Russian Trolls Created Facebook Events Seen By More Than 300,000 Users (cnn.com)
"Posing as American activists, Russian government-linked trolls created 129 Facebook events between 2015 and 2017," writes CNN. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
On multiple occasions, the events prompted real Americans to take to the streets. In a written statement Facebook gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee released on Thursday, the social media network said that the events created by one Kremlin-linked troll group were seen by more than 300,000 Facebook users. About 62,500 users marked that they would attend the event, and an additional 25,800 expressed an interest in attending.
Facebook told Congress it does "not have data about the realization of these events," but CNN has previously found evidence that the Russian group successfully convinced Americans to attend the demonstrations. The events were organized on a range of divisive issues and were designed to pit Americans against each other.
"The company also told Congress it had removed Kaspersky Lab from a list of free anti-virus offerings it provides users."
Facebook told Congress it does "not have data about the realization of these events," but CNN has previously found evidence that the Russian group successfully convinced Americans to attend the demonstrations. The events were organized on a range of divisive issues and were designed to pit Americans against each other.
"The company also told Congress it had removed Kaspersky Lab from a list of free anti-virus offerings it provides users."
On what planet did Putin and his cronies think the West wouldn't throw the kitchen sink at them in retaliation for the election hack?
Did these mongs REALLY think they could hold us off forever simply by gaslighting us on Twitter? ("there is no proof of collusion, there is no proof of hacking, whatabout this, whatabout that, etc etc). So fucking stupid.
The arrogance and naivete defies belief.
LOL
Just shows you how powerful social media really is.
How many other countries has the US messed with through coups outright attacks or other dirty tricks throughout the last 100 years?
Let me help you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
It's not a witchhunt.
It's a CNN.COM article.
That's right, it's a feeding frenzy. Definitely draws a crowd.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That is how propaganda works. You keep repeating a lie and eventually it will become the truth. This is standard propaganda 101 so please keep up :P
Spell out then, Mr Political Scientist, how this is "leftist".
Go ahead. I'm waiting.
Bet you you can't. You're just full of shit, repeating political slogans like the mindless little tribalist you are.
Americans have faith in the government and the media (CNN especially).
On what planet did Putin and his cronies think the West wouldn't throw the kitchen sink at them in retaliation for the election hack?
Did these mongs REALLY think they could hold us off forever simply by gaslighting us on Twitter? ("there is no proof of collusion, there is no proof of hacking, whatabout this, whatabout that, etc etc). So fucking stupid.
The arrogance and naivete defies belief.
First of all, chill. The purpose was to get people riled up and divisive, and by being outraged you are playing into their hand.
Furthermore, if you are outraged don't propagate by posting about it - that just amplifies the effect.
Secondly, does this de-ligitimize at least one major riot here in the US? Was there (at least) one instance where US people did not feel strongly enough to protest, but were egged on by outside influences?
Doesn't that mean that there is *less* discontent in the US than what might be inferred from protests?
I don't think the user base here is heavily leaning (at least not to the extent that most online communities are) in one direction or the other based on comments posted here, though I suppose you could claim that the editors have a particular leaning.
I suspect that they post these articles not out of any particular political allegiance, but simply because they get more traffic and therefor generate more revenue.
Four Trump campaign and administration officials have been charged with serious crimes.
Two have already plead guilty.
Donald Trump committed treason with Russia, and committed obstruction of justice in his cover-up.
Holding criminals accountable for their crimes isn't a witch hunt.
It is also our duty as Americans to protect our country from traitors, like Trump who conspired with Russia's attacks on our country, and his supporters who willfully refuse to see the evidence of his treason.
Arabs bought Slashdot through the front called "Bizx, LLC." Why these Arabs are pushing blatantly baseless propaganda is anyone's guess.
Who is funding these Arabs? Who is behind it all?
The US would be a land of harmony and zero social division, governed perpetually by enlightened Democrats who are our intellectual superiors, if only Russia hadn't bought 100k worth of Facebook ads.
If the Devil lights your cigarette, can you blame him when you choose to inhale?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays :P
I can see someone doing that just for shits and giggles... and there are many of those folks. Lolz
[($)]
Impressive, how many lies you've managed to cram into one sentence. Going for the world record, son?
Russia spends upwards of $US1b on computation propaganda and information warfare every year. We know that the FSB is emptying out Russian universities of anybody who can contribute to their information warfare campaign. It has been noticed. And it won't go unpunished.
And there are zombie accounts that hatch like little reptiles with modpoints. It's how creimer gets his spam links modded up. It's also why all of the sensible posts are modded down.
Notice how two years ago you could say something and not be modded down purely because someone disagreed you? Remember two years ago when all the stories were actual attempts at tech news and not biased anti-Russian spam?
Good thing it's only Russia that does this, otherwise we would live in a fully destabilized world. I mean, could you imagine if other great powers had propaganda/saboteur campaigns going on across the world, or did other things to rig elections in their nations interests. Whew, good thing it's just the Russians doing this and not the good guys. Glad we caught 'em. Good job Lou.
Parent posts demonstrating the two truths and a lie technique. The reddit-style one sentence per line formatting makes it a weaker post than it could have been, so take care to learn from his mistakes.
Slashdot has always been a cesspool of moderator abuse. If you think otherwise, you haven't been paying attention at all.
"Biased"..... oohhhhhh, you sweet summer child :-) There is no obligation for balance, or even pro-Putin false balance here. The editors can be as "biased" (waaaaaaah!!) as they damned well like, and there's there's NOTHING you can do about it.
Care to post how much US spends on the same item? Just, you know, to be fair and balanced.
US played the same game for decades, since radio was invented. Same as Russia.
I was going to say something similar but you beat me to it. Why does /. keep running these pointless stories about "the Russians rigged teh election!!!1!11!"? Isn't this supposed to be "news for nerds", and not "pointless political bullshit that is a duplicate of 100 other stories in recent memory"?
It's a miracle I haven't felt the urge to drive around town attending all of the FB events that show up on my newsfeed. It's almost as if seeing an event listed in that way doesn't compel me to change my mind about a candidate or a policy issue. Amazing! But somehow it probably still cost Hillary the election, I'm sure. I'll check with Rachel Maddow for confirmation on that.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Well I appreciate it because it confirms a personal belief I've been holding since the elections: Russia (the nation.. not the "people") has been playing both sides of the board. A divided USA would be nothing but beneficial to them. A new civil war (wishful thinking on their part) would be a wet dream come true. The same assholes you see screaming about Trump are the same assholes you see screaming about Clinton. Both sides want to create bandwagons to "stop" the other.
it's a fact that as people age they lose mental facilities. It's called "Age related cognitive decline' and there's a lot of effort going into studying it. Thing is, most folks think about people getting older and jump straight to Grandpa forgetting where his keys are style Alzheimers. But there's a huge range in the amount of decline. Grandpa might know where his keys and he might know the different between reality and fantasy on a moment to moment basis, but his critical thinking skills might have atrophied to the point where he has trouble questioning his biases.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Apples and oranges, son.
Transparent public diplomacy, and Russian-style covert information warfare are completely different. The US budget for that kind of public outreach is a miniscule fraction of Russia's spend on covert information warfare.
It's completely pointless comparing the two.
Call me crazy, but no one forced these people to go to these events. Were the meetups for the same political topics in person that they were advertised as? Was there some "bait and switch" thing going on here? Did people leave when they found things aren't what they expected?
If these participants all got together and found solidarity in their shared views, then I'd say the events functioned exactly as they should -- regardless of who organized it. Maybe the people who went are just embarrassed to admit to the sometimes racist, xenophobic, or religiously intolerant viewpoints that brought them all together.
If they want to see who "trolled" them, I believe they will find the individual in the bathroom mirror.
Why not? Russia's information warfare campaign is fascination and world-changing, and VERY interesting to nerds. After all, most of the vectors of Putin's information assault on the West are enabled by the Web and social media.
Some make believe accounts made some make believe events that other accounts (make believe or not) said they were going.
"not have data about the realization of these events," WFT, CNN?
A reporter reports about half the story, how hard can it be to research if these said "events" were real or not? My guess, none ever happened. But, isn't a quality news report one that has the complete story? This report isn't sufficiently researched to have any utility besides stirring the pot.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
/ Which fucking adults? Oh, you mean the people who became multi-millionaires while in public service? Those adults? The ones who played with theimselves while ISIS conquered large fractions of the middle east? Oh,, no, you mean the ones who gave 7 billion dollars to a terrorist regime that triggered the rise of ISIS by creating their own Iranian controlled militias all over Iraq and Syria..
You know what we call Arabs and Russians killing each other?
"Self cleaning oven" :-D
Hope Putin and his fascist buddies get reamed in Syria. You break it, you own it moskals ;-)
LIke the 20k emails? Or maybe the server that should not have existed? How about the dude deleting emails that should not have been? The smashed phones? Or the emails that talk about blaming russia? Or the billions missing from haiti?
As fun and serious as watching that?
NICE!! you wont find much unbaised posts here. US propaganda = GOOD, Russian propaganda = BAD.
