As part of this week’s hearings into how Russia has used social media to influence American opinion, House lawmakers released several Facebook and Instagram ads linked to Kremlin meddling online. Although lawmakers have not yet released the full cache of ads, which includes about 3,000 examples provided to Congress by Facebook, the so-far disclosed ads offer one of the closest looks yet at the Russian operation.
Some of these ads and fake accounts are quite fascinating – they’re clearly designed not just to promote Trump, but also to rile up different groups – from the LGBT community to proponents of the US 2nd amendment – against each other. Oh, and also to pitch a fight between Clinton and Jesus.
Truth to be told, the Russians use more sophisticated methods than the West used in Lybia
What’s the point of posting political articles on a site supposedly related to the IT?
Let’s discuss the flowers and bicycles instead. The topics seem to be relevant to Operating Systems as much as politics is, but could induce more useful discussions.
Cyber attack and use of social media (who said fake news ?) to control election in a foreign country to favorite a friendly candidate.
That said, it’s been US usage to do so for ages, so I find this quite amusing when it happens to them and have their own elections rigged
“Come get some (democracy) !”
However it has been proven before that there’s no need of foreign implication to get quite shady results (remember Bush vs. Gore ?)
Edited 2017-11-02 11:46 UTC
And Sadly it worked. And I am not talking about who is in the White house. They were looking to kick the hornets nest and cause division in the U.S. What better way to weaken a nation than convince it’s people that they all Hate each other.
It worked? It was a drop in the ocean. Hillary Clinton spent a BILLION DOLLARS. You think $150k worth of Facebook ads did anything, half of which was spent after the election!?
This whole Russia thing is a distraction. The Clinton campaign paid for information from Russia too. Trump’s business dealings with Russia (and Saudi Arabia etc) are more relevant but this whole matter of collusion is a huge red herring as the corporate class and the politicians and consultants that survive on it are trying to distract you from the real problem in America – that its political system has been corrupted and both parties represent their donors instead of voters. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
First, these ad drops from Facebook is just the tip of the iceburg, I cant wait to see the information from google (which has ad-sense, and youtube) and twitter. These orgs have been warned since at least 2014 about things like bot accounts (russian twitterbots), etc. Also, I would love to know how many 4chan accounts are run from the kremlin.
If you want a look, here is a good primer from 2014:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-kremli…
Second, These what-about-isms are really getting played out. If you think Hilary, the DNC or anyone else isnt being investigated, you’ve been played by whatever news you are ingesting. Due to the Comey firing we now have to hear INCESSANTLY (yay Trump, yay 24 hour news cycle) about the special counsel Muller’s specific investigation. That does not mean the FBI is not investigating other leads, or other national security issues. Its a large law enforcement org with a big budget.
EDIT-removed a double negative!
Edited 2017-11-03 16:29 UTC
https://i.imgur.com/8GY0tNu.jpg
“the Atlantic” ? …
_rant_
While you’ve been downvoted, I think you bring up an excellent (yet troubling) point. There is a shift in the way people seem to consume news. Thinking that somehow being from fox or cnn or britebart or theatlantic means “fake news”.
News Outlets have always has a bias or specific motivations, whether its to get at a particular subject from a different view point, create/mold common identity (usually state/public run), sow confusion about a topic, or a mercenary drive for views/viewers at all costs. The hope of a “free press” is that out of all that chaos comes a coherent narrative about facts and events. /rant
I have been reading breitbart before it became vogue to bash them…they are as to political news as wccftech is to tech and gaming news, and guess what? I remembered they ALSO covered the russian pys ops and troll farms, as did nytimes and the guardian.
Here is an addendum to my primer:
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/06/03/journalists-g…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-r…
an ex-employee of one of these troll farms sued one in RUSSIAN court, and won:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/18/woman-who-sued-pro-put…
Ultimately, the systems of governance are largely reflections of their populations. Perhaps the people of US get the gov they deserve… how many would, given the chance, say no to getting their slice of political cake / being in the “club”?
I don’t quite get why everyone so excited by this. It virtually useless information. Even if it is presented in and by congress, it is virtually impossible to link to Russian state agencies just by IP addresses.
Even if it will be prooved that, yes, these post have been sponsored by Russian state, then what? Can some one proove that all these posts had any meaningful impact and 2016 president election?
And in the end it is not like USA have done nothing like this before. It just that Russians do not have multi-billion $ budget to sponsor hundreds on non-commercial organizations in foreign countries, like USA does, so they might have chosen less costly option of social networks.
Edited 2017-11-02 13:58 UTC
Eh, it’s important because it’s something we need to defend against in the future, You can’t have a hostile foreign power influence elections through disinformation campaigns, just like you don’t want nigerian princes to make deals with your mom.
It’s not really a mystery.
