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Trolls Are Still Actively Trying to Influence Brexit and US Elections (go.com) 470

Posted by EditorDavid from the influence-marketing dept.
TechCrunch reports: A major new campaign of disinformation around Brexit, designed to stir up U.K. 'Leave' voters, and distributed via Facebook, may have reached over 10 million people in the U.K., according to new research. The source of the campaign is so far unknown, and will be embarrassing to Facebook, which only this week claimed it was clamping down on "dark" political advertising on its platform. Researchers for the U.K.-based digital agency 89up allege that Mainstream Network -- which looks and reads like a "mainstream" news site but which has no contact details or reporter bylines -- is serving hyper-targeted Facebook advertisements aimed at exhorting people in Leave-voting U.K. constituencies to tell their MP to "chuck Chequers." Chequers is the name given to the U.K. Prime Ministers's proposed deal with the EU regarding the U.K.'s departure from the EU next year.
ABC News reports: When the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges detailing a yearslong effort by a Russian troll farm to "sow division and discord in the U.S. political system," it was the first federal case alleging continued foreign interference in U.S. elections. Earlier Friday, American intelligence officials released a rare public statement asserting that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in ongoing efforts to influence U.S. policy and voters in future elections. The statement didn't provide details on those efforts. That stood in contrast with the criminal charges, which provided a detailed narrative of Russian activities...

The criminal complaint provided a clear picture that there is still a hidden but powerful Russian social media effort aimed at spreading distrust for American political candidates and causing divisions on social issues such as immigration and gun control.... Court papers describe how the operatives in Friday's case would analyze U.S. news articles and decide how they would draft social media messages about those stories. They also show that Russian trolls have stepped up their efforts with a better understanding the U.S. political climate and messages that are no longer riddled with misspellings.
CNN notes that one week before America's 2016 presidential election, "one of the Kremlin-backed accounts denied that Russian meddling, saying: 'Russia's Putin says Moscow not trying to influence U.S. election.'"
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Trolls Are Still Actively Trying to Influence Brexit and US Elections More

Trolls Are Still Actively Trying to Influence Brexit and US Elections

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  • The truth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21, 2018 @02:38AM (#57511880)

    Everybody I disagree with is a troll.

  • And then the question becomes, how do you get everyone to believe that everything online is over-rated?

    --
    Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They're underused. -- Tommy Lee Jones

  • Gullble people (Score:5, Insightful)

    by riverat1 ( 1048260 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @03:00AM (#57511918)

    Unfortunately there are a lot of gullible people in the world who just skim the headlines and don't bother to dig down in any detail on an issue. Lazy thinkers will always be with us and all we can hope for is there are enough people who aren't that way in order to counter them. Lately it's kind of depressing how much of this has distorted the political realm.

    • Unfortunately there are a lot of gullible people in the world

      But not you, right?

      And you are an above-average driver too!

      Best to protect all the "others" not as smart and clever as you.

  • what they don't say says more than what they do (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheRealQuestor ( 1750940 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @03:49AM (#57511982)
    It's odd that we [the us] do it to them and it's ok, but fuck them if they do the same thing to us. God I hate politics and politicians.

  • Yeah yeah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @04:03AM (#57512014)

    Funny how these trolls always affect the side the person writing the article doesn't support, isn't it? I mean, no one would dream of spreading misinformation on the Remain side - they're all saints devoted to the purity of Truth.

    I'm sure Russian trolls are feeding out misinformation about all sorts of things. The real issue is whether it has any more effect than the lies politicians tell.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Zontar The Mindless ( 9002 )

      It wasn't the Remain folks who had to admit after the election that they'd been lying all along.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Because they lost, so any lies they might have told would never have been exposed anyway.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by serviscope_minor ( 664417 )

          Yeah yeah. Funny how the Brexiteers always counter with vague accusations of lies but can somehow never be specific.

          Remain didn't make a compete lie the cornerstone of their entire campaign. Brexit camp knew it was a lie yet plastered it in the side of a bus and paraded it around the county.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 )

        The Remain campaigners lied repeatedly, aggressively and in a coordinated way, far more so than the Leave campaign did. It was partly the sight of the relentless lying that caused me to study the arguments for Leave more closely and eventually conclude Leave was right. They are still right.

        Here are a few lies told by the government alone in the course of the Remain campaign, let alone other campaigners:

        If you vote Leave we (Osbourne and Cameron) will punish you by passing a massive 'emergency tax'. Literall

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by jareth-0205 ( 525594 )

          lie

          You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Half of the stuff you list is rumours and projections.

