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Russia Reportedly Used Pokemon Go In an Effort To Inflame Racial Tensions (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Russia's far-ranging campaign to promote dissension in the United States reportedly included an effort to weaponize Pokemon Go. CNN reported that in July 2016, a Tumblr page linked to Russia's now-notorious Internet Research Agency promoted a contest encouraging people sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement to play the game near famous sites of police brutality. Players were told to change their characters' names to the victims of those incidents -- an apparent effort to inflame racial tensions. The Tumblr page was linked to Do Not Shoot Us, a multi-platform campaign designed to mimic aspects of Black Lives Matter. (As CNN notes, the name plays on "hands up, don't shoot," one of the movement's slogans.) Do Not Shoot Us included a website, donotshoot.us, along with related pages on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. The Facebook page was one of 470 pages that were removed after the company determined that it was linked to Russian groups attempting to interfere in US politics.
They used an appy app APP from Pokémon to make people unappy with other people without using their own APPS for LUDDITES! APPS!
Wasn't the slogan they used "Pokemon go to the polls!"?
It's less trying to promote one side or the other than a case of Let's You and Him Fight where they just try to get everyone so mad at each other than the US has trouble governing. Trolls are less about converting people (although it's great if they can) and more about making the other side think their views are so insane that they can't be reasoned with. It's all an attempt to get us into increasingly frustrated self selected bubbles and it does seem to be working. ...but maybe I'm just bitter because the Russians didn't offer me a Lapras for helping them. I mean if you're going to use Pokemon Go, use it!
Blacky, I choose you!
This is simply the Russian's exploitation of liberal campaigns that are inherently divisive to begin with. The liberals are unwitting helpers.
...laying blame for their race war on Russia. Fake news is fake.
Next they're going to say Russia mind controlled Hillary and made her call half the country deplorable.
The thing about Pokemon GO is that you have almost no interaction with other players. They didn't add raids until this year, meaning that at the time, literally the only interaction you had with other players was by attacking a gym held by an opposing team or adding a lure to a gym. Nothing else you did effected anything that anyone else was doing. There remains no way to talk to other players in-game. No way to see other players. No way to see if anyone is near you.
This story makes absolutely no sense. You can't interact with other players and other players names only show up in very limited circumstances and are otherwise meaningless. Besides, Russia doesn't need to do anything to make Black Lives Matter "inflame racial tensions," that's literally the purpose of the movement itself.
... Realize that the MSM(ratings), politicians(votes) and external forces(espionage) are at place to cause anger? The common American goes about their day, trying to earn enough to provide for their loved ones. But the left is eating up anything and everything divisive, projecting all kinds of ill will towards anyone who has a differing opinion - SO MUCH SO, that a person who should not be the president of the US, IS the president of the US, because there was no other choice.
And what has happened since the US election? The left has double downed on portraying any and all who don't think exactly as they do, as misogynists(oh the irony there) and racists(check out the founding and core of the Democratic party for the TRUE racists.
Pushing people so far will yield someone who is not afraid to push back, and that was who was elected - the only person is not afraid to push back against all the crap that is constantly slung against the right.
Keep on looking down your nose at fly over country, and this will NOT get any better. In fact, it will get MUCH worse.
*Please done take this as the right is perfect, because I am greatly saddened that Trump can't act like an adult. He had the perfect opportunity, and has done nothing but blow it.
herp derp
The desperation of CNN... just smells sweeter every day!
Man, really! Unfortunately, it has everybody fixated. The hysteria has infected every facet of mass media. Russia is an adversary to be sure, but if their "interference" had so much effect on the the vote, what does that say about all the simple minded idiots who believe the bullshit? I mean, look closely at Trump/Clinton/Congress/etc, and look even more closely at why the fuck anybody would vote for them. We do indeed have a very representative government. It truly reflects all of our deepest desires, or vice versa. Either way, the power to change can only come from us. Presently we are headed off the cliff. We either go along or not. Our choice. What will *we the people* do? Are we really going to let the accuweather guy lead NOAA into the abyss? Or are we going to keep jerking off over Russia?
