How Russia used social media to divide Americans

[turbinetree]

For the past year, the world has reeled over escalating reports of how Russia “hacked” the 2016 US presidential election, by stealing emails from Democrats, attacking voter registration lists and voting machines and running a social media shell game.

Such is the focus on Russian meddling that congressional investigators are increasingly aggressive in asking the big tech companies to account for how their platforms became the staging grounds for an attack on American democracy. Early next month that scrutiny will intensify, with executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter formally invited to appear before the House intelligence committee on Capitol Hill in Washington.

What has now been made clear is that Russian trolls and automated bots not only promoted explicitly pro-Donald Trump messaging, but also used social media to sow social divisions in America by stoking disagreement and division around a plethora of controversial topics such as immigration and Islamophobia.

Facebook must 'follow the money' to uncover extent of Russian meddling
Diana Pilipenko
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And, even more pertinently, it is clear that these interventions are continuing as Russian agents stoke division around such recent topics as white supremacist marches and NFL players taking a knee to protest police violence.

The overarching goal, during the election and now, analysts say, is to expand and exploit divisions, attacking the American social fabric where it is most vulnerable, along lines of race, gender, class and creed.

“The broader Russian strategy is pretty clearly about destabilizing the country by focusing on and amplifying existing divisions, rather than supporting any one political party,” said Jonathon Morgan, a former state department adviser on digital responses to terrorism whose company, New Knowledge, analyzes the manipulation of public discourse.

“I think it absolutely continues.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/14/russia-us-politics-social-media-facebook

This article should be in every newspaper in this country

[dalton99a]

1. Black Lawmakers Hold a Particular Grievance With Facebook: Racial Exploitation (NYT)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/us/politics/black-lawmakers-russia-facebook-racial-division.html
Black Lawmakers Hold a Particular Grievance With Facebook: Racial Exploitation
By YAMICHE ALCINDOR | OCT. 14, 2017

Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, after initially denying that Russians had exploited the company’s system, has reversed course and admitted that groups backed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia paid Facebook to influence voters last year with ads designed to inflame and exploit racial, political and economic rifts in the United States. Russian-backed Facebook pages promoted anti-immigrant rallies, targeted the Black Lives Matter movement and focused attentions on critical election swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan.

But the grievance of black lawmakers is a particular one: As black activists tried last year to focus attention on police brutality, unfair treatment before the law, inequality and white supremacy, social media giants like Facebook were being commandeered by Russian intelligence agents to turn white voters against them.

For Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, the moment recalled the 1970s, when another government, this one in Washington, not Moscow, targeted black activists. She served as a community worker for the Black Panther Party as the F.B.I. used false information to go after its members.

“That actually got people killed and destroyed organizations,” Ms. Lee said. “Now look at Facebook allowing ads by the Russian government to create this kind of environment. That’s a problem. I don’t know if they’re even aware of the history and how dangerous allowing the promotion of division and racial animosity and racial hatred can be.”

[Boomerproud]

6. You never minded where the money was coming from, did you Zuckerburg?

Go ahead and "investigate"...

[Hoyt]

2. Truthfully, I think you have to be receptive/accepting of that crud to buy it. Those people

were already GOPers and Trump supporters.

[procon]

3. The Russians are STILL at it and no one is doing anything to stop it!

Why is the damn government sitting on it's ass when Russia is taking "cues directly and immediately from the @realdonaldtrump Twitter account" and using social media accounts to influence every aspect of American life?

Maybe congress can spare some time from gleefully taking away medical coverage from sick people and do something to defend us from Russian attacks.

Lifted from the cited story:

After Trump criticized the “poor leadership ability” of Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on 30 September, for example, Russian-linked Twitter accounts disseminated articles with “the primary theme of either discrediting” Cruz “or accusing the media of spreading ‘fake news’”, the alliance said.

The week before that, the clandestine network poured accelerant on the fight picked by Trump with the mostly African American players in the NFL who kneeled during the national anthem in protest of police violence. Instead of simply echoing the president’s demand for a boycott unless the players stood, however, the Russian accounts took both sides of the issue, spreading both the hashtags #TakeaKnee and #BoycottNFL.

Is sure looks like Trump is coordinating the Russian attacks against Mayor Cruz and Puerto Rico to make himself look better in the court of public opinion. His views will be seen and shared by many more people than the one who watch what's actually happening, and that tips the scales so he can abandon Puerto Rico .

[RainCaster]

5. Twitter has a plan: take their money

Same with Facebook. Bastards.

[California_Republic]

4. ...uses.....

[mopinko]

7. exploiting chaos, or profiling?

the news that they played both sides of blm made me go hmmmm.
i think more than sowing chaos, they were profiling people- get them to click/share a pro or anti blm meme, and that tells you whether to target that person for gotv. you look them up in the stolen voter rolls, see if they vote every time, vote in primaries, or show up intermittently.

i think any campaign would kill for that kind of info.