barely know him!

To see millions of fake accounts...

[Anonymous Coward]

To see millions of fake accounts, just look at Trump's followers. The numbers of accounts with no photo and no activity other than following Donald Trump and 30-60 others is astounding.

It would be very interesting to see an analysis of the patterns in the others followed by these accounts. The difference in that versus the others followed by the real accounts would help to reveal who is being promoted by the bot system creating these accounts.

Re:Are there any Republicans with spines/balls lef

[Anonymous Coward]

A russian can't commit "treason" against the United States, you moron. Unless you're accusing Facebook of treason, in which case you're an idiot because that's not remotely what "treason" is. (Nor is anything Trump or any of his associates have been accused of by any but the craziest of left wing idiots, but that's not really relevant here anyway)

Protectionism

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump administration is trying to protect Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, and Alex Jones from Russia who is doing a better job at dividing America.

Re:Forget the Russians...

[sexconker]

GTFO with your affiliate link spam.

Profound Hypocrisy

[PJ6]

Not only do we actively interfere with other democracies, but when propaganda fails, we resort to violent action like funding coups and terrorism. Not just a little bit, either, but on massive scales. And we've been doing it for decades.

I guess that's not news, though.

200 Accounts wow some actual numbers

[Crashmarik]

and 50 thousand dollars just wow.

Number of active Twitter accounts 328 million
https://www.statista.com/st...

Number of tweets per day 500 million. 7700 per second so far today.
http://www.internetlivestat......

1 billion in digital political advertising in 2016
https://www.forbes.com/site...

Twitter was deliberately not carrying advertising supporting Trump
https://www.recode.net/2016...

I recall other incidents but ehh

Re:200 Accounts wow some actual numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

200 seeds creating ads for the millions. They haven't dug into the millions of accounts in the bot network that fertilize the seeds.

Re:200 Accounts wow some actual numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an impressive troll. Make it look like you've cited each ludicrous claim by posting a link to a non-existent web page. My hat off to you!

Re:200 Accounts wow some actual numbers

[Crashmarik]

Links were truncated. Sorry to hear about your autism.

Re: 200 Accounts wow some actual numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's true then post the proper links, trollboy.

Re: 200 Accounts wow some actual numbers

[Crashmarik]

Google is your friend, if you think the numbers are wrong.

The missed one...

[jimprdx]

They missed one...

Re:Are there any Republicans with spines/balls lef

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm accusing TRUMP'S BOUGHT FAGGOTS LIKE YOU who run distraction for A TRAITOR WHO WE NOW KNOW LIED ABOUT HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH RUSSIA 1000 TIMES of treason, yes bitch. You get to choose between the rope or the gun, but you're going to get one or the other you fucking worthless nazi scumbags on Putin's gold-plated cock.

Trump's getting buried UNDER THE PRISON, you want to go along for the ride? ABSOLUTELY FINE BY ME.

But if catching Russians makes Trump gone...

[TheZeitgeist]

...than Twitter's gone too. The Orange Emperor's tweets probably drive like high single-digits in both traffic and Q-scores for Twitter. Without him, they're more hosed than they already were.

Re:Are there any Republicans with spines/balls lef

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem upset.

Russia Today...

[Anonymous Coward]

is a fesspool of foreign espionage.

Imitation, something, greatest, something

[rmdingler]

The weak and witless Americans have been meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations better than you since WWII.

Is that a Coke in your hand?

I'd like to see the same scruitiny given to Israel

[Anonymous Coward]

They have their own trolls who troll reddit/facebook etc

Contribute != opinion and/or ads

[Roger W Moore]

Contributing to a campaign is not the same as expressing an opinion or taking out ads on how a US citizen should vote. Indeed it is hard to see how you can prevent the latter given freedom of speech since ads are really nothing more than a megaphone: they allow your opinion to travel further and reach more people.

It might be unwelcome involvement but then so was Obama's intervention in the Brexit referendum (which backfired spectacularly, unfortunately) so you can hardly blame other countries for the same behaviour as your former president.

Re:Contribute != opinion and/or ads

[Jeremy Erwin]

You can't rely on your gut when it comes to dealing with the FEC. Unless your gut has passed the bar exam.

Did Facebook ads traced to a Russian company violate us election law

Betteridge's Law of Headlines aside, there may well be an indictable offense here.

