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.

Comments

Re: The strategy is obvious

[OzPeter]

Trust me... It didn't take the Russians to be divisive, condescending, smug, and insulting.

Liberal America did a great job of that without any prompting.

The irony in your post is almost palpable.

Please show us a conservative campaign that the Russians exploited for purposes of divisiveness. Your response is telling, utter refusal to acknowledge reality.

So you're doubling down with a Red Herring and a dash of Reductio Ad Absurdum? No surprise there.

In Post-Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pokemon Go plays YOU!

Re:You want to use cashiers check or PayPal...

[AmiMoJo]

The foundation of the accusations about Russian interference are the FBI, CIA and NSA investigations of their activity on social media, funding and meeting with American citizens. It's all in that report, why don't you read it?