But i'm with you and do love these posts.. as you said, the US has been doing the exact same thing for decades against many countries, but the US citizens seem to have a serious issue when it is done to them? They didnt seem to mind having decent democratically elected leaders thrown out to bring in tyrants in the name of "freedom".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism WHAT ABOUT MUELLER and the cancelled golf membership, the REAL scandal? Haha, just enjoy watching Trump go to prison, it's going to be his best TV role ever! Certainly his longest. :D
How is it an apple vs orange? you posted how much the Rusians spend on propaganda, they just asked how much the US spends.
Seems to be an appple vs apple?
The West doesn't carpet bomb entire villages with dumb ordinance, WW2-style like the Russians do.
Go figure.
Ok then.
We know that Hillary rigged the DNC, and the Russians were the ones who exposed it.
We know Russian trolls used social media to shitpost. We suspect it may have had an influence. But nobody has determined how much, or if it actually had any effect in any State.
So the Libs have been pumping stories speculating that Trump put Russia up to it, and bury the Hillary story. They also pretend like Russia hasn't done the same damn thing for Years.
rtfa
It's a fucking witchhunt generated by a secret society of FBI agents (their fucking words) and paid for by Democrats. It's never been remotely POSSIBLY true. If you weren't so blinded by bias, you'd stop and think for a moment: what would Trump or Putin gain by actually colluding? Neither would gain a goddamned thing, that's what, except risk. Any agreement they came to could be rendered moot by either party at any time, the ultimate in idiotic and unenforceable contracts. Candid comments by people working on it also show that no one ACTUALLY takes it seriously at all. It's a witchhunt, a bunch of people spending tens of millions of dollars to try to find some procedural error to slap Trump with, and to keep the Democrat base motivated.
Anyone who believes this is anything beyond that has either not thought about it much, or is plain simple.
I'm convinced there is Russian propaganda on this site. Any time someone mentions Trump might be guilty of something, the protective crowd leaps to attention. Even your post, "The Russians did far more to help Hillary" is yet another denial.
I find it very hard to believe that the actual Slashdot user base who began as liberal freedom-for-software advocates in support of democrats are now nationalist racists who support Trump. Even the AGW denial on here appears to be propaganda. I don't believe it one bit.
Hey, don't like it? TOO BAD.
The world doesn't owe Russia "fairness" or "respect". Russia is NOT equal to the West. Russia is a pissant with terrible demographics, rampant crime and corruption, and an economy smaller than Italy's.
In what universe does Russia get to demand to be "equal" to America?? Dream on!!
Russia gets no respect, because it is run by a bloodthirsty fascist who is morally depraved on just about every axis you want to compare with the West.
Attacking us won't earn you respect either. It'll earn you an epic punishment beating (which is coming your way, mark my words), but NO respect.
We're not going to turn around after years of Putin's fascist bullshit and say, "O great Putin! Forgive us! We are not worthy! You are our equal!". Doesn't work that way. And BOY, are these arrogant Russian wankers who think that in for a rude awakening!
Stamping your feet and holding your breath like an angry toddler does not change facts.
Look, I'll admit I'm a rank amateur up front. But I reached 1,000,000 eyeballs during the 2016 election.
If the Ruskies can only pull off 300,000 eyeballs then I am pretty damn impressed with myself.
Caution: Contents under pressure
That's like ... 0.002% of the total voter turnout. This serious interference obviously cost Hillary Clinton the election!!!! What can we do!?
Sigh.
--- ...when the adults are back in charge in Washington, there are going to be SERIOUS, life-changing repercussions for Putin and his friends.... This is going to be FUN to watch."
"Trump is totally, unbelievably fucked...
---
Good fucking grief, the party-rah-rah-rah in this. Your 2018 is going to be as disappointing as your 2016.
You're probably seeing some Russian trollbots, some Turkish, some Ukrainian, Romanian, who the fuck knowsian... and a lot of brainwashed Republican Americans too, taking up the cause of propaganda as their entire "party" now. They've disowned Ryan and the other spineless cunts in Congress because they were only paying blind-eye to racism, as opposed to Trump's direct and unambiguous support for racism/nazism. So intent on that path, they could give a fuck about any other reality but their own - and they have to spin each day's news into some sort of hoax-smokescreen in their minds internally - every damning detail of the Mueller investigation as Trump get's carted off to tie in prison. Pity the fools, lol. But not too much, they're nazi trash and they deserve their own personal holocaust worse than the one they deny.
Read the post histories of some of the folks on these threads where Mueller, Russia, Trump are involved and try to guess who is associated with Russia propaganda mills. Then go look at the user histories. You think there isn't Russian propaganda active today on /.?
So somebody scams your grandparents of their life savings (and your inheritance).
Who are you going to blame for that?
These people were scammed by sophisticated Russian military information-warfare outfits. How are people, who are unaware of the fascist threat, going to defend themselves against that?
>Call me crazy, but no one forced these people to go to these events
Please. Obviously nobody was forced, noone said that anyone was.