Re: Contribute != opinion and/or ads

[mSparks43]

Well, my twitter account is still active.....

Re:Contribute != opinion and/or ads

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious indictable offense here is that you're using WaPo as a source.

How about Obama?

[Roger W Moore]

The Russians did nothing different from what Obama did with getting involved in the Brexit referendum. So if you are going to blame the Russians for the outcome of your last election does that mean the UK can blame the US for the outcome of the Brexit referendum? If you want countries like Russia to stop getting involved in your elections - which I completely agree is wrong - it might be nice for the US government to stop doing it too.

Re:How about Obama?

[Anonymous Coward]

American Exceptionalism.

It is blatantly obvious that many Americans, including those on /., believed that America has special privileges. What America did to other countries does not imply other countries can do the same to America.

Trying to point out this out, which is obvious to anyone else, will only be met with dull eyed incomprehension from Americans.

Re:How about Obama?

[mean pun]

The Russians did nothing different from what Obama did with getting involved in the Brexit referendum.

So you're accusing Obama of spending money (presumably in the UK) to influence the Brexit referendum? Because that's what we're talking about. Not just giving an opinion, but spending money to influence opinion.

Don't you think it is dangerous for US democracy when foreign powers buy influence in it?

Re:How about Obama?

[serviscope_minor]

The Russians did nothing different from what Obama did with getting involved in the Brexit referendum.

ORLY?

So Obama secretively bought a bunch of ads to try to influence the referendum?

Brexiteers made direct claims about the US, and the US via Obama responded directly through public channels. That is more or less exactly not what happened with Russia in the presidetial election.

Re:How about Obama?

[Roger W Moore]

Obama did not need to spend money to generate a platform to speak from. Indeed the fact that a foreign government official was getting involved in an election which did not concern them would have generated a big enough platform to get heard by itself. If your only point is that Obama got his platform to shout from for free whilst the Russians had to pay for theirs that's not really much of a difference is it?

Re:How about Obama?

[Roger W Moore]

So you are now alleging that they hid the fact that they were Russians when buying the ads? That's not something I had heard and if correct then you do have a point. However, my understanding was that they bought the ads openly in which case there was no secrecy involved just people not caring who they listened to.

As for Obama, you are right that this is how his involvement started but he followed up that initial comment with a day of campaigning in the UK which really raised some eyebrows on this side of the pond and which spectacularly backfired because nobody likes being told how to think by a foreign leader even if they happen to be right.

In A Stunning Reversal, DHS Concludes NO HACKING

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, last week's accusation of Russian interference in the US elections was blatantly incorrect. “DHS confirmed that Russian scanning activity had actually occurred on the California Department of Technology statewide network, not any Secretary of State website. Based on this additional information, California voters can further rest assured that the California Secretary of State elections infrastructure and websites were not hacked or breached by Russian cyber actors.” Wisconsin’s chief elections administrator, Michael Haas, has also repeatedly said that Homeland Security assured the state it had not been targeted: “Wisconsin was not provided any information that indicated before the November election that Russian government actors were targeting election systems.”
 
The latest Red Scare is just a big nothing burger.

Sorry but if you are defending Russian Inteligence

[modmans2ndcoming]

If you are defending Russian inteligence operations agains tthe US, you are a fucking traitor. I don't give a shit how republican you are, or how conservative you are or how much you love fucking your woman with American Flag comdoms, you are a god damn traitor who should be shot.

Remember the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember this as well...

The DNC literally rigged a national primary election to get the result they wanted.
Hillary Clinton took Millions$ in foreign donations for her campaign.
Hillary's campaign colluded with multiple media outlets, telling which stories to run, when, and getting editorial control.
Obama administration was literally wiretapping Trump's campaign manager DURING the election.

But we go batshit crazy over $100k of facebook ads? Really. Are liberals literally this fucking stupid now?
Answer: Yes they are

Re:Remember the DNC

[Zontar The Mindless]

The DNC literally rigged a national primary election to get the result they wanted.

1. It's their party. A political party is not part of the government, but is rather a private institution. They can run any candidate they like.

2. I love how you guys keep saying that it was perfectly acceptable for *Trump* to subvert the *GOP* nomination process beyond any shred of creditability while at the same time lambasting the Dems for failing to select a candidate who plainly did not and never was going to have enough votes to secure the nomination, much less the election.

