Russian Influence Campaign Sought To Exploit Americans' Trust In Local News (npr.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The information operatives who worked out of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg did not stop at posing as American social media users or spreading false information from purported news sources, according to new details. They also created a number of Twitter accounts that posed as sources for Americans' hometown headlines. NPR has reviewed information connected with the investigation and found 48 such accounts. They have names such as @ElPasoTopNews, @MilwaukeeVoice, @CamdenCityNews and @Seattle_Post. "A not-insignificant amount of those had some sort of variation on what appeared to be a homegrown local news site," said Bret Schafer, a social media analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks Russian influence operations and first noticed this trend. Another example: The Internet Research Agency created an account that looks like it is the Chicago Daily News. That newspaper shuttered in 1978. The Internet Research Agency-linked account was created in May 2014, and for years, it just posted local headlines, accumulating some 19,000 followers by July 2016.

Another twist: These accounts apparently never spread misinformation. In fact, they posted real local news, serving as sleeper accounts building trust and readership for some future, unforeseen effort. "They set them up for a reason. And if at any given moment, they wanted to operationalize this network of what seemed to be local American news handles, they can significantly influence the narrative on a breaking news story," Schafer told NPR. "But now instead of just showing up online and flooding it with news sites, they have these accounts with two years of credible history."

Comments

Curious..

[Vegan Cyclist]

Curious how deeply researchers dug into these accounts. Another possibility would be for them to have also posted 'fake news', allow it to get shared while relevant, and then delete those posts to continue the appearance of a semi-legit news source...? Very troubling either way. What would be really helpful now is news sources documenting how to detect these questionable sites....the willingness of people to trust what they see on Twitter and elsewhere is another side of the problem that needs attention.

Re:Why?

[postbigbang]

It's all about pressuring Germany to buy fracked LNG. If you expected Truth from Trump, you were mistaken; he's a sales guy with lip flatulence, a bad hairdo, and no conscience. Sales guy.

Re:Apathy to be Expected

[Obfuscant]

this is about the heart of our election process

Exactly, this is precisely the problem.

Yes, it is. People who think Twitter is the heart of our election process are a big problem.

Folks, Twitter is a social media thing. There is no validation of who posts what. It is DESIGNED for anyone to be able to say whatever they want. Just because someone calls themselves "OrlandoOfficialRealNewspaper" doesn't make them a newspaper, and it never has. Anyone who does not understand that shouldn't be allowed to view tweets from anyone.

Now it is a big deal that people are saying whatever they want, and it is somehow ruining the "democratic process". Item number 1 in the Bill of Rights is "freedom of speech", which means freedom of speech. It's based on the idea that people are supposed to be critical readers. Abandoning freedom because some people can't handle the work of thinking about what they read is pathetic.

It's going to be hard to elicit a big response from people about a torrent of lies from foreign agents when they are already used to listening to a torrent of lies from everyone else who has a political agenda to push.

FTFY.

I have yet to see anyone comment on the heart of this story. Russians created Twitter accounts to spread disinformation and then didn't use them to spread disinformation. From TFS:

Another twist: These accounts apparently never spread misinformation. In fact, they posted real local news, ...

Shocking abuse of our electoral process, Russian agents posting real news stories. Absolutely unthinkable and unacceptable!

Re:Apathy to be Expected

[Straif]

Foreign governments HAVE ALWAYS been involved in the democratic process. The only time they aren't is if your country has absolutely nothing of advantage for them which is rare.

It may be as little as a nasty word or two about a particular politician or it could be an outright assassination but you'd be hard pressed to find any election in the past 200 years in which some foreign power wasn't involved either behind the curtain or outright on the streets.

The 'Russian' thing is just sour grapes. China probably had more of an impact on the last election in the US.

Re: Sinclair Broadcast Group

[Anonymous Coward]

You have chosen False equivalence (logical fallacy in which two completely opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency) as your fallacy of the day. Is this your final choice?

Wrong

[rsilvergun]

the media gave Trump massive amount of coverage, much more than Hilary. What matters in an election as close as this is coverage, not the quality of the coverage. But even if we're talking quality Hilary stories were non-stop negative. How many hours were devoted to your emails? So many that it's become a meme ("But her emails...").

The media didn't really care who got elected as long as it wasn't Bernie (they were caught doing a Bernie Blackout when the guy who runs the youtube Channel "The Young Turks" refused a sweet gig in exchange for shutting up about Bernie). The media sided with Trump because they wanted a horse race (so long as there was no risk of an anti-corportist getting elected). And they're loving the results. Hilary was a safe, boring choice. Trump is a ratings bonanza.