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Reddit Admits Russian Trolls Got Into Website During 2016 Election (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: Reddit says it has identified and removed hundreds of Russian propaganda accounts, a few days after reports revealed that Russian trolls were active on the platform during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In a post Monday, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman said his site operators had been investigating for awhile and had found a few hundred accounts suspected to be of Russian origin or linked to known sources of Russian propaganda. "Of course, every account we find expands our search a little more," he said, also claiming the "vast majority" of the suspicious accounts were banned back in 2015-2016. An even bigger challenge was the problem of "indirect propaganda," where content produced by accounts now known to be Russian trolls was enthusiastically shared by Trump supporters on subreddits such as r/The_Donald. Reddit's investigation followed a report from The Daily Beast, based on leaked internal data from Kremlin-backed troll farm the Internet Research Agency, that confirmed Russian trolls were active on the site, as well as Tumblr, in their mission to spread disinformation, divide Americans and disrupt U.S. politics. The Washington Post reports that congressional investigators looking into the Russian issue intend to question Reddit and Tumblr over their involvement.
We the public, hear the words.... Trump, Russia, Mueller.... We stop listening. Nobody cares. Move on... Seriously.
Require a valid SS# to sign up and pull a soft credit check to verify it's an actual person. Now that wasn't so fucking hard, was it? #WeCreateOurOwnProblems #MAGA #LockHerUp
Russia Russia Russia! Russia Russia!!
Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia!!!
Russia Russia!
https://youtu.be/lIpev8JXJHQ?t=54
I was a lifelong straight ticket Democrat voter until 2016.
The Russians didn't make me vote for Trump.
Hillary Clinton, CNN, Jimmy Kimmel, HuffPo, WaPo, MSNBC, Madonna, etc, etc, etc made me vote for Trump.
They were so god damn smug, condescending, elitist, insulting, divisive, and arrogant... It made Trump's personality flaws look endearing in comparison, and voting for him was my big "fuck you".
No. The Russians didn't divide us. The Democrats and their media stooge propagandists did. Fuck them all to hell. I will never vote Democrat ever again, even though I disagree profoundly with the Republicans on most issues.
> On the first topic, ads, there is not much to share. We don’t see a lot of ads from Russia, either before or after the 2016 election, and what we do see are mostly ads promoting spam and ICOs. Presently, ads from Russia are blocked entirely, and all ads on Reddit are reviewed by humans. Moreover, our ad policies prohibit content that depicts intolerant or overly contentious political or cultural views.
> As for direct propaganda, that is, content from accounts we suspect are of Russian origin or content linking directly to known propaganda domains, we are doing our best to identify and remove it. We have found and removed a few hundred accounts, and of course, every account we find expands our search a little more. The vast majority of suspicious accounts we have found in the past months were banned back in 2015–2016 through our enhanced efforts to prevent abuse of the site generally.
That does not sound as sinister as what is being reported here this morning.
Seriously Russia, internet trolls & elections??
Clearly the more we hear about this the more false it is. After all, who has an interest to spread such lies? The west! -With their anti-Russian propoganda.
You see if the US/CIA blame Russia for Trump being elected then uhm...that means his election wasn;t meddling or collusion but an inside job by the intelligence community that seem to hate Trump...hmmm.
Maybe it isn't all Anti-Trump/Anti-Russia BS. Maybe we're just finding more EVEIDENCE.
But hey what does evidence have to do with anything? Just think who you support and make sure you have an explanation as to why your side of the argument is right.
Of course Obama was the real reason for all these issues...I won't even mention the orange baboon's porn star hush money, the multiple ex-wives, the unnamed children, the many days at the golf course, the multiple indictments or backchannel ties to Russia. It's all propoganda by Clinton to cleverly hide her emails.
Remember; Trump does not even know what "This Russia thing" is even about but he does state many times that "There is no collusion." & "There was no collusion."
But nevermind cause some dimmwitted fools and shills are gonna quickly label me as a gun hating SJW democratians. Which ironically even if true does not change evidence or truth. -Shooting the messenger is a Trump game. (Lying Ted, Crooked Hillary etc)
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
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No of us Americans care! The Baseball game is more interesting. Go team!
I still haven't heard Hillary deny any of the information posted by Wikileaks.
Emboldened Russians will meddle even more in the next election.