As for the ads, they were the false-flag ops you nutters should have been worried about--the ones used to spread lies much the same as those lies you're spouting now.

Coincidence? You think so, really?

Re: Forget the Russians...

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the main message.

Forget the Russians
Forget the Russians
Forget the Russians
Forget the Russians
Forget the Russians
Forget the Russians ...

Re:Sorry but if you are defending Russian Intelige

[Anonymous Coward]

If you defend the DNC you are a fucking traitor. The same DNC that rigged a national primary to decide who gets to run for the president. The same DNC that took in millions of foreign donations for their political ads.

Yea, lets actually attack REAL election fraud instead of having to make shit up, you moron.

Might want to look up the word first...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, you expect people to present a reasoned defense of that?

Or were you not aware of the definition of the word?

Re:Sorry but if you are defending Russian Intelige

[Anonymous Coward]

En Dios Confiamos, in-deed. https://mrsyiswhy.files.wordpr...

Traitors

[meglon]

There sure does seem to be a lot of pro-Russian traitors living in the USA. I remember, back in the day, when conservatives were at least kinda pro-USA... but not anymore.

Re:Sorry but if you are defending Russian Intelige

[meglon]

...that'd be the ones no one has heard about except the worthless fucking anon cowards here on slashdot. Conservatives just can't keep seem to keep from hating the USA, and then lying like little bitches (anonymously) that liberals are the ones doing bad things. It's simple.... anytime a conservative says someone else did something, that means they KNOW they themselves did it, and are either trying to distract people from the truth, or are simple so stupid they think everyone is as big a piece of shit as they are.

Let me enlighten you... no one else is as big of pieces of shit as conservatives.

So two hundred twitter accounts..

[guacamole]

So two hundred twitter and facebook accounts swayed the USA presidential election by spending 100,000USD on political ads. This is why Hillary Clinton lost, and not because she forgot to fight in the battleground states or because her discourse did not address the concerns of the worker class Americans. Mmokay.

Reading this topic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really hard to know:

Who are the Russian funded propagandists.
Who are the GOP supporters genuinely wanting a better relationship with Russia.
Who are the Qatar funded propagandists.
Who are the Dem supports genuinely wanting a worse relationship with Russia.

Re:Reading this topic

[mean pun]

Qatar? Qatar? I've seen a lot of face-palm level deflection on this issue already, but this is a new one. Qatar! Give me a few minutes to get some popcorn, but then please explain what Qatar has to do with the price of butter in Paris, let alone fact that the US democratically elected a horror clown as president.

...

Ok, I'm ready. So you're saying Qatar funded some propagandists? Details please? And who are these Dem support[er]s wanting a worse relationship with Russia? Why? Why does this concern Qatar? Please explain.

Re: Reading this topic

[Anonymous Coward]

You should know that Qatar are one of the main targets of Russia and her allies in Iran, Syria and Egypt, mainly for its support for the Muslim Brotherhood. If you see an attack on Qatar here, it's almost certain to be a Russian troll (the Saudis are against them too but they don't do English language trolling). Obviously, most Trump supporters think Qatar is a heavy cold.

Technical details please

[mnemotronic]

How did Facebook determine that the accounts were associated with the International Research Agency? IP addresses? I can't believe the Russians didn't use tor or some form of VPN to disguise their location. And 179+22 accounts doesn't sound like a lot. I would have expected tens of thousands of accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
Could Facebook visibly flag posts coming from a VPN or tor exit node or known troll farm?

Re: Technical details please

[Anonymous Coward]

In denial or in Vladivostok?

Re: Technical details please

[mnemotronic]

I'm asking a simple question.

$100,000 vs $1,000,000,000

[Anonymous Coward]

So one tenth of 1 percent did so much in an election run on a billion on both sides?

Anyway, isn't this Facebook's responsibility?

They forgot one

[MoarSauce123]

The biggest troll account is @realdonaldtrump. Long overdue to shut that one down!

Re: there are loopholes

[Anonymous Coward]

You could say set up a foundation that raises money and is in fact a slush fund to funnel said money into your campaign,

Ahem.. Hillary Rodham Clinton ..SAUDI money!
Who knows who pays twi#er off!

Zontar approaches peak stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice come back, blatantly lie about GOP rigging their primary to make the DNC one ok.

