Tumblr Takes Down 84 Russia-Linked Accounts (thehill.com) 118
On Friday, Tumblr said it has taken down 84 accounts used by Russia to spread disinformation ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The accounts were reportedly linked to the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency. The Hill reports: Special counsel Robert Mueller last month indicted 13 Russians and three Russian entities associated with the Internet Research Agency who are accused of orchestrating an elaborate plot to spread divisive messages to U.S. audiences on social media ahead of the election. The individuals face multiple charges, including identity theft and bank fraud. Tumblr said in a statement Friday that it provided information on the 84 Russia-linked accounts from its investigation to the Justice Department. Tumblr said the Russia-linked accounts were solely focused on spreading disinformation by posting "organic content." The company found no indication that the accounts purchased any advertisements. The platform says it will notify any users who interacted with the accounts and provide them with a list of usernames they engaged with. Tumblr also disclosed that it will keep a public record of usernames linked to the Internet Research Agency or other state-sponsored disinformation efforts for the sake of transparency.
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It means they weren't just publishing one account, it's enough to play whack-a-mole
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Because the left _Must_ push the russia narrative. it's all they have.
Apart from
- Sexual assault claims / treatment of women
- Tax records
- Treatment of immigrants
- Cops murdering black people
- Gun control and NRA campaign donations
- Transgender ban in the military
- Adultery and illegal campaign contributions to cover it up
we're ignoring the saud spending hundreds of millions, or the chinese spending hundreds of millions
Spending hundreds of millions on what specifically? And more to the point was it illegal and have to forwarded your evidence to Mueller?
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Sexual assault claims / treatment of women
Oh no Trump called fat women and fat and banged sluts. Who the hell cares?
Tax records
No one cares.
Treatment of immigrants
Illegal immigrants and their anchor babies who should all be catapulted across the border.
Cops murdering black people
I think you mean "law enforcement officers defending themselves from thugs."
Gun control and NRA campaign donations
The whole "NRA money boogyman" thing is bizarre. You think if the NRA vanished everybody would be like "well, time to shred the 2nd amendment and give up our guns!' If NARAL dissolved, would pro-choice people suddenly want to ban abortions?
Transgender ban in the military
The military needs
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Oh no Trump called fat women and fat and banged sluts. Who the hell cares?
Anyone who cares about the Office of the President and thinks it should be held to a higher standard.
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Like when Thomas Jefferson was banging his slaves? Like when JFK was banging sluts? Like when LBJ was showing everybody his dick? Like when Bill Clinton was using his intern as a humidor? "Dignity in the Office" has been the rare exception, not the rule.
Assume Trump raw dogged porn stars ten years ago. Now what? Impeach? What exactly do you want to happen over this?
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All of those people you mentioned are dead, and Bill Clinton was impeached.
I'm NOT saying that any of these are impeachable offenses. But it disgraces and degrades the office when it occurs.
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Okay. Consider the office disgraced and degraded. Can we move on now?
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Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives. Since he was acquitted of a crime by the Senate, he was not required to leave office.
Impeachment does not necessarily mean "thrown out of office." The House impeaches, the Senate conducts a trial.
Andrew Johnson, the only other President to be impeached, likewise passed a Senate trial, served the rest of his presidential term, and was later elected Senator.
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Because the left _Must_ push the russia narrative. it's all they have.
Well, that and 22 indictments with 5 guilty pleas [wikipedia.org] so far. But keep telling yourself that there's nothing there.
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Well it'd be really embarrassing for Mueller if he couldn't claim at least a few scalps, given the level of corruption that is the standard in politics and the level of manpower and unlimited resources at his disposal.
Ants put under a magnifying lens get burned. When you're working backwards from the conclusion, the more little ants you burn the better, since the pile that results can be pointed at by professional liars and be claimed to amount to something substantial.
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What they actually need to do is drop social justice and authoritarianism and go back to be the ones that protect the working class from the corporations.
Re: 84? (Score:1)
Sure. Cant be that the democRats are simply sorry losers and want to discredit Trumps presidency.
Becauze Cultural Marxism and perpetual war is morally superior.
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I think it's a dogwhistle for The Races Must Be Separated (I mean, what would cultural Marxism be? sharing in the benefits of each others cultures? Maybe? Perhaps they can define what it is they mean, but I doubt it). Unless they can come up with some kind of coherent definition, just take it as more of the same nationalist and white supremacist bullshit, with a new shiny label.
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"Cultural Marxism" is a conspiracy theory revolving around the very real "Frankfurt School" of social philosophy. Wikipedia has a decent list of resources about the philosophy. [wikipedia.org] It was founded by Marxists who were critical of Soviet Socialism and tried to bring in other schools of thought like sociology and psychoanalysis to try to "fill in the gaps" of classical Marxism. Much of their work came between 1920 and 1960.
Your Mileage May Vary as to whether you want to accept the Southern Poverty Law Center at fa
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84? (Score:5, Insightful)
So 84 accounts out of 345 million registered? Nothing in other words.
Science (Score:5, Funny)
You have no idea what sort of evil they were up to. They were probably claiming something horrible on Tumblr, like saying there are only two genders.
Can you even imagine how much that would disrupt Tumblr?
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three genders
You're about 2 orders of magnitude off there fam.
http://genderfluidsupport.tumblr.com/gender [tumblr.com]
Some personal favorites:
Ambonec: Identifying as both man and woman, yet neither at the same time
Anesigender: feeling like a certain gender yet being more comfortable identifying with another
Antegender: a protean gender which has the potential to be anything, but is formless and motionless, and therefore, does not manifest as any particular gender
Apconsugender: a gender where you know what it isn't, but not what it is
Re: Science (Score:1)
Yeah, that's the leftists theory. You can count any imaginary combinations and get any number of sexes, just by considering people's feelings about what they imagine themselves to be. If I identify myself as a bisexual dog that feels like a cat on every other day, etc. an honest doctor would prescribe me some lithium.
The Genders though belong strictly to grammar. In Spanish there is two, on German three, in Japanese perhaps just one.
Re: Science (Score:2)
You forgot my gender: Napoleon. Pronoun: Your Imperial Majesty.
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Some university level meme magic and traditionalism reminded America it was always great?
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Lets look at rates given by another astroturfing campaign AC.
Operation Earnest Voice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"50 user "operator" licenses, 10 sockpuppets controllable by each user"
Note the need for background, history and supporting details.
The need for a special secure VPN. Thats the vital trick only a government/mil can offer.
Private servers "based on the geographic area of operations" That needs other nations network support to
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All of the crap, runs straight smack into the face of an infinitely think concrete wall, people will believe what they want to believe. The internet propaganda tends to fail apart from bringing together people who want to believe particular things. What happens is people get exposed to all sorts of stuff, big truths, little truths, big lies, little lies, stupendously massive lies and they select from what is on offer and choose to believe what they want to believe, based upon the whole range of lies/truths
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So 84 accounts out of 345 million registered? Nothing in other words.
If they found 84, given that there are 345 million accounts, it's almost a certainty that there are others they missed.
Did they miss 10? Did they miss 500? 1000?
We don't know, but we have seen that a relatively small number of vocal shills can stir the pot and make trouble on a scale that's waaaaaay out of proportion to their numbers.
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Somebody pointed that out to Podesta on Meet the Press, iirc. Asked him how the Ruskies knew to target swing states, but the Hillary campaign did not. She just took for granted that she would win states like Wisconsin,
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Sure was, but isn't that last minute panic evidence that Hillary did not target those states?
Easily the worst of all time, as she lost to Trump. Speaking of Obama, he every-so-politely called Hillary out for her lazy hubris after the election: [politico.com]
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This is like asking how Trump's Twitter account can have any influence or power at all when it's just one single account out of 330 million active users.
These accounts are just entry points for fake news, memes and propaganda. What matters is not how many there are, but how far their messages spread and the influence they had. The number of accounts tells you nothing.
That's why social media is such a powerful tool. That's why Russia uses it. That's why western governments use it too - don't forget that the
can you show me what the disinformation was? (Score:1)
seriously, I'd like to know what the disinformation was.
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One candidate was giving great positive speeches to lots of real voters all over the USA.
Another candidate was talking to small numbers of the tame media on the east and west coast.
One candidate was able to give a speech that people in different states all over the USA enjoyed.
Another candidate spoke down to people all over the USA.
Subtle news topics that actual US voters like sharing.
To stop that US news from spreading facts
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Thats really what the CIA, NSA, GCHQ, MI6, MI6, FBI would have to block from internet users commenting on in real time.
All comments on the news.
All art and cartoons created from the news.
Freedom of speech would be removed from the internet in real time.
Have to wait days into the news cycle while an account is proved to be on a list of approved nations to upload an approved funny political cartoon?
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Because it's the dumbest conspiracy theory of all time, and the one with the most plot holes. Why would Russia try to get either party in the White House when both parties have been anti-Russian for a century. How is it that Putin was able to see years in advance that an asshole gameshow host could be president, yet completely unable to anticipat
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Putin's goal has been to destabilize the west and weaken it. Regardless of his involvement or not, it's hard to argue that Trump and Brexit have not done that. And it appears Russia was involved in trying to get the far right elected in France too, which would have had a similar effect.
Doesn't matter if you think Trump and/or Brexit are good things, what is undeniable is that they have created great turmoil and weakened relations between former allies. Brexit drove an even bigger wedge between the UK and EU
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So now Putin is not only responsible for Trump, but Brexit as well? Don't forget the poop in the hallway. [pinimg.com] As for France, their own intelligence agency debunked that conspiracy theory as soon as it happened, but that doesn't stop it from lumbering on with the rest of the Russiagate zo
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So... (Score:2)
What you're saying is that 84 accounts took a bit of a tumbl?
The IRA (Score:1)
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Just 84. Either the Russians are pathetic (Score:2, Insightful)
I just googled this,... (Score:5, Informative)
There's nearly 400 MILLION accounts on tumblr.
*400, MILLION*
So it's newsworthy that 80 accounts 'linked to Russians' were closed? Really? Really? For goodness sakes, there's over 300,000,000 Americans, there's 6 (7?) Billion people on the planet.
There's VPN providers in Russia, when the figure is as low as 84 people, it could literally, literally be Americans just using a VPN or proxy because they're paranoid, coming out of a Russian IP. Christ, it could be 84 Americans who've moved to Russia?
Maybe it's just 84 citizens?
When, WHEN, *WHEN* will the @#$%^ing Russia articles stop on this website? It's this endless braying of Russia Russia Russia! with exceedingly little convincing evidence of anything. *Even if there was* I've no doubt the American govt would've done the same thing historically.
I come to slashdot for technology news, not politics. I'm *NOT* American, no I wouldn't have voted for Trump, I would've voted for Bernie.
Another day, another person, entirely focused on politics, unable to detach politics from everything else in society, has to spam their stuff here, to try to rustle up feathers.
Seriously, I'd be better off hitting /homelab /linux /hardware /android etc on Reddit at this point. Can someone, in some position, stop this shit? It's fucking daily and 2/3 of them are barely tech related.
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Slashdot is a technology site, deal with it, it's not about politics or conspiracy theories.
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Hey - it undoubtedly makes for traffic/income!
Also, if you're someone outside the US, that cares about liberal democracy and technology - you do kind of have to worry at least a little about the pretty massive operations Russia has been enacting on democracies world-wide, not just the US.
I see the problem more like - this isn't really doing anything on a scale needed to detect/prevent international sabotage, this is just closing the barn door a YEAR AFTER the cows were already eaten.
Technology has a role to
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The stories might stop when Mueller's investigation ends, depending on what he finds. I wouldn't count on it though.
And like it or not, technology is now an important part of politics. If that bothers you then try tweeting @DonaldTrump and asking him to stop.
lol Tumblrina Trump voters? (Score:2)
What's next, Geocities Takes down 23 Russia-linked accounts? My sides.
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The bigger news is that Tumblr assumed their nationality.
State-Sponsored Accounts? (Score:4, Interesting)
So when Tumblr says that
"...it will keep a public record of usernames linked to the Internet Research Agency or other state-sponsored disinformation efforts",
does that include those used by the FBI, NSA, and/or CIA, or is it just those evil foreigners?
So (Score:2)
Did Tumblr also take down Harry Reid's account?
Be careful what you shout for. (Score:2)
They were pushing flaming leftist outrage, presumably to get peoples' mouths louder with stuff that makes conservatives more liky to get out and vote.