To Disrupt America's 2020 Elections, Russian Internet Trolls Amplify Divisive Messages, Assemble 'Massive' Followings (time.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg: Russian internet trolls appear to be shifting strategy in their efforts to disrupt the 2020 U.S. elections, promoting politically divisive messages through phony social media accounts instead of creating propaganda themselves, cybersecurity experts say. The Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency may be among those trying to circumvent protections put in place by companies including Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. to find and remove fake content that hackers created to sow division among the American electorate in the 2016 presidential campaign. "Instead of creating content themselves, we see them amplifying content," said John Hultquist, the director of intelligence analysis at FireEye Inc. "Then it's not necessarily inauthentic, and that creates an opportunity for them to hide behind somebody else."

Other hackers are breaking into computing devices and using them to open large numbers of social media accounts, according to Candid Wueest, a senior threat researcher at Symantec Corp. The hacked devices are used to create many legitimate-looking users as well as believable followers and likes for those fake users... Wueest said he observed a decrease in the creation of new content by fake accounts from 2017 to 2018 and a shift toward building massive followings that could be used as platforms for divisive messages in 2020.
Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy responded that policing foreign influence campaigns is "an incredibly hard balance" between the need to slow down bad actors while maintaining "meaningful public discussion."

Comments

Fox news?

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't stop Fox News repeating the Russian Memes, you cannot tell the difference between RT and Fox, and haven't been able to since Obama era. Whatever token thing Facebook does won't change a thing when it comes to the National Enquirer and Fox repeating those fake stories.

Try this, when they're both running commentary shows, flip between Fox and RT. Same talking points, same lies, interchangeable.

Putin never takes over a country by external force, he leverages the traitors inside. That's you Fox and Friends, Hannity, Pirro....

Re:Trolls use divisive messages

[Freischutz]

So was Hillary a Russian troll when she declared a quarter of America a "basket of deplorables"?

She was trolling for the same people Mitt Romney was trolling for when he effectively called 47% of Americans a bunch of enitled moochers and his entire Republican audience clapped their approval. Hint: most of those 47% are dirt poor minimum wage workers who don’t pay income taxes because the tax code explicitly exempts them due to them being dirt poor. According to the Republicans these Walmart slaves are simply to lazy to be millionaires.

Re:Who benefits from making Russia the enemy?

[AmiMoJo]

Facebook profits, more time spent on their site. YouTube profits, more time spent watching cranks instead of the real news.

Russia profits of course, from a weaker West and NATO.

Re: And it's *TRUMP* that can't accept losing?

[GLMDesigns]

If you're a US citizen, and graduated high school, then you should sue your school system for not having taught you the basics of the US Constitution.

If you're not a US citizen then:

There were huge debates at the Constitutional Convention at how best to deal with unequal sized states. (For example large states such as France and Germany in the EU and small states such as Luxembourg and Cyprus.) The solution was to give Electoral Votes close to the size of the state population and then make it a winner take all scenario for each state. The purpose for this was to prevent a candidate from racking up the votes in a large state and thus swamping, and making irrelevant, the wishes of the small state.

Imagine you lived in a union where you joined for common defense; had a common currency, open borders internally, and no internal tariffs - but just about everything else left to the states. Imagine there were huge social and economic differences between these states in which there was little to no common ground.

In the 1780s the main point of contentions were slavery and agriculture v merchant trading policies.
Today we have other issues.

This is why the electoral system helps keep peace. A large part of our current discord comes from trying to make a multi-cultural, continent-wide country have one-size fits all laws. That doesn't work - and it surely doesn't work when it's unequally enforced.

Here's an example we have the crazy scenario where it's close to illegal for one person to transport his legally owned firearms to another (and zero exception for people who make an honest mistake in how they transport these items). Furthermore a resident of a state (say NY) can't buy, own, and keep a firearm in another state. WTF is this? A law that prevents you from legal actions elsewhere. This is like a state making drugs illegal in its state and preventing its citizens from using drugs in another.

The electoral system is there to prevent the large states from stomping on the small states. If not for the electoral college and separation of powers there cannot be a stable union. Take a look at the collapse of the EU.

Not exactly

[rsilvergun]

the purpose was to shift power from the populous cities (which were full of working class citizens) and to rural areas where the wealthy lived and had their plantations and a tight control on the voting electorate.

But they don't teach you that in school because it doesn't fit the desired narrative. Anyway, go read a book called "A People's History of the United States" for starters. We are one hell of a fucked up country.