Slashdot Mirror
Report Claims That 18 Nation's Elections Were Impacted By Social Engineering Last Year (bbc.com)
sqorbit writes: Independent watchdog group Freedom House released a report that claims that 18 nation's elections were "hacked." Of the 65 countries that Freedom House monitors, 30 appear to be using social media in order to affect elections by attempting to control online discussions. The report covers fake news posts, paid online opinion writers and trolling tactics. Other items in the report speak to online censorship and VPN blocking that blocks information within countries to interfere with elections. The report says net freedom could be aided by: large-scale programs that showed people how to spot fake news; putting tight controls on political adverts; and making social media giants do more to remove bots and tune algorithms to be more objective.
You get arrested for saying anything AGAINST bad leader, sometimes killed, and on top of that you get social engineering saying "bad leader is good leader, most popular leader with everyone ever".... i.e. the attempt to keep the people from forming opposing groups.
You see this in Russia with Putin, media that reports anything negative finds their staff arrested, opposition leaders who say Putin is corrupt get arrested 'for corruption', and social media pretends Putin is ultra popular beloved by all, when the last free election they he didn't get a majority. Literally pro-Putin districts changed their tally from marginal support for Putin, and reported 92% support for Putin and 98% turnout to swing the vote. That was the last time the rigging was so obviously visible in Russia.
"but thats the price we pay for both free speech and open and free elections."
They don't have those either. The social engineering is to cover the rigging.
USA does NOT have free and fair elections, the people voted against Trump by millions and millions of votes and he got the Whitehouse anyway. Look at Heritage Foundation now, they are vote suppressors, they dream up laws to exclude voters from voting, those laws are passed in Republican controlled States to turn the Senate/Congress votes Republican too.
Trump has created an Election Commissions to turn his loss into a win by suppressing a target of 5 million more votes. The main party in that Commission is the Heritage Foundation representative. That commissions has asked for voting data on everyone in every state, and their party alliance where known (and postal voting record where they postal vote). That data is handed FROM the Election Commission to the Heritage Foundation, who will then analyze it, datamine it, and dream up State law changes to favor their group*.
This is what happens when a subgroup choose the leader, the leader rigs the election to favor the subgroup and politicians state their allegience to that group.
Paul Reynolds, the Republican national committeeman from Alabama said "“My gosh, it's The Washington Post. If I’ve got a choice of putting my welfare into the hands of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin or The Washington Post, Putin wins every time,"
You see how he's laying out his stall to get some Russian hacking, troll and troll money sent his way? You'll see a lot more of that among US politicians.