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Russian Fake News Ecosystem Targets Syrian Human Rights Workers (securityledger.com)
chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: Kremlin linked news sites like RT and Sputnik figure prominently in an online disinformation campaign portraying Syrian humanitarian workers ("White Helmets") as terrorists and crisis actors, according to an analysis (PDF) by researchers at University of Washington and Harvard. An online "echosystem" of propaganda websites including Russia backed news outlets Sputnik and RT is attacking the credibility of humanitarian workers on the ground in rebel occupied Syria, according to a new analysis by researchers at The University of Washington and Harvard University. Online rumors circulated through so called "alternative" media sites have attacked the Syrian Civil Defense (aka "White Helmets") as "crisis actors" and Western agents working on behalf of the U.S. and NATO. Statistical analysis of the online rumors reveal a tight network of websites sharing nearly identical content via Twitter and other social media platforms, wrote Kate Starbird. Starbird is an Assistant Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering at University of Washington and a leading expert on so-called "crisis informatics."
In activity reminiscent of the disinformation campaigns that roiled the U.S. Presidential election in 2016, articles by what Starbird describes as "a few prominent journalists and bloggers" writing for self described "alternative" news sites like 21stCenturyWire, GlobalResearch, MintPressNews, and ActivistPost are picked up by other, smaller and more niche websites including both left- and right-leaning partisan news sites, "clickbait sites," and conspiracy theory websites. Government funded media outlets from Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia figure prominently in the Syrian disinformation campaign, Starbird's team found. In particular, "Russian government-funded media outlets (i.e. SputnikNews and RT) play a prominent and multi-faceted role within this ecosystem," she wrote.
In activity reminiscent of the disinformation campaigns that roiled the U.S. Presidential election in 2016, articles by what Starbird describes as "a few prominent journalists and bloggers" writing for self described "alternative" news sites like 21stCenturyWire, GlobalResearch, MintPressNews, and ActivistPost are picked up by other, smaller and more niche websites including both left- and right-leaning partisan news sites, "clickbait sites," and conspiracy theory websites. Government funded media outlets from Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia figure prominently in the Syrian disinformation campaign, Starbird's team found. In particular, "Russian government-funded media outlets (i.e. SputnikNews and RT) play a prominent and multi-faceted role within this ecosystem," she wrote.
Contribute to Richard Spencer's defense fund now!
check your 6.
For millennials (particularly the one that posted this): 'fake news' is only a concern if you, the dumbass, believe it. 'Fake news' has been with us under its former name, 'propaganda' since human beings have had the ability to relay information to one another, and yet, time and humanity have marched on. Is there anything, anything at all, that folks 35 and under are capable of applying critical thought to? Is there a single millennial out there that wasn't molded into just a human-robot-victim hybrid by their parents? If this is representative of your 'higher education', you are right: your degrees are worthless. Just because you invent a name for something and start a meme does not mean you have personally discovered anything or that your style of sharing is anythng resembling accute or profound. Your parents have created the most epic failure of intelligence, consciousness, and presence of mind or heart the world has ever seen.
No, small amount of people read that those posts, let alone were influenced by them. tempest in a teapot, made by the party that thought they had it in the bag when actually they're disconnected from almost half of U.S. society, instead focusing on their "bread and circuses" inner city base.
Welp, let's hope the Democrats run a serious candidate next time
But it's still more accurate than what Fox News viewers are told. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Do we really have to have an anti-russia or anti-potus post every. single. fucking. day. on a tech news website?
You are not changing anybody's mind and you never will.
Meanwhile, in the US the fake news ecosystem targets democracy by attempting to overturn the last election, because the wrong candidate won.
Damn those voters who don't know what's best for themselves! They need white, sheltered, urban "progressives" to tell them they all RAAAAACIS NAZIS!
I'm perfectly sure that Russia can handle any catastrophe or attack of any magnitude all by themselves. Any other possibility would show weakness, something not tolerated in Putin's Russia. No. By the way, crisis actor is a legitimate term for all actors in crisis, including the relief organizations. Words, redefined.
the "Russian Fake News Ecosystem" differs from the media in the United States, specifically NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Snapchat, Facebook, Yahoo, etc? Thanks.
Now cue all the trumptard russian apologists that will flood the comment section with their anonymous trolls.
The russian propaganda machine is indeed a well oiled one.
