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Twitter Publishes Archive of 10 Million Tweets From Russian, Iranian Bots (boingboing.net)

Posted by BeauHD on from the influence-campaigns dept.

AmiMoJo shares a report from Boing Boing: To enable "further research of information operations on Twitter," the company today published a dataset of tweets posted by known Russian and Iranian troll farms. "These large datasets comprise 3,841 accounts affiliated with the IRA, originating in Russia, and 770 other accounts, potentially originating in Iran," the blog post reads. "They include more than 10 million Tweets and more than 2 million images, GIFs, videos, and Periscope broadcasts, including the earliest on-Twitter activity from accounts connected with these campaigns, dating back to 2009." You can download the Russian and Iranian datasets here. The Russian dataset is comprised of 1.24GB of tweets and 300GB of media, while the Iranian dataset is comprised of 168MB of tweets and 65.7GB of media.

9 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. uhh, what about ISIS? Archive of that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They aren't archiving all the ISIS posts? ISIS had 100s of accounts all spamming terrorist propaganda 24/7 basically Obama's whole second term. Can we get an archive of THAT? Started around 2013 when John Brennan became CIA director, and ended around 2017 when Trump took over and replaced Brennan with Pompeo.

    1. Re:uhh, what about ISIS? Archive of that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      ISIS is muslim and Twitter is run by lefties, so publishing ISIS tweets would be racist or something.

    2. Re:uhh, what about ISIS? Archive of that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Shh, Russian bots stole the election, the TV man said so.

    3. Re:uhh, what about ISIS? Archive of that? by squiggleslash · · Score: 1, Insightful

      What valid point is it making?

      The concerns Twitter are addressing relate to professional troll farms, not ideological extremists. ISIS tweets would add absolutely nothing of value to the survey, and it's extremely hard for me to comprehend the logic that says "Oh, so Twitter is publishing information making it easier to do research on bad faith tweets from fake accounts built by governmental organizations trying to interfere with an election, WHAT ABOUT ISIS?

      What the fuck does ISIS have to do with the price of tea in China?

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  2. Re:What about US & Five Eyes bots? by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Things like this always strike me as awfully nationalist and willfully ignorant propaganda terrorism. (So just like such bots.)"

    Yes. And?

    I mean, it is what you say it is. The US surely runs it's own too. And we're not going to get to see it unless or until someone leaks it. Which at some point will likely happen.

    And then perhaps you'll speculate it was a false flag to make us look bad? Which it might be.

    At some point you have to choose what you will believe, and determine what sources are likely to be as credible as is reasonable.

    So... where does that leave us?

  3. Re:Bad job twitter by NuclearCat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Good point, possible.
    At the same time, you can blame for same any person who often repost the news.
    It smells bad and creates a conditions for action resembling repressive regime of Stalin.
    Proverb associated with such logic: "If there is a man, there is always a criminal article for him"

  4. Re:Bad job twitter by rtb61 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It is straight forward calling every Russian who uses twitter a troll. If you are Russian or Iranian and ever used twitter in English, you are now a troll and a Russian or Iranian agent. Seriously any post originating in Russia or Iran, any?!?

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  5. Re: Brazil is electing a nazi because they're lazy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    We're not playing your definitions idiot. That's the problem: you're boxed in by what marx said and he's a 19th century drunken clown. You fools have no imagination. It's why you're losing.

  6. Re:What about US & Five Eyes bots? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It doesn't matter though, it works because people see a meme or post confirming their existing biases and making them feel that it's okay to say those things, and don't pause to ask "is this a Russian fake account?" or wonder if they are being manipulated.

    "and making them feel that it's okay to say those things"????

    So the real problem is that it might undermine our little domestic cultural revolution, which otherwise would successfully make people feel that it's not OK to say unapproved things?