Russia has done in the U.S. what U.S. had been doing in other countries for decades - influencing a foreign country's domestic policy according to their own interests. I am just not sure what rules apply there - am I supposed to condemn them for this? Or is it allowed only as long as they don't catch you? Or is it allowed only if it's done by the good guys, not the Russian boogeymen? The irony is, that they've done it using U.S. companies and their greed for advertisement money.
On a different topic - I am really surprised how racist the U.S. is, the country I used to perceive as a dreamland of freedom, human rights and equal opportunities. All of that degenerated into SJW madness and LGBTQ+ craziness (don't get me wrong, I am all up for them having all rights like any other citizen, I am just sick of their constant weeping and attention whoring), while some basic freedoms are fundamentally broken.
Disclaimer: I have no connections to any russian 'trolls' or anything russian, never been in that country, while I visited the U.S. a couple times. If I had to choose, I'd rather live in the U.S. than Russia, I am just annoyed that I am pressed to choose sides because that is what the current relations are evolving to.
Russian babes are hot.......
and they put out...which is more than you can say for the Americans...
c'mone ladies, it is your patriotic duty! Oh hang on, this is Slashdot nm then!
What does CNN have to do with Russia's campaigns in the US?
we now have an SJW=Russia talking point to try and rile up the right against Russia?
No. This is not reported very well in the summary (shocking, I know), but the idea was to rile up the right against Black Live Matters.
Yeah, I can't believe that anyone would consider anything on CNN worthy of any use. The only thing I did do is setup a cron job to use curl to see my entropy pool from CNN's homepage[*]. That's about the only use of those bits!
I used to use Google's news aggregator but even that became insanely left-biased so I just stopped with it. I would change my preferences to not show certain sites and Google clearly had a bias for ignoring those settings.
[*] No, I didn't really do this. It's a joke.
... so must be trying to destroy the American way of Life clearly! /s
You all just loved Russia when they were flat out honest to goodness murderous communists.
Damn it Russia!!!!!
Don't forget the most crazy thing: They seem to always side with an ideology that is the polar opposite of what they stand for: Islam. I'm not sure how you can be pro-gay, pro-feminist and pro-religion that want's to throw the other groups off a roof.
You forgot voting for Wall Street as soon as they left their Occupy Wall Street rally.
If so you should send me your money before some Nigerian prince steals it from you. The story went from Russia hacking servers and emails, to Russia colluding with Trump, and now we're down to talking about Pokemon and Facebook ads. But Russiagaters have to keep talking about this - if they stop, they'd have to admit they were a million megatons of bullshit crammed into a five pound sack.
https://consortiumnews.com/201...
The comments of this thread indicate how deep the brain washing goes on the right, and it demonstrates just how powerful manipulation of the media really is.
Look at the staggering levels of incompetence and corruption in the current administration, and tell me you weren't played. And keep in mind, if you're saying you were NOT manipulated by right-wing media, then you actually are stupid enough to vote for a complete ass clown like trump. Either way, it's a no-win scenario for republicans and conservatives. Your president is done, and your brand is over.
Pokemon Go plays YOU!
So since the Trump=Russia narrative failed, we now have an SJW=Russia talking point to try and rile up the right against Russia?
It did not fail. The investigations are ongoing.
Why are you so dismissive about this subject? Wouldn't you want to know if a foreign entity that is not the friend of the US and the west in general is interfering in your country's politics? Wouldn't you be concerned about possible collusion between the White House and an authoritarian country that actively fights against western values on multiple fronts?
Russia hasn't done shit. Bush's mistake back in 2003 was in trying to provide evidence (all of which was fake) that Saddam planned 911 and was pursuing nuclear weapons. If he only knew he could have skipped that whole sending Powell to the UN and providing satellite photos, and just told a tall tale with no evidence whatsoever. Because people would eat it up with a spoon.
Yes Iâ(TM)d like to know if that happened. I would also like to know if Hillary Clinton is actually an alien from a far away galaxy. Wouldnâ(TM)t you like to know if that was the case? Or do you not care about your country or democracy? She was a sitting senator, after all, and ran for the highest seat in the land, with millions of people voting for her (many of them citizens!). If an alien from a far away galaxy were able to infiltrate our demoracy to that extent, I hope we would all want to know about it.