And to those who are not trolls and who actually believe that Putin is a really nice guy and that, anyway, the U.S. propaganda is just as bad as the russian's, just try to move to russia and start a late night tv show similar to what Stephen Colbert is doing.
After your death, make sure a have access to your body so I can extract the Polonium 210.
There are no "moderate rebels" and there are no knights in white hats. There are terrorists of varying degrees of viciousness, funded, trained and armed by the US and UK, trying to overthrow another government. The real propaganda is the US media, working on behalf of the oligarchs, OWNED by the oligarchs, who are the real power in our broken government.
We dodged a bullet not letting Clinton take us to war with Russia, but Trump is just a patsy. If they can't get him into a war in Syria, they'll do it in Iran.
But these days they talk less about their "dossier".
One great revolution caused by Internet is the collapse of media monopolies. And it is a good thing. Media monopolies were used to engineer public opinion. One example is "Weapons of Mass Destruction" fake news which was publicized by almost all main stream media to justify a war with terrible consequences. I do not automatically trust any news coming from any source. I check at least one contrary argument before making my mind.
wtf... cease fire stand down, there are mothers & children in every town.. thanks again
We have ours. If Russian fake news is attacking these white helmets and our fake news is hailing them as heroes, then its very unlikely these white helmets are completely neutral in this conflict. Why else would two super powers who never cared about humanitarianism before have such strong opinions about this one group.
Here are the ads the the Russians ran.
I was amazed that they worked. The only explanation is that the people who were affected by those ads were so misinformed that they believed them. And not only misinformed but also unwilling to fact check making them doubly stupid.
You can only blame Clinton for so much - and much of the hate towards her was based on bullshit.
And I think it's idiotic that the Republican super pacs ran and ad stating that Clinton would bring all this controversy and baggage into the Whitehouse when Trump is doing that ten fold.
From what I'm seeing and based on having lived through a Clinton Presidency, Trump is making Bill look like an amateur when it comes to fucking up the Presidency.
Fuck the White Helmets, and all aid organizations trying to help them topple Syria. The last thing we need is yet more refugees pouring in to Europe.
For context:
3,393 advertisements purchased (a total 3,519 advertisements total were released after more were identified by the company);
More than 11.4 million American users exposed to those advertisements;
470 IRA-created Facebook pages;
80,000 pieces of organic content created by those pages; and
Exposure of organic content to more than 126 million Americans.
Half of Americans saw their content.
I have to think that the MSM is partly to blame here.
There is really no trusted news authority one can go to for verification or accurate information any more. I suppose there used to be only a *perception* of accurate reporting, but even that has vanished in the age of internet fact-checking.
During the run-up to the presidential election, otherwise legitimate news sources spewed a torrent of contempt, insults, and partisan framing. After the election, those same news sources went absolutely ballistic over the results.
Even today, highly regarded sources such as MSNBC and CNN post factually incorrect statements and politically misleading facts, that have to be quietly walked back a few days later.
Is it any wonder that people look to alternate sources?
You used to be able to go to online fact-checking sites such as Snopes.com and politifact, but even these have been taken over by partisan views. I've researched a couple of Snopes articles myself and found them to be either completely wrong, whitewashed, or highly misleading.
You used to be able to trust polling results: the polling companies made it their business to be accurate. Even now polls that report inconvenient truths are being suppressed.
If the news organizations started simply reporting what happened, instead of trying to get emotional engagement by emotionally framing the facts, people might leave the fringe sources and go back to regular news.
(Of note: CNN's ratings are down 20% compared to a year ago. I cannot understand how they believe what they're doing is in their best interests. I thought it was the fiducial responsibility of a corporation to make money, and pushing a political agenda seems to be a poor strategy for that.)
In activity reminiscent of the disinformation campaigns that roiled the U.S. Presidential election in 2016
[At the cost of some karma....]
I looked through about 100 of the Facebook ads in the dump and got bored. They were targeted at anything polarizing. Presumably later ones were around the two candidates, but I didn't see it.
The early ones were all inciting LGBTxxx, Black Racist, White Racist, Pro/Anti Immigration, Anti-Police passions. Most of the ads had almost no exposure receiving on the order of 0-10 clicks and a few dozen views, although a few received over 1k views and dozens of clicks.
Seems to be a long running low level propaganda operation aimed at dividing the US into camps/sowing dissent/keeping wounds open. Considering the polarization in the country, it could well be working in the long run, but I don't think we can honestly blame our woes on external actors.
