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.

Comments

Nothing Burger

[Anonymous Coward]

Were so convincing and capable that they swung the entire election.

Right. Pull the other one. It's got bells on.

Nothing on Trump. No collusion. The closest they come is that some members of the Trump campaign "unwittingly" had communication with the bots/trolls. What - did a campaign staffer retweet something?

This insanity has gone far enough. The US was not conquered by Russia. Putin does not control the President.

In fact, the only Russian collusion was between the previous administration and Russia (e.g., the catastrophic "Russian Reset" that led to the problems in the Ukraine), and the sale of 20% of the US's uranium assets to Russia for a massive infusion of cash to the Clinton Foundation.

Re:What tampering? This is about memes

[mi]

"Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities."

How is that criminal? It is certainly dishonest, but not criminal...

Re:$100k

[e3m4n]

yea I pointed that out before... I said "Let me get this straight, I am to believe that Internet Research Group spent $150k on ads and manage to swing the election. Yet Killary spent hundreds of MILLIONS in advertising and lost. So you are basically telling me she is 100% unfit to be president because she would be spending MILLIONS in OUR tax dollars when mere THOUSANDS would have gotten the job done just as well, if not better?"

Re: ..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks

[WindBourne]

How did Steele spread it? He wrote a dossier and gave it to a company. Nothing illegal about documenting Trump's treason