Low turn out in the off year primaries in just a few states decides the fate of the whole nation.
Combine the Democratic and the Republican primaries and let the top two go for general election. In most red states two Republicans will run for the same seat. Though Democrats will suffer in the short term, there is some chance sanity will return and Republicans will stop fearing being primaried from the right.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Data disagrees with your assessment. For example, according to this poll http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/02/26/rel3c.-.russia.pdf approximately 58% of Americans don't think that the administration is taking Russian interference seriously enough. And a large fraction of Americans support the Mueller investigation to completion although curiously about 40% of Americans don't even know who he is https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/poll-most-americans-want-robert-mueller-to-complete-his-russia-probe. It is a mistake to think that because you and the people around you think something that that view must be universal.
That wannabe Facebook clone run by a bunch of muppets.
Though I have never And sling or table very own shiiter,
I do not understand why the world does not return the favour.. I am sure a few photos of put in with an animal companion in time for the elections.. be creative people. nothing teaches a rumors monger a lesson faster than a few rumours about themselves
OMFG! They found TROLLS on Reddit!
After posting a story about the surprising discovery that water is wet, BeauHD will post a story about the probability of ursine defecation in forested regions.
It appears half of Obama's cabinet were taking bribes from Russia to approve sale of Uranium One. Clinton taking the majority with $145 million in bribes to her and her interests, while Muller covered up that Russia was bribing half the government to get the sale approved. Funny how he is the one now investigating Russian interference and can't seem to find any that he was involved with.
While we also have ACTUAL PROOF of Russian interference with a dossier that Clinton had them write up to justify Obama wiretapping Trump Tower during the election, illegally at that. The entire leadership of the DOJ/ FBI/ and State Department were involved with it, including even the UN Ambassador at the time.
Yes, Russia has been interfering and bribing government officials. Funny thing is they were working with the ones accusing other of working with the Russians.
And the Russian Trolls - like the ones on Fox News (Sean Hannity works for the Russians) - want to talk about Monica Lewinsky. Like Clinton is still President.
And the hilarious thing is that during the '16 elections, the Republican super PACs were saying voting for Clinton was voting for Whitehouse controversy and distractions.
Boy, did those morons get it wrong!!
The internet is global. Maybe someone should inform out journalists?
When will slashdot admit they are overrun with Russia shills
I half joke when I say, I can make an ad like McAffee's video and say "I'm a PRO-LIFE, PRO-GUN, LOW-TAX Republican!" and the Republican base would vote for me just because I have an 'R' by my name.
The Democratic candidate could be the Second Coming but the Republicans just won't vote for him.
The child molester Roy Moore almost won in Alabama. Just because too many folks will not vote for a "baby killing Democrat who will be beholden to Nancy Pelosi and her San Francisco ways." - that is how John Osssoff lost.
Reddit is predominantly white and male. Trump's supporters are predominantly white and male. It stands to reason they would be highly active on reddit as they are on other forums like 4chan, and so on. Yet if you listen to Steve Huffman he seems to act like they are a minority on the site and any activity must be Russian Trolls. It just doesn't seem likely.
These CEOs want us to believe they have these brilliant investigative skills into this mythical army of russian trolls, yet they can't cover their own traces when they manipulate votes, edit people's posts or alter algorithms to favor political forums they agree with.
What was the point in banning the account when on Reddit you just create another username and you're away again? You don't even have to bother with all the hassle of creating another email address for verification. Bans on Reddit are as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Those in the US having profited from Russian trolls will be somewhere between downplay and straight denial.
remember that on websites like Reddit, anyone who expresses an opposing view will be rolled up in the same bunch, the "internet trolls", or "russian shills".
Don't take the whole tripe about russian trolls and propaganda so seriously. It involves anyone who doesn't agree with the status quo and dares say it on the internet.
Rather confused by why this narative keeps coming up on Slashdot but more importantly why is it a "bad" thing? Reddit like other social media sites are supposed to be about sharing. Sharing ideas, stories, cat pics, whatever. There should be no difference between Russian, American or any other group utalizing the platform for communication... unless of course your entire platform is a farce.