It would be more accurate to state that the -reaction- to the disinformation campaigns roiled the post election year.
Definitely worth seeing if anything can be done about them because of the long term damage they are designed to do, but not significant in a single election. I am not terribly optimistic about countermeasures however, Russia will just get a bit better at hiding their connection to ads and everything will continue on as it has.
--- Mercutio was right.
Of course US will say they're the good guys and Russia will say they're the bad guys. Who is right? There are no independent journalists on the ground. You will never know.
Faith is all you have to go on.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
"a tight network of websites sharing nearly identical content" pretty accurately describes modern journalism. One site comes up with an opinion article and all those politically aligned news outlets copy & paste it over and over. Suddenly what started as "an anonymous source familiar with the hair color of people involved" becomes a well-sourced "fact".
I guess it's easier to point at the other side of the world instead of looking at your own doorstep.
Every once in a while, a story comes up on /. that makes me question the authors sanity. This is one of them.
There is plenty of reason to doubt the neutrality and motives of the White Helmets, outside of and being shared around long before any Russian news stories. There are plenty of pictures where the same people are seen as victims in different locations, and the curious fact that the White Helmets are routinely at the scene immediately and seemingly active exclusively in islamist-controlled territory.
So what is this story? FUD? Did too many questionable details about these guys surface recently?
From an outside perspective, two things seem to be obvious: One, the White Helmets are doing humanitarian work and providing emergency services to civilian victims in a war zone. Two, they are clearly aligned with one of the sides in this conflict.
Neither of these diminishes the importance of the other.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
These are the same organizations who, when Russia deliberately bombs hospitals or civilians standing in bread lines in Syria, claim "terrorists" were targeted. And then, when the white helmets show up to do their work, Russia bombs them again so pictures and news of the deliberate attacks will be suppressed.
These are the same organizations who reported on the killing of a 10-year old girl in Eastern Ukraine when the Ukrainian military and volunteers were fighting the Russian invasion in 2015. The claim was she was killed outright in an artillery attack.
Only problem, the girl never existed. It was the literal embodiment of fake news. In fact, when a BBC news crew tracked down some of the Russian news teams who reported on the "incident", they asked why the Russians reported the fake news. On camera one guy said the girl never existed while another guy said, "We had to broadcast it."
I don't know why the ones who write the article talk about some kind of secret network.
These stories are on Russia today and Sputnik since weeks. These are known Russian state websites.
The White helmets are portrayed as the ones who fabricated the proof for the chemical attacks. I don't know if anyone has a proof of what is true or not.
Given that they can walk through areas that have just been hit by a sarin gas, a lethal neural toxin, wearing nothing more than a cheap dusk mask and no gloves and not immediately be incapacitated or otherwise or die.
Yup, that makes perfect sense.
CNN's ratings are down 20%...I cannot understand how they believe what they're doing is in their best interests.
You have to stop thinking about "the news" as a business. I have an article that will help:
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos signed the $250 million Washington Post deal with no due diligence
The objective isn't to earn money selling advertising, needing viewership/readership to accomplish that. The objective is to dictate what people think about...everything. It's mind control, not business. It has a financial payoff, but it's not as direct as subscriber numbers or advertising revenue.
It's Fox News, the fake news your faggot ass craves.
Google the CNN reporter sniffing a backpack she suspects has sarin on it. It's a hoot.
And when are we gonna look into CNN and the likes doing the same thing?
Please get the facts straight.
The White Helmets are US-UK-Turkish funded emergency first responders who seem to do their work only in jihadist infested rebel areas in Western Syria (but not for example in Kurdish areas). In the places where they're seen, a "human rights worker" would have his head chopped off.
The Telegraph
The Guardian
It is undeniable that the White Helmets and the Syrian American Medical Society are western funded yet operate only in jihadi held territory. Their videos are staged. Their claims are questionable. The fog of war is thick in the mainstream media.
There's no room for any other conclusion. Extraordinarily well documented. Organized by "The Syria Campaign", a group of UK origin intelligence professionals, based in New York.
https://dissidentvoice.org/201...
https://www.mintpressnews.com/...
https://www.truthdig.com/artic...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Syria is caught in the middle of a proxy war between US-aligned and Russian-aligned forces. It's almost impossible to be neutral under those circumstances. The white helmets are supported by the US and therefore treated with suspicion by Russia and Syria. US support means it's easier for them to help US-backed militias in the conflict and in the fog of war, boundaries will get constantly blurred.
