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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.
I agree with you BTW. Let's not forget that America's CIA has been doing the same thing via different channels for decades. They are perhaps still doing this to this day.
Where's the media outrage? There is an article here affirming trolling by the USA.
USA complains because they can now be beaten [on the cheap] at their own game.
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.
Yes, that would work really well on an international web site...
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.
"because he has objectively been one of the best presidents in history and you can't talk about his actual job performance"
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
What other nationalities would you like to exclude from discussion forums? Latvians? Spaniards? The British?
Should we establish an Americans Only Internet? Should we exclude any other classes of people? The handicapped can't participate in forums concerning wine and cigars? Women can't participate in forums about sports cars?
We the public choose to not allow the entire political agenda to be steered by the shrieking minority who lost the election.
Nobody cares about Hillary Clinton's underwear (esp. Bill, btw). We do care about rampant corruption. Which is being ignored during all this deflection about 'Russian collusion'. Also, because it doesn't matter, the foul Clinton Machine was defeated.
Ah yes, the one thing that is a pretty sure bet whenever Russia comes up in the news in a none positive way is whataboutism.
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.
We the public, hear the words.... Trump, Russia, Mueller.... We stop listening. Nobody cares. Move on... Seriously.
Wouldn't that be nice? Looks like you identified a new attack vector. Enough news about it and you will say I'm bored, so do what ever you want.
Your post has indicted that you are completely manipulable. I kinda hope you are at least a Russian troll, and not an American who will just accept anything because you are tired hearing about it.
Or perhaps just a Trumpster.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
The AC does have a point though. Voter ID laws on the face of it are a good idea. The problem is that it is easy to manipulate the ID requirements to disenfranchise chunks of the population.
Here in Canada, we've had voter ID laws for a long time. Generally they worked well until the last Federal election where the Conservatives were in power and getting coaching from the American Republican party on how to do it right.
Used to be that most ID was good enough, perhaps combined with some bills with your address and name on it and the ability to do an affidavit when the ID wasn't good enough. Last election, they limited the type of ID required and did a few other weird things. For example, my wife has always voted under her maiden name, partially due to her ID being in that name, and that is how she was registered. Went to the elections web site and double checked our registration, everything was fine, even the day before the election. Went to vote and mysteriously her registration had changed to my name. As this was expected due to her race, we showed up with marriage license, lots of ID and time. After a couple of hours on the phone to Ottawa, she did manage to vote. Meanwhile, I had no problem voting even though my ID just proved my residency, not my citizenship, unlike hers which was only available to citizens.
Voter ID laws are just easy to manipulate. Make it hard and ideally expensive to get ID (need to drive 40 miles here to pay $75 for ID), be really anal about the ID and disenfranchise people, especially the poor, university students who are resident somewhere but don't bother updating their ID, demand actual street addresses to remove those living in places without addresses such as Indian reservations and such and you limit voting to the correct people, including wealthier non-citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Ah yes, the one thing that is a pretty sure bet whenever Russia comes up in the news in a none positive way is whataboutism.
It is not just about whataboutism. It is also about setting a precedent for censorship and thought control. We have gone from "Congress shall make no law ..." to "Censorship is okay if the speaker is Russian". The next step is a prohibition on speech by other "bad people". Anyone who stands up to defend the scoundrels is obviously one of them.
Even the author of your research says that Judicial Watch's interpretation (and math) are wrong.
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/...
Also, remember this entire research is based on an opt-in online survey. In other words, as evidence of voter fraud, it's pretty much horseshit.
You are welcome on my lawn.