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Russia Reportedly Used Pokemon Go In an Effort To Inflame Racial Tensions (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the stoke-the-fire dept.

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.

1 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. You want to use cashiers check or PayPal... by Uberbah · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...to send me your life savings?

    Actually the hysteria is mounting.

    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.

    find this report by the Director of National Intelligence particularly interesting

    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:

    We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.

    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.