So if "destabilizing us" is the problem, doesn't that mean that #resist are unwitting (?) Russian agents?
I mean, here's an album of what the Russian trolls were posting.
Apparently the Russians were colluding with BLM, who knew? Is that why you guys always call out to your buddy Ivan?
in key districts. So it's not fair to say there was no impact. The election was so close it's entirely possible this was the proverbial straw. Also, there's strong evidence that Russia got ahold of tons of voter demographics during the election during one of the hacks. At the very least they would have used these to target ads. There's also some evidence they shared that data with the Republican party.
All that said, if Hilary hadn't been so damn arrogant and had just campaigned in the Rust belt none of this would be happening. She really was the worst candidate in history.
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Could be a Natalia...
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RT & Sputnik keep telling it's ONE person in England and not a mutlinational organization like he name could suggest (and like mainstream media are presenting it)
Who's right on this one ?
Very interesting video from Syria.
https://youtu.be/DCu8mNC1JyE
https://www.rt.com/news/426560-paris-place-opera-stabbing/
Here is some TRUTH instead of perpetual Mainstream Media Lies:
https://www.rt.com/news/426560-paris-place-opera-stabbing/
https://www.rt.com/news/426550-spiegel-trump-cover-iran/
https://www.rt.com/usa/426552-manning-us-governments-oppressive/
He is not doing what the arms industry and the banksters paid for when they hired Clinton !!!
Trump’s plans are not about starting a war with Iran but trying to bring about regime change by draining it financially. It’s a plan which is doomed to fail, and could also create a costly trade war with the EU.
You have to go back quite some time in contemporary history to find a policy decision taken by a superpower so spectacularly wrong, that it compares to the decision by Donald Trump to pull out of the so-called Iran deal. One tends to think more recently of the decision by George W. Bush to not only invade Iraq with no real plan, but to also cancel all pay to the Iraqi army – a move which perhaps our grandchildren will still feel the impact of, in decades to come. Another one, perhaps, could be the decision in 1956 for Britain to plough ahead with the military campaign in Suez, an all-time low in British history which still produces red faces from bewildered politicos and historians today.
Has Trump’s buffoonery in the Middle East with this latest decision also set a new milestone in off-the-scale inanity? What exactly are we witnessing?
Read more
FILE PHOTO: An Israeli Air Force F-35 fighter jet © Amir Cohen Israel launches massive missile strikes in Syria
The decision appears to have come out of desperation after 18 months in office and still not being able to assert himself in the Middle East, in particular in Iran. But the statement made on the Iran deal is so deeply flawed with lies – even James Mattis has stated that Iran “robustly” complied with the terms of the deal, including inspections – one has to wonder if his recourse is nothing more than an exercise in trivia. Is Trump fiddling while Rome burns? Have all plans failed and so all he is left with is this juvenile ruse which is really nothing more than a churlish statement?
Trump has manufactured a crisis in the last two days which wasn’t there before. In 48 hours, we now have a new, heightened tension with Iran, a statement from Saudi Arabia that it will have to develop nuclear weapons, and an intensified military campaign between Iran and Israel in Syria.
If Trump wanted to create a crisis which dominates the headlines and puts him in the media spotlight 24/7, then he certainly achieved that. But his methodology and understanding of the region is comically flawed. Some pundits believe he wants war with Iran. In my view, he doesn’t, but is focusing on trying to topple its regime – a strategy no doubt supported by John Bolton, a man who dodged the Vietnam draft but apparently loves war – as long as he’s not the one on the battlefield.
But here’s where the fatal flaw lies in his thinking.
Absolutely critical to this master plan to shake Iran and bring about an economic crisis, which in turn, he believes could facilitate regime change, is hitting its economy hard. Certainly, Trump can bully countries around the world which have trade agreements with Iran – but giants like Russia, China and the EU?