They were manipulated. Sounds a bit like you have been too.
The war in Syria is about a Natural Gas Pipeline that the west wants and Russia does not.
Nice deflection attempt. Try harder, though.
Jesus christ.
This story never ends, Russia did this, Russia did that, always very little or circumstantial evidence, or something like "up to 6 fake accounts were made, with over 32 followers!"
Unless something significantly concrete, ground slamming and thorough comes out which outright proves some kind of real huge conspiracy, then all this looks like is crazy people on a witch hunt.
FUTHERMORE even if it were real, it's up to people to vote with their conscience / brain, assuming they have one.
On top of this, even IF the Russia email hack Hillary thing is real (or was Russians) the point should be the bloody evidence revealed, don't play the distraction game, if her emails clearly proved she was a liar or trouble or whatever (I don't even know what it was) why are we desperately trying to look the other way?
Note: NOT an American, didn't even vote in your election and I know Trump is an idiot, but the republicans didn't win your election, the fucking democrats lost it by omitting Bernie.
So tired of this political stuff on /., what next? Another in depth article about how every single white male programmer is without question a rapist or something?
The goal is to cause chaos. The bait-and-switch approach is that you take advantage of a shocking event (mass shooting, disaster, etc) and let loose your army of bots to organize protests with 100,000 followers on one side, and an opposing event with 100,000 followers on the other side.
If nothing happens, meh, it cost you nothing except paying some guys in St. Petersburg to shitpost. Try again after the next shocking event.
If you get lucky, you get 500 protestors on one side of the street, and 500 counterprotestors on the other side of the street, and they start throwing insults, bricks, and molotovs at each other.
Then you sit back and enjoy the chaos you've created -- not just the localized disruption of the riot but the fact that everybody you lured into a riot leaves with hardened feelings against their opposition.
Lather, rinse, repeat. More chaos, more violence, and maybe you get really lucky and kick off a civil war. Your greatest geopolitical adversary basically punches itself in the face and off the global stage while you sit back and way "Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!"
Look upthread -- notice that some of the ACs are vehemently supporting one side of the story, and some of them are just as vehemently supporting the other side. Maybe only a few of them are actual information warfare guys. But it only takes a few to get the rest of the ACs (sincere readers with partisan opinions) to tear at each other's throats.
Basically, they're doing this in real life: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/trollbait-nobody-is-right
And they're going to keep on doing it as long as it continues to work.
It's a fucking witchhunt generated by a secret society of FBI agents (their fucking words) and paid for by Democrats. It's never been remotely POSSIBLY true. If you weren't so blinded by bias, you'd stop and think for a moment: what would Trump or Putin gain by actually colluding?
1. The words you are quoting were a joke. They recovered the other emails to prove it. People like you who stretch tiny things like a single text message into vast conspiracies really need to get mental help, or at least change to some slightly more ethical job.
2. Putin hated Hillary. Trump was seen as more useful to Putin's goals and he has been particularly useful. I'm not going to list them all, but needless to say Putin thinks he can get by with more on Trump's watch.
Trump is pushing protectionism and isolationism. That is just perfect for Putin's agenda. Given that it is quite likely that Trump is deeply in dept to Russia, given what we know he is hiding, well, I'd say Putin is smiling.
Hell Trump is single handedly doing his damn-est to destroy rule of law and freedom of the press to protect himself. If America is not a shining example, well that is better for his own purposes. People will complain less internally if they look less bad by comparison.
Wipe that froth off your chin, motherfucker.
Everyone hates competition. But besides German industry's thirst for Russian gas, it's hard to see how Putin could keep the resource-weapon going over the long term. Still, he gets credit for trying.
The Americans just tanked the price of natural gas with fracking. And they are shipping it to Europe. Putin's bullshit fascist aggression has everyone coming out against Nord Stream II (and let's face it, if you manage to upset the _Swedes_ of all people, you've fucked up big time).
Now if we can convince the French to start fracking (although I'm sure Putin's got THAT covered with anti-fracking astroturfing groups), they might have some problems.
He is an immigrant, probably from the Ukraine.
Americans should risk their life and property on behalf of Ukrainians. That's the point.
It's only of interest to the nerds from the Ukraine or other little nations of zero consequence. Like, Georgians or Lathuanianz. Normal people tend to be less than obsessed with, well, nothingburgers.
Russian leadership is composed of some small time thugs; their threat to US is on par with that of Chavez or Duterte.
Hahah, got you there, didn't I!
You have no answers, because deep down, you know it's true.
Four Trump campaign and administration officials have been charged with serious crimes.
For lying either after the election or crimes long before the election. Which makes the special investigation moving beyond the original intent and your next point rather moot.
Donald Trump committed treason with Russia, and committed obstruction of justice in his cover-up.
