NBC News yesterday: Russian trolls went on attack during key election moments

[highplainsdem]

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/russian-trolls-went-attack-during-key-election-moments-n827176

Twitter has identified 2,752 accounts as being linked to the Kremlin. In November, Congress released the list of account names.

NBC News took those names and cross-referenced it against data held by three sources familiar with Twitter's API, an online system that allows software developers to work user data, generated a database of 202,973 tweets sent by known Russian trolls. The sources asked that their names be withheld to avoid being identified as possibly violating Twitter's developer policy.

The resulting database from 454 of the identified accounts is "one of the largest" known repositories of deleted Russian Twitter troll activity to date, according to Jonathan Albright, research director at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

Those tweets from accounts impersonating real Americans earned 2.1 million retweets and nearly 1.9 million favorites from their duped followers.

-snip-

According to the dataset, Russian twitter troll volume increased significantly on July 21, two days after Trump became the official Republican nominee, and continued at the same intensity or higher for the rest of the year.

Throughout 2016, the trolls' tweets and retweets spiked during key campaign events.

-snip-

Troll activity spiked again during the final presidential debate, rehashing conspiracy theories and retweeting divisive content. The trolls alternately said the debate was rigged, or a total win for Trump.

-snip-

The online troll games entered the real world two days after the election

On Nov. 10, a banner was removed from the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington, U.S. Park Police confirmed to NBC News.

"Goodbye Murderer" read the captioned portrait of President Barack Obama, according to photos recovered from online archives tweeted by an identified Russian troll whose activity appeared in the NBC News database.

-snip-

The account, which portrayed itself as that of a military veteran turned activist, also tweeted the images to @realDonaldTrump.

Leroy's tweets got hundreds of likes, and retweets and were amplified by other identified Russian trolls.

As they spread across social media sites, the Russian state-owned media organization RT reported on the banner.

-snip-

[Blue_Tires]

1. Greenwald and Snowden were unavailable for comment...

I'm old enough to remember when state actors influencing actions in foreign countries through online trolling was a scandal worthy of global outrage...

[renate]

2. I've been wondering whether people who don't watch MSNBC have been hearing about Russia

I'm glad to hear that the old-school news programs like NBC are covering it, so presumably middle-of-the-road, not-particularly-political people are hearing about it too.