          You're right about one thing though, the brexiteers have not admitted to the bullshit that they spouted (and keep spouting), they will never take responsibility for the mess we're in and will be in. Everything is someone else's fault. The EU being uncooperative. Remainer conspiracy. They will never own anything. If it doesn't help then it's because you didn't believe enough. Becau

          • Why should they take any responsibility for a mess? They didn't cause these problems.

            Indeed, the idea that the EU is so unreasonable and hard to deal with that we must leave is exactly what Brexiteers have been arguing for years, and they were repeatedly ignored. Instead ever more power was given to Brussels by pro-EU politicians, powers the EU now isn't hesitating to use to create as many problems as possible for the UK.

            As far as I can tell, if the Brexiteers had been more influential, if they had been abl

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by serviscope_minor ( 664417 )

          We haven't actually left need you moron.

          Voting leave isn't the same as actually leaving.

          Nonetheless our economy has been growing at a much slower rate than all comparable countries in Europe, the £350 million a week has vanished and the current government are still talking about raising taxes to make up for the missing money when we do leave.

        • Re:Yeah yeah (Score:4, Interesting)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @10:41AM (#57512972) Homepage Journal

          Half of what you say was actually Vote Leave lies, e.g. the claim that there would be an instant recession was an exaggeration that they turned in to a talking point for their "Project Fear" story. And of course the whole point about Project Fear was to make you ignore the experts who were giving you factual information and realistic predictions with caveats.

          But really those are relatively small things, bad predictions, compared to what leave campaigners lied about. For example, Farage was promoting the Norway model (EEA membership) as being an ideal outcome and something we should welcome, but now claims it would be a betrayal and a disaster. The "Brexit Bonus" money we would stop sending to the EU has all vanished into mitigating the losses and replicating institutions and subsidies that are going away. Worse still, even at the time the £350m/week figure was known to be a fabrication but they didn't remove it from that bloody bus.

          There were lots of specific promises about what leaving would mean, things like staying in the single market and customs union, about making immigration easier (!) for non-EU citizens and the like which were all reneged on within hours of the result.

          More over there were decades of lies supporting them. I remember a few weeks after the vote there was a woman on Question Time who said she was thinking of voting remain but the day before saw some bananas in the supermarket, and was reminded of the "straight bananas" Euro Myth. That apparently changed her mind, despite it being a well known lie that has been debunked continually since the 90s when it first appeared.

        • Re:Yeah yeah (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21, 2018 @11:39AM (#57513302)

          You couldn't be more wrong if you tried, you're just trying to justify being part of the UK's flagrant downfall as a result of Brexit.

          "If you vote Leave we (Osbourne and Cameron) will punish you by passing a massive 'emergency tax'. Literally, vote wrong and we'll take all your money. A big deal for pensioners and poorer people who were more inclined to vote out. But no emergency tax happened."

          A number of tax increases have already occurred as a result of fiscal tightening due to Brexit, notably taxes on self-employed are drastically up. The next budget due in a couple of weeks looks set to tax the mainstream even more. Remain was right.

          "The Treasury knew they were lying, that's why they refused to show its models or how it measured "uncertainty". We know this was a lie because two years after the vote the economy is booming. There was no "uncertainty hit" at all."

          What fucking rock do you live under? The UK as a result of the Brexit vote has gone from being the fastest growing G7 economy to the slowest growing G7 economy, we're barely breaking 1% growth whilst our peers such as the US which we were growing faster than are breaking 4% growth. At a time where the global economy has sped up, the British economy has slowed down. Furthermore, the pound has plummetted 40% in value, which has necessarily forced the price of every day goods such as petrol way up. The last time petrol was at 130p was when oil was at $120 per barrel, it's only at $80 per barrel now it's hit that level again and petrol tax has been frozen for the period, literally the only reason petrol is as high again is because of the collapse of the pound, which is stone hard real. A number of companies have cancelled UK investment, and a bunch more have already moved jobs overseas. What fucking crackpot world do you live in if you think any of this is proof that the economy didn't suffer when it clearly has and will so even more with hard Brexit? Remain was right.

          "Notice a pattern here - the Remain campaign built a tower of lies that all supported each other and which have all been disproven in the years since. I'm not even getting into all the other stupid claims they made and are still making today. Just the basics were enough to seriously tilt things in their favour."

