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

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?

"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.

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:As opposed to others who do it?

[Calydor]

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

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: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?

[Jeremy Erwin]

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

Now if they could only...

[ckatko]

...do that to all the ISIS ones.

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.

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: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.