The investigation about Trump Russian collusion only has arrests for things that never occurred during the election in which said collusion was supposed to happen. You know it's a witch because the scope has moved beyond "Trump Russia collusion during the election". Now, it's about "find any dirt and use that hopefully to impeach Trump when our team takes the congress". IOW, dirty politics and the same bullshit that has haunted every special investigation that has ever been convened.
There is most certainly a witch hunt because the original special investigation has moved well beyond "Trump Russian Collusion". Until the facts come out, the FBI, the special investigation, have had their reputation tarnished because of shit people like Strozk and Page.
You are a piece of shit anonymous coward pushing an agenda that gives zero shits about the rule of law when you brandish words like "treason" and "traitor" without giving a fuck about the fruit of the poison tree.
I learnt from the masters -- the Russian troll army.
*bows*
Were you born with calipers? Read what I wrote.
The Muslim Brotherhood's trolls created a fake "Women's March" that was actually an evangelical recruitment drive for their terrorist religious organization. That event was noticed by a lot more than 300,000 users. You still see morons wearing those pink pussy hats. Where is the media outrage over that?
Yes, we need to keep an eye on Russia, but let's have some perspective.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But we do carpet bomb them with smart ordinance, like cluster bombs. Cluster bombs where the bomblets look like toys to children. So when it's unexploded ordnance, they can play with the bomblets. Until they go boom.
So that's different, right?
But they hate us for our freedoms.
"They're American bombs. They hug you to death." -- Jimmy Dore
--
BMO
typical trump supporter right here.
i could live a little longer in this prison
To control the natural resources of the Middle East. It is in their best interests to propagate and foister Islamic terrorism and instability in the Arab World because that allows them to tighten control of the land and oil supply. Anyone who questions this corrupt state of affairs is slandered.
Russian information warriors definitely play both sides -- to the level of ridiculousness.
They were caught organising riots in Baltimore, by having trolls (sitting in the same room!), posing as both BLM activists and alt-right skinheads simultaneously, trying to organise civil unrest.
It's simply unbelievable what America in general -- and social media bosses in particular -- are allowing Putin and his vile regime to get away with.
Heads must roll.
The adults who wage drone strikes and blow up civilians routinely and call it "collateral damage."
The adults who implemented the largest spying apparatus in world history and directed it against the public?
The adults who loot and plunder the savings and livelihood of the people through the Federal Reserve, then steal nearly 1/3 of our income to pay the interest to the bankers?
What a swell group!
Good thing the data shows that the vast majority of the public doesn't believe these lies, deceptions and shenanigans and have overwhelmingly rejected the fake Russia narrative.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
"The events were organized on a range of divisive issues and were designed to pit Americans against each other. " -- Hey, that's Trump's strategy!
I'm a libtard.
The Hillary viewpoint with the DNC and Podesta Emails boils down to this:
"We would have won if those meddling kids didn't expose our lies"
It's literally something out of Scooby Doo.
Trump and trumpism isn't the result of the goddamned Russians, it's the result of 40+ years of stultification of the American Public. Ever since the Southern Strategy. The Republicans have been courting the idiots ever since then, and don't fucking argue this point with me, because it was Nixon's own words as to what rubes he was going after.
And ever since then, they've become the Republican Base.
Gone are the Barry Goldwaters. The GOP (grand?) is now composed of grifters, wannabes, assholes, racists, and tools. Since this matches much of the American Public, it's no wonder that Trump won, because he is all of that, and more.
And what gets me is that the Democrats should be /hammering/ the Republicans on policy. Except that it's "Russia Russia Russia." Which the American Public doesn't give two shits about. So we have tools like Tom Perez in charge of the party, someone who would stab you in the back (politically) as much as look at you.
No platform. No policy. Just skulduggery.
--
BMO
in my best jan brady voice: "russia, russia, russia"
Idiots!
Sure, Russia and the US, go ahead and weaken each other with stupid games and win stupid prizes.
China abides.
Russia probably spent less than $1 million to try screwing with our election. If the hysterical left is right, then that means that this ~$1 million investment that was only seen by the die hard fans was more effective than almost $1 billion in ad and marketing spend by the Clinton campaign.
Does that make sense?
"Russia gets no respect, because it is run by a bloodthirsty fascist who is morally depraved on just about every axis you want to compare with the West."
There is not a day that goes by that Trump doesn't exhibit himself to be a sort-of dumb Mussolini, without the dignity or humility.
You may call Putin a fascist, but Trump is also that, without being able to get the trains to run on time.
Respect is to be earned. It's hard won and easily lost. Whatever respect we had as a nation, is fucking gone.
>epic punishment beating
This is not how you earn respect. You are mistaking fear for respect. They are completely two different beasts altogether.
