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Twitter Says It Exposed Nearly 700,000 People To Russian Propaganda During Election (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Twitter this evening released a new set of statistics related to its investigation on Russia propaganda efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including that 677,775 people were exposed to social media posts from more than 50,000 automated accounts with links to the Russian government. Many of the new accounts uncovered have been traced back to an organization called the the Internet Research Agency, or IRA, with known ties to the Kremlin. The data was first presented in an incomplete form to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee last November, which held hearings to question Facebook, Google, and Twitter on the role the respective platforms and products played in the Russian effort to help elect President Donald Trump. Twitter says it's now uncovered more accounts and new information on the wide-reaching Russian cyberintelligence campaign.
"Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period," writes Twitter's public policy division in a blog post published today. "Because we have already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available."
"Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period," writes Twitter's public policy division in a blog post published today. "Because we have already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available."
Is it that ad ridden social network full of crackpots, some of them threatening with nuclear war? Does anybody sane still use it?
The rest of the world just takes it as a given that they're being exposed to American propaganda.
There is a huge whiff of "us be bad guys, us get taste of own medicine? Unpossible!"
Maybe if the Democrats had run Sanders and not Felonia Von Pantsuit, they wouldn't have given the Russians such a target-rich environment.
Look, it's not hard. If Clinton were the Foreign Minister of any of our NATO allies, her government would have put her in prison for a very long time for even a third of what she's accused of doing.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
We have no idea what Mueller has, but the people he is handing subpoenas to is highly interesting.
What about twitters own people saying on video they wish to "ban a way of talking" from "shitty people"... their words. Forget russia what about twitter's own propaganda via censorship?
Why should it work that way? It's just an easy cop out to not provide evidence. If you don't feel like participating in the discussion, then don't participate at all, instead of proudly proclaiming that you're not going to hop into in good faith.
Changing the trending section to show TrumpShutdown instead of SchumerShutdown, even though a basic Civics class and understanding shows clearly that this is a Democrat action isn't propaganda ?
Removing the hashtag Release the memo from trending because a left leaning PAC said something about Russian bots isn't propaganda ?
Twitter please. And they say right wingers are prone to believing conspiracies.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
I'm fairly sick of Twitter and Facebook going on about this. The Internet is full of propaganda. The world is full of propaganda. We should not be surprised if Russia meddled a bit, because we meddle in everyone else's affairs, especially in the Middle East. I don't like Trump much either, but the fact is that people are using this merely as a way to comfort themselves about him having won the election. But does it really make a difference? Were we really naive enough to think that democracy was truly fair in the first place?
Let's think about this rationally. 700,000 were exposed; that's a tiny number. A Google search says that almost 139,000,000 voted. So that means that about 0.5%--a mere half percent of voters may have been exposed. But chances are that only some of those who were exposed actually voted. And then most of them probably already were Trump supporters in the first place, who merely grabbed hold of the propaganda as confirmation of their already-held point of view. So it's impossible to say how much it affected the vote--especially given the complexities of the electoral college and the fact that we do not know where these viewers lived--but chances are that it did not affect it enough to have swayed anything.
Or let's put it another way: the burden of proof would be on those who would claim that Russia actually changed the outcome of the election. Prove it. I sincerely doubt that it will ever be proved, but people will go on and on about it because it gives them a kind of comfort to think that it was really the fault of some sinister external force. People love blaming outsiders, or even internal minorities who are treated as outsiders--such as Mexicans like myself--but it is a sad, pathetic, illegitimate comfort.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Just because the Russians did this (as per the facts of this article) doesn't mean Team Trump "colluded" with them to make it happen. It's known that Putin hated HRC (for, among other things, saying the Russian elections were rigged, back in 2011, when she was SoS). It's not a far stretch to suggest that rather than being primarily interested in helping Trump, they were interested in hurting Hillary. Helping Trump would just have been a means to an end.
