Russian Election Meddling is Back -- via Ghana and Nigeria -- And in Your Feeds (cnn.com) 91
The Russian trolls are back -- and once again trying to poison the political atmosphere in the United States ahead of this year's elections. But this time they are better disguised and more targeted, harder to identify and track. And they have found an unlikely home, far from Russia itself. From a report: In 2016, much of the trolling aimed at the US election operated from an office block in St. Petersburg, Russia. A months-long CNN investigation has discovered that, in this election cycle, at least part of the campaign has been outsourced -- to trolls in the west African nations of Ghana and Nigeria. They have focused almost exclusively on racial issues in the US, promoting black empowerment and often displaying anger towards white Americans. The goal, according to experts who follow Russian disinformation campaigns, is to inflame divisions among Americans and provoke social unrest. The language and images used in the posts -- on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram -- are sometimes graphic. One of the Ghanaian trolls -- @africamustwake -- linked to a story from a left-wing conspiracy website and commented on Facebook: "America's descent into a fascist police state continues."
Well this is going to be fun (Score:1)
No Russian trolls here, right? Riiiight.
Re:Well this is going to be fun (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you all have such feeble minds to be so easily influenced by advertising?
Yes. The advertising industry is worth $1.2T per year. If it didn't influence, organizations would keep their $1.2T.
Re:Well this is going to be fun (Score:4, Interesting)
> Yes. The advertising industry is worth $1.2T per year. If it didn't influence, organizations would keep their $1.2T.
That's why it's so amazing what the Russians did, a few hundred thousand somehow outmaneuvered Hillary's $1.2 billion dollar campaign.
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Maybe you didn't see their, "Vote for Trump! Or we'll shoot your dog!" campaign. Doesn't cost much at all.
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What doesn't cost much at all is reality, with so much available on the internet, people will believe what they want to believe and find areas of the internet that share that belief, truth or lies is arbitrary.
Blaming the Russians all the time is just really lame and boring, a poor excuse for failing in various propaganda schemes to drive public opinion, public opinion has so diversified it is always the individuals opinion that serves their needs they look to find on the internet and do find it.
As for tro
They Ignore Foreign Interference (Score:4, Interesting)
> Yes. The advertising industry is worth $1.2T per year. If it didn't influence, organizations would keep their $1.2T.
That's why it's so amazing what the Russians did, a few hundred thousand somehow outmaneuvered Hillary's $1.2 billion dollar campaign.
Plus, if the MSM were really worried about (or even opposed to) foreign election interference, then you'd be seeing this in the news too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's nothing but a partisan smear campaign (and it always has been).
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It's often not that hard if you don't give a damn about the law and you are safely beyond prosecution.
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> It's often not that hard if you don't give a damn about the law and you are safely beyond prosecution.
Often? That's an amazing claim. Can you detail how many other times it has happened?
Maybe Putin should set up an ad agency if he's more than 2000% better than anyone else in the world at advertising.
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Consider, cafe acroos the street from your cafe is grabbing all your customers. You can either spend thousands on advertising or spend $50 to hire the homeless guy on the corner to open a box of roaches next to their kitchen.
Campaign advertising has restrictions and the money must be well accounted for. If you lie too blatantly, you could have some real legal trouble, so you need a lawyer to make sure you have an out and a PR expert to make sure you still leave the impression you wanted to leave but couldn'
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That's why it's so amazing what the Russians did, a few hundred thousand somehow outmaneuvered Hillary's $1.2 billion dollar campaign.
Because truth is hard to accept. Lies play on background fears. They can play on our desire for solid answers where there are none (ie, conspiracy theories). Sometimes, they're even more comforting than reality.
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Da comrade. Russian are for to stronk mind, only influenced by vodka and violence.
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*It's either us or Trump*.
To hell with it, just shoot me.
If that's the only choice I have, the bullet is the lesser evil.
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Da comrade. Russian are for to stronk mind, only influenced by vodka and violence.
Lovely. You're displaying the kind of intellect that lost you the 2016 election. What makes you think name-calling and shaming will work this time when it didn't work the last time?
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I love how you love to shout "Russia! Russia!" as if none of that ever happened.
Do you all have such feeble minds to be so easily influenced by advertising?
Welcome to humanity, buddy. I am sure you feel you are oh so superior, and you are not at all influenced by repeated narratives. Not at all.
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If you could see yourself, you would vote republican!
If I looked in the mirrror and saw a Republican, I'd see a a gun in my hand pointed at my temple.
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You severely overestimate the importance of this site.
Didn't you admit to spreading propaganda before? (Score:2)
What really amazes me is how they knew that posting memes of Jesus arm wrestling Satan would convince the US to elect Trump.
I mean, just look at how threatening to Democracy their memes were [imgur.com].