The analogy here is putting a band poster up on a wall. Whereas traditionally you'd need to spend money and resources to reach even tiny markets (including having physical boots on the ground), these sites allow that to happen from anywhere in the world and with almost impunity. They don't even have to expend resources on marketing since it's all built into the sites platforms with extreme accuracy. This is why in the fuck we have residency requirements on things like voting.
It Reddit's case for example, it's quite simple. Their scoring system allowed posts to be promoted into the faces of people whom would otherwise not have ever seen them. But unlike a band poster, you can't just ignore them nor do they fade with time.
More censorship isn't going to solve this any more then CC TV cameras. The platforms themselves don't give users any control over what they see or how their data is used any more then moving to another neighbourhood does.
Isn't that pretty much the normal state of things there?
Hillary Lost!
More than a year later, some people just can't get over it. How can the smartest woman who ever walked the Earth lose to Donald Trump? Yeah, it must be the Russian trolls!
Tune in to the latest news on the ongoing epidemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome, right here, every day, on slashdot.org!
If anonymous troll posts on social media are all that's required to change votes, it doesn't sound like the electorate is terribly intelligent.
So the left is simply upset that the wrong type of propaganda is winning?
So every Russian user speaking English on twitter and reddit that has opinions that aren't "politically correct" is a government agent sent to disrupt American discourse....somehow.
Meanwhile our own government has a proven history of infiltrating any and all institutions they want to in order to spread propaganda and subvert "politically incorrect" groups and movements.
Meanwhile mass surveillance is proven: everything they can decrypt (not hard with broken implementations and backdoored hardware), everything unencrypted (such as locational metadata from your cell phone, credit card records, etc.) are collected and stored permanently for endless data mining.
1 + 1 = the government is spying on us in order to develop more effective models of propaganda, and that is the source of the divide in this country.
So sorry, life is not as comfy as you wish it was. Far past time to do something about this mess, from outside the bounds of law if necessary, as seems inevitable.
When will slashdot admit they have been overrun by Russian trolls?
With the Murrican media acting as propaganda channel for democrats, Russians managed to make American elections more fair. You should be grateful.
> ... had found a few hundred accounts suspected to be of Russian origin ...
Wtf? I am pretty sure there are more than a few hundred reddit accounts of Russian origin. They probably meant linked to Russian government. It is like saying they found a few hundred accounts linked to Muslims, when they meant linked to Islamic terrorism.
I am of Russian origin, and I am getting pretty fucking tired of this hysteria.
They were very quick to ban people spreading real info...not so much Russians who were putting their guy in the Whitehouse.
There are always trolls.
Reddit is covering to justify their massive partisan censorship campaign. They censored to silence anyone with an opinion contrary to the party line. This is what happened. Now they are just using this story as justification for their actions. It is McCarthyism. They silenced and blacklisted people claiming it was the Russians. Utter bullshit and I'm happy to call them out on it.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
He's probably voting for the party that he disagrees with because the propaganda is even more important. There is nothing that separates Democrats and Republicans that is more important than our policy, and even our elections, being driven by propaganda. He voted for the candidate that is the beneficiary of less propaganda. He voted for the candidate who (he thought, incorrectly) would change the system so that propaganda and money don't drive policy and elect candidates.
I don't know about "they", but the media said Trump would lose badly. They were counting on the bandwagon effect. They over-played it, and convinced their own side that they didn't need to vote. She had it in the bag.
He needs to name the accounts. Then we can evaluate how much effect they had.
far left leaning liberal progressive
I've followed The_Donald since early 2016 as a hostile observer and it is clear to me that they don't know what any of these words mean. Not in the political sense.
Almost the entire Democratic party is centrist. Google "new democrats". Bill Clinton set them on this path. The party has become both neoliberal (free-market capitalist) and neoconservative (American exceptionalism, interventionist foreign policy).
They are very much NOT leftist, NOT liberal, NOT progressive. Those words have all become meaningless, because people are still using them to describe the Democrats, when they are very much none of those things any more.
No, not Trump. You. Keep digging that Russian Hacking hole. Keep believing.
None of it's true of course, or at least none of it is true in the way you want it to be true.
The end result is that you're just going to be in more psychological distress when nothing comes of it.
Trump will get 7 more years. You'd better get used to the idea.
They didn't "get into" it, as per the headline. They just signed up, as anyone can, and posted. That's the whole point of Reddit.
