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[–]Vaxthrul[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

credit for this post goes to Reddit, u/rightwingdings

New York Times' summary of the Russian troll factory directed by Putin (published in 2015, even before the election):

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

The trolls are measured on how many likes they get and know that bringing up "guns and gays" with conservatives is one of the guaranteed ways:

“That could always get you a couple of dozen likes.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-trolls-schooled-house-cards-185648522.html

Russian accounts didn't create BLM; they specifically spread "fake news" about Black Lives Matter targeting Republicans in key states, who then made it viral for free (screenshots in article):

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/russian-trolls-tea-party-news-twitter-account

Russia's pattern that Facebook's chief security officer noticed (from the article above):

post about the Russians’ political ad spend on Facebook, the company’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, observed that the ads and accounts identified as being linked to the $100,000 buy “appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights.”

Russia's accounts setting up Texas secession protests and anti-Hillary Clinton protests:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/350787-russian-linked-facebook-group-asked-texas-secession-movement-to-be

Russia-backed groups trying to set up a California secession referendum ballot initiative:

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/17/calexit-leaders-drop-ballot-measure-to-break-from-the-u-s/

Russian accounts pretending to be American Muslims:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-russians-impersonated-real-american-muslims-to-stir-chaos-on-facebook-and-instagram

Russian accounts pretending to be "Boston Antifa": https://imgur.com/fVzvOMM

"Russian trolls trying to sow discord in NFL kneeling debate":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmaker-russian-trolls-trying-to-sow-discord-in-nfl-kneeling-debate/2017/09/27/5f46dce0-a3b0-11e7-ade1-76d061d56efa_story.html

Russia's accounts targeting US vets:

The Oxford University study found that three websites with Kremlin ties — Veteranstoday, Veteransnewsnow and Southfront — engaged in “significant and persistent interactions” with the U.S. military community,

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/354596-russia-targeted-us-troops-veterans-on-social-media-platforms-study-finds

You can even track the hashtags those Russian accounts try to get trending with the new Hamilton 68 project tracking Putin's propaganda efforts:

http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/

More screenshots of how obvious Russia's accounts are working on specific things like Ukraine, race relations in the US, Trump, Brexit: https://imgur.com/gallery/6flYH

One of the many ways Trump's campaign is accused of working with Russia's propaganda is giving them US voter data to target with the fake news and other tactics:

Steve Bannon on similar tactics to get young white males "radicalized":

the power of what he called “rootless white males” who spend all their time online.

And five years later when Bannon wound up at Breitbart, he resolved to try and attract those people over to Breitbart because he thought they could be radicalized in a kind of populist, nationalist way. And the way that Bannon did that, the bridge between the angry abusive gamers and Breitbart and Pepe was Milo Yiannopoulous, who Bannon discovered and hired to be Breitbart’s tech editor.

http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-white-gamers-seinfeld-joshua-green-donald-trump-devils-bargain-sarah-palin-world-warcraft-gamergate-2017-7

[–]Abraxas 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Do you think they knew it was Russian propaganda? Even if they did, I doubt they would care... plausible deniability and all that. Modern social media platforms have their heads so far up advertisers assholes that they make it incredibly simple for the troll farms to affect the crowd psychology.

[–]tardinator 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I came here to say this after reading the article. Did they realize or were they "colluding"? This needs to be the question.