At this point, any shred of evidence would suffice. It's been a whole year of people talking and talking and no one even showing a shred of evidence.
At least if you provided ANYTHING, it would give us something to actually talk about. At this point, this is just people shouting over each other's head, and the Democrats showing they are sore losers who can't accept their candidate's failing.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Hacked the DNC and DCCC,
Allegedly.
hacked elections systems in several states, grabbing electoral data.
Allegedly.
Handing the electoral data and political information to people like Aaron Nevins and defacto co-ordinating with them to get Ron DeSantis elected in Florida
Allegedly.
There are plenty of allegations flying around that this was all Russia's doing. It very well may have been. What is lacking is evidence.
It would be politically expedient for the US if it were Russia behind the meddling. It may or may not be politically expedient for Russia to have Trump as president. Hillary was a known quantity to Russia. They've dealt with her before as Secretary of State. Knowing how someone operates is diplomatically valuable.
Trump *seemed* to be more friendly to Russia, but he was also incredibly flaky, even as a candidate. The reasoning behind a coordinated push to back Trump over Hilary seems tenuous at best.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
If someone asks for evidence, present the most compelling and convincing evidence you have. It is a lame dodge, and implicit admission that you have nothing, to demand that someone else define a standard of evidence -- because you would then just argue about their definition instead of providing evidence.
Every single one of our intelligence agencies are convinced that the Russians directly influenced our election but you believe it is a lie?
It's funny you quote that, as that was debunked as well :
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/pageoneplus/corrections-june-29-2017.html
A White House Memo article on Monday about President Trumpâ(TM)s deflections and denials about Russia referred incorrectly to the source of an intelligence assessment that said Russia orchestrated hacking attacks during last yearâ(TM)s presidential election. The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies â" the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.
So who should you believe ? Obviously, you've been believing the wrong people.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
That doesn't work because what convinces me won't necessarily convince you. That's because of differences in Bayesian prior beliefs.
Some people also like to waste your time demanding you marshal information they have no intention of looking at. It's like playing a game where they don't tell you the rules, or are free to change the rules to suit themselves.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
another wave of largely talented caring young people into our country will not hurt our economy in any way.
That's the problem. Illegals in the US are NOT largely talented or caring. The stats just do not support this tired narrative. Education is lower than the average, skillsets are lower than the average, participation in crime is higher than the average.
Also, where were you when the Canadian governement put an end to its own TPS program for Haitians in 2016 ? You say Trump is inhumane, but Canada ended their program a full 2 YEARS prior to the US. Are you saying Canada is even less humane ? Or maybe you just forgot what the word TEMPORARY means.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
As I said, you are more interested in arguing about standards of evidence -- with the implication that the people asking for evidence are so unreasonable that nothing will convince them -- than actually pointing to evidence.
Here's a bonus hint to not sound pretentiously ignorant: Nobody is engaging in Bayesian reasoning about this. Nobody's going to give you a prior probability that politician X colluded with the Russians on subject Y, unless politician X has been caught on tape telling the Russians how much more flexibility X will have after his election. Nobody is going to give a formula on how to form an a posteriori belief from the combination of an a priori belief and a particular piece of evidence, until all the parameters are set -- at which point it is entirely an ad hoc, political, and non-repeatable exercise.
Would meetings by people in the campaign with what they believe to be people working for the Russian Government for purposes of obtaining favors rise to the level of collusion for you?
The definition of collusion is simple :
col . lu . sion
secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.
So for this "meeting" to be collusion, it would require for it to be to "cheat" or "deceive" and have been secret or illegal. Does said meeting meet those requirements ?
Let's look at the other side. Was it in fact deception that even led to this meeting ? And did this deception require special steps from an outside influence ?
Is the fact the meeting took place collusion, or did collusion result in said meeting even taking place under false pretenses ? So what do you think about me thinking about a "simple meeting" being equal to collusion now ?
