Slashdot Mirror
Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting (wired.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: In the wake of Wednesday's Parkland, Florida school shooting, which resulted in 17 deaths, troll and bot-tracking sites reported an immediate uptick in related tweets from political propaganda bots and Russia-linked Twitter accounts. Hamilton 68, a website created by Alliance for Securing Democracy, tracks Twitter activity from accounts it has identified as linked to Russian influence campaigns. On RoBhat Labs' Botcheck.me, a website created by two Berkeley students to track 1500 political propaganda bots, all of the top two-word phrases used in the last 24 hours -- excluding President Trump's name -- are related to the tragedy: School shooting, gun control, high school, Florida school. The top hashtags from the last 24 hours include Parkland, guncontrol, and guncontrolnow.
While RoBhat Labs tracks general political bots, Hamilton 68 focuses specifically on those linked to the Russian government. According to the group's data, the top link shared by Russia-linked accounts in the last 48 hours is a 2014 Politifact article that looks critically at a statistic cited by pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Twitter accounts tracked by the group have used the old link to try to debunk today's stats about the frequency of school shootings. Another top link shared by the network covers the "deranged" Instagram account of the shooter, showing images of him holding guns and knives, wearing army hats, and a screenshot of a Google search of the phrase "Allahu Akbar." Characterizing shooters as deranged lone wolves with potential terrorist connections is a popular strategy of pro-gun groups because of the implication that new gun laws could not have prevented their actions. Meanwhile, some accounts with large bot followings are already spreading misinformation about the shooter's ties to far-left group Antifa, even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group. The Twitter account Education4Libs, which RoBhat Labs shows is one among the top accounts tweeted at by bots, is among the prominent disseminators of that idea.
While RoBhat Labs tracks general political bots, Hamilton 68 focuses specifically on those linked to the Russian government. According to the group's data, the top link shared by Russia-linked accounts in the last 48 hours is a 2014 Politifact article that looks critically at a statistic cited by pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Twitter accounts tracked by the group have used the old link to try to debunk today's stats about the frequency of school shootings. Another top link shared by the network covers the "deranged" Instagram account of the shooter, showing images of him holding guns and knives, wearing army hats, and a screenshot of a Google search of the phrase "Allahu Akbar." Characterizing shooters as deranged lone wolves with potential terrorist connections is a popular strategy of pro-gun groups because of the implication that new gun laws could not have prevented their actions. Meanwhile, some accounts with large bot followings are already spreading misinformation about the shooter's ties to far-left group Antifa, even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group. The Twitter account Education4Libs, which RoBhat Labs shows is one among the top accounts tweeted at by bots, is among the prominent disseminators of that idea.
The Russians are out to get me ha ha, the Russians are out to get me Ha Ha!!!!!
I canâ(TM)t shake them. I canâ(TM)t hide from them. Theyâ(TM)re always watching. Always gazing!!! The US, our liberal enclave, is now a Russian state!!!!
If the anti-gun lobby was a little more powerful, those kids would be alive.
Doesn't pass the stink test. They have been funding the West Coast Wall for years.
Have gnu, will travel.
The United States has never been a "system with the fundamental principles of freedom and liberty". That's just a fairy tale to keep people docile.
And it's clearly not working any more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
keep up with the story, it got debunked he was a nazi. In fact he lives in Broward county. Thats 90% DEMOCRAT, if you remember as it was the battleground for the 2000 recount for EXACTLY this reason. its probably going to come out in the wash that both his parents were registered democrats. Dont stereotype on this shit, it will backfire every time. The guy picked valentines day for a reason, its not a coincidence. This is one of the first mass shootings where the victim stayed alive to be interrogated. I for one am hopeful that atleast better insight can bet gained by this factor.
I think it is typical American bullshit. Number Russian who do english 7,571,787 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... If they want to do English on the web they will have to do it on English based web sites, largely American. If they make one post a day for a year that is 2,763,702,255 a shit bucket ton of posts. According to the US government if a Russian any fucking english speaking Russian use the internet in English they are a Putin bot. Fuck off with your idiocy, it is fucking stupid they day you have more that 2.7 billion Russian posts then you can cry Putin bots but until then STFU murderous regime change Americans.
Wow, English speaking Russians are forbidden from accessing English based web sites, else they are spies and should be killed. Pay attention to all those other fucking countries with large number of English who are also going to be in the smarter group in that society (2nd language smarter group) and who will also use English based web sites, are they fucking spies for their country too. Fuck off you lying pieces of shit in the US government, they are just fucking you with statistics making some thing look like it isn't. Total number of English speakers 838,676,510, take out the english as their main langurage countries and that is still a whole bunch of spies according to the mind bogglingly corrupt and idiots US Congress and Senate.
I garan-fucking-tee you, you have seen just a drop in the ocean of foreign country trolling, keep pushing this shit and the numbers will sky rocket, just to mock the US and they will brag about it all over the place.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen