Mileage Psycho Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 The Russians are fucking with us big time. Quote After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced SAN FRANCISCO — One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate. The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. “This is pretty typical for them, to hop on breaking news like this,” said Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of New Knowledge, a company that tracks online disinformation campaigns. “The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans. Almost systematically.” One of the most divisive issues in the nation is how to handle guns, pitting Second Amendment advocates against proponents of gun control. And the messages from these automated accounts, or bots, were designed to widen the divide and make compromise even more difficult. Any news event — no matter how tragic — has become fodder to spread inflammatory messages in what is believed to be a far-reaching Russian disinformation campaign. The disinformation comes in various forms: conspiracy videos on YouTube, fake interest groups on Facebook, and armies of bot accounts that can hijack a topic or discussion on Twitter. Those automated Twitter accounts have been closely tracked by researchers. Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian influence campaign. The researchers zeroed in on Twitter accounts posting information that was in step with material coming from well-known Russian propaganda outlets. To spot an automated bot, they looked for certain signs, like an extremely high volume of posts or content that conspicuously matched hundreds of other accounts. The researchers said they had watched as the bots began posting about the Parkland shooting shortly after it happened. Amplified by bot swarms, Russian-linked Twitter accounts tried to foment discord before and after the election. Hundreds of accounts promoted false stories about Hillary Clinton and spread articles based on leaked emails from Democratic operatives that had been obtained by Russian hackers. Facebook, Google and Twitter have, to varying degrees, announced new measures to eliminate bot accounts, and have hired more moderators to help them weed out disinformation on their platforms. But since the election, the Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag, which referred to a secret House Republican memorandum that suggested the F.B.I. and the Justice Department abused their authority to obtain a warrant to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser. The debate over the memo widened a schism between the White House and its own law enforcement agencies. The bots are “going to find any contentious issue, and instead of making it an opportunity for compromise and negotiation, they turn it into an unsolvable issue bubbling with frustration,” said Karen North, a social media professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “It just heightens that frustration and anger.” Intelligence officials in the United States have warned that malicious actors will try to spread disinformation ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. In testimony to Congress last year and in private meetings with lawmakers, social media companies promised that they will do better in 2018 than they did in 2016. But the Twitter campaign around the Parkland shooting is an example of how Russian operatives are still at it. “We’ve had more than a year to get our act together and address the threat posed by Russia and implement a strategy to deter future attacks, but I believe, unfortunately, we still don’t have a comprehensive plan,” said Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, during a hearing this month on global threats to the United States. “What we’re seeing is a continuous assault by Russia to target and undermine our democratic institutions, and they’re going to keep coming at us.” When the Russian bots jumped on the hashtag #Parklandshooting — initially created to spread news of the shooting — they quickly stoked tensions. Exploiting the issue of mental illness in the gun control debate, they propagated the notion that Nikolas Cruz, the suspected gunman, was a mentally ill “lone killer.” They also claimed that he had searched for Arabic phrases on Google before the shooting. Simultaneously, the bots started other hashtags, like #ar15, for the semiautomatic rifle used in the shooting, and #NRA. The bots’ behavior follows a pattern, said Mr. Morgan, one of the researchers who worked with the German Marshall Fund to create Hamilton 68, the website that monitors Russian bot and fake Twitter activity. The bots target a contentious issue like race relations or guns. They stir the pot, often animating both sides and creating public doubt in institutions like the police or media. Any issue associated with extremist views is a ripe target. The goal is to push fringe ideas into the “slightly more mainstream,” Mr. Morgan said. If well-known people retweet the bot messages or simply link to a website the bots are promoting, the messages gain an edge of legitimacy. An indictment made public on Friday by Mr. Mueller as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the election mentioned a Russian Twitter feed, @TEN_GOP, which posed as a Tennessee Republican account and attracted more than 100,000 followers. Messages from this now-deleted account were retweeted by the president’s sons and close advisers including Kellyanne Conway and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. The indictment also described how fraudulent Russian accounts on Twitter tried to push real Americans into action. The indictment said the fake Twitter account @March_for_Trump had organized political rallies for Mr. Trump in New York before the election, including a “March for Trump” rally on June 25, 2016, and a “Down With Hillary” gathering on July 23, 2016. By Friday morning, the bots that pushed the original tweets around the Parkland shooting had moved on to the hashtag #falseflag — a term used by conspiracy theorists to refer to a secret government operation that is carried out to look like something else — with a conspiracy theory that the shooting had never happened. By Monday, the bots had new targets: the Daytona 500 auto race in Daytona Beach, Fla., and news about William Holleeder, a man facing trial in the Netherlands for his suspected role in six gangland killings. It is unclear why. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/after-florida-school-shooting-russian-‘bot’-army-pounced/ar-BBJlGVk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mainecat Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 Yup they are and our president is allowing it. He may actually be a Russian agent as Mannifort and Gates are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JEFF Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 12 minutes ago, Mainecat said: Yup they are and our president is allowing it. He may actually be a Russian agent as Mannifort and Gates are. And Obama... For allowing all of this "meddling" back in 2014... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mainecat Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 Just now, JEFF said: And Obama... For allowing all of this "meddling" back in 2014... Ok Jeff and Reagan, Clinton the Bushes....blah blah blah Meanwhile The sanctions congress sent in response for Trump to sign sit since last fall on his desk. JEFF....one question.....WHY wont he sign them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum Contributing Member Skidooski Posted February 20, 2018 Platinum Contributing Member Share Posted February 20, 2018 14 minutes ago, Mainecat said: Yup they are and our president is allowing it. He may actually be a Russian agent as Mannifort and Gates are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MiSledder Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 19 minutes ago, Mainecat said: Yup they are and our president is allowing it. He may actually be a Russian agent as Mannifort and Gates are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JEFF Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 1 minute ago, Mainecat said: Ok Jeff and Reagan, Clinton the Bushes....blah blah blah Meanwhile The sanctions congress sent in response for Trump to sign sit since last fall on his desk. JEFF....one question.....WHY wont he sign them? Sanctions for clickbait ads? You've got to be kidding me? Can we get our uranium back maybe? That'd be great... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
racer254 Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 OMG. The russians???? Take a good look at the DNC. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum Contributing Member Highmark Posted February 20, 2018 Platinum Contributing Member Share Posted February 20, 2018 No surprise Russia would want our govt to take our guns. Oh and the first line of the article cracks me up. They do or they don't. For God's sake do some investigating before you write stories. SAN FRANCISCO — One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mainecat Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 The bots are in early Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum Contributing Member Skidooski Posted February 20, 2018 Platinum Contributing Member Share Posted February 20, 2018 Back to the "we are all Russian bots" thing eh. The crazy cycle repeats itself yet again 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snoslinger Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 16 minutes ago, JEFF said: Sanctions for clickbait ads? You've got to be kidding me? Can we get our uranium back maybe? That'd be great... so fucking clueless Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum Contributing Member SnowRider Posted February 20, 2018 Platinum Contributing Member Share Posted February 20, 2018 Just now, Skidooski said: Back to the "we are all Russian bots" thing eh. The crazy cycle repeats itself yet again Are there Russian bots/trolls working the internet or not.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum Contributing Member Skidooski Posted February 20, 2018 Platinum Contributing Member Share Posted February 20, 2018 Just now, SnowRider said: Are there Russian bots/trolls working the internet or not.... Dude...you're a bot too don't ya know 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mainecat Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 Read somewhere up to 5 % of social media site members are Russian bots. Who are they? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F3600 Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 Good thing I don’t get my opinions from Twitter...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JEFF Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 Or facebook Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum Contributing Member Skidooski Posted February 20, 2018 Platinum Contributing Member Share Posted February 20, 2018 8 minutes ago, Mainecat said: Read somewhere up to 5 % of social media site members are Russian bots. Who are they? Um...DemUnderground perhaps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum Contributing Member Highmark Posted February 20, 2018 Platinum Contributing Member Share Posted February 20, 2018 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum Contributing Member steve from amherst Posted February 20, 2018 Platinum Contributing Member Share Posted February 20, 2018 27 minutes ago, Mainecat said: Read somewhere up to 5 % of social media site members are Russian bots. Who are they? You do realize that's way over a million right? Think about that for a minute. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
racer254 Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 15 minutes ago, Highmark said: Always happens when you put two democrat talking points together. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ez ryder Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 42 minutes ago, SnowRider said: Are there Russian bots/trolls working the internet or not.... lol .look at your self you are the poster child . stir some shit get run off in shame only to pop up time and time again with the latest nothing story . but again you are so fucking clueless you cant even see it . you sir are doing the job of a Russian bot but with out the paycheck 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
racer254 Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 32 minutes ago, Ez ryder said: lol .look at your self you are the poster child . stir some shit get run off in shame only to pop up time and time again with the latest nothing story . but again you are so fucking clueless you cant even see it . you sir are doing the job of a Russian bot but with out the paycheck There are a few of them on this site and they don't even have a clue that they are doing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mileage Psycho Posted February 20, 2018 Author Share Posted February 20, 2018 2 hours ago, Mainecat said: Ok Jeff and Reagan, Clinton the Bushes....blah blah blah Meanwhile The sanctions congress sent in response for Trump to sign sit since last fall on his desk. JEFF....one question.....WHY wont he sign them? That is a good question, anyone care to answer that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mileage Psycho Posted February 20, 2018 Author Share Posted February 20, 2018 1 hour ago, Highmark said: No surprise Russia would want our govt to take our guns. Oh and the first line of the article cracks me up. They do or they don't. For God's sake do some investigating before you write stories. SAN FRANCISCO — One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate. It's about creating divisiveness among Americans and distrust of our institutions, the Russians are playing and inflaming both sides and if you can't see that.......oh well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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