Twitter Publishes Archive of 10 Million Tweets From Russian, Iranian Bots (boingboing.net) 144
AmiMoJo shares a report from Boing Boing: To enable "further research of information operations on Twitter," the company today published a dataset of tweets posted by known Russian and Iranian troll farms. "These large datasets comprise 3,841 accounts affiliated with the IRA, originating in Russia, and 770 other accounts, potentially originating in Iran," the blog post reads. "They include more than 10 million Tweets and more than 2 million images, GIFs, videos, and Periscope broadcasts, including the earliest on-Twitter activity from accounts connected with these campaigns, dating back to 2009." You can download the Russian and Iranian datasets here. The Russian dataset is comprised of 1.24GB of tweets and 300GB of media, while the Iranian dataset is comprised of 168MB of tweets and 65.7GB of media.
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SuperKendall
c6gunner
RayMorris
Luckyo
ShanghaiBillfromSanDiego
Miserable old faggot Archie Bunker
Wumpwuss
> ---hit tab to continue--- >
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uhh, what about ISIS? Archive of that? (Score:4, Insightful)
They aren't archiving all the ISIS posts? ISIS had 100s of accounts all spamming terrorist propaganda 24/7 basically Obama's whole second term. Can we get an archive of THAT? Started around 2013 when John Brennan became CIA director, and ended around 2017 when Trump took over and replaced Brennan with Pompeo.
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ISIS is muslim and Twitter is run by lefties, so publishing ISIS tweets would be racist or something.
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If they put up an archive of ISIS material they would be blamed for spreading terrorist propaganda by idiots. Idiots like the UK government [theguardian.com].
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They aren't archiving all the ISIS posts? ISIS had 100s of accounts all spamming terrorist propaganda 24/7 basically Obama's whole second term. Can we get an archive of THAT? Started around 2013 when John Brennan became CIA director, and ended around 2017 when Trump took over and replaced Brennan with Pompeo.
What are ISIS posts? Posts by people claiming to be official members of ISIS? People in Syria who seem to be posting pro-ISIS propaganda? What about people who seem to be from other similar groups? What about the ISIS fanboys? ISIS posts actually ends up being a lot harder to define than you realize.
The Russian and Iranian bots however, that's relatively straightforward. Groups affiliated with the Russian and Iranian governments make a set of bots, and these bots network together and generate comments. Once
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Dude you just said "There is no way to tell who is posting the pro isis stuff."
and then turned around to say all but "Any bots we say are russian or iranian bots are real!" How can you not know one, but know the other? Better question, How do you know who the bots belong to? People all over the world write bot sources.
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ISIS don't bother to disguise their posts with fake accounts. That's the issue here, not the content but the deception.
Also, PROTIP, when attempting what-about-ism don't put "what about" in the title of your post. Best to be at least a little bit subtle.
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Who keeps modding up Amimojo? Protip, lmao
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ISIS don't bother to disguise their posts with fake accounts. That's the issue here, not the content but the deception.
Also, PROTIP, when attempting what-about-ism don't put "what about" in the title of your post. Best to be at least a little bit subtle.
There's nothing wrong with "whataboutism" if it makes a valid point.
People sure work hard to try to magically make (sometimes) effective arguments be out of bounds.
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Re:What about US & Five Eyes bots? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Things like this always strike me as awfully nationalist and willfully ignorant propaganda terrorism. (So just like such bots.)"
Yes. And?
I mean, it is what you say it is. The US surely runs it's own too. And we're not going to get to see it unless or until someone leaks it. Which at some point will likely happen.
And then perhaps you'll speculate it was a false flag to make us look bad? Which it might be.
At some point you have to choose what you will believe, and determine what sources are likely to be as credible as is reasonable.
So... where does that leave us?
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So... where does that leave us?
People need to step up and do their damn job. Freedom isn't free. It takes constant vigilance. A reasonably educated person that tried could have spotted much of this crap.
Of course you have the problem of tribalism where people either believe, state they believe, or flat don't give a crap that their tribe is embracing lies if it serves their purpose, directly or indirectly. I particularly love it when it is the people who think they are super moral by doing so as if their tribes goals are the right thi
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We know for a fact that GCHQ uses these tactics because their manual on how to do it was leaked.
However, it doesn't appear that the west does it on anything like the scale that Russia does. You can't really hide something that large, Russia certainly can't. It doesn't matter though, it works because people see a meme or post confirming their existing biases and making them feel that it's okay to say those things, and don't pause to ask "is this a Russian fake account?" or wonder if they are being manipulate
Re:What about US & Five Eyes bots? (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter though, it works because people see a meme or post confirming their existing biases and making them feel that it's okay to say those things, and don't pause to ask "is this a Russian fake account?" or wonder if they are being manipulated.
"and making them feel that it's okay to say those things"????
So the real problem is that it might undermine our little domestic cultural revolution, which otherwise would successfully make people feel that it's not OK to say unapproved things?
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Pass the bottle. After being randomly accused of wanting to control people's speech for the Nth time, despite being a bigger proponent of most of these freeze peach losers who want to stop people disagreeing with them because it might have consequences, I really can't be bothered.
I'll happily have an honest dialogue, but I've been here before and I don't think cascadingstylesheet will believe it if I tell him that's not at all what I meant. And I have little faith that they would respond in good faith, rath
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Drink for AmiMojo making empty claim about himself with no evidence...
That's not a claim, it's an offer. Admit you don't want to take it up or address the point directly.
My experiment is not going well.
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> The US surely runs it's own too.
Nope, it doesn't. There is not even one single account of false flag propaganda by the executive branch of the US.
Maybe some US citizens do in their spare time but most likely they are not paid by the goverment.
I know that because I have been watching troll propaganda on the internet since the 1980ths. And I have never ever found even the slightest evidence for false flag propaganda by western goverments. On the other hand there where MILLIONS of such events by Iran, Rus
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There is not even one single account of false flag propaganda by the executive branch of the US.
Uh huh. The Smith-Mundt act that bans propaganda on domestic audiences must have been gutted in 2012 for absolutely no reason at all, just in time with the rise and popularity of social media.
Furthermore, the agencies that routinely do troll propaganda on foreign populations are also entities beholden to themselves, with their own interests and motivations to protect their own budgets. Perhaps you'd also like to claim that the oversight and accountability congress has over these sprawling massive agencies
Re:What about US & Five Eyes bots? (Score:5, Informative)
"GCHQ has tools to manipulate online information, leaked documents show" (15 Jul 2014)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk... [theguardian.com]
Welcome to CLEAN SWEEP and UNDERPASS.
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It's a shame we don't have more evidence of how these techniques are actually used in practice. For example we know that the Russians organized events in the US via their fake social media accounts, which people went to. I'd imagine that GCHQ does the same but would love to see an example.
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The tech used to create content would be perfect and isolated for that nation and mission.
The art work, persona created and time zone spent would often just be strange and the tell the West had rushed into for a few reasons.
The only real tell for US and UK operations was a lack of trusted translators and the ability to quickly create a normal back history of years on another nations version of social media.
Time zone
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Uncovering British spies’ web of sockpuppet social media personas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Thanks, I'm going to watch that later. Trust the CCC to find it!
Bad job twitter (Score:5, Informative)
Can't see anything how it makes it "troll farm". And news even, seems, not biased, they reposted news from various websites pro and against government.
I feel i will be considered criminal, by default, just because i'm posting sometimes in russian language
Re:Bad job twitter (Score:5, Informative)
It's part of the basic trolling toolset, to establish yourself by linking to real news before you start on the disinformation. Effective trolls mix and match between reality and distortion, thereby infecting the reality with their distortion.
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At the same time, you can blame for same any person who often repost the news.
It smells bad and creates a conditions for action resembling repressive regime of Stalin.
Proverb associated with such logic: "If there is a man, there is always a criminal article for him"
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It's also a way to avoid Twitter bans and to help get Russian news sources some visibility through increased numbers of followers and retweets.
The determination that the account is part of the troll farm is not just based on content or association, it's also stuff that Twitter has like IP addresses, operating times (Russian office hours), use of stolen profile images and occasional screw-ups like forgetting to remove the geolocation metadata from images that are posted.
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It's also part of the basic toolset, to say *that* (Score:2, Informative)
It's called "false flag" and "poisoning the well". And it's a technique mentioned in the NSA leaks. It's extremely old though, and definitely used by every single spying and propaganda agency, big political organization, big lobby group and big corporation.
E.g. you take a valid criticism, and start posting it, posing as your enemy's side. But you join it with some utter bullshit, that is easy to attack, ridicule, and not take serious.
Spam this enough, and whoever posts the valid criticism, will be ridiculed
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It is straight forward calling every Russian who uses twitter a troll. If you are Russian or Iranian and ever used twitter in English, you are now a troll and a Russian or Iranian agent. Seriously any post originating in Russia or Iran, any?!?
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It is straight forward calling every Russian who uses twitter a troll. If you are Russian or Iranian and ever used twitter in English, you are now a troll and a Russian or Iranian agent. Seriously any post originating in Russia or Iran, any?!?
3841 Russian and 770 Iranian accounts are the exact number accused. I'd guess the number of legit accounts are at least 1000x higher making you sound a bit hyperbolic.
This is news... (Score:1)
...about fake news.
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10 print "Our news is the best news\n"
20 print "All other news is fake news from Nazi Russian bots!\n"
30 print "Orange man bad ! \n"
40 goto 10
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While you do have a point about confirmation bias in perception, in this case there is no evidence to suggest that Twitter is impartial. The policy towards blue checkmark status as a form of social affirmation not identity, and the double standard in which bans are enforced has already been well established.
Even participating in the recent NPC meme to mock leftists to make a point about the ideological conformity, highlighting the methods of indoctrination and conditioning, is sufficient to get an accoun
MSM and Hillary's troll army tweets not included?! (Score:1)
Ignoring the elephant in the room?
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Well, that's a pretty big goddamn difference, isn't it?
When an American or American organization tries to sway and election, it's called "campaigning". When a foreign government tries to do it, it's called espionage, treason, invasion.
One is legal. The other can get you bombed, at least if we had a President instead of a punk like Trump who foreign dictators use like a woman.
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The former President of Mexico just endorsed a US political candidate and encouraged Mexicans in the US to vote for him.
This is foreign interference in the US elections. Should the US now start bombing Mexico?
China took out several full page ads in US newspapers recently, encouraging people to vote against Republicans.
This is foreign interference in the US elections. Should the US now start bombing China?
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Without getting in to the merits or otherwise of allowing organizations to campaign in elections, the fact that they are domestic means they are subject to domestic laws. If it was legal for foreign organizations to interfere then they would all just set up shell companies in the Caribbean and there would be no way to control them.
I'm not an expert on the US but there are rules around stating who paid for ads and stuff like that, right? And in the UK there are strict spending limits.
Also, WTF was that last
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It's a literary reference.
Clinton is a traitor? (Score:1)
So Clinton/DNC paying Steel in the UK to collect propaganda from Russia to influence the 2016 election is called treason.
Good to know you think Hillary and the DNC are traitors.
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b) you only get "caught" if you dont let the others do their stuff in your country (like the netherlands a few weeks ago)
out of ca. 195 nations only like 3 get it all the time ?
Dating back to 2009 (Score:2)
Wow, ten million spanning almost a decade, against the backdrop of the hundreds of millions of Twitter posts per day. Trump's own account has 55 million followers, by comparison.
Oh and glad to see Iran lumped in there too; we definitely need to be singling them out more, because reasons.
Well there's this analysis [medium.com] that graphed the data over time. There's no bell curve in the number of tweets during that time period leading up to the election. How curious.
It's as if the excuse for heavy-handed political
There are no Chinese bots (Score:3)
Chinese bots would be too costly. In China it is probably less expensive to hire many people to pretend to be bots rather than have actual bots.