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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."
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
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 /.?
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.
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