Bullies think that fear is respect. Bullies have rude awakenings of their own when people stop fearing them.
--
BMO
So I guess this post (about downplaying Russia's incredible aggression), is yet another variation on the theme that I'm seeing the bots hammer these days.
Tell me -- is downplaying Russia's 2016 act of war indeed on the temka? Maybe you can share the rest of it with us, while you're at it?
All good -- we've got evidence of China's complicity with Russia's fascist schemes. You've been rumbled.
Speaking of inviting hatred and fear, isn't it funny you're defending Russia, who literally did that via social media propaganda?
Makes you think about the projection so common to some political parties these days.
stats lie
Agreed, we need to nuke Russia before they nuke us!
"Posing as American activists, Russian government-linked trolls created 129 Facebook events between 2015 and 2017,"
What, 129 "events" over the course of three years? That isn't even one a week!
Too bad CNN lacks the ability to research any of these so-called "events", I guess they don't have access to any historical information about what went on in the country between 2015 and 2017.
Ken
Don't need paid trolls, Russian or otherwise to do this. There's a huge amount of American citizens willing to do it for free, just by being themselves online. If Russia was suddenly wrapped in a bubble and cut off from the internet, I don't think you'd notice much of a difference as far as online political flamewars go.
Punching yourself may get you locked up.
Yeah you've been like sprinkling your babble all across the thread and personally I disagree with your silly aggression.
The (American) problem is that we let it get to this point. We take social media outbursts and promises from people we don't know as truth, just because they make us feel sad or confirm our biases. We allow our emotions override our logic and our hearts end up making decisions best reserved for our brains. Some responsibility must be taken in this regard.
Russia, they with no money, no military, or otherwise no resources, are playing the only game they have: information (thanks internet). Frankly I'm surprised it got as far as it did.
The locals would have noticed all the embassy workers herding them to speeches.
People all over the USA, in all professions, retired, mil, gov had the freedom to listen to the speeches and vote for who they wanted.
More states liked one candidate who could give a great speech in their state over a candidate who used short media releases.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I created a meme video watched by over 20 million people.
I'm bigger than russia and coluding with my trump tie on!
fucking morons. stop with the fake russia shit. we're not buying it. STOP.
129 events over 2 years.
This is 1 guy, and not working hard either.
Jesus fucking CHRIST. Other people have said this, but I'm so incensed I feel the need to repeat what has already been said thirty times in this very thread. Stop propagandizing at me. The DNC was hacked and their dirty laundry was aired and I don't give a shit by whom. Anyone actually informed knows over half of the Russian "interference in the election" was in support of Hillary. Anyone with a brain knows the contents of the emails are more important than who exposed them. Whether you're trying to make me believe this narrative or just adding headlines for some list of "1,000 headlines that make this claim and therefore it's true", whether you're lying on purpose or just ignorant, I don't give a shit. Stop it! Stop pushing agendas. Your job is not to influence my beliefs or behavior, your job is to present interesting, PERTINENT news for nerds. Take your user profiles, your Shareblue talking points, your bribe money, your demographic maps, and your informal automated polling and shove it so far up your ass that your problem glasses fall off you piece of shit.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Tell that to the people of Vietnam, preferably face to face and see if you walk out.
Fuck off Russian.
Supposedly the cold war was over in the 1990s. Putin has kept it going.
Probably because he's fucking useless at managing the economy, so instead he creates the boogeyman.
Which he of course has to attack because he's thick as fuck and can only think in terms of chess pieces.
War the greatest evil that men perpetuate against one another.
Countering war propaganda is not about defending a nation-state. All governments are run by crooks, thieves and liars.
No, countering war propaganda ought to be the endeavor of every sane, rational person who values life and human dignity.
Nyet!
So you think Russians are engaged in a grand conspiracy to take down America and somehow STOLE the election from Hillary by posting stupid ads about Jesus v Satan... ...And yet simultaneously believe that they are DUMB enough to leave it all in the open so CRACK DETECTIVES like you and Slashdot editors that can barely compose a coherent thought are able to blow the case wide open?
Stuck on stupid is easy to exploit.
You aren't allowed to use evidence to point out the hypocrisy.
Using evidence and facts is something only Russian troll bots do. If you use evidence and facts to dispute the Deep State narrative, you must be a Russian.
Benjfowler certainly seems focused on Russia. Unfortunately his constant cursing and un-sourced assertions do little to help his cause.
Sorry, I wouldn't believe CNN if they told me water was wet.
oh look another typical classy trump supporter.
i could live a little longer in this prison
But the truth is - you can't, and, more importantly, you'll be dead, and everything you care about will end up dead.
Watch some Japanese footage of Hiroshima victims just to get an idea.
