New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate,
shows the operation’s scale and sweep:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ion’s-scale-and-sweep/ar-BBR2Dxf?ocid=U220DHP

A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump -- and worked even harder to support him while in office.

The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel hasn’t said if it endorses the findings. It plans to release it publicly along with another study later this week.

The research -- by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm -- offers new details on how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for meddling in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.

The data sets used by the researchers were provided by Facebook, Twitter and Google and covered several years up to mid-2017, when the social media companies cracked down on the known Russian accounts. The report, which also analyzed data separately provided to House intelligence committee members, contains no information on more recent political moments, such as November’s midterm elections.

“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party -- and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says. “Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign. The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.”

Representatives for Burr and Warner declined to comment.

The new report offers the latest evidence that Russian agents sought to help Trump win the White House. Democrats and Republicans on the panel previously studied the U.S. intelligence community’s 2017 finding that Moscow aimed to assist Trump, and in July, they said investigators had come to the correct conclusion. Despite their work, some Republicans on Capitol Hill continue to doubt the nature of Russia’s meddling in the last presidential election.

The Russians aimed particular energy at activating conservatives on issues such as gun rights and immigration, while sapping the political clout of left-leaning African American voters by undermining their faith in elections and spreading misleading information about how to vote. Many other groups -- Latinos, Muslims, Christians, gay men and women, liberals, Southerners, veterans -- got at least some attention from Russians operating thousands of social media accounts.

The report also offered some of the first detailed analyses of the role played by YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, and Instagram, owned by Facebook, in the Russian campaign, as well as anecdotes about how Russians used other social media platforms -- Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest -- that have gotten relatively little scrutiny. The Russian effort also used email accounts from Yahoo, Microsoft’s Hotmail service and Google’s Gmail.

The authors, while reliant on data provided by technology companies, also highlighted the companies' “belated and uncoordinated response” to the disinformation campaign and, once it was discovered, for not sharing more with investigators. The authors urged the companies in the future to provide data in “meaningful and constructive” ways.

Facebook, for example, provided the Senate with copies of posts from 81 Facebook “Pages” and information on 76 accounts used to purchase ads, but it did not share posts from other user accounts run by the IRA, the report says. Twitter, meanwhile, has made it challenging for outside researchers to collect and analyze data on its platform through its public feed, the researchers said.

Google submitted information in an especially difficult way for the researchers to handle, providing content such as YouTube videos but not the related data that would have allowed a full analysis. The YouTube information was so hard for the researchers to study, they wrote, they instead tracked the links to its videos from other sites in hopes of better understanding YouTube’s role in the Russian effort.

Facebook, Google and Twitter didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Facebook, Google and Twitter first disclosed last year that they had identified Russian meddling on their sites. Critics previously said it took too long to come to an understanding of the disinformation campaign, and that Russian strategies have likely shifted since then. The companies have awakened to the threat — Facebook, in particular, created a “war room” this fall to combat interference around elections — but none have revealed interference around the midterm elections last month on the scale of what happened in 2016.

The report expressed concern about the overall threat social media poses to political discourse within nations and among them, warning that companies once viewed as tools for liberation in the Arab world and elsewhere are now threats to democracy.

“Social media have gone from being the natural infrastructure for sharing collective grievances and coordinating civic engagement to being a computational tool for social control, manipulated by canny political consultants and available to politicians in democracies and dictatorships alike,” the report said.

Researchers also noted that the data includes evidence of sloppiness by the Russians that could have led to earlier detection, including the use of Russia’s currency, the ruble, to buy ads and Russian phone numbers for contact information. The operatives also left behind technical signatures in computerized logs, such as Internet addresses in St. Petersburg, where the IRA was based.

Many of the findings track, in general terms, work by other researchers and testimony previously provided by the companies to lawmakers investigating the Russian effort. But the fuller data available to the researchers offered new insights on many aspects of the Russian campaign.

The report traces the origins of Russian online influence operations to Russian domestic politics in 2009 and says that ambitions shifted to include U.S. politics as early as 2013 on Twitter. Of the tweets the company provided to the Senate, 57 percent are in Russian, with 36 percent in English and smaller amounts in other languages.

