Twitter Seen as Key Engine in Russian Influence Campaign (NYT)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/technology/twitter-russia-election.htmlTwitter Seen as Key Engine in Russian Influence Campaign
By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI and SCOTT SHANE | SEPT. 27, 2017
SAN FRANCISCO — After a weekend when Americans took to social media to debate President Trump’s admonishment of N.F.L. players who do not stand for the national anthem, a network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia seized on both sides of the issue with hashtags such as #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee.
As Twitter prepared to brief staff members of the Senate and House intelligence committees on Thursday for their investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, researchers from a public policy group have been following hundreds of accounts to track the continuing Russian operations to influence social media discourse and foment division in the United States.
For three weeks, a harsh spotlight has been trained on Facebook over its disclosure that Russians used fake pages and ads, designed to look like the work of American activists, to spread inflammatory messages during and since the presidential campaign.
But there is evidence that Twitter may have been used even more extensively than Facebook in the Russian influence campaign last year. In addition to Russia-linked Twitter accounts that posed as Americans, the platform was also used for large-scale automated messaging, using “bot” accounts to spread false stories and promote news articles about emails from Democratic operatives that had been obtained by Russian hackers.
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I mean, there was a report just this week showing how republicans McConnell, Ryan and many others took millions in donations from Putin's money-man in the Ukraine, and from other kremlinesque sources.
Will the FBI defend American democracy by cracking the cases, exposing those who have betrayed the USA for money and power, and then bring justice?
One really needs faith to hold onto that thought.
But, being a faithful sort of entity, I do form that thought clearly in my mind at least once a day, and then empower it with will force. I'm just one meme-forming meditator, but there are others. In that I have faith. Of course I also realize mental pictures must of necessity lead to donations, and the drive to take real, essential political actions in positive ways locally, state-level and nationally).
