Professional Russian Trolling Exposed 276
An anonymous reader writes: Today the New York Times published a stunning exposé revealing the strategies used by one of the Web's greatest enemies: professional, government-backed "internet trolls." These well-paid agent provocateurs are dedicated to destroying the value of the Internet as an organizing and political tool. The trolling attacks described within are mind-boggling -- they sound like the basis of a Neal Stephenson novel as much as they do real life -- but they all rely on the usual, inevitable suspects of imperfect security and human credulity.
America next? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're Talking About a Different Scale (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just about time to drag the American organized political trolling on sites like reddit, twitter, and tumblr into the open too, right?
Well, astroturfing is no new tactic [wikipedia.org] but ... I think what this article deals with is scale. 400 clearly skilled (bilingual at the least) individuals running multiple catfish personalities online day in and day out ... the whole thing on a budget of $400k a month? That level and size is probably unparalleled by ... say, Digg's conservative idiots [wikipedia.org].
You have one entity orchestrating the 12 hours a day work of 400 individuals on topics that are pro-Russian and tangentially pro-Russian. They are sophisticated enough to "hit play" at a certain time to unfold a natural disaster or assassination or anything to destabilize/confuse a region and they do so over many accounts on multiple social media platforms. They create video, screenshots, websites, etc. And they use proxies and sufficiently sophisticated means to appear to be disjoint at first glance.
They appear to have run an exercise on a rubber plant explosion in Louisiana for no other discernible purpose than to test out their new super powers or demonstrate their abilities to their customers/leaders.
Frankly put, I'm unaware of "American organized political trolling" that rivals this. This is paid. This is tightly controlled. This is prepared. This is unified. American organized political trolling is just a run-of-the-mill monkey shitfight with the occasional Koch Bros/Soros website (usually easily sourceable) thrown in.
Now if you can point me to a faked ISIS attack on American soil right before an election that was done by some political group stateside, I'd be interested to hear about it.
Re:You're Talking About a Different Scale (Score:5, Funny)
> Astroturfing
Cosmoturfing
Re:You're Talking About a Different Scale (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly put, I'm unaware of "American organized political trolling" that rivals this.
Americans are quick to believe the Official Narrative, no matter how absurd. Mass media is the professional 'troll' that gets people to fight each here.
Again, you're conflating two things that are significant enough that I don't see a simple one-to-one comparison here.
The clear difference here is that the trolls in the article are a nebulous entity whereas the media trolls are not. I know to laugh at Glenn Beck and Katie Couric. I know who they are. I recognize their blubbering stupid talking heads. They're a trainwreck of lies and half truths. On the other hand, you can't stop google from returning search results that confirm what you're looking for. When it's a "trending hastag" on Twitter, you can't figure out if it's legit or not. How do I know that podonski432 on Twitter is the same individual on Youtube named ashirefort posting videos of an explosion is the same person retweeting podonski432 and adding ashirefort's video to their tweet?
Mass media doesn't employ subterfuge and I sure as hell can stop reading the New York Post & Washington Times & CNSNews & Huffington Post and all that other drivel. I can't, however, identify easily that this account on Twitter is just the new troll account that tricked me last time.
You do know that it's news if the New York Times is caught lying or spreading known falsities, right? I watched Jon Stewart hold a "reporters" feet to the WMD fire on one of his recent episodes. There's no self-policing mechanism like that among trolls.
Re:You're Talking About a Different Scale (Score:4, Interesting)
In a way this is right, trolling and astroturfing are done on the mass media via PR mouthpieces, press releases and advertising.
I think the difference is that it's so professional and done with such public transparency (ie, you can call the PR office and get mailed a press kit, nobody pretends they're not doing it) that it lacks the kind of nefarious, ministry of propaganda kind of dishonesty that a state-sponsored organized astroturfing campaign has.
I just don't think those tactics would work all that well within the US. It seems like whenever an organization DOES try an astroturfing campaign ("Citizens for Enhanced Comcast Monopoly") it gets spotted so quickly for what it is that it seems to achieve negative results.