Somehow, with merely a few thousand dollars, GRU outdid Hillary's $1.2 billion dollar campaign.
No wonder our Democrats feel so threatened. They're so bad at messaging, some chaotic online memes disrupt their narrative enough for a scary orange guy to take over.
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GRU had an advantage: they didn't have Hillary on their side.
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Most prez elections are basically senile old man vs. senile old man.
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Meanwhile Israel boasts about their influence (Score:4, Insightful)
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Both. It's obvious both have undue influence.
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Because Russia is doing this antagonistically, rather than by the time honored method of greasing palms. For Russia, this isn't about getting aid so much as it is about overturning the Magnitsky act. Which itself was a weakening of previous sanctions.
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Low level bureaucrats? Is that what they are calling Russian oligarchs these days? Putin needs these guys on side or they will off him and his entire family.
Typical for Russia, which is an authoritarian hell hole with no redeeming features. Russians are garbage people, just natural born authoritarian boot lickers.
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If the Russian people weren't such garbage, they wouldn't have let a third rate dictator like Putin slap them around.
Any how, let me link you to a site you'll like. https://www.russian-untouchabl... [russian-untouchables.com]
That's the first guy. The rest are on there too. Look at the purchases made since the Magnitsky theft. Like all these thieves, he made bank.
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Got one.
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Besides sanctions on 18 low level Russian bureaucrats, the Magnitsky act normalized trade relations with Russia. Why would Russia want to overturn it?
The Russian government has been trying to overturn the act since it was first put into place. It allows the US government to sanction officials implicated in human rights abuses wherever they occur. Russia retaliated by banning a number of US officials from Russia and banning adoptions of Russian children. Natalia Veselnitskaya is both a Russian lawyer and informant (by her own admission) whose firm lobbied to repeal the Magnitsky Act and "keep Mr. Magnitsky's name off of the law." She offered the Trump ca
Re: Meanwhile Israel boasts about their influence (Score:2)
By ignoring the disproportionate focus on one over the other amongst the media and the general public you out yourself as being a piece of shit. By using the word "whatabouttery", you out yourself as a moron.
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The matter of the fact is that these whataboutery reactions are usually done when being accused of something they know to be true. Then the infantile deflection reaction with pointing fingers at others sets in. At the end of the day it changes little except for the dumb people who think that there can only be 'one primary' issue and everything else has to be discarded.
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Ironically what you're doing is another tu quoque fallacy variant by appealing to hypocrisy as a basis to invalidate my pointing out of the fallacy.
And just to clarify things because people who never learned or care little about deductive reasoning and logic in general easily misunderstand things.
In a tu quoque the 'counter accusation' may very well be true. For example I have no doubt that the EU here doesn't also tr
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If it ask for clarification, sure. In that case I wouldn't even see it as whataboutery in the first place (although of course I can't speak for anyone else who might use the term).
Here it asks about who the "real influencer" is. But it doesn't stop there and has people do their own investigation into all possible candidates. Instead of that it provides exactly two options. Of course in the case of having two options there's still the possibility of 4 outcome
Comment removed (Score:3)
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I've seen the firing of a few US bureaucrats for being too right-wing, too left-wing, too 'American': That's not a "clearing" by any definition. One man didn't create the 'swamp' and one man won't empty it.
You work.
That leaves a number of problems untouched: The jobs don't exist. I won't discuss the long-term consequences of that inconvenient truth. But short-term, it means those without, don't get a pension fund or healthcare. As long as people seek these things from their boss, employees (and government) mus
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In my feed? (Score:2)
So, a Russian shed operation can do that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to hire them as a new marketing agency I guess.
Or is this yet another product of the same morons who make 7 mistakes in one line of Russian: https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]
Have to get ONE WORD in Russian correctly for one of the biggest "marketing" campaigns done by Washington and f*ck it up: https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]
And advertise for a law enforcement Russian speaking position using the Russian equivalent of Dirty Harry: https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]
Yep, same analysis as the 2016 election by same people: https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]
We definitely live in an Idiocracy.
Re: So, a Russian shed operation can do that? (Score:3)
Yep It's dead easy to undermine a marketing campaign that's designed to build trust. That's why trademark tarnishment is recognized as grounds for a lawsuit.
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Yep It's dead easy to undermine a marketing campaign that's designed to build trust. That's why trademark tarnishment is recognized as grounds for a lawsuit.
Are you trying to tell me that the 2016 election, BrExit, etc were not about building mistrust?
Deep State, Anti-Experts, Lock Her Up, Lock Him Up - you name it. The anti-Bernie ads, the "Russian agent", "Ukrainian Agent", "Martian agent" bollocks.