You liberals have become so stupid it isn't worth discussing issues with you. You realize you support the party that oppresses minorities and women. Recently they rioted because a gay man and a woman were going to give a speech in Berkley. Yes, liberals can't have women and gays giving speeches. They even shouted down Nancy Pelosi, the MOST liberal woman on the planet, because she wasn't liberal enough.

You guys are complete morons. Supporting oppression of women, rigging elections, taking millions in illegal donations for campaigns, and going batshit crazy over Russia buying $100k in Facebook ads (which I haven't seen proof of even that, just Zuk's word which isn't believable). You are literally ignoring ACTUAL voter fraud to go crazy over the word of a known liar that hasn't shown proof yet.

Complete idiots.

Re:Zontar approaches peak stupidity

[Zontar The Mindless]

I never said the GOP rigged their primary*. They did do a nice job of bending over for Trump, though, and didn't even demand any lube.

*And even if they had, it's their primary and they can run it however they choose to.

Re:Zontar approaches peak stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Supporting oppression of women, rigging elections, taking millions in illegal donations for campaigns, ...

Looks like you've got your copy of Trump's Christmas wish list handy...

Re:Zontar approaches peak stupidity

[Zontar The Mindless]

...a gay man and a woman...

You mean, like Ernst Röhm and Leni Riefenstahl?

Re:Zontar approaches peak stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, a jewish gay man who prefers negro lovers. You know, the Milo... Who is like Röhm in your mindspace?

Re:Zontar approaches peak stupidity

[guacamole]

I never said the GOP rigged their primary*. They did do a nice job of bending over for Trump, though, and didn't even demand any lube.

So basically, you're saying you didn't say shit. Only some profanities. The RNC primary bent over for Trump? Mmookay.

Saudi is also your friend!!

[Anonymous Coward]

3-2-1
Kind Regards,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Meglon approching peak stupidity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we are waiting for KNOWN and PROVEN election fraud, that was the DNC primary to be prosecuted first.

Yes, Hillary has taken millions of foreign donations for her campaign, colluded with media outlets to run fake stories, and rigged a primary. All proven. And you are worried about what Zuk, who is not trustworthy, has said about $100k of Facebook ads?

You are an imbicle.

Re:Meglon approching peak stupidity?

[meglon]

Citations needed. You fucked in the head conservatives keep spouting so much bullshit i honestly think you can't tell the difference between reality and your own lies anymore. Do conservative families no longer teach their kids about honesty and integrity? It sure doesn't seem like it.

Re:Sorry but if you are defending Russian Intelige

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are defending Russian inteligence operations agains tthe US, you are a fucking traitor. I don't give a shit how republican you are, or how conservative you are or how much you love fucking your woman with American Flag comdoms, you are a god damn traitor who should be shot.

You mean like Obama did when he said the "80s are calling and want their foreign policy back" after Romney said Russia is America's biggest geopolitical enemy during the 2012 election? Yeah, Obama and the Democrat party are nothing but a bunch of treasonous scammers who only fool the lazy and stupid.

Maybe your political masters forgot to tell you, but Russia has been our enemy and has been influencing our country and elections (and we do the same to them) since the start of the Cold War. Try not to confuse a recognition of reality for an endorsement. In any case, glad to see you are "woke" now. LOL!

The Russia narrative is little more than an excuse for the many failures of the Democrat party that resulted in their embarrassing election defeat in 2016. If you were as concerned with our country as you appear, you would know better. Pathetic and sad . . .

Meanwhile..

[tinkerton]

Meanwhile Glenn Greenwald posted an article which explains why BeauHD falls in the category of useful idiots.
https://theintercept.com/2017/...

$100 000? Other new outlets quote $28 000

[Mrakodrap]

Will Twitter also suspend hundreds of accounts tied to U.S. operatives in Russia? Because they certainly paid more than meagre $100 000 for their advertisements to sow unrest and manipulate Russian voters during last gov't elections.

Twitter Ad Taken Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Russians want to waste money on Twitter ad - let them. What thinking person would believe any ads on Twitter? If anyone was dim enough to believe a Twitter ad they likely could not find their way to their assigned polling station to cast a vote anyway.

Re:Sorry but if you are defending Russian Intelige

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi. I'm not from the United States. Am I still a traitor? Do I deserve to be shot?

Please advise.

Whiny Babies.

[Anonymous Coward]

You whiny babies that voted for Killary, then lost, and can't stop shutting up about it.