It's a failed investigation. They haven't landed any lunkers yet, and in fact are running out of bait and thinking it's time to move the boat (again!) to a new spot in the lake.
It's right wing Democrats who keep fucking the Russian chicken, though they've been reduced to talking about Pokemon and Russian internet ads (many of which came AFTER the election, and one of which was for a documentary attacking a Trump golf course). They clutch onto that raft so they don't have to admit they nominated an even worse candidate than Trump to run for the presidency.
And before the Russian chicken came a long, right-wing Democrats were fucking the "white male privilege" chicken with abandon, ever since Obama clinched the primary in 2008. Because right-wing Democrats are just as happy as right-wing Republicans to keep people divided on race when they should be uniting on class.
Wouldn't a more effective long-term method of undermining Russia's economy be to spread renewables? Yeah, we can temporarily undermine them with a glut, but we would be ultimately creating a disincentive to actual energy independence.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You are righ man - I was an SJW but now thanks to your posts I get it - Trump is AWESOME and so is the Republican Party - I love Trumps head fake by appointing Goldman Sachs to the treasury, Wall Street just thinks Trump is on their side with the tax breaks and gutting the EPA - he put a fossil fuel executive in charge! Crazy like a fox! And now I hear he is into alt-science - way to stick it to those stuck up eggheads! What has science ever done for us anyway? I sure hope he can get rid of Obamacare so we go back to the days when insurance was cheap and easy to get- and I really hope now he sticks it to North Korea - what a whack job! Nuke him!
It took a century to spread non-renewables and even at that, there are still places in the world that cook with cow poop.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well if that's the game it will backfire hard. As some one on the right I don't see Russia as the threat these SJW groups that are actively using terrorist tactics like BLM and Antifa are. These people need to be classified as the terrorists they are and people voluntarily contributing money and partipating in these riots need to be charged. Hopefully convicted and imprisoned for s long time after. Fortunately my team controls most of the AGs right now. We will just demand more of left be prosecuted, every felony conviction is one less Idiot voting
Oh please. The idea was to throw more fire on the easily triggered left, so they get even more irrational.
Sorry that these revelations bust your Trump=Russia narrative. Better run to a safe space and call everyone not toting the party line, a racist mysoginist along the way.
...to send me your life savings?
Fixed that for you.
The Russian's hacked power plants storyline was bullshit.
CrowdStrike is bullshit.
The "17 intelligence agencies" line was bullshit.
The Russia hacked election systems is bullshit.
Sure, lets look at this - while remembering the FBI wasn't allowed to examine the DNC servers so how exactly would they have "high confidence" in any thing - but this time noting the weasel words:
Zero evidence provided, only claims and accusations. Well guess what Chem Trailers, Sandy Hook Truthers and Birthers have? Claims and accusations.
Then there's the fact the entire "Russia wanted Trump to win so hacked the election" makes no sense whatsoever. The election was Hillary's to lose, right up until she picked Tim Kaine as her running mate and decided to skip campaigning in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan. So according to the storyline, Putin was crafty enough to dig up dirt on Hillary (which was all true) but dumb enough to collude with someone as dumb as Trump. Which means the CIA, NSA & FBI would know all about it. Which meant Hillary would too, who had already campaigned on shooting down Russian jets in Syria. So what's really going on?
The entire "Russian hacking" storyline is nothing but Swiftboating from Clinton supporters, as she was the candidate who engaged in corrupt collusion with Russian interests to sell a fifth of America's uranium.
And you can skip that Snopes link that handwaives away Hillary's culpability for a number of reasons:
1) Access is corruption
2) Avoiding the appearance of impropriety applies to politicians, not just judges
3) Her own campaign was warned internally that the deal was a political liability for her
4) Hillary flat-out broke her confirmation promises on keeping a wall between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation
At this point, Chem Trailing anti-vaxxer Birther Sandy Hook Truthers have more respectability than Russiagaters.
Sadly there are idiots dense enough to fall for rubbish like this. Russia may be architecting a massive, complex plot but these CNN clowns lost me when they involved Pokemon. Surely the Russians can do better than that.