So there is already 1Bn on each side piling up to build mistrust. If the Russians are materially capable of altering the balance with their paltry few hundred thousands can we hire them instead of all the SuperPacs and all the USA advertising agencies involved
Not effective at the moment (Score:3)
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Ahhh, Russian Nigerian Royalty (Score:2)
hello dear friend, you may not know me, but I am Nigerian royalty. I have 100,000,000,000 rubles stored in my Nigerian bank-
Russia supports chaos not candidates (Score:3)
As Sean Davis tweets [twitter.com], “If only Bloomberg had hired Russians to buy $100,000 in barely literate Facebook ads, instead of spending $700 MILLION, he’d be president now. That’s what the media have told us for 3+ years.”
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Re: Russia supports chaos not candidates (Score:2)
What a vacuous response. None of the political campaigns have in any way been about creating order. Have you been cut off from all media for the last decade?
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What a vacuous response. None of the political campaigns have in any way been about creating order. Have you been cut off from all media for the last decade?
Political campaigns 'for' a candidate are about creating trust and confidence: you can trust this guy. He's got your back, he has an established record, he's a good guy.
Political campaigns against a candidate are much easier. It's very easy to deceptive sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt, especially if you can do so anonymously and don't have any sort of ethical constraints.
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What about (Score:1)
Chinese trolls? Let's not pretend they aren't out there. But never a mention of them.
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Chinese trolls? Let's not pretend they aren't out there. But never a mention of them.
The Chinese aren't really interested in tearing down our democracy, they've been more focused on stealing corporate secrets and using that to bolster their own offerings so they can compete economically. Russia's efforts have been politically based -- weaken the position, power, and influence of the western nations.
What about Canada? (Score:2)
We have Canadian citizens actively cold-calling, texting and even coming to the US to help campaign for various candidates.
None of whom are named "Trump".
https://thewalrus.ca/my-weeken... [thewalrus.ca]
https://thewalrus.ca/why-canad... [thewalrus.ca]
braindead McCarthyism (Score:3)
Really? We're going to here about a handful of online trolls again after what just happened on Super Tuesday? Where the entire media and democratic establishment hooked up the defibrillator and with some ballot stuffing [thegrayzone.com] turned Zombie Biden into the frontrunner.
If these Russian trolls were so good, candidates would have been hiring then rather than prostituting [youtube.com] themselves to big money donors. They're not.
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What I find interesting is that Bernie has enough money to self-fund an entire campaign and pretty much match any spending either party does. He can be a true independent, not beholden to any donors for anything. Imagine what that could do to the ballot boxes and results come November.
Um (Score:1)
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Over the past years:
All the videos of a coughing fits
Not going to states like Wisconsin and Michigan more times
Not having needed campaign literature ready all over the USA
Few political events in the Rust belt....Russians.
2020
"Police state"
Russian anthropologists who study the USA are getting the extra bil
We Already Have Those (Score:3)
They have focused almost exclusively on racial issues in the US, promoting black empowerment and often displaying anger towards white Americans
Not sure why they'd need to hire Russians to do that. We have plenty of Americans (are they Russian assets?) that screech identity politics. It's extremely hip with the far-left crowd to bash on white people while saying non-white people can't be racist. Actual people here in the US. If there are Russians doing this, they're only spitting into the wind.
Re: We Already Have Those (Score:2)
Right. Apparently these idiots think The Root [theroot.com] is a Russian asset.
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No Time for Unhinged Conspiracy Theories (Score:2)
Take your paranoid delusions elsewhere and grow a pair. WTF, editors.
Where's my rubles? (Score:2)
If I'm being influenced by Russia I want to be paid!
who the fuck cares. (Score:2)
Reality (Score:2)
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In Soviet Russia, Election influences *you*!
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And it sounds exactly like our current left.
And no, no one reads the articles here, obviously.
Russia is the 3rd worse problem (Score:2)
How the hell did the donkey's coalesce around a 79 year old senile white guy who can't keep his foot out of his mouth? They had literally a dozen other people they could have chosen, but no. 79 y/o senile white guy it is.
I'm glad I'm old and will be dead soon, I hate the way this country has been going ever since Georgie the Younger.
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It seems like the dems are trying their best to shoot their own foot off, and then that of the country. For a party whose goal seems to be "defeat trump" - they certainly don't seem to be trying to accomplish it.
Biden is a terrible choice. Repeating the Hillary mistake all over again.
The solution is very simple: (Score:2)
At the very least, stop getting your news and information from social media! Consider anything you read on Facebook or Twitter to be suspect.
For fucks' sake people, if you must use 'social media', just use it for social purposes, not as a substitute for reading actual credible news sources or credible sources of information on anything. Chat with your friends and family and leave it at that! But, again:
Stop this load of BS (Score:1)