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US Charges Russian Social Media Trolls Over Election Tampering (cnet.com)
The US Justice Department has filed charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 presidential election. From a report: In an indictment [PDF] released on Friday, the Justice Department called out the Internet Research Agency, a notorious group behind the Russian propaganda effort across social media. Employees for the agency created troll accounts and used bots to prop up arguments and sow political chaos during the 2016 presidential campaign. Facebook, Twitter and Google have struggled to deal with fake news, trolling campaigns and bots on their platforms, facing the scorn of Capitol Hill over their mishandlings. The indictment lists 13 Russian nationals tied to the effort.
There's no still evidence of any tampering. This is about memes posted to Facebook. Literally about memes.
This is the best he's got? This is absurd. This is going to get laughed out of court.
It's part time to stop the pointless Mueller witch hunt and time to stop pretending he has anything.
So these are the guys who spent less than 7 figures on propaganda and supposedly bought the most powerful government in the world?
Then Christopher Steele will be indicted too for interfering with the election? He is foreign national that spread Russian Propaganda.
indicted for trolling
Except not a single American is indicted — much less anyone from the Executive Branch.
Please, hold your breath until it gets interesting. Please, please, please. With sugar on top...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Oh, the indictment is juicy, folks. Among other things, it specifically charges that these Russians sought to help the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, and that they also sought to suppress minority votes, and to create social media accounts pretending to be US media outlets and American individuals.
We got us a RICO case against the White House. This is 'bout to get real interesting.
https://www.justice.gov/file/1...
Try again.. I just heard the presser for these charges. They where actively supporting BOTH sides. One day they actually set up two rallies in the same city, one for Clinton and one for Trump...
I'd be careful with your conclusions here..
Why would they do this? They where spreading FUD about the election SYSTEM in this country. They didn't care one wit about which candidate won, they just wanted to make people not trust the system. They where sowing unrest, not trying to get Trump elected....
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I believe the original claim was: "The Russians hacked the election", indicating that Trumps victory was illegitimate.
This has eroded to the point of "Some people on the internet were trolls in the buildup to the election. Some of those people were Russian nationals".
You've changed the news from a serious concern that required investigation to an obvious truth that should never have been looked into.
And the ultimate irony, you're admitting that the American people, free to communicate among themselves and with people throughout the world, are unfit to vote in a democratic election. That somehow, without some level of government control of that information, the election is somehow invalid.
This is going to be a very hard case to make and going to set a very dangerous precedent.
Any law twisted enough to make what they do illegal will outlaw astroturfing and potentially even advertising.
And if misrepresenting oneself online is a crime, I shudder at the amount of FBI agents going to jail for pretending to be 14-year-old girls.
Or are they just planning to outlaw foreign nationals from twitter and facebook? Or are they just planning on preventing them from posting? This kind of government intervention should scare the crap out of anyone.
2 of the 3 charges are plain silly. The 3rd is identity theft which is more serious. They are alleged to have 5 stolen SSN.
I want this to be investigated as much as anyone, but the feigned shock and surprise from some Americans feels naive. Considering all the meddling (or outright coup d'etats and invasions) our country has been involved in over the last 100 years, this almost feels a little like a sliver of long overdue karmic payback.
More importantly, I don't think those who want this investigation to go on and on (for whatever reason) understand just how pious and insulting it sounds to those who chose Trump. I mean, dark money and political parties put out metric tons of political "ads" every election cycle, and people see through 99% of it. But they couldn't see through Russian propaganda?
Even if Putin himself was posting fake news content to Facebook, this continued coverage wreaks of Russian xenophopia and pious arrogance emanating from the national media and "holier than thou", ivory tower types: "The independents who voted for Trump had to have been influenced by SOMETHING to make such a horrible choice. We're the enlightened ones, so we have a responsibility to make sure everyone foolish enough to not see just how AWFUL Trump would've been as president NEVER make that miscalculation again."
Let's wipe up this spilled milk instead of crying about it.
At this point, I just figure that anyone who posts idiocy about the Russians not hacking the US is either a Russian shill or one of their dupes. Either that, or they're so soaked in conspiracy theories that their brains are addled. It's really no use listening to them. Once you decide that false information is as good as real facts, your mind might as well be gone.
And for the idiots referenced above who say that all this Russsia stuff is "fake", I'll take the CIA, FBI, and NSA's word about spying before any of you conspiracy-spouting morons in the peanut gallery - I do value professionalism, if nothing else.
That is all.
um, yeah, i think you are talking out of your ass and trying to cope defending your shithole president. here's the complete list
What does the indictment say?