A few things…
1) Some of these ads were actually paid for (some with rubles!!), so we have banking transactions to follow, not just “IP” addresses. We know with close to 100% certainty that these were russian psy ops.
2) Your cynical What-about-isms dont detract from the fact that every sovereign nation can and will defend against attacks and manipulation…from internal or EXTERNAL threats. The first line of defense (in a democracy) is an informed public to the nature of the attack.
3) from an academic standpoint; its fascinating to see how far psy ops via propaganda as come. Most (americans) have a passing familiarity with the “Call to Action” style posters and such of WWII and the anti/pro capitalism/communism psy ops of the first 20 years of the cold war. We (the west generally, Americans specifically) havent really been exposed to modern psy op/propagada methodology.
So there are no “in-house” Psy Ops going on ?
Interesting how downvoted I became on that post … Of course there are in house Psy Ops, its called Hollywood amongst others ..
Amongst others. Spin doctors have been there like… always ? Remember how they, through ages, showed down citizens’ throat the need for war all around the globe the “defend America’s interests” as PR bullshit ? And for more undercover operations that were too blatantly wrong, just call the CIA for a secret ninja kill you can always blame on someone else, preferably an opponent/dissident/whatever and hide it under secret classification.
Excellent, Sounds like we are on the same page that russia attacked the US using psy ops during the last election cycle. Thats what is being debated here, and you seem to agree!
No one is saying psy-ops are new, or somehow unique to russia. The current questions are what KINDS of psy-op tactics are being used by russia? who are they targeted at? have they been effective? What damage has been done? can we counteract them?
Glad we cleared that up!
Since they use the same tactics that each governments use to control their own citizens, there’s nothing new at saying using “Dumb’n dumber” approach, not tickling the best of our intellect, but click-bait demagogy.
We have provided an excellent example for them to learn from…
Seriously though, I get it. Russia messing with our elections like this is not cool. But you have to admit, they weren’t really doing anything that our media, political campaigns, PACs, etc. haven’t themselves been doing for decades.
Edited 2017-11-02 16:51 UTC
People are worrying about Russian propaganda while their belief systems are based on American propaganda.
If you consider the news to be gospel and have blind faith in it, then do not expect to learn what today’s real propaganda is like. Propaganda needs to be hard to discover for what it is because otherwise it would not work. Reading the news and having blind faith in it is something many people do, so propaganda that can be discovered for what it is by doing that is not a threat and will quickly fail and disappear.
The real propaganda is not going to be revealed for what it is on the news any time soon. Those in power did not get that power by being complete idiots. They got it by being smarter than us.
Bingo! Nice to hear from someone who is awake to the truth more than the average donkey.
If “they” are smarter, perhaps “they” deserve to be on top…
So I guess you have no problem with those Indian scammers who scam old people out of their life savings? Because ‘If “they” are smarter, perhaps “they” deserve to be on top’.
You’re doing a textbook strawman argument / that’s different than politics (I’m surprised this needs to be pointed out to you…). Which shows the most just your twisted perceptions of politics…
So, you’re for government formed by stupid people (the only alternative); that will work really well…
Offtopic: I get an ad in this article for “meet Russian ladies”
Somehow I think the ad matching in this case is quite poor / won’t work. 
We have always done that with VOA voice of america, meaningless
What a waste of time and waste of brain-cell-usage.
Just consider this in the realm of “free speech” and as, always, never assume too much but analyse frequently.
Critical thinking is important but not practiced enough nowadays.
History has shown many examples where a “target” nation is made the “boogey-man” so that it becomes easier for that “target” nation to be attacked through sanctions, war, etc.
Today’s “boogey-man” is Russia, kindly brought to you by (portions of) Europe and USA.
All this because ….
Hillary “The Butcher of Libya” Clinton
did not win the presidential election against
Donald “I Say What I Want” Trump.
Snap out of it.
It’s all a game.
Many of the images showed in that hearing were 4chan memes that got spread on Twitter and Facebook, notably the #DraftOurDaughters hashtag campaign. The Senate, and by proxy anyone who believes them, is retarded.
There’s truly a lot of media illiterate people commenting here.
The fact that the news media are for sale and money can get involved in politics is something that can be exploited by any foreign power more easily, be it directly or by shell companies seeking favors.
Anyone thinking that money in politics and “money above everything else” is not a problem and what drove this to happen, and that it did get influenced is just rehashing their ideology and ignoring all the investigations and evidence.
A good read would perhaps be specifically media investigations. There’s a book called Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences which is a very nice introductory and in depth view into these type of issues and how media influences society and vice versa and what has happened to get us to where we are with media.
Why is the US directly messing with Israeli elections recently totally ignored? The Russians spent 10’s of thouands on this crap while actual spending was 100s of millions in the last election.
I think I’ve identified possibly fake and certainly beyond irrelevant news here.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-h…