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It seems like whenever an organization DOES try an astroturfing campaign ("Citizens for Enhanced Comcast Monopoly") it gets spotted so quickly for what it is that it seems to achieve negative results.
Not when it is framed as an *Exciting new customer experience at lower than low prices that only we, with our grand national infrastructure and 5 billion channels, can provide*. This is why Comcast already enjoys its monopoly it holds now.
This stuff is all over the place. Somebody just got named. And who knows?
Re:You're Talking About a Different Scale (Score:4)
There is a big difference. The Russian trolls are pretending to be your average Mr. Normal posting on the internet, hiding the fact that they are employed by the Kremlin and spreading Russian propaganda.
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Re:You're Talking About a Different Scale (Score:4, Interesting)
The GP was questioning the existence of a US counter-example of what we see regularly in the Russian/Ukraine mess (where Russia blatantly lies about what's happening on the ground, using all sorts of classical methods in their media, including the professional trolls discussed in TFA). I said that we had a close example that we could examine - where something that happened on the ground and was well understood by everyone in defense and intelligence, right up the food chain to the White House, was never the less lied about for weeks in the service of spinning for the imminent election. They sent people like Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton out to deliberately troll, multiple times, in order to muddy the waters and distract from the fact that what happened was taking the fun out of part of their re-election campaign narrative.
Re:You're Talking About a Different Scale (Score:5, Informative)
You are the one spreading lies. There have been numerous investigations into Benghazi and it has been concluded that "The CIA talking points were flawed but still "painted a mostly accurate picture of the IC's analysis of the Benghazi attacks at that time, in an unclassified form and without compromising the nascent [FBI] investigation of the attacks."" and "that the interagency coordination process on the talking points followed normal, but rushed coordination procedures and that there were no efforts by the White House or any other Executive Branch entities to 'cover-up' facts or make alterations for political purposes." Seriously, let's put this BS to bed. [senate.gov]
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You're just being partisan.
You're right. Sending out Susan Rice to lie to reporters in an attempt to spin a completely preventable horror show at the consulate so as to prevent it from further tainting an upcoming election ... that's party-neutral. It's pointing out the lies that's partisan, right? Yeah.
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But in your imagination, I have? THAT'S how you make it more comfortable, so
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Everyone on the US side new within hours (even as it was happening) exactly what had occurred.
The CIA disagrees, and the opinion of the CIA at the time is demonstrated by what they actually included in their summary talking points bulletin. That it was a well planned attack was a completely obvious hypothesis, one among numerous competing hypotheses, that was not substantiated by collaborating facts within the time frame you are talking about.
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The CIA disagrees, and the opinion of the CIA at the time is demonstrated by what they actually included in their summary talking points bulletin.
No, the CIA reported on outside-the-embassy protests elsewhere, and made some conjecture along those lines in the hours immediately following the event. They (and the FBI, and DoD) briefed the White House (and thus State) on the reality of the event (a planned, organized event run by well armed, hardened militants) not even 24 hours later. But for days and weeks afterwards, the administration continued to try to sell the "It's all because of this vile video, see..." fairy tale. Why? Because that deliberate
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You do realize that there have been subpoenas for the email records out for literally years, which have been being ignored? That when handing over the email records (finally), Hillary failed to hand over all email records as she was ordered by the investigation to do? When completely stonewalling the investigation, is it any wonder that the investigation is taking forever?
Re:America next? (Score:5, Insightful)
the USA has better free speech protections. therefore, nonsense on the internet has less power
i am certain there is organized political trolling in the USA as well, by the government and by organizations with agendas, but it is less effective in the west
countries with less free speech protection (like china and their 50 cent bullshit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5... [wikipedia.org] ) will rely on this sort of organized trolling as a means of persuasion and control, domestically and internationally. more than the west, simply because the west has less need to manipulate these whisper campaigns because nonsense on the internet has less power because are exposed to it more in a free speech environment and are more resistant to it. they simply have better trained more critical minds
the governments of authoritarian countries fear provocative opinions more, therefore they engage in this sort of nonsense more, because they view controlling people's opinions as important. their people wind of living in a walled garden of controlled opinion with less options to consider, and a state that officially endorses and pushes weak minded opinions and fear. the west simply doesn't give a fuck. the opinions and lies of random morons on the internet is exactly that, and most people can see that for what it is. you have to live in a paranoid insecure state to give much credence to inflammatory bullshit from random whispers on the internet
in the end, it weakens these countries, because you are breeding people with weak, easily manipulated minds. people in the west simply have better and more healthy bullshit meters. simply because when you can say anything, people do
expose a socially and psychologically normal person to 4chan for a month, and what do you get? a crackpot? no, a jaded experienced mind that can see bullshit coming from a mile away
exposure to the kind of thinking and commentary that resembles mental illness, amongst the more rational choices of speech, gives one a more critical eye and healthy skepticism. the ability to see the difference between credible words and manipulated words
but in countries where paranoid schizophrenic theories are actually supported and endorsed by the government's official media agencies as a means of control, you breed people to live in panic and fear. weak minds. it's a shame to weaken people's minds like this. russia, china, iran, etc., reap a side effect of their manipulations: a general population more susceptible to idiocies most westerners (not all) would easily reject, simply because westerners (even though some choose to stay within ideological bubbles and never consider other sides out of prideful ignorance, some personality types are universal, but limited) can, and do, see other sources of narrative, good or bad
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Nonsense has a power all its own.
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you're not kidding
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You still get people requiring that all media is only allowed to tell The Truth. They don't realize that a state that has the power to outlaw lies and by that controlling what is published and what is not published will publish nothing but lies or at least will censor much sooner uncomfortable truths than meaningless bullshit.
The only way to guarantee that the truth is allowed to be published is to also allow bullshit to be published by allowing to publish whatever you want. If you want to be told nothing b
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well said and absolutely correct
furthermore, it trains critical minds to be exposed to everything. in this world, there is only one guarantor of truth: you. and you only get a good mind that can smell out bullshit by being exposed to all the different bullshit
although, there are minds that would have been great, in less free countries, but those minds are weak and flabby: hopelessly cynical
it is just as dangerous to reject everything as it is to be naive and believe everything. and such once-great minds get
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there are no absolutes anywhere. it would be easy to find a person more level headed in russia and china than some people in the usa. but i'm talking about trends and averages
i'm talking about the media environment and what it does to a critical mind. an environment where anything goes means that critical mind is exercised more, exposed to more bullshit and gets more sophisticated and powerful
but a walled garden, where a government controls more of what is officially (and unofficially, as the existence of g
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it's a continuum in all countries
1. the naive, who believe what the official channels say
2. the genuinely critical and intellectually honest
3. the hopelessly cynical. too much automatic distrust is not intelligent, it's actually a personality disorder hobbling in the same way naivete is, to automatically reject all info, even something that might be true
the point is, in the west, those who are genuinely critical have more information sources to peruse, and therefore are better able to find out the truth. in
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and you are an authority because...
Re:America next? (Score:5, Insightful)
it's a continuum. the west falls for plenty of bullshit. it's just that, on the average, the west falls for less
every single example of the west falling for shit you just gave me, can also be shown in countries with less free speech. and they fall for *more*
the perfect is not the enemy of the good. if you gauge all countries against an ideal perfection of a populace of everyone being perfectly rational critical minds, which does not exist and never will, then your criticisms are useless
the west simply edges out countries with less free speech because they train more critical minds. the west is not perfect and never will be. it's just that, until countries that now have very little free speech get more, the west will simply do better than them, not perfect
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The majority of people on this world either lack critical thinking and reasoning skills (not totally their fault they are conditioned since early childhood), or have the ability to ignore/go against it since they are more concerned with their own well being and daily troubles than worry about the issues troubling humanity as a whole.
I'll agree that the majority of people lack well developed critical thinking and reasoning skills, but I do wonder why you equate "being more concerned with your own well being and daily issues [than with some nebulously defined future state]" with a lack of critical thought? All things being equal, I wish our species as a whole nothing but the best now, and tomorrow, but if you tell me that, say, putting a bullet in my head right now is going to make the world a better place for "future generations," my we
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there is propaganda and there always will be. but in a more free speech environment, you breed more critical minds, because you expose the minds to more bullshit. as opposed to walled gardens in countries with less free speech, which breeds weak minds
that's all i'm saying. the west is not perfect and never will be. it's just *better*
and people like you seem to think because you can't get perfection, then everything is the same. but it's not the same. therefore your criticisms are useless
more free speech mea
Don't forget slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just about time to drag the American organized political trolling on sites like reddit, twitter, and tumblr into the open too, right?
I've often wondered about certain comment threads on slashdot. Framing certain actions as "hijacking the conversation for propaganda purposes" seems to hit the Bayesian priors higher than just "a lot of people really feel that way".
The conversations attached to Uber articles are weird, not at all what one would expect.
The recent one about California raising the minimum wage was suspect: affecting roughly 2.4% of wage earners, you would expect posts like "has no effect because costs are passed on to consumers", "raising everyone's wages make costs rise to compensate", and so on to be roundly debunked by the first person to google some numbers.
It's worse around election time. In a presidential election year, about 6 weeks beforehand we start to get framing posts - some of which are quite insidious. "I agree with him on *that* issue, but everything else he stands for is batshit crazy". It seemed like every response to a Ron Paul was that way: his immediate position is OK, but it puts the "batshit crazy" idea into people's minds with no supporting evidence.
...and it's starting to happen for Rand Paul as well.
Then there's the visibility-massaging techniques: posting an opinion that's not *quite* right just to get people to respond so that text further down gets pushed below the fold where no one can see it. Posting a definition that's not *quite* right so that people argue the definition back and forth and avoid the core issues, and of course modding things down.
I sometimes monitor certain posts and see them modded down... only to see them modded up a few hours later. That indicates to me that there are people trying to promote an agenda with the moderation system, but get overruled by the general population.
In addition to participating in the conversation, take a step back and look at the overall context of the conversation some time. Instead of just responding, think about the reasoning behind *why* the person made the post that they did.
It is sometimes quite enlightening.
Re:Don't forget slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, sorry, the Pauls take great positions on one or two issues and the rest of them are batshit crazy. That's a reflection of reality, not a conspiracy theory.
That said, I might actually vote for Rand, because I think it's time for the pendulum to swing back to the other end of the spectrum for a while. Not all of the changes will be for the best, assuming he manages to make any, but we really need to take a break from the national security/world police routine.
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Er, I think what you are observing is just called debate. People disagree with you about Uber? No conspiracy theory needed for that - perhaps your views about what other people think just aren't as accurate as you had believed. Rand Paul? Likewise.
There have been delusional people with nonsensical arguments on the internet since the internet was invented. As with terrorism, this recent rise of "you disagree with me thus you must be a secret government paid sockpuppet" is by far more damaging than anything p
Care to explain that? (Score:3)
As with terrorism, this recent rise of "you disagree with me thus you must be a secret government paid sockpuppet" is by far more damaging than anything paid trolls could actually do by themselves.
I'm just pointing things out and asking the question. Your response seems to be "In my opinion, it's not so".
I posted specific examples so that people could discuss the issues and point out problems with the conclusion. Several, in fact.
You took the most vulnerable example and framed it in a "conspiracy theorist" context, and used it to frame the entire position.
That's fine, it's a good use of rhetoric, but it adds nothing new to the conversation other than "in my opinion...".
