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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."
Wait 'til people realize that we've all been breathing the same air as Russians for years. We've all been compromised!
Why is Slashdot obsessed with this witch hunt? The Russians actually did far more to help Hillary Clinton. Why is Slashdot so biased?
I agree that it's racist to hold Russia accountable for their attacks on our country, and that it's equally wrong to hold traitors like Moscow Donald accountable betraying their country.
You see, as an uneducated racist, I support Donald's racist actions and statements, however I find any mention of Russia's attack on America to be racist. And not the kind of racist that I vote for.
No, you see, I support Moscow Donald, and I'm glad he colluded with Russia's attacks on his own country. When he treasonously asked Russia to hack Hillary's emails on TV, I thought - yes! this is a traitor I can support.
Let's all pretend that we don't see the mountain of incontrovertible evidence linking Trump to Russia's attack on America.
Let's further pretend that we don't notice the decades of Russia money laundering which Donald repays by being subservient to Vladimir Putin and helping block investigations into Russia's continuing attack on America.
I am a traitor. I am scum. And I vote Republican.
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
The same emasculated faggots that released a story extolling the benefits and virtues of cuckolding ?
Because nobody gives a shit what subhuman cunts like that think about anything, ever.
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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?
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?
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.
I can see someone doing that just for shits and giggles... and there are many of those folks. Lolz
[($)]
before I voted for a stupid bitch or an ugly minority. I'm sick of hearing about how terrible white people are. I dont give a fuck how minorities feel. It feels goddamn awesome being white, with my chiseled features and my beautiful Northern European family. I wouldn't trade it for anything and no amount of ugly, fat, Afro-Mexican tranny propaganda is going to change that.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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
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 ;-)
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!?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Gee, it sure takes a tremendous amount of courage, intellect and fortitude to systematically demonize and category condemn 150 million creatures that look nearly human, such as Russians. What ever would we do without CNN, Slashdot, Louise Mensch, Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Bill Kristol and other leading geniuses to show us all the way?
Imagine what kind of person it takes to incite hatred, fear, suspicion and potential world war and nuclear holocaust against that many almost-humans. It's a good thing Russians aren't REALLY humans, and so it's totally fine to systematically categorize, demonize and hate them. After all, World War III wouldn't be that bad.
Hooray for sanity!
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.
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!
in my best jan brady voice: "russia, russia, russia"
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?
stats lie
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry, I wouldn't believe CNN if they told me water was wet.
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.
"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.
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.
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...
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
Another li'l fella who doesn't understand the Democrats and Republicans swapped left and right a few decades back.
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