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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.'"
Last week it was "hackers". Make up your mind.
I remember two years ago, in the poll booth, about to vote for/against Brexit; I was trying to sum up what the campaigns had told me. I came to the conclusion: a mass of emotional froth, little of hard reality upon which to make a decision. All sorts of contradictory predictions; few agreed facts. I remember listening to opposing politicians who could not even agree on, what should have been, basic facts. I came to the conclusion that both sides were lying (or at least greatly playing up their arguments), many others did also. The main agreement was that 'the other side are not being truthful' -- both sides said that!
Two years later: it is not hugely better. The problems that Brexit may bring have now been revealed & are being shouted loud but no one can say what will happen on 29 March 2019 (Brexit day), partly because exaggeration of dire consequence is a tool of political negotiation. The promised sunny uplands of EU-restriction free international trade are also being promised, but are nebulous.
Debate amongst politicians is at a level that would bring discredit to a bunch of squabbling 4 year olds at infant school.
The "deplorables" and "bitter clingers" can't be allowed to win elections.
This latest charge of a Russian "agent" charges a woman with "conspiracy to defraud the United States" - which isn't actually a crime.
Good one, Ivan!
923. 18 U.S.C. 371â"CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE UNITED STATES
The general conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371, creates an offense "[i]f two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.
https://www.justice.gov/jm/cri...
Half of what you say was actually Vote Leave lies, e.g. the claim that there would be an instant recession was an exaggeration that they turned in to a talking point for their "Project Fear" story. And of course the whole point about Project Fear was to make you ignore the experts who were giving you factual information and realistic predictions with caveats.
But really those are relatively small things, bad predictions, compared to what leave campaigners lied about. For example, Farage was promoting the Norway model (EEA membership) as being an ideal outcome and something we should welcome, but now claims it would be a betrayal and a disaster. The "Brexit Bonus" money we would stop sending to the EU has all vanished into mitigating the losses and replicating institutions and subsidies that are going away. Worse still, even at the time the £350m/week figure was known to be a fabrication but they didn't remove it from that bloody bus.
There were lots of specific promises about what leaving would mean, things like staying in the single market and customs union, about making immigration easier (!) for non-EU citizens and the like which were all reneged on within hours of the result.
More over there were decades of lies supporting them. I remember a few weeks after the vote there was a woman on Question Time who said she was thinking of voting remain but the day before saw some bananas in the supermarket, and was reminded of the "straight bananas" Euro Myth. That apparently changed her mind, despite it being a well known lie that has been debunked continually since the 90s when it first appeared.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried, you're just trying to justify being part of the UK's flagrant downfall as a result of Brexit.
"If you vote Leave we (Osbourne and Cameron) will punish you by passing a massive 'emergency tax'. Literally, vote wrong and we'll take all your money. A big deal for pensioners and poorer people who were more inclined to vote out. But no emergency tax happened."
A number of tax increases have already occurred as a result of fiscal tightening due to Brexit, notably taxes on self-employed are drastically up. The next budget due in a couple of weeks looks set to tax the mainstream even more. Remain was right.
"The Treasury knew they were lying, that's why they refused to show its models or how it measured "uncertainty". We know this was a lie because two years after the vote the economy is booming. There was no "uncertainty hit" at all."
What fucking rock do you live under? The UK as a result of the Brexit vote has gone from being the fastest growing G7 economy to the slowest growing G7 economy, we're barely breaking 1% growth whilst our peers such as the US which we were growing faster than are breaking 4% growth. At a time where the global economy has sped up, the British economy has slowed down. Furthermore, the pound has plummetted 40% in value, which has necessarily forced the price of every day goods such as petrol way up. The last time petrol was at 130p was when oil was at $120 per barrel, it's only at $80 per barrel now it's hit that level again and petrol tax has been frozen for the period, literally the only reason petrol is as high again is because of the collapse of the pound, which is stone hard real. A number of companies have cancelled UK investment, and a bunch more have already moved jobs overseas. What fucking crackpot world do you live in if you think any of this is proof that the economy didn't suffer when it clearly has and will so even more with hard Brexit? Remain was right.
"Notice a pattern here - the Remain campaign built a tower of lies that all supported each other and which have all been disproven in the years since. I'm not even getting into all the other stupid claims they made and are still making today. Just the basics were enough to seriously tilt things in their favour."
I notice that you've no idea what the fuck is going on around you that's for sure - you've not even noticed how badly UK growth is suffering to the point you naively think the economy is booming. If 1.5% annualised growth is booming then please don't speak to anyone ever again, you're way too uneducated to have a discussion about anything ever, but that's probably not surprising from a leave voter.
"Finally, your own post is itself a lie. The Leave campaigners haven't "admitted they'd been lying all along"."
Incorrect. Farage admitted the $350million a week for the NHS was an outright lie on the very morning of the referendum result, as has Michael Gove. The idea that the EU would easily give us what you want has similarly been proven wrong. Arguments that immigration would be halted have been destroyed by Brexiteers like Pritti Patel who admits she always wanted higher immigration, just from countries like Bangladesh with significant Islamic populations, rather than from our much more culturally align European neighbours.
It doesn't matter anyway, even if we do leave the EU it's clear it won't be for long. The tide has already turned, voters are firmly against Brexit at this point, and it was only ever the old racists generation that supported it anyway in the most, and they're dying out, at such a fast rate in fact that demographically the death of old racists alone has been enough to inherently switched the referendum result, much less with the fact Leave's lies and illegal funding from Russia have now been exposed.
All the same, you should be ashamed of yourself by supporting Russia's goal of punishing us in response to UK sanctions over Crimea by similarly trying to harm our economy through it's widespread funding of Brex
When has people spreading lies and propaganda designed to cause division and reduce the ability of citizens to effectively participate in democracy ever been acceptable?
If you post lies, if you deliberately try to sow discord, people are going to call you out and flag up what you are doing. And we should take notice because we want to be informed and aware of the world around us, not stuck in a bubble of misinformation.
If you want to criticise John Oliver then you need to address the things he was saying. Of course he has a right to state an opinion on the matter, what is at issue is if he is trying to add to the political discourse or deliberately trying to confuse and bullshit voters because he wants to destabilise Canada.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC