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Russia-Linked Accounts Were Active on Facebook Ahead of Brexit (ft.com)
The Russia-linked troll farm that used Facebook to target Americans during last year's election was also active in the UK ahead of the Brexit vote (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source), the social media company has admitted. From a report: In a letter to the Electoral Commission, Facebook said accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency spent $0.97 for three ads in the days before the EU referendum. These ads appeared on approximately 200 news feeds in the UK before the country voted to leave the EU last year. For months the social media company has sidestepped questions from MPs and journalists about Russian interference through its platform in the UK. The concerns were fuelled by revelations this summer that Facebook had been weaponised by Russian entities before the election of US President Donald Trump. France and Germany have said their elections were also targeted. "We strongly support the Commission's efforts to regulate and enforce political campaign finance rules in the United Kingdom, and we take the Commission's request very seriously," Facebook said in the letter.
That's about the same value as a can of coke has been spent on pre-brexit facebook ads. Either, the spend was much better hidden (see how the vote leave campaign channelled GBP625,000 through a 23yr old student) or brexit was not endorsed or funded by the Russians and simply fuelled by the stupid.
Only 200 news feeds, that's less then the average shot of a kitten falling off a sofa or a half-decent restaurant meal. Really if that's all they managed they aren't very good hackers, the effect would have been almost non-existent.
Everyone who thinks Facebook has the power to persuade people of ANYTHING are insane. When has it ever changed YOUR mind? It's the ultimate echo/thunderdome chamber where everyone only agrees with each other or causes pain, no actual change takes place there...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The new norm: When the election result doesn't suit the powers that be, blame the Russians.
What, the US and UK didnt think the same political manipulation that they use to keep poor countries poor would ever hey used on them?
Fuck em both.
Russia-linked accounts were active on facebook before global warming.
97 cents??? You're doing an entire Slashdot post about 97 cents worth of ads????
More than $140 million was donated to the Clinton Foundation by Uranium One board members and associates, but no, let's focus on 97 cents worth of ads.
The left's newfound Russia Derangement Syndrome is beyond parody.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Who stands to win by the Balkanization of the World's most stable organizations? When the EU, NATO, the USA and other large/multi-national organizations fall, Russia, still smarting from the fall of the USSR, can rise in prominence. Putin already tried putting Humpty back together, tearing down everyone else is a parallel strategy.
Organization? You must be joking..
I know it's en vogue to blame Russia for all things non-liberal but this shit is getting ridiculous. Russia hacked the Election, Russia hacked Brexit, Russia killed your puppy, Russia forced Harvey Weinstein to jerk off in front of women, Russia made my wife cheat on me...
Fuck off all of you.
Yeah, but this is the problem of money in politics. A country like Russia has vast money to pour into a campaign like this, and there's no way average people can come up with a dollar to combat this insidious advertising campaign.
Seriously, though, someone's getting this upset over less than a dollar? The left is beyond parody at this point.
Do you have ESP?
EXACTLY like Slashdot, but with better Emoji support and no UID digits to tell you who to respect.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I voted for BREXIT. Here's why
Outside the EU with a Canada type deal the UK would have control over
1) Immigration. Inside the EU we have to accept free movement of EU citizens. Not just to come to work, which I have no problem with, but also to claim benefits which I have a large problem with. And, more subtly, being inside the EU means we have to sign up to the ECHR. Article 8 of that makes it almost impossible to deport criminal, non EU aliens. Also if the UK is in the EU, it cannot refuse EU migrants and immigration is unpopular it instead clamps down on non EU ones. I've got a lot of friends in non EU countries who have tried and failed to get UK work permits because of this, despite the fact that they'd get a job and pay taxes if they moved to the UK. Many EU migrants end up in low pay jobs and are not net taxpayers because they depend on Working Families Tax Credit, Housing Benefit and so on. I.e. the EU is a source of cheap labour but that labour is subsidised by the taxpayer.
2) Trade. Inside the EU we need to have tariffs on non EU imports. Outside the EU we don't - we could sign free trade agreements with the US for example, which is our largest export customer. There's the Commonwealth, Asia and so on. Trade with the EU is important, but it is declining in importance. Also even without a Canada type deal we have a trade deficit with the EU. I.e. we buy more than we sell. So if tariffs are imposed on trade both ways we can use the tariffs we collect to pay our exporters tariffs.
3) Internal regulations. If you trade with another country, your exporters need to comply with their regulations on goods they export. Unfortunately the EU goes much farther than that - the EU wants to be a state and to regulate even intra country trade. Outside the EU that wouldn't happen.
4) Democracy. Democracy works if you vote for a government, that government makes policy and then you vote again. In the EU that process is broken because there are things you can vote for - controls on immigration for example - which the EU will block. In the run up to BREXIT Cameron asked for a delay between new immigrants arriving from the EU and being able to claim benefits but was slapped down. Meanwhile Merkel unilaterally admitted 'Syrian refugees' who turned out to be mostly not Syrian and not refugees. Since Germany controls the EU, the EU didn't bat an eyelid. In fact the EU is still trying to impose a quota system on EU countries to accept their 'fair share' of the migrants Merkel invited into Germany.