The efforts to manipulate Americans grew sharply in 2014 and every year after, as teams of operatives spread their work across more platforms and accounts, in order to target larger swaths of U.S. voters by geography, political interests, race, religion and other factors. The Russians started with accounts on Twitter, then added YouTube and Instagram before bringing Facebook into the mix, the report said.

Facebook was particularly effective at targeting conservatives and African Americans, the report found. More than 99 percent of all engagement -- meaning likes, shares and other reactions -- came from 20 “Pages” controlled by the IRA, including “Being Patriotic,” “Heart of Texas,” “Blacktivist” and “Army of Jesus.”

Together, the 20 most popular pages generated 39 million likes, 31 million shares, 5.4 million reactions and 3.4 million comments. Company officials told Congress that the Russian campaign reached 126 million people on Facebook and 20 million more on Instagram.

The Russians operated 133 accounts on Instagram, a photo-sharing subsidiary of Facebook, that focused mainly on race, ethnicity or other forms of personal identity. The most successful Instagram posts targeted African American cultural issues and black pride and were not explicitly political.

While the overall intensity of posting across platforms grew year by year -- with a particular spike during the six months after Election Day -- this growth was particularly pronounced on Instagram, which went from roughly 2,600 posts a month in 2016 to nearly 6,000 in 2017, when the accounts were shut down. Across all three years covered by the report, Russian Instagram posts generated 185 million likes and 4 million user comments.

Even though the researchers struggled to interpret the YouTube data submitted by Google, they were able to track the links from other sites to YouTube -- offering a “proxy” for understanding the role play by the video platform.

“The proxy is imperfect,” the researchers wrote, “but the IRA’s heavy use of links to YouTube videos leaves little doubt of the IRA’s interest in leveraging Google’s video platform to target and manipulate US audiences.”

The use of YouTube, like the other platforms, appears to have grown after Trump’s election. Twitter links to YouTube videos grew by 84 percent in the six months after the election, the data showed.

The Russians shrewdly worked across platforms as they refined their tactics aimed at particular groups, posting links across accounts and sites to bolster the influence operation’s success on each, the report shows.

“Black Matters US” had accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, Tumblr and PayPal, according to the researchers. By linking posts across these platforms, the Russian operatives were able to solicit donations, organize real-world protests and rallies and direct online traffic to a website that the Russians also controlled.

The researchers found that when Facebook shut down the page in August 2016, a new one called “BM” soon appeared with more cultural and fewer political posts. It tracked closely to the content on the @blackmatterus Instagram account.

The report found operatives also began buying Google ads to promote the “BlackMatters US” website with provocative messages such as, “Cops kill black kids. Are you sure that your son won’t be the next?” The related Twitter account, meanwhile, complained about the suspension of the Facebook page, accusing the tech company of “supporting white supremacy.”



Hush....an alias

 

Thanks Hush I was just looking at another story about this but yours is more detailed and from a better source.

But here's the thing that jumped out at me right away. The Republicans control the Senate and this committee and they still came up with these findings.

 

Love the spin. Wonder who will run against the Russians in 2020.

 

SUSPEND DISBELIEF SUSPEND DISBELIEF WE MUST SUSPEND DISBELIEF BECAUSE TRUMP!!!!

Reason my fucking ass. What a hoot.

 

Trump and Republicans are pro-police. How the hell was "Cops kill black kids" seeking "to benefit the Republican Party -- and specifically Donald Trump"???!!

 

Have you considered listening to some soothing music while trickling water runs over cantilevering rocks down a slow but steady brook in the background?

You folks better find something to settle your nerves and such sooner than later.

 

I think it was the Dallas Morning Star that wrote a series of articles about all the Russian money that poured into just Republicans in general. Hundred Million or so. Then the Russians bought the NRA. Then they managed to tip the balance to Trump in an election that was that close.

And you call yourself and an American and support that?

Bullshit.

 

Funniest shit yet.

Let's see. First, shooter recalled almost all of the publicity on trump, from the beginning, was negative. You know, his sexual misadventures, his bankruptcies his shady business practices, his eating habits, his odd hair and skin and so forth.

It's hard to believe those negative stories were part of the russian plan to support trump into office while stopping the anointed one from realizing her destiny.

Second, shooter finds it incredible that any self respecting despicable would believe for one second that any truck driving, beer drinking, gun toting, gaping hind in flyover country, genetically ambiguous, deplorable could be realistically capable of creating (much less using) any Facebook, Twitter, or Google account, not to mention, getting their political information from social media. You know, the whole too fucking stupid to do anything but manual labor thingy.

Third, if true, despicables must now be truly terrified. The Russians did not let the Mueller investigation get started with so little opposition unless they could control the information gathered by Mueller about Russian collusion. And if they did control the information then Mueller has shit on trump, but the DNC, Clinton and most of the Obama administration are heading for jail.

 

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation.

Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million.

Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors.

Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

The New York Times’s examination of the Uranium One deal is based on dozens of interviews, as well as a review of public records and securities filings in Canada, Russia and the United States. Some of the connections between Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation were unearthed by Peter Schweizer, a former fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and author of the forthcoming book “Clinton Cash.” Mr. Schweizer provided a preview of material in the book to The Times, which scrutinized his information and built upon it with its own reporting.

 

BUT TRUMP

BUT THE RUSSIANS

 

The Trump supporters who exist inside their own little fact free plastic bubbles are missing this but this story is really starting to catch fire as the media continues to analyze just how extensive and successful the Russian propaganda campaign IS (because it is still happening right now.) Certainly enough to tip the election to Trump. And that the propaganda campaign by the Russians actually increased after Trump was elected in attempts to support him.

 

.... and we can all see how that's working out for them..........

 

Then get down on your knees and thank the Russians cuz if Obama 2.0 was in office right now, we wouldn't have the economy we have, we wouldn't have record low unemployment, ISIS would still be terrorizing countries all over Europe (and probably here in the US as well), China would still be screwing us over, probably worse than they were before, and so much more.

 

Oh fucking hilarious. We keep seeing the same false propaganda right here on our little forum that the Russians are pushing. Which ought to tell us something about who we are really dealing with around here.

 

Hush....an alias

 

That sure is rich...considering the source.

 

Report finds Russian disinformation campaign targeted Mueller

https://thehill.com/policy/technolo...sian-disinformation-campaign-targeted-mueller

 

God bless the Russians and thier whores . Beautiful whores

 

Sounds like they're zeroing in on some of you...

Russian disinformation teams targeted Robert S. Mueller III, says report prepared for Senate:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...t-prepared-for-senate/ar-BBR6n44?ocid=U220DHP

Months after President Trump took office, Russia’s disinformation teams trained their sights on a new target: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there.

The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram — which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal — claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with “radical Islamic groups.”

Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday.

One of the reports, written by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and network analysis firm Graphika, became public when The Washington Post obtained it and published its highlights Sunday. The other report was by social media research firm New Knowledge, Columbia University and Canfield Research.

Together the reports describe the Russian campaign with sweep and detail not before available. The researchers analyzed more than 10 million posts and messages on every major social media platform to understand how the Russians used American technology to build a sprawling online disinformation machine, with each piece playing a designated role while supporting the others with links and other connections.

The reports also underscore the difficulty of defeating Russian disinformation as operatives moved easily from platform to platform, making the process of detecting and deleting misleading posts impossible for any company to manage on its own.

Twitter hit political and journalistic elites. Facebook and its advertising targeting tools divided the electorate into demographic and ideological segments ripe for manipulation, with particular focus on energizing conservatives and suppressing African Americans, who traditionally are more likely to vote for Democrats.

YouTube provided a free online library of more than 1,100 disinformation videos. PayPal helped raise money and move politically themed merchandise designed by the Russian teams, such as “I SUPPORT AMERICAN LAW ENFORCEMENT” T-shirts. Tumblr, Medium, Vine, Reddit and various other websites also played roles.

“We hope that these reports provide clarity for the American people and policymakers alike, and make clear the sweeping scope of the operation and the long game being played,” said Renee DiResta, research director at New Knowledge.

Social media researchers said the weaponization of these sites and services highlights the broadening challenge they face in combating the increasingly sophisticated tactics of Russia and other foreign malefactors online.

“Some of the platforms that don’t have as much traffic, but still have highly engaged communities, are the most vulnerable to a challenge like misinformation,” said Graham Brookie, head of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “They don’t have the resources to dedicate to making their platforms more resilient.”

