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

Who benefits from making Russia the enemy?

[Quakeulf]

I live in Norway. Russia is my neighbour. I have been to both USA and Russia. I see both as friends, and none as enemies. I don't get why these allegations should result in nuclear war (it seems that this is the goal of those who want to drive Russia against USA). If someone is meddling with your election, you take steps to fix your election. Exploits will be exploits, regardless.

Re:Who benefits from making Russia the enemy?

[Solandri]

Oh I'm sure that Russia is meddling in the elections here. Just like every non-American with Internet access and an opinion on Trump/Clinton chipped in their 2 cents. Just like the U.S. meddles in elections elsewhere. People talk to each other, it's a fact of life. And in the Internet age that means they'll talk across national boundaries, even about stuff that they're technically not supposed to be talking about.

If the reports of Russian meddling I've seen are accurate, the scale of it was so small (tens of thousands of dollars of ads in an election where Trump and Clinton spent over $1.8 billion, or nearly $14 per vote) that random people in other countries posting their opinion about the U.S. election on public forums, Facebook, etc. probably had a greater cumulative influence. The media keeps hyping the Russia angle because they feel they need to discredit the 2016 election. I mean if the media were right and a few dozen Russians spending on the order of six figures really swung the election, then every politician would be tripping over themselves to hire these guys to help them run their future ad campaigns.

Re:We don't need this

[AmiMoJo]

That's the post-truth narrative: everyone lies all the time about everything so believe whatever you want.

It's dangerous because it's basically giving up on democracy and trying to make things better, and instead voting for stupid reasons like pissing off liberals or trying to disrupt the establishment by voting for even more established candidates.

Worst of all it makes people think that their opinions are the most valid and ignore all advice from people who do actually understand the issues. Brexit is basically 25% of the population of the UK experiencing a Dunning-Kruger moment.

Re:Fox news?

[Freischutz]

Put down the Kool-Aid and walk away.

You sure?

If you wanted to divide, weaken, and destabilize the US you could hardly improve on AOC and Ilhan Omar.

Bullshit, most of the people outraged at Ilhan Omar for pointing out that AIPAC uses money to **GHASP** lobby!!!! ... because it is supposedly anti-semitic to point out that jewish people are not above buying political influence with money like everybody else. However, the people most outraged over Omar's utterances are also the same people who have been deriding George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and other jewish people more liberal than themselves which they don't like for buying political influence with money. Of course that is a steaming pile of hypocrisy since that means that it's OK to sling around anti-Semitic tropes about jews and money if you are, white, Republican and a Trump supporter but not if you are a little brown woman in a Hijab.