Anyway, we all know that inside every Russian troll is another, slightly smaller, Russian troll.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
'Stand down': How the Obama team blew the response to Russian meddling
This is the second of two excerpts adapted from Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump (Twelve Books) by Michael Isikoff, Chief Investigative Correspondent for Yahoo News, and David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones. It will be released on March 13.
...
Then Brennan turned to an even more sensitive issue: Russia’s interference in the American election. Brennan was now aware that at least a year earlier Russian hackers had begun their cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee. ...
This was the first of several warnings that the Obama administration would send to Moscow. But the question of how forcefully to respond would soon divide the White House staff, pitting the National Security Council’s top analysts for Russia and cyber issues against senior policymakers within the administration. It was a debate that would culminate that summer with a dramatic directive from Obama’s national security adviser to the NSC staffers developing aggressive proposals to strike back against the Russians: “Stand down.”
It's not like David Corn has a goal of protecting Donald Trump...
This has really been a strange turn of events. Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Google.... they all started with at least some degree of the "information wants to be free" ethos. They created platforms that would allow anyone to speak for any reason. Sure, trolls were an issue - as they have been since the days of BBS and USENET. Slashdot came up with a method for handling it with moderation and meta moderation. Others created similarly soft-handed techniques.
And where are we now? These same folks are looking to control the point of view of the content that gets posted on their platforms. Reddit is hunting accounts because of their motivation for speaking (they are Russian propagandists). Facebook and Twitter are looking for ways to prevent "fake news" - which is dangerously close to "opinions I disagree with" - and Google? Well, they had a motto of "do no evil", now their chairman has founded "the Groundwork", a company designed to do what the Russians are accused of and a whole lot more, with hooks directly into the back-end of Google. Of course this is different, because it is in the service of Team Blue, not Team Red.
I'd love to see all of the people who are so adamant about doing these things go back to 1998 and explain it to their younger selves. They might cut their own throats rather than contribute to the future they are creating - everything about it is anathema to everything they stood for back then. Heck, go back to the 80's or 70's and explain all this to a country that used to ridicule the Soviet Union for trying to prevent outside news and jamming "Radio Free America". Now here we are, desperately working to do the same thing.
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Whichever party has the most votes wins.
Reddit is a leftist site. Of course they'll say anything to bolster the campaign story. By the way, how many reasons for losing does the campaign have anyway? It's everybody's fault but their own.
I wonder how much time Cheney spends kicking himself these days. Why go through all the trouble of faking evidence of Saddam's WMD's when he could have made a series of vague, ever-changing series of assertions and people would just suck that shit up with a straw?
Some people may be "fooled' by a troll, but with zero consequence..
It's like claiming that some people now crave pictures of assholes because they fell for a Goatse link on Slashdot.
I mean, really.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So you tell me the DNC is centrist liberal. They stand for:
Open borders with no limits on immigration
Protecting felons/murders who are here illegaly so they don't have a chance to be deported
Preventing middle class from getting any possible relief on taxes
Promoting regulation and policies that destroy middle class jobs and lifestyle
Pay rogue nations developing nuclear weapons billions of dollars
Come down hard on nations like Israel who defend themselves from terrorist, while attempting to help the terrorists
Take millions and millions in bribes from countries like Russia to set State Department policy to help Russia
Abuse FISA warrants and intelligence to spy on US citizens illegally
This is what the DNC has stood for over the last few years. They are centerist? I take centerist to mean they have policies that the majority of the country would agree with. I literally don't know a SINGLE PERSON who supports DNC policies as they are enacted.
I'm not sure what you think that the Mueller investigation has leaked. The only things public so far are the court filings, and when one of those leaked last year, the red team was all over it. Because it's illegal to do that (unless you're investigating a Democrat). The news media tries their best to make the court filings into a story, but they're really not getting a lot of information about what's happening, and that's a good thing. Conversely, if you think that there has been some substantial amount of leaking, I'm sure that Team Trump would be extremely happy to have that as an argument for Mueller's dismissal. Good luck with that.
If you think that there was something scandalous about Uranium One you're fucking retarded. Uranium One isn't even an American company, and the only one with veto power on that deal was Obama. Clinton sold nothing, could not have sold anything, and had a minimal role even in rubber-stamping this trade deal. The uranium in question generally stayed in the US. Some was exported for processing, and an equivalent amount of processed uranium was returned to the US, but technically it can be said that some of the uranium was exported to western Europe due to something called book transfer.