It says a group of Russians:
Posed as Americans, and opened financial accounts in their name
Spent thousands of dollars a month buying political advertising
Purchased US server space in an effort to hide their Russian affiliation
Organised and promoted political rallies within the United States
Posted political messages on social media accounts that impersonated real US citizens
Promoted information that disparaged Hillary Clinton
Received money from clients to post on US social media sites
Created themed groups on social media on hot-button issues, particularly on Facebook and Instagram
Operated with a monthly budget of as much as $1.25m (£890,000)
The indictment says those involved systematically measured how well their internet posts were doing and adjusted their strategies to maximise effectiveness.
You're missing the point, and veering rather far from reality, as well.
The original concern (I won't even say it was a "claim") was that Russians may have influenced the election process. That doesn't invalidate the result, and nobody credible has claimed that it would.
The Trump campaign has since then countered that there's nothing to see, never any outside influence, and the whole investigation should be shut down.
With these indictments, there is now an official accusation, backed by a nice pile of evidence, that there was in fact Russian interference. That's it. No, it doesn't indicate on its own that Trump knew, or his campaign officials knew. Those questions are still open. What has been resolved at this point is the question of whether something illegal happened (yes, it did), and whether there was foreign involvement (yes, there was).
This could be the end of the indictments. If Trump's campaign was as honest as he claims, it will be. However, those open questions still need to be answered, which means the investigation needs to keep going. By making statements opposing the investigative process, Trump has made it worse for himself and his administration, because now the investigation needs to answer the question of whether anyone is trying to obstruct justice.
This has nothing to do with whether Americans are unfit to vote. That's always been a risk, echoed in Benjamin Franklin's famous response when asked what kind of government we would have: "A republic, if you can keep it." It has always been known that people are subject to manipulation, and that's why interfering in the election carries severe consequences. If the indicted Russians ever find themselves on American soil, they'll have a chance to find out exactly how harsh those punishments can be.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Are you people actually serious when you say things like this? I mean, I assume these are troll accounts, but I just don't know anymore.
I'd find it funny if it wasn't such a serious issue. But sure, let's say that Steele, working for a third party who was being paid by the GOP is totally working for Hilary Clinton's benefit. Because the GOP love Hilary and definitely started their relationship with GPS Fusion for her benefit. (Yes I know the democrats took over payment, but we should be clear on where this whole thing started)
And the two charges are totally identical, because where the charges levied here are for explicitly directed campaigns intended to spread misinformation, Steele was a paid employee of a company hired privately to produce information for another private entity. A full fledged and funded campaign by a foreign government is surely the same thing as the domestic government hiring a foreigner to act as, more or less, a Private Investigator.
These are totally the same.
These two things are totally equatable and not at all two completely distinct and different things so different it would be like comparing apples to horses.
Putin can't have witnesses. I'm betting we're about to see some dead Russians.
If you were one of the 13 indicted Russians, would you be more afraid of the US Department of Justice or Vladimir Putin?
You are welcome on my lawn.
If Russian influence is so bad for our elections, then I don't want California people campaigning for democrats in Nebraska.
This is a bullshit story. Outside influence isn't the problem, it's stupid people that are so easily influenced. Again, it's the usual blame passing to divert attention from corrupt political parties, and the lapdog media right here at home.
Nobody ever said the American people were unfit to vote. What we _did_ say is that they, like everybody, are capable of being lied to about the sources of information. Kinda like when a Cigarette company backs a study on the health benefits of tobacco. Or when Coke did the same thing. You'd want to know who backed that study. Lying by omission is a thing. A democracy lives and breaths by the quality of information available.
And no, there's still plenty of talk about the Russians hacking the election. They got caught funneling money through the NRA to Trump's campagin, and the only question is are we doing to do anything about it. Then there were all those meetings between high level Trump campaign officials and shady Russians that are still being investigated. Oh, and there's tons of evidence that the Russians have hacked into (literally) our electronic voting systems and that they continue to do so. There's good solid evidence they shared priceless voting record data with the Trump campaign. Again, hard to say if anything will come of this since the Republicans control so much of the government even before Trump won.
Remember, Trump was and is always a patsy. Nobody cares if he knew any of this because his only job was to show up to rallies and say bad things about Hillary and Mexicans. The question is how much did the folks who _really_ run the show know and do. What's clear is that what tattered remains of American democracy are left are being eroded.
But whatever, just keep ignoring the mounting evidence because the word 'hacked' sometimes gets used slightly inappropriately.
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Getting Hillary to do anything you want is just one donation to the Clinton Foundation away.
she will be dead before being president. We might have a madame president but it wont be her. That 'cold' she has had for the last 2 years..... its still there. Besides why would you WANT her? She ACTUALLY IS guilty of collusion and conspiracy to meddle in an election. They didnt even deny they colluded with the media to rig the primary elections. Thats what started the whole screaming about russian hacking to begin with. Podesta fell for a fake email that tricked him into signing into a fake website with his real password. Hell even the then-chairman of the DNC released a book outing the illegal stuff the HRC campaign did. If you try to put her back into the election cycle you're going to end up with someone else you dont like. Pick someone without so much damn baggage for fucks sake