One unexpected star of the new reports Monday was Facebook’s photo-sharing subsidiary Instagram. Over the years of the disinformation campaign, Instagram generated responses on a scale beyond any of the others — with 187 million comments, likes and other user reactions, more than Twitter and Facebook combined.

But it had been the least scrutinized of the major platforms before this week as lawmakers, researchers and journalists focused more heavily on Facebook, Twitter and Google. Instagram’s use by the Russian teams more than doubled in the first six months after Trump’s election, the researchers found. It also offered access to a younger demographic and provided easy likes in a simple, engaging format.

“Instagram’s appeal is that’s where the kids are, and that seems to be where the Russians went,” said Philip N. Howard, head of the Oxford research group.

The report anchored by New Knowledge found that the Russians posted on Instagram 116,000 times, nearly double the number of times they did on Facebook, as documented in the report. The most popular posts praised African American culture and achievement, but the Russians also targeted this community for voter suppression messages on multiple platforms, urging boycotts of the election or spreading false information on how to vote.

On Monday, the NAACP called for a week-long boycott of Facebook starting Tuesday, saying the company’s business practices — and the spread of “disingenuous portrayals of the African American community” on its site — should prompt further congressional investigation.

Facebook said in a statement that it has “made progress in helping prevent interference on our platforms during elections, strengthened our policies against voter suppression ahead of the 2018 midterms, and funded independent research on the impact of social media on democracy.”

Tumblr pointed to a November blog post, which said the company took down Russian-related disinformation ahead of this year’s election. PayPal said it “works to combat and prevent the illicit use of our services.” Twitter said it has made “significant strides since 2016 to counter manipulation of our service.” Reddit said it is “always evaluating and evolving our approaches to detecting malicious activity and have grown our team significantly since 2016.” Medium did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The emergence of Mueller as a significant target also highlights the adaptability of the Russian campaign. He was appointed in May 2017 as special counsel to investigate allegations of Russian influence on the Trump campaign. In that role, he has indicted on criminal charges a Kremlin-linked troll farm called the Internet Research Agency and others affiliated with the disinformation campaign.

A Clemson University research team, not affiliated with either of the reports released Monday, found that the Russians tweeted about Mueller more than 5,000 times, including retweets first posted by others. Some called for his firing, while others mocked him as incompetent and still others campaigned for the end of his “entire fake investigation.”

The report by New Knowledge highlighted the focus on Mueller and fired FBI director James B. Comey, who was falsely portrayed as “a dirty cop.”

The Russian operatives often spread jokes to undermine the investigations into their disinformation campaign, the researchers found. One showed Democrat Hillary Clinton saying, “Everyone I don’t like is A Russian Hacker.” Another showed a woman in a car talking to a police officer, with the caption, “IT’S NOT MY FAULT OFFICER, THE RUSSIANS HACKED MY SPEEDOMETER.”

At one point, shortly after the 2016 election, the Russian operatives also began to make fun of Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg for saying that social media didn’t have an impact on Trump’s victory — a claim for which he later apologized.

On Capitol Hill, top Democrats said Monday that the revelations in the pair of Senate reports underscored the need to study social media and consider fresh regulation in order to stop Russia and other foreign actors from manipulating American democracy in future elections.

“I think all the platforms remain keenly vulnerable, and I don’t have the confidence yet companies have invested the resources and people power necessary to deal with the scope of the problem,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

In particular, Schiff described the Instagram revelations as “surprising,” contradicting the data and testimony Facebook previously provided to the committee. “If Facebook was unaware of it, it’s one problem,” he said. “If they were aware of it and didn’t share that information, that’s a completely different problem.”

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the committee that asked the researchers to analyze the tech companies’ data, said the findings show “how aggressively Russia sought to divide Americans by race, religion and ideology.”

Every other GOP lawmaker on the Senate Intelligence Committee declined to comment or didn’t respond.

Facebook executives barely discussed the role of Instagram when they testified before Congress late last year about Russian meddling. At the time, the company said that the Russian campaign reached 126 million people on Facebook and 20 million on Instagram.



Hush....an alias

 

One thing that is getting a lot of attention right now is that the Russian efforts to suppress the black vote is simply uncanny how closely that dove tailed into Trump's campaign and some of Trump's statements.

Like the Church Lady says Well my how convenient.