Trolls Are Still Actively Trying to Influence Brexit and US Elections (go.com)

TechCrunch reports: A major new campaign of disinformation around Brexit, designed to stir up U.K. 'Leave' voters, and distributed via Facebook, may have reached over 10 million people in the U.K., according to new research. The source of the campaign is so far unknown, and will be embarrassing to Facebook, which only this week claimed it was clamping down on "dark" political advertising on its platform. Researchers for the U.K.-based digital agency 89up allege that Mainstream Network -- which looks and reads like a "mainstream" news site but which has no contact details or reporter bylines -- is serving hyper-targeted Facebook advertisements aimed at exhorting people in Leave-voting U.K. constituencies to tell their MP to "chuck Chequers." Chequers is the name given to the U.K. Prime Ministers's proposed deal with the EU regarding the U.K.'s departure from the EU next year.
ABC News reports: When the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges detailing a yearslong effort by a Russian troll farm to "sow division and discord in the U.S. political system," it was the first federal case alleging continued foreign interference in U.S. elections. Earlier Friday, American intelligence officials released a rare public statement asserting that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in ongoing efforts to influence U.S. policy and voters in future elections. The statement didn't provide details on those efforts. That stood in contrast with the criminal charges, which provided a detailed narrative of Russian activities...

The criminal complaint provided a clear picture that there is still a hidden but powerful Russian social media effort aimed at spreading distrust for American political candidates and causing divisions on social issues such as immigration and gun control.... Court papers describe how the operatives in Friday's case would analyze U.S. news articles and decide how they would draft social media messages about those stories. They also show that Russian trolls have stepped up their efforts with a better understanding the U.S. political climate and messages that are no longer riddled with misspellings.
CNN notes that one week before America's 2016 presidential election, "one of the Kremlin-backed accounts denied that Russian meddling, saying: 'Russia's Putin says Moscow not trying to influence U.S. election.'"

Comments

Re: Disinformation? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, Obama flew over personally to threaten Britain into voting remain and no one raised a shitfit about America "influencing" a British election.

Re:Define trolls

[Dr. Evil]

China, Russia and Iran could hire teams of people to write news articles with bylines and promote them overtly, that's fine. China Daily, RT, Tehran times, are good examples.

Trolls aren't concerned with even writing news articles, not even slanted, biased news articles, the truth is immaterial to their objective, and certain truths run contrary to their objective. The trolls themselves pretend to be somebody else to disrupt conversations, recruit followers and expand their influence. They focus not on informing people, but on polarization and division. They're paid to do this, for this purpose.

https://tinyurl.com/y9dby46f

"Topic: NATO troops are embedded with Ukrainian armed forces

Keywords: ukraine news, russia and ukraine, ukraine policy, ukraine, NATO, PMC (private military company)

Task: Raise this topic on 35 municipal forums

Work begins after an initial post, written by a troll in a different department, is published on the LiveJournal social-networking site under the username flcrbgrjn. The post argues that foreign mercenaries are fighting on the side of Ukrainian soldiers and links to a video that purports to show two American soldiers in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol...."

UK government cheating dwarfs this

[divec]

You have to keep pro-Brexit Facebook ads in perspective:

• The UK government spent more than Vote Leave's entire legal spending limit on a pro-Remain leaflet
• They enlisted Obama to state (incorrectly, it turns out) that the UK would be at the "back of the queue" for a trade deal
• They enlisted the IMF to state (incorrectly, it turns out) that a Leave vote would result in a recession by 2017
• Serious consideration is being given to a second referendum to overturn the first, which would never have happened if the result had been the other way — even if the EU continued its rapid evolution into a superstate
• much more

This level of gaming the system clearly dwarfs a few Facebook ads

Re: Disinformation? No.

[jader3rd]

Hell, Obama flew over personally to threaten Britain into voting remain and no one raised a shitfit about America "influencing" a British election.

He went over as himself and argued for his ideas. This is different. Russian posing as a Brit is different than the American President coming over as the American President. Obama making his pitch is him trying to win an argument. These Russion propogandists don't care about any side of the argument, they're trying to create division and sow misinformation. Is it really that hard to see the difference?