Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.'"
Everybody I disagree with is a troll.
Unfortunately there are a lot of gullible people in the world who just skim the headlines and don't bother to dig down in any detail on an issue. Lazy thinkers will always be with us and all we can hope for is there are enough people who aren't that way in order to counter them. Lately it's kind of depressing how much of this has distorted the political realm.
It's odd that we [the us] do it to them and it's ok, but fuck them if they do the same thing to us. God I hate politics and politicians.
Funny how these trolls always affect the side the person writing the article doesn't support, isn't it? I mean, no one would dream of spreading misinformation on the Remain side - they're all saints devoted to the purity of Truth.
I'm sure Russian trolls are feeding out misinformation about all sorts of things. The real issue is whether it has any more effect than the lies politicians tell.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Imagine people actually able to see differing points of view. They might just decide they don't like what their betters have planned for them
While this sort of thing is typically frowned upon -- you both are being a bit silly, in that you're missing the point.
That was an *open*, and *plainly visible* thing. That is not even remotely the same as people pretending to be real users, genuine citizens, and instead being paid for foreigners, pretending to belong to the country they are trying to destroy.
If Trump, Putin, anyone tries to OPENLY say "Vote this way!", that has no bearing on this conversation, on this topic. It is instead, the goal of secretly funding, and secretly trying to destroy a foreign power via trickery that is the problem. A problem, that really only democracies are vulnerable to, for in a fascist state (like Russia, or China), if you dissent? You're in trouble period.
Where as the citizens of a democracy? Have the RIGHT to complain...
Meanwhile, we have sneaks, spies, paid for people FAKING belonging to the citizenry of democratic nations. That's a very, very dangerous thing to do to a democracy.
I remember, the the poll booth 2 years ago, trying sum up what I had learned from what the politicians has said over the preceding weeks. I remembered a huge amount of emotional froth but little by way of solid detail or summary of what would happen. I had listened to debates between politicians who could not even agree on basic contemporary facts - that should have not been hard to ascertain. The misinformation was more than political spin: it was outright lies. I am not the only one of that opinion.
The only agreement between the sides was 'the other side is lying'.
Now, two years later, things are not much better. We have been told of all sorts of horrible things that will happen after 29 March 2019 (Brexit day) but are well aware that these are being played up. Both sides have too much to lose if the hard lines being talked about come to be. Exaggeration of consequences and declarations of impossibility seem to be the way that political negotiations are done. The bright sunny post Brexit uplands, that we are assured (by the Brexiteers) will come to be, are equally nebulous.
What passes as debate between politicians would bring discredit to a bunch of squabbling 4 year olds at infant school.
It's all underrated. (Except the stuff I believe in, of course)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What difference does it make if some particular bit of bullshit propaganda comes from Russia or Enron or the CIA or the DNC/RNC or whoever? The message is what's important, not the messenger. You say they want to "destabilize" the system? Well so do I. That's why I voted for Trump, because the system fucking sucks. And now that they're out of power, the left wants to destabilize things too. After exhausting every lega possibility for removing Trump they've resorted to open violence and calls for dismantling the government itself. Did Russia get us to that place, or did CNN and the Kochs/Soros and all the other rich, american sociopaths behind 99.999% of the political so-called information people are exposed to?
You're holding up the trivial fact that someone lied about their country of origin in the standard course of lying about a hundred other things to push a political agenda as the big, bright dividing line. The nationality of the person who created a meme or article or whatever else is the absolute last part of the equation I give a fuck about. If some Russians in a basement somewhere on a shoestring budget can out-persuade billions of dollars worth of the best professional advertising people America has to offer, then more power to them. If that's the case, maybe they deserve to run the world after all.
Or maybe you're just desperate for a scapegoat to explain away your failure and are far, far less immune to paranoid bigotry than you like to think.
Democracy is a fine idea, but doesn't just depend on votes. It depends on choices made by informed voters. The Brexit voters were deliberately misinformed by the side that won, which it admitted to doing after the referendum.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.