Hmmm, "is reaching". Passive verb phrase anchoring your lead sentence.
As Pinker points out in more than one book, the principle advantage of the passive voice is to avoid naming the subject conducting the action.
The subject of your sentence is "fake russia-gate narrative", which in this construction effectively behaves as topic, not subject. And it's already wrong, because "-gate" is a suffix that principally denotes criminal coverup (Nixon's more serious crime). Not a single item in your list concerns any kind of cover up (though a few that might warrant a cover up).
Does your adjective "fake" then apply to your misapplication of "-gate"? Well, it could, but it probably doesn't, as most readers would sort your intent here.
If there wasn't the possibility here of criminal collusion with the Russians on the part of several tight-lipped members of the Trump family (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner) and prominent tight-lipped officials within the Trump administration (in the first row, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and Michael T. Flynn; in the second row Roger Stone, Rick Dearborn, George Papadopoulos, and Wilbur Ross; in the third row, Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer via Cambridge Analytica) this would not be a "gate" narrative whatsoever.
I use the modifier "tight-lipped" because—despite norms and procedures designed to strongly encourage or legally require full disclosure concerning interactions with foreign nationals—we had to learn about these connections the hard way in almost every case.
Who, then, is the subject engaged in spinning this "fake russia-gate narrative" willfully elided from your opening sentence?
It is nearly a universal principle of tradecraft that no narrative about anything important is allowed to exist uncorrupted. If the opposing interests don't corrupt it automatically in the normal course of events, then interests benefitting from a general climate of less clarity are sure to step into the breach.
All joint narratives are fake narratives. To discriminate the true from the false, the valid from the invalid, one has to break some eggs.
Nameless eggs, in your case.
The vast majority of responsible news reporting has operated since the beginning on the heuristic of "where there's smoke, there's fire". Usually a hunch or vague suspicion precedes discovery of a smoking gun. Maddow bends over backwards to frame "smoke" stories in language such as "what this would seem to suggest". Like the Y Combinator, a fair number of these early smoke stories graduated to attain full unicorn status—and loving it.
The main exception to this rule are the more "salacious" aspects of the Steele dossier. Short of serving a subpoena to the Kremlin, these wilder allegations from the standard-issue shit stew of raw intelligence will probably remain unconfirmed. Colbert is by far the worst offender here, leaning on the pee tapes over and over again for cheap laughs, despite this having the least prospect of demonstrated credibility. Whenever the dossier comes up, Maddow keeps repeating "and other salacious allegations" and then refuses to go there.
Next, the whole point of the Mueller investigation is to assign responsibility where responsibility belongs, despite certain cretins fervently wishing otherwise.
Non-fake narrative (subtype "gate"): a worrisome number of people in the Trump administration had ties to Russia which they systematically concealed, criminally concealed, downplayed, covered up, neglected to recall, or lied about. Once discovered, most of these ties were directly confirmed by the person responsible. Snopes verdict: 100% confirmed.
Non-fake narrative (subtype "tradecraft"): the Russians are engaged in a global disinformation strategy to undermine democratic norms and thereby weaken their democratic adversaries. Snopes verdict: W
Wouldn't a more effective long-term method of undermining Russia's economy be to spread renewables? Yeah, we can temporarily undermine them with a glut, but we would be ultimately creating a disincentive to actual energy independence.
Yes, but that's the point. 20-30 years out Europe will still be heavily dependent on natural gas. It needs time to get their power grid ready for a more distributed method of power generation. People will also need to retrofit gas burning heaters and utilities with electric.
We can spin up natural gas production pretty quickly. The only major hurdle is building more LNG plants to ship the stuff.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
what failed? Your logic, bitch. That failed.
The parties traded places fifty years ago, dumbass. This is not news. And skip Robert Byrd as he spent the rest of his life apologizing for joining the Klan, as opposed to Republicans like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms who went to their graves as Dixiecrats.
You mean right-wing corporate democrats whoring themselves out for money?
Any decent American would be outrage, but 80% of republicans are stone cold traitors like Trump.