Trump believes that, with the vague threat of trade tariffs on steel and aluminum still hanging in the air, the EU is perhaps the weakest link and will comply with ‘secondary sanctions’ against Iran. But this is already apparently impossible for EU countries like France and their economies. Their stoic resolve is pretty clear, according to statements. EU countries can’t entertain this idea as it would push Iran down a slippery slope of developing a nuclear weapon, which in turn could easily create war in the Middle East. Europe simply cannot cope with new torrents of refugees and terrorist attacks. Even politically speaking, it would set a fetid precedent for Europe to allow the US to bully them into playing such a servile role to Trump’s half-baked plans on the foreign policy circuit. Indeed, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, will not allow the Iran deal to collapse as it would make the EU look weak and ineffective – an iconic international treaty, brokered
Was 2003 when they had to whip the sheeple into support for the illegal Iraq war. Lies, Lies and non-existent WMD.
Now they want us to believe them AGAIN.
Göbbels would be proud of CNN and NYTIMES.
> disinformation campaign portraying Syrian humanitarian workers ("White Helmets") as terrorists and crisis actors
That's not disinformation, that's the truth. The web is full of photo pairs identifying the face of white helmet members with their previous armed roles in various jihadist "rebel" groups, gangs who made themselves infamous by frequently posting beheading videos on Youtube.
The USA, Saudi Arabia and various gulf oil sheikdoms, as well as .il supports these jihadist-turned-fake-disaster-rescue guys with money, PR and weapons. Luckily Russian Air Force expeditionary squadrons are regularly bombing the living shit out of ISIL, jihadi "moderates" and fake kurds, helping to liberate ad re-unify Syria.
More and more people support Assad and Putin in Europe as more and more recognize that US-IL are run by war-crazed, religious fanatics (who wouldn't mind WW3 if it's neded to realize the infamous Yinon-plan for the creation of a so-called Greater Israel, thereby invoking the Armageddon).
If someone were to have e a lot of years of experience developing some sophisticated software to post to sites like Craigslist, Facebook and other places it's easy to reach large audiences with; would the US government consider hiring them to develop tools for counter propaganda campaigns.
Asking for a friend who is tired of working for people with a penchant for misleading claims and possible fraud and can't buy legitimate advertising...
How 'bout you Americans tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
“I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against." - Malcolm X
Nothing. His boss would be upset that Trump is fighting against his efforts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I didn't find anything in the paper that offered evidence that the information was wrong or inaccurate. The entire thing is predicated on the assumption that the white helmets are, in fact, a human rights organization with no connection to Jihadi groups in Syria, but no evidence offered. That's what we call innuendo.
You know, the stuff that's on TV all the time?
snort !!!
Syrian islamist organizations don't allow infidel organizations access to their territory.
There is more then enough footage availabe to support this conclusion.
Western insisntance to support the cotinuation of the war in Syria is weird and borders on immoral.
Hey Slashdot, mind updating us on what's happening in Yemen? Are U.S. backed forces still dumping white phosphorous on civilians?
Oh but who the fuck cares about that, RUSSIAN FAKE NEWS IS COMING TO GET YOU.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. In this case, RT and Sputnik could be those clocks. Just because they aren't trusted doesn't mean they're not right about this. The White Helmets ARE Al-Qaeda. It's been extensively investigated and documented by people on the scene in the Middle East.
You can't even prove that a place called Russia even exists. Claims that they are in the other hemisphere fail. Because the earth is flat! If there were people on the other side, they'd all fall off.
It's all a conspiracy on the part of the military-industrial complex to keep us funneling out tax dollars into non existent weapons systems.
Since the beginning of ISIS, Hezbollah was already fighting them. They've been in the Syrian conflict for a while now and it seems pretty safe to assume they know who these people are.
They are al nusra/al qaeda. And they are financed by the US/UK/etc.
By the way things are they in the American political scene, they are probably going to be called Russian trolls fake news too.
This summary and TFA are trying to push people away from reading the "alternative news", but this article Syria’s White Helmets: War by Way of Deception – Part I links to USAID.gov to prove that the USG is financing them. The alternative news points to government spending, but these people here are trying to red scare you into not reading them.
People here (who I'm sure have been called Russian trolls sometime in the past year) have pointed out that the NYT and the Guardian also pointed out who finances the White Helmets or where they are working.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/may/10/uk-aid-syria-white-helmets-trump-pulls-funding
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/magazine/aleppo-after-the-fall.html
It's a Russian Alt-News story, which is catnip for Deplorables. Great job, Brownie!
https://www.epi.org/publicatio...
https://www.epi.org/publicatio...
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
https://www.epi.org/publicatio...