5) Defence. The EU wants an army and to be a state. The UK has traditionally seen NATO as being the security organisation, and the EEC and then EU as being about trade. Leaving the EU with a Canada type agreement keeps tariffs off trade but removes us from getting sucked into the EU's aspirations at statehood. Even a WTO deal isn't too bad for the reasons mentioned in 2)
6) Money. The UK makes a net contribution of £10billion per year. Outside the EU we'll probably have to pay a divorce fee of around £40billion or so. However after that we'll only contribute to programs which are in the national interest. Norway is not an EU member but is a single market member and makes per capita contributions of around 1/7 what the UK does.
Of course the Remoaners want you to think it's all a Russian plot. Nope. There was a referendum and you guys lost.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Hillary Clinton Gave 20 Percent of United States' Uranium to Russia in Exchange for Clinton Foundation Donations?
Uh, the article says that they located Russians buying three ads totaling about a dollar.
That's not really a problem.
also, logically, Russians meddling in a British elections would not be treason-- treason would have to be by citizens of the same country.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I can't help but wonder whether these Russian fake news accounts were online and active trying to get Roy Moore elected in the special senate race. Trump would have likely requested Putin to try to tip this one too in his favor.
No, Putin has re-allocated all his election rigging assets to the nor important task of rigging the upcoming Russian presidential elections.
Darling: So you see, Blackadder, Field Marshal Haig is most anxious to eliminate all these German spies.
Melchett: Filthy Hun weasels fighting their dirty underhand war!
Darling: And, fortunately, one of *our* spies--
Melchett: Splendid fellows, brave heroes, risking life and limb for Blighty!
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
How many CIA linked accounts were active on Facebook?
How many CIA linked accounts are still active on Facebook?
1. Re-enforce your base's opinions and get them motivated to actually take action.
That would be great but the only thing Facebook excels at is de-motivation.
2. Depress your opponent's supporters.
Which Facebook does not really manage to do At All.
If everyone is in an echo chamber, then it's impossible to depress anyone. But on the flip side, you get all so beguiled by the echo chamber you do not need to do anything so if anything it makes it less likely you will take real action... Facebook is a tool for pacification, not for riling people to action.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and look at the massive impact it had. $125k ads goes a long way with conspiracy-minded right-wingers who will share and re-tweet without a second thought to its truthiness.
Of course left wingers only share and re-tweet factual stuff. Right.....
Fox is downplaying Russia's and CHina's impact on the west esp where it concerns Trump/GOP.
As such, it means that you are way wrong.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yeah right, Chechnya voted 99.8% for his party with 99.7% turnout, not long after Putin waged two wars against them. Think about how many votes Lincoln would get in the South the next election had he survived the assassination.
You're used to vote fraud meaning a few tens of invalid votes. On the other had, Russia didn't have a remotely fair election anywhere in its history: not by the tsars, not during the revolution, not by the soviets, a close shave by Yeltsin, then fully back to normal by Putin. Same in puppet countries they conquered (most recent example in Crimea).
“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.” -- Joseph Stalin
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Seriously, can't you see them when they pop up, they're not even that good at creating profiles and they don't even understand how humans link to each other in the real world. Fake posts liked by other fake profiles and commented on, but they repeat the exact same posts in a specific cycle, and the same comments.
If you can't detect that, get out of security, because you've failed.
And you're off by a factor of 1000, by the way. There are more.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
$0.97
Excellent!! Proceed with operation Brexitfix!
Mwuhaahaaahaaahaaaa!
Uh, read (2)
Demotivation is DISTINCT from depression. And you are ignoring the de-motivation happens in the echo chamber, NOT for opponents.
Wait, you just said... did you read what you literally said one sentence before that?
Can you please read what I wrote instead of what you think I wrote?
TRANSMISSION END
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
BBC was actively opinionating on US elections. BBC is not registered as a foreign agent. BBC is funded by the British government. Great Britain is not part of the US nor is it a US territory. This is open foreign interference in US elections which has been happening for close to 100 years.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
You clearly failed civics class. Go back and read up on how impeachment and the line of succession works.
Even the summary reads like an onion story. Is this a joke, parody, or do the editors truly want to share this news on this website with this audience? Some probably russian-related actors bought three ads for the amount of ONE dollar..? This is background noise. You can probably find even more adds of Pakistani people trying to influence the elections in Portugal
int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
What does Occams razor say?
Was there a huge coordinated group of people, effortlessly injecting fake news, creating stores, posting comments across the entire internet in an attempt to sway massive elections involving millions of people, many of which wouldn't even use a fucking computer.
OR
Did people just vote what they thought best?
The far left have gone off the bloody deep end. Don't tell me, it's *.white *.males fault some how?
Look at the map, and you'll see that most of 'Bama is sparsely populated farmland. Look at the politics, and you have a candidate for the majority party being accused of child molestation. The minority party tends to do better is special elections, because the base for that party feels under siege. In this election, the minority party would be especially up in arms, in a special election which tends to have a VERY small turnout.
I wouldn't expect fraud to be needed for Jones to win.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"If Theresa May is certain Russia is ‘meddling’ in British democracy she obviously knows some seriously cheap advertisers. It just emerged Russia spent 73p ($0.97) on ads to influence the Brexit referendum. How much influence can you buy for 73p?"
"Well, for a start, probably not a lot because the Facebook ads were about migration and the wider European context – and not Brexit. And then there’s the fact less than £1 was spent." link
Vladimir Putin dropped his trousers and took a shit on my front lawn! There are witnesses!
ok ivan