That's it. No bribes, no crimes, just a big fat Republican lie, and you are apparently the kind of idiot who repeats lies, long after they're proven false. Burn in hell.
> They are very much NOT leftist, NOT liberal, NOT progressive. Those words have all become meaningless, because people are still using them to describe the Democrats, when they are very much none of those things any more.
People keep saying that, but left and right are relative to each country. Europeans make a big deal that they have communists in their legislatures, but they also have hardcore nationalists. The US doesn't really have either (yes, the news makes a big deal about right-wing protesters, but they don't have any power; neither do the communists I've met).
Of course, this could all change via immigration policies. Bringing in millions of Latin Americans could result in a communist insurgency since they are much more left leaning (and yet don't mind their labor being exploited by capitalists, go figure). The same is true of potential Islamic troubles if we let a bunch of Middle Easterners in.
So the party of identity politics isn't far enough left for you. You're right in one thing though, they're certainly not liberal. Liberals believe in free speech, today's Democrats do not see any value in dissenting speech at all.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
No Collusion! They've got nothing on me. Absolutely no evidence. Fake news!
What you should be worried about is Hillary. Email servers! Bengazzi! Sickem boy!
Let's just set aside the fact that Slashdot admins are deleting comments here. Now, Reddit is a leftist site and will do whatever it can to bolster claims from the Hillary Campaign, which is where this originated, as well as the fake dossier, and as well as the FBI collusion with the campaign to push this false story.
3 or so years ago it was a running joke that Russian "infiltrators" were running around Slashdot, with obvious bias, trying to steer conversations around in the comments section. Suddenly, in 2018, that joke is seen is absurd, not happening, never ever, not on THIS website, and how dare you for suggesting!
One wonders if they actually won the Slashdot "battle" when no one was noticing.
Hail, Comrade. How is St. Petersburg this time of year?
hookers and grits.
They are very much NOT leftist, NOT liberal, NOT progressive. Those words have all become meaningless,
They were meaningless a century ago, if not more. Political parties are all about choosing a side and helping "your side" win. Partisans have a bad name for that reason.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I was not aware that CNN was actually part of the Democratic Party. Given how hard they've been going on the Russia "nothingburger", I can't say I'm too surprised though.
Reddit is notorious for pervasive, aggressive Chinese-style censorship. They have zero credibility. Why does anyone believe a word they say?
What about american trolls?
Sounds like Reddit has a case of the Jan Bradys.
It's OK Reddit. Some day you will grow up and the boys will start to notice you, just like they do Facebook. Don't be jealous.
Like the "Correct The Record" trolls spouting propaganda? That probably involved more money than what the Russians spent.
What exactly makes these people trolls?
Bring on the /. right-wing equivocation. I love it. How deluded can humans be, when driven only by selfish desires? Look at the Republicans. Mueller is coming, the 'libtard' story turned out to be true - and almost nothing the 'conservitards' claimed turned out to be true.
Same old historical story. Progress, blocked by conservative selfish/xenophobic hate.
Can anyone believe RUSSIANS are allowed to be on the internet and posts memes that aren't amusing to the Reddit administration?
We need to step up our control of the internet to rein in these cyber-superweapons.
It's the red scare!
They even post as Chinese trolls.
They overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian government...
They overthrew the Iraqi strongman and plunged the country into chaos.
They eliminated the Libyan government and allowed ISIS to arise.
They interfered in the Phillipines election.
The told the British not to vote for Breitling
They have 800 military bases world wide.
They are so powerful, they record EVERY text, email, phone call and website visit in the USA at their data center in Utah.
Those pesky Russians!
All this over some Pepe memes...
When I lived in California, one of the senators attempted to pass a bill that would allow illegal aliens to vote. (This man has since passed away.) I remember thinking we should therefore allow absentee ballots to the Russians. Funny how the absurdity of one era gets more absurd over time.
"enthusiastically shared by Trump supporters" certainly no bias there, they clearly contacted each individual and asked them their emotional state and whether or not they are a supporter of the elected President.
"less propaganda"
So you didn't even read the article, about Russian PROPAGANDA flooding social media in favor of tRump.
Libtards gonna libtard.