Would you care to formulate a r
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None of your examples support your thesis. I've been reading and posting to Slashdot for 15 years. People posting "an opinion that's not *quite* right just to get people to respond" is pretty much the lifeblood of Slashdot, how else would you test out ideas and discover they were wrong? Heck, in another story I'm getting my ass kicked right now because I didn't know that light Amer
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I surf too much on the web ;-) and from this perspective must say that I highly doubt that there are organized US trolls. Or at least, if there are some, then they are much harder to recognize. Russian trolls are easy to spot, they come in troves and swamp news media forums. They don't have to be sneaky, because the 1x1 of political propaganda is to simply repeat a complete falsehood over and over. Works all the time.
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Shit, they're onto us! (Score:2)
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is anybody pretending that corporations and politicians aren't already effectively doing the same thing?
Only they pretty it up with foundations and think tanks who put out position papers to benefit the talking points of the people paying for them.
Propaganda comes in many forms. And from many sources.
And even some of the people who will be hand-wringing about this propaganda will be endorsing some other stuff.
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Swarms of unemployed people attempting to influence discussion online?
No. Our corporations and politicians aren't that smart, or well organized. They may be malicious but I don't think they've got the gumption to properly be this corrupt and evil.
Read this (Score:5, Informative)
The story of ACORN [wikipedia.org] is a perfect example of how media manipulators manufactured a scandal -- literally creating reality for movement conservatives -- in order to shut the group down. To this day, some GOP congress critters are unaware that ACORN is defunct. The interesting thing is, the more outraged a person is (politically), the easier they are to manipulate. It is all rather ironic.
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Read Trust me, I'm Lying [amazon.com] -- it is a book by a self-confessed media manipulator who got depressed and [...]
Especially read the Amazon comments about that book, including the one that claims that right there on the Amazon page are patterns of manipulation of reviews and ratings of the book that suggest he is cynically trying to manipulate people to make a pile of dollars, and hasn't actually:
[...] left the industry.
Re:Read this (Score:4, Informative)
The Attorneys General of several states, various government agencies, and a couple of independent analysis all agreed that the original videos show no indication of what you called "really ad things." The journalists even admitted their wrongdoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
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Let me just copy/paste the relevant bit here then.
"The California Attorney General granted immunity to O'Keefe and Giles in exchange for their raw videos shot at three California ACORN offices. Its comparison of the raw videos with the released versions found that the published videos had been heavily edited to misrepresent the workers and the situations so as to suggest criminal intent and activity."
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Well, in theory. Russia sort of is a despotic shithole where success means being jailed/murdered so your assets and company can be annexed by one of Putin's business buddies.
You are basically right. Russia is sort of beephole where crablike Putin jails the oligarchs etc. Problem is that the side being jailed is not an angel, too. Especially - if the other side is not only the oligarch but the 5th column too. I had some positive emotions towards jailed Khodorkovski, jailed Bolotnaya square demonstrators etc. Now I have no positive emotions: I've seen what kind of people they are.
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While they are really mostly Jews, I don't link it with a nationality. I know enough good Russians with inflammation of the fifth paragraph (Soviet euphemism for Jews)
I blame the liberal idea as a whole and "Invisible hand" as a part of it.
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It's very real (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at any site, twitter, instagram, facebook, reddit. If you post something about say MH17 and the information about the Russians being involved, all of a sudden the trolls come out about Ukrainian aggression, whores in Kiev etc. As the TFA indicates, this can create panic considering how hooked people are on Social Media but it'll also be more than anything else, the death of anonymity on the Web. Why? because people on Social Media sites will demand it because of the trolling activities and having to filter through a bunch of propaganda and targeted misdirection.
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Just block the fuckers and stop worrying about stupid shit already. The have a button for that. Unless you WANT to gather these trolls as active followers, then you're all set! Here's a tip; make websites, don't live on them. When you have more important things to do, then Twatter and Farcebook look like what they really are; huge motherfucking wastes of time to people who are creative.
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I see the score comes down. It means that the trolls are already here. And they try to use their moderator points instead of posting the proof of Russian involvement. And they are not Russian ones.
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Yes, see, the moderation and replies to this post are quite disturbing.
This troubles me greatly. Internet debate is being shut down on the internet, but not by paid Russian trolls. I have yet to see proof of such things happening on Slashdot, and the article itself largely draws blanks with regards to English-language interference.
Debate is being shut down by an army of people who automatically assume any position they disagree with w.r.t Russia is held by "non people" and therefore anything they say can be
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Well you can listen to the Dutch and the BBC about a little thing called a Russian Buk missile system with photos that was seen in that area of the crash. A Buk isn't a simple system. It's very sophisticated and it takes months to learn how to use it so it's doubtful that it didn't have a Russian crew with it; or maybe that's why the 777 was accidentally shot down by it because of incompetence either way it's linked into the investigation. Of course blaming the Ukranians is of course the easy thing but h
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If you want the proof, it is damn easy to come up with. The problem is that Russians on general are programmed to see everything put out by the West as faked.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
There are a whole bunch of satellite photos of the launchers.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
There are photos of the launchers in Eastern Ukraine, though it is unclear who has them, it is clear that the Ukraine doesn't even own that launcher.
The rest of your points are Russian propaganda, there was no smell of formald
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I'll just point to the twitter account by the rebel leadership proudly claiming they shot down the plane, the numerous Russians captured in combat on the ground, the signals and radiotraffic, the eye witness accounts of the Buk missile system being moved to Ukraine, and the open support by Russia for the rebels.
Did they hand over missile systems to barely trained rebels so they could use them against the Ukrainian airforce? That's a very likely scenario, given all that's known at the moment.
However, the inq
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You mean a woman in SPb that had not received her 30 silver pieces from Putinists for trolling contract? Ha-ha-ha.
I don't state that Putin's trolls are not existent. I am just tired as [beep] from trolls from the opposite side. You understand that during 1917-2015 we Russians have trained to ignore the propaganda.
Q: Radio states that there is a plenty of food in Soviet Union, but my fridge is empty.
A: Feed your fridge from the radio.
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Yes, Comrade.
Q: Why the Soviet Food Program is named Complex?
A: Because everything complex consists of Real and Imaginary parts.
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There actually hasn't been any so far. All you had is punditry from various sides. Dutch investigators specifically avoided releasing any of their materials as to avoid pundits making it worse again. They want a solid case before they publish anything.
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Wait for Dutch investigators to come up with the actual evidence and then we will likely be able to have at least something to base . All you'll see before that is punditry.
Current body of evidence is entirely inconclusive on all points but #1, answer to which is "royalties in hard currency for a highly corrupt state".
Re:It's very real (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The separatists captured an Ukrainian BUK when they took over an Ukrainian air base
2. A BUK has in fact been seen and photographed travelling in the separatist controlled region of the Ukraine.
3. According to witness reports, a BUK system was moved into Russia the night after the incident
4. Immediately after the incident, separatists boasted on the Internet they shot down an Ukrainian Antonov
5. Bellingcat analysis of Russian provided satellite imagery intending to prove Ukraininan involvement have been proven to be fakes
Meanwhile Russian media has raised all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories trying to obfuscate the incident:
- A mysterious spanish air controller came out and admitted an Ukrainian fighter plane shot the aircraft down
- The pilot of the machine was an Ukrainian committing suicide to frame the separatists
- MH17 was full of corpses to begin with, pointing towards a fucking batshit crazy CIA operation
- It was an Ukrainian Sukoi
- It was an Ukrainian MIG
- It was an Ukrainian BUK
- It was an attempted assassination attempt on Putin
- There was an UFO in the vicinity (thanks for that one)
Seriously man...
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Why would ukraine even deploy a BUK that close to donbas when DPR doesn't have any air support? You realize it's an AA system, right?
It was in an airbase. It has to be deployed somewhere. I think airbases are one of the spots you might expect to find these things.
There were plenty of photographs, including that of Russian tanks, which were taken elsewhere; Georgia '08 in the case of the tank photos.
True. In the end it often comes down to, which sources do you trust? I prefer to trust independent sources like Reuters or Der Spiegel over RIA Novosti, which is controlled by the Russian government. like almost all Russian news sources.
It was neither Ukrainian nor an Antonov. It's funny because the day before, we were told DPR didn't have the capability to shoot down planes at that range.
Not until they captured a BUK.
What motive does donbas or Russia have for downing the airliner? What do they stand to gain by doing so? What does kiev stand to gain? Why are these questions never asked?
What motives do Donbas or Russia have? None. It obviously hurts their cause while it plays into the hands of the U
Why does /. only do bits about RUSSIAN trolls? (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't think you fully grasp how the Soviet Russia meme works...
This is serious (Score:2)
General "Buck" Turgidson: We can not allow a troll gap.
Lets keep facilitating this (Score:2)
Lets keep facilitating this by keeping unregistered anonymous account postings.
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Obviously there will be some that will register with throwaway emails but it's at least a deterrent for the occasional trolls that just comment for the sake of leaving negativity behind.
I moderate a small car-oriented forum and when we locked down posting to registered members, it cut the spam a great deal. We still have a great deal of bots registering accounts but given email verification requirement, only about 1 a week makes it through and ends up posting one or two messages before one of the mods delet
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Speaking as a leftist...Slashdot isn't my echo chamber. Odds are you either have batshit insane political views (like lots of people here) or have no good idea how to express them.
Ironic that such accusations should come from NYT (Score:2, Insightful)
Nearly the whole corporate media in the United States might be regarded as government trolling, and the government as a wing of big business.
Slashdot is beginning to look like an anti-Russian propaganda website these days. The Russians are small timers, compared to the kind of wall-to-wall propaganda you see in the United States. I have been there, and every time I visit, I'm pretty shocked. Compared to even the corporate media in Europe, the level of propaganda is is shocking. Sure there are problems here
Nyet (Score:5, Funny)
Now I know (Score:2)
Now I know why machines with Russian IP addresses so consistently try to break into my Wordpress sites. Two of three of those sites are in the formative stages and have almost no content. Russian professionals will provide, da?
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If your [write your blogging platform name here] site can be broken into - you should blame the authors of the blogging platform and it's OS, not us Russian hackers.
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AFAIK, Russian hackers not succeed. Yet.
I use the excellent "Wordfence" plugin, and it tells me these things. It also locks out IPs that fail at too many logins. So hacker gets botnet. But maybe Wordfence itself is Russian hack - nyet?
Only Putin Can (Score:2)
I for one thinking only best great Leader Putin can for with saving our global societies.
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While he wrestles a bear without a shirt on?
Foundations of Geopolitics (Score:2)
Foundations of Geopolitics [wikipedia.org] details a plan including riling up the riff raff in the US.
This book's author is supposedly âoeone of the chief ideologists of the [Putin] Kremlin,â [4pt.su]
Stanisaw Lem predicted this in 90's (Score:2)
I've read Stanisaw Lems essay predicting it in late nineties. The essay was published in a polish "PC Magazine" and then released as part of collection as "Bomba megabitowa" which was also released in English:
http://www.bookinstitute.pl/ks... [bookinstitute.pl]
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Sorry it wasn't translated to English - my mistake.
Kill Political Discourse, Undermine Democracy (Score:2)
This makes a lot of sense. Think of a site like Politico. You would think the country is filled with people who think that either Obama is a Muslim communist, or that George W was a warmongering moron trying to bring about the second coming. Most discussion boards end up devolving into a giant troll pit almost immediately. No matter what the topic, the Fox News and John Stewart crowds go for each others' jugulars, very often with no context to the article they are "commenting" upon.
One of the promises o
putin (Score:2)
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It seems you have not met professional trolls from the other side. You understand my word "other".
Re:par for the course (Score:4, Funny)
Holy crap, that guy. Cold fjord shows up to every Snowden/Manning/Wikileaks story like an unwanted sex offender to a family Christmas dinner.
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The professional Russian trolls are about as subtle.
Thing is, you don't need to be very good at trolling if you are working full time at it. You will always get the last word against people who has better things to do than to argue with paid trolls.
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Do we know Cold Fjord is not a Russian troll? After all, he's making American patriotism look bad by associating it with authoritarianism.
You will always get the last word, and then what? The point of such trolling is to disrupt, to keep people arguing over stu
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Blame America first (Score:5, Informative)
Four years ago the article said: "The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda."
There is not a more recent update as to what has become of that software development effort. But we do know, that in 2011 — when the article you are linking to was talking about America's evil plans in future tense — Russian government's Internet-propaganda machine was already up and running [theatlantic.com]:
Let me guess, USSR's Lavrenty Beria was a normal reaction to America's Joseph McCarthy in your opinion too?
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Let me guess, USSR's Lavrenty Beria was a normal reaction to America's Joseph McCarthy in your opinion too?
Our Lavrenty Beria was a curator of Russian nuclear project while your McCarthy was a politician and investigator ONLY.
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A few scores and mass intimidation, and that's probably still an underestimate. But that's still minor compared to Beria.
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"The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda."
"Gentlemen, we've given the prototype the codename 'Bennett Haselton.' At present it is capable of trolling up to 3.5 pbps across over a million sites at once."
"My god! Are you sure you can even control such a monster?!?!?"
"We're confident that our safeguards will hold and that it will not escape into the general internet."
"But what if it DOES? Can you even IMAGINE what could happen???"
"We're confident that our safeguards WILL HOLD."
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In fact, the article about these trolls, that I read earlier, contained lamentations about how bad their Russian is too...
For a job as an Internet Troll that would probably be counted as a benefit.
US' domestic propaganda ban was lifted in 2013 (Score:3)
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Citations? Given how enthusiastically US media supports the party currently in power, I doubt, you'll find any.
Not until there is another regime-change and dissent becomes patriotic (rather than racist) again.
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Well, hint. What is the side of trolls that can contaminate every blog in Russia with anti-Russian commentaries in pure Russian language if you Americans usually don't speak Russian?
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Russia has been late for pretty much every post Cold War new front party. Looks like they were late for this one as well. Israel's version of this was documented half a decade ago, and US version has been reported to be moving from using people to developing automated software back in 2011.
http://www.theguardian.com/tec... [theguardian.com]
Looks like they're late once again.
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I don't get too angry about Russian astroturfers on Slashdot anymore than I do the telemarketers that call me up when I'm trying to eat dinner. I can't imagine the job being any more fun, either. But it is sad.
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It likely is a paid troll comment. Pointing out that others do it so you doing it is ok is very poor thinking. Things that are not ok don't suddenly become ok just because others do the same thing.
That's silly (Score:2)
You're essentially claiming that it's in the best interest for US government trolls to out themselves as existing here on slashdot. Or maybe you're claiming he's a russian troll, just because he's stating the obvious? That's absurd, especially given how pro-russia trolling is virtually nowhere to be found on this site.
And "you doing it is ok"? How is that even relevant when the guy was posting as anon?
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Well, I see your message modded to -1. Basically it means that not only Ukrainian but US trolls spend here moderator points, too.
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They're probably past it, considering the original story on US moving to automated software to do this was published back in 2011.
Russia is way late if they're still using people for everything instead of automation.
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this good post comrade. deny, derail, and diminish.
we will spill the ketchup onto the french frys and salt the plates to make those capitalist pigs our bacon for breakfast!
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Neo-Fashists? There are NO neo-fashists in Russia. Half of them decided that Russians are "Mongolo-Katsaps" with spoiled genetics and must die. This half went to Ukraine to fight against Mongolo-Katsaps and for European values. The second one decided that their Russian people and Russia is Aryan and Uber Alles and went to Donbass to fight against the first part. So even the Russian neo-nazi sites have been closed. And while I hate Nazism I know both sides fight quite heroically.