Also, the only regime that ever used nukes on people was america.
Look up a video where american regime bombs the shit out of a hospital with doctors, patients, women and children.
You imbecile.
BizX and its CEO have funded both Obama and Clinton. It's in the public FEC records. There is a concerted effort here to turn Slashdot into a propaganda outlet for the Democratic Party.
Fortunately, the people they put in charge of doing that aren't particularly competent (some of the editors can barely write complete sentences in English), and it makes them very easy to troll, which is great for laughs.
The irony I find in all this fake news and Russia interfering with US election garbage is that many of the biggest lobbies in the US are foreign interest groups. AIPAC anyone? Not to mention the foreign influence of major US media groups. No one cares except the people who aren't paying much attention anyway.
Adults don't think treason or confrontation with Russia or anything resulting from the whole situation is FUN. In fact, calling a national disaster fun because it humiliates a political party you dislike is the sort of thing Trump does. You're just another symptom of the same juvenile insanity Trump suffers from.
This space intentionally left blank
The West doesn't carpet bomb entire villages with dumb ordinance, WW2-style like the Russians do.
No, the Americans just used WW1-style* white phosphorus bomb during the siege of Raqqa and Mosul.
*White phosphorus ammunition was first used by the British in 1916.
Actually, it's "we would have won if those meddling kids had exposed our opponent's lies evenly with ours." There's no doubt the GOP does plenty of unsavory things that would come out if you dumped their server contents, but the leak selectively left them alone.
I don't excuse the democrats for anything, they dug their own grave, but they are correct that they would've won if they'd had the company they deserved in the grave. Because apparently nothing will convince Americans to vote for a third party.
This space intentionally left blank
Are you kidding? There are more libertarians on slashdot than there are libertarian voters in the country on election day.
This space intentionally left blank
"the people who became multi-millionaires while in public service?"
Like Putin and his relatives and friends, and his Prime Minister and many other government employees including his chef. How could they manage to fill those offshore bank accounts on their official salaries? Must be just luck and hard work.
(and let's face it, if you manage to upset the _Swedes_ of all people, you've fucked up big time).
Sweden has been pissed with Russian behavior way before Nord Stream II.
Russia takes almost every opportunity to violate Swedish borders. It is even to the extent that Russian ships takes the detour between Oland and Gotland since there is a path that technically only is in the Swedish economic zone.
Nord Stream II is just another step among many. Sweden doesn't want to give Russia a "legit" reason to have troops patrolling Swedish waters and Russia tries to use EU to pressure Sweden in accepting a pipeline that only really Germany wants. (I was going to type benefits from, but Russia is going to recuperate the cost of the pipeline somehow and it is going to be on the gas. Germany would probably benefit more from switching away from the gas dependence.)
Either way Sweden and Russia have been at war on and off for half of a millennia. so there is probably a lot of old shit to be angry about.
There's an old Russian saying which goes something like "one troll in Savushkina Street is worth 50 libertarians on Slashdot". Yeah it loses something in translation.
That's what the head of that organization in St. Petersburg deserves. Seriously, to start multiple street demos, brawls and riots in a different countries just by few keystroke.
!
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Do we really have to have an anti russian unproven BS article nearly every single day? Isn't this supposed to be a technology website? Slashdot is racist against russians.
The worst part is that we knew it was going to happen and exactly what they would do. The leaked GCHQ manual on trolling laid out all the techniques that Russia is using. GCHQ uses them too... But apparently forgot to develop any ways to detect or defend against them.
Since GCHQ knew, that means the NSA knew as well, as also failed to do anything about it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's hard for the Dems to attack Trump on policy, because he has made any attack on populist ideas into "political correctness" and other easily dismissed slogans.
He's very hard to criticise because he's already so offensive and so far divorced from reality that any sort of appeal to the decency or truth is ineffective. In fact his base revels in him being that way.
Short of creating some kind of left-wing version of Trump to oppose him, which let's be honest none of us want to see, the only thing anyone can really do at this point is wait. He is already failing, so just let it happen, let people realize he is full of shit and put up a good candidate in 2020.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Because there is no such information warfare campaign. And your insistence on this makes you the laughing stock of people outside the US.
Also, the Russia Russia Russia s**tstorm is being put to actual serious use by politicians - democrats first and foremost, but not just them - by applying pressure on the large tech companies to start censoring content. And this has borne some fruit, e.g. mass demonetizations of political videos on YouTube; purging of prominent socialist/progressive websites for most search results (e.g. wsws, alternet, global research, counterpunch) and so on.
I would absolutely love it if CNN would do stories about the collusion between democrats and the Russians but, alas, CNN has a long history of purveying fake news. As it it stands, CNN is censoring a huge story which would expose the democrat hypocritical agenda.