Let's not forget that the main plank in the republican party's platform is to kill thousands of Americans with treatable illnesses by denying them health care.
These same murderous traitors also intentionally sabotaged the economy during the Obama years with government shutdowns and other attacks on their own country.
Don't expect these traitors to demonstrate an ounce of patriotism.
Timeline of Treason
Dec. 10, 2015
Lt. Gen Michael Flynn is part of a panel discussion in Moscow for the 10th anniversary of government-backed Russia Today, for which he receives payment (The Washington Post, Aug. 15, 2016). Officials notice an increase in communication between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, following the Russia Today event (CNN, May 19, 2017).
Late 2015
British intelligence agencies detect suspicious interactions between Russia and Trump aides that they pass on to American intelligence agencies (The Guardian, April 13, 2017).
March 19, 2016
Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is sent an email that encourages him to change his email password, likely precipitating the hack of his account (CBS News, Oct. 28, 2016).
March 21
During an interview with The Post, Trump lists Carter Page as part of his foreign policy team. Page had been recommended by a son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox (WP, March 21, 2016).
March 28
Political veteran Paul Manafort is hired to help the Trump campaign manage the delegate process for the Republican National Convention. He is recommended by Trump confidante Roger Stone (New York Times, March 28, 2016). Before joining the campaign, Manafort lobbied on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That deal followed a memo from Manafort in which he offered a plan that could "greatly benefit the Putin Government." His relationship with Deripaska ended in 2009 (Associated Press, March 22, 2017). Manafort also worked on behalf of the Russia-friendly Party of Regions in Ukraine, helping guide the party's leader, Viktor Yanukovych, to the country's presidency. Yanukovych would later be ousted. (WP, Aug. 19, 2016)
April 27
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) may have met with Kislyak at a reception at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington before a foreign-policy speech given by Trump (CNN, May 31, 2017).
June
At a closed-door meeting of foreign policy experts and the prime minister of India, Page praises Putin effusively (WP, Aug. 5, 2016).
June 9
Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya's efforts to reverse a law passed in 2012 sanctioning Russians suspected of human rights violations at some point drew the attention of the FBI. The meeting was not initially reported to the government by Kushner as required when he took a position with the administration (Times, July 8, 2017). After the meeting was originally reported, Trump, Jr. admitted that the pretext for the conversation was that he believed Veselnitskaya to have information incriminating Hillary Clinton (Times, July 9, 2017).
June 15
A hacker calling himself "Guccifer 2.0" releases the Democratic National Committee's research file on Donald Trump (Gawker, June 15, 2016). News reports already link the stolen data to Russian hackers (WP, June 14, 2016).
July
At some point this month, the FBI begins investigating possible links between the Russian government and Trump's campaign (Wired, March 20, 2017).
July 7
Page travels to Moscow to give a lecture (NYT, April 19, 2017). The Trump campaign approved the trip (USA Today, March 7, 2017). This trip was likely the catalyst for the FBI's request for a secret surveillance warrant to track PageÃs communications (WP, May 25, 2017).
July 11 or 12
Trump campaign staffers intervene with the committee developing the Republican Party's national security platform to remove language call arming Ukraine against Russian aggression. (July 18, 2016).
July 18
At an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation as part of the Republican National Convention, Sessions and Kislyak have a brief conversation (WP, March 2, 2017).
Flynn delivers a speech at the Republican convention, joining in the crowd's "Lock her up!" chant. "If I, a guy who knows this business
Ruskies can learn a thing or two from US media on how best to "inflame racial tensions" for profit.
with dihydrogen monoxide!
Well, no, they can't. Russia is a shithole of epic proportions, and gave up competing a long time ago. Now they're just trying to drag other countries down to their level.
Headline could just as easily have been The Onion.
I have just 2 words in response to your TL;DR bullshit:
Fuck you.
It's like a Roth IRA, but...no wait, it still screws you in the end. Never mind.
This post desperately needs to be modded up
"Squirrel!" works for dogs.
For Americans, it's: "Russians!".
Welcome back to the 1950s, folks.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
... is about as trustworthy as "this tumblr page said".
They're getting desperate if they're blaming Pokémon now.