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
People engage in Bayesian reasoning all the time, even if they don't know what that is. Everyone does this. If you actually believe anyone in the Trump organization would never collude with Russians, then Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin appears entirely innocent to you, even though Trump Jr. has openly admitted he was seeking Russian government supplied dirt on Clinton.
Likewise the meeting between George Papadopolous and Joseph Mifsud in which Mifsud offered a Russian government trove of emails from the Clinton campaign was perfectly innocent. Papadoploous lying about that meeting to the FBI was also a perfectly innocent mistake.
And when in response to Papadopolous's attempt to set up a meeting involving Trump Paul Manafort complained "It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal," he really meant that nobody in the campaign should be doing it.
So given that people who believe there isn't a shred of evidence of collusion aren't impressed by these fairly well-established facts attested to by the participants, I think it's perfectly legitimate to what level of evidence in your opinion constitutes "a shred"?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So what does "cooperation" mean? Your definition seems foolishly broad, because using the common definition of cooperation, probably any politician who seeks national office, a governorship, or the like, has "colluded" under your definition.
It's equally lame when you provide it and the other party says "that's not good enough" regardless of how strong it is. Hence asking for the bar to prevent trolls from trolling you by arguing that standards are not relevant.
Ezekiel 23:20
OK, so you're hung up an issue of terminology. Solicitation of an illegal activity, which is itself illegal, doesn't fit your definition of "collusion", but it's still illegal.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Either Mueller really has some dynamite shit on trump that we don't know about;
Considering the prosecutors that are willing to drop their high paid jobs to work on the case you can be pretty sure that it is something significant.
They aren't exactly nobodies that are looking to make a name for themselves. Most of them are considered to be the top name in their respective field.
It looks a lot like FBI have been investigating Trump since way before the election campaigning started and just handed everything over to Muller on his first day on the job.
But that doesn't mean it will lead anywhere. Impeaching a president is a completely political deal so the entire investigation is pretty pointless.
If the congress doesn't want Trump gone then evidence doesn't matter. If they want him gone they don't need much evidence at all.
That is not much of a correction, though.
Actually, it's as telling as telling can get. The fact that the initial claim was that all 17 agencies believed rather than the 4, which did, clearly means that whoever made the claim did not read the actual reports. Now who are you going to believe? Politicians who state that reports (which they haven't read) claim that Russia tried to sway US Presidential election or some guy on slashdot? Well, if the reason for not believing the guy on slashdot is that he is misinformed, consider the fact that the politicians making the claim are not only misinformed, but they also have vested interest in mis-stating the conclusions.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Russiagate is bullshit. Always has been, always will be. When Russiagaters are confronted with the fact that they are as full of shit as anti-vaxxers, chem trailers and birthers, they engage in petulant hand waving rather than deal with the fact they've bought into a conspiracy so insane you'd have Alex Jones embarrassed to be in the same room as you.
Yes, in a classic case of Swiftboating, everything Hillbots are baselessly accusing Trump of doing, their candidate actually did. Rigged an election? Check, the Democratic primary. Not just colluded with foreign intelligence for dirt against a general election opponent, but paid for it? Check! Corrupt deal with Russian interests? Check! Literally, to Bill Clinton from people pushing the uranium deal.
Yeah, slick, its a witch hunt. An investigation that starts with a single issue but the prosecutor uses it as a special warrant to look for any evidence of any wrongdoing, anywhere....Dembots were pretty pissed in the 90's when it was Ken Starr and Whitewater.
Because Russiagaters have just as much evidence to back up their bullshit as do the anti-vaxxers, birthers and chem trailers.
Pro-tip: assertions and speculation are not evidence. Just ask anti-vaxxers, birthers and chem trailers.
You first, dipshit. Then come back with the evidence.
Eh.
Vi.
Dense.
For issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with Russiagate. Which is why Russiagaters are as pathetic as anti-vaxxing chem trailing birthers.
So who should you believe ?
Setting up fake accounts on social media and posting bullshit with the intent to influence does not constitute hacking.