Censoring the news by omission is fake news.
CNN is the fake news KING! Long live the Fake News King!
So 300K people saw the events, 62,500 people said they would attend, and 25,800 said maybe? What % of that 300K people didn't give it a second thought? And what % of the 62,500 and 25,800 were the oh-so-powerful Russian trolls? This seems to be one of those scenarios that, if we were rational, would tell us how absolutely overblown this has been. Show of hands for how many people thought Russia stood by and didn't try to do anything in any of our elections before today? I would have thought the "eyeball number" was much higher. But even if they swayed the votes on 50% of these people, that's a remarkably small number. Wonder what the numbers are from the last couple elections...
1) http://www.foxnews.com/politic...
2) FSB is a domestic intelligence service. Foreign espionage is not their duty.
So yes, it is completely pointless comparing the two, but not for the reasons you've stated.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You do realize that reality itself has a left-leaning bias. Rightwingers themselves are against reality as a whole
So, you recycled a racist National Socialist joke about Jews and Poles for your new hate groups? Lovely.
It's amazing how far the current Left has embraced racism. Then again, if you look at the roots of National Socialism, boycotting the Civil Rights Act, or founding the KKK, it's not surprising. It's more a matter of the mask falling off.
uh huh
The first thing I look for is the source - once I saw "CNN" I read no further. CNN is no longer a source of integrity, has never been since 2000 when I cut cable TV out of my life.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Do you use the same manual to design your posts?
They actual world changing Russian - well, Soviet - Information Warfare campaign was the American Civil Rights movement.
The Soviets funded the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam... and one Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Funny how that turned out for them, huh.
Another li'l fella who doesn't understand the Democrats and Republicans swapped left and right a few decades back.
2. Putin hated Hillary.
According to whom?
Trump was seen as more useful to Putin's goals and he has been particularly useful.
Maybe, maybe not. That depends on the goals as some might be parallel to those of the US, some inconsequential, and some against our interests. What is true is that Trump doesn't call Putin a boogeyman like the media used to talk about Saddam Hussein nearly two decades ago. You know, that guy that didn't have any WMDs in the end, and who wasn't involved with 9/11 in any way.
Given that it is quite likely that Trump is deeply in dept to Russia, given what we know he is hiding, well, I'd say Putin is smiling.
First you have to explain "what we know he is hiding". No one has revealed anything more than circumstantial yet.
Hell Trump is single handedly doing his damn-est to destroy rule of law and freedom of the press to protect himself.
Hah, I thought his fake news awards were hilarious and in some cases very accurate. As for the rule of law, what is being destroyed? All I see are unemployment numbers better than they've been in decades and mass hysteria in the media.
Different AC here, but I'll bite...
The world doesn't owe Russia "fairness" or "respect".
Of course, but turnabout is fair play and they're only giving back a fraction of what we give (like you said, their GDP is comparable to Italy's).
Russia is NOT equal to the West.
Does being the West automatically gives one the moral high ground?
Russia is a pissant with terrible demographics, rampant crime and corruption, and an economy smaller than Italy's.
And the Russians I've spoken to are generally content with how life has improved in the last decade.
In what universe does Russia get to demand to be "equal" to America?? Dream on!!
The GP didn't make that claim.
"O great Putin! Forgive us! We are not worthy! You are our equal!". Doesn't work that way. And BOY, are these arrogant Russian wankers who think that in for a rude awakening! Stamping your feet and holding your breath like an angry toddler does not change facts.
I get it now, you're deranged. And the best part is that you didn't even address the GP's point about the US overthrowing world leaders and installing the people of their choosing and calling it "democracy".
He's very hard to criticise because he's already so offensive and so far divorced from reality that any sort of appeal to the decency or truth is ineffective.
Speaking of being divorced from reality, AmiMoJo, remember how I adopted the sig "The one straight white male in new Star Trek will be portrayed as evil or incompetent" back before Star Trek Discovery premiered? You know, because he was the only straight white male on an SJW show, and so I knew that he would ultimately have to be revealed as either evil or incompetent--because SJW's, as much as they would deny it, really HATE straight white males.
Remember how an enlightened SJW like yourself corrected my foolish misinformed view back in October, responding to my sig, with:
By the way, your signature makes you look silly now. Your prediction was way off the mark.
Then remember how I replied with:
LOL. Keep watching, You'll be eating those words soon.
Well, go watch the latest two episodes. And enjoy your meal.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Send rotten Rodham Clinton to prison already. She;s above the law it seems. So much dirt on her and still she is more audacious than ever - crime family.
That would explain how the Bolshevist terrorists of Antifa got ignored by the liberal press so long.
NRRPT/RCT
Deep down, there's a turd with your name on it. Don't worry, I already flushed.