          I notice that you've no idea what the fuck is going on around you that's for sure - you've not even noticed how badly UK growth is suffering to the point you naively think the economy is booming. If 1.5% annualised growth is booming then please don't speak to anyone ever again, you're way too uneducated to have a discussion about anything ever, but that's probably not surprising from a leave voter.

          "Finally, your own post is itself a lie. The Leave campaigners haven't "admitted they'd been lying all along"."

          Incorrect. Farage admitted the $350million a week for the NHS was an outright lie on the very morning of the referendum result, as has Michael Gove. The idea that the EU would easily give us what you want has similarly been proven wrong. Arguments that immigration would be halted have been destroyed by Brexiteers like Pritti Patel who admits she always wanted higher immigration, just from countries like Bangladesh with significant Islamic populations, rather than from our much more culturally align European neighbours.

          It doesn't matter anyway, even if we do leave the EU it's clear it won't be for long. The tide has already turned, voters are firmly against Brexit at this point, and it was only ever the old racists generation that supported it anyway in the most, and they're dying out, at such a fast rate in fact that demographically the death of old racists alone has been enough to inherently switched the referendum result, much less with the fact Leave's lies and illegal funding from Russia have now been exposed.

          All the same, you should be ashamed of yourself by supporting Russia's goal of punishing us in response to UK sanctions over Crimea by similarly trying to harm our economy through it's widespread funding of Brex

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      I mean, no one would dream of spreading misinformation on the Remain side

      And yet they didn't. The remain side was characterised entirely by: "World isn't as bad as Leavers make out. We don't know what will happen if we vote Leave." There was no disinformation to spread.

      Unfortunately the truth was both a boring and weak argument. The Remain side's biggest fault was they didn't play a dirty game in the dirty world of politics.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "There was no disinformation to spread"
        Sure, Project Fear was completely accurate and all of its predictions have come true. Just like 89up mentioned in TFS is a completely neutral observer and not a pro-EU PR agency.

        "The Remain side's biggest fault was they didn't play a dirty game in the dirty world of politics."
        Sure, and they're still pure as the driven snow. Which is why Mainstream Network, "source of the campaign is so far unknown" couldn't possibly be a company directed by Martin Ellice, MD of the gro

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      "I mean, no one would dream of spreading misinformation on the Remain side - they're all saints devoted to the purity of Truth."

      Why would Russian advocate for Remain? Leave weakens the European Union and the UK, both of which are certainly to Russia's benefit. What does Remain get them?

    • I laid out the very unpopular case before (on Slashdot) that trolls have zero effect. Look around Twitter, what kind of arguments could anyone possibly insert that would inflame people more than they are already inflamed?

      Furthermore, I don't think trolls from other countries have the depth of understanding about where the buttons are to press to be nearly as effective as the actual people arguing in those countries. They can put up some generic arguments or whatever, but they cannot go for the really deep

  • Yeah The Horror (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @04:13AM (#57512036)

    Imagine people actually able to see differing points of view. They might just decide they don't like what their betters have planned for them

    • And which side are our betters? The Eton toffs who wanted to remain or the Eton toffs who wanted us to leave? Is David Cameron the real man of the people or is Reese-Mogg?

  • The politicians are just as bad (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Sunday October 21, 2018 @04:19AM (#57512048) Homepage

    I remember two years ago, in the poll booth, about to vote for/against Brexit; I was trying to sum up what the campaigns had told me. I came to the conclusion: a mass of emotional froth, little of hard reality upon which to make a decision. All sorts of contradictory predictions; few agreed facts. I remember listening to opposing politicians who could not even agree on, what should have been, basic facts. I came to the conclusion that both sides were lying (or at least greatly playing up their arguments), many others did also. The main agreement was that 'the other side are not being truthful' -- both sides said that!

    Two years later: it is not hugely better. The problems that Brexit may bring have now been revealed & are being shouted loud but no one can say what will happen on 29 March 2019 (Brexit day), partly because exaggeration of dire consequence is a tool of political negotiation. The promised sunny uplands of EU-restriction free international trade are also being promised, but are nebulous.

    Debate amongst politicians is at a level that would bring discredit to a bunch of squabbling 4 year olds at infant school.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      I can tell you one result: Britain will have to recreate all the infrastructure they used to get from the EU. This will cost Britain more in the long run because they will get any economy of scale out of that. Drug regulations? Oh, they'll now need their own, wouldn't want to use those naughty EU regs on drugs. Import-export controls? They'll be needing their own. Scientific exchanges? Throw some sand into those. Britain's health care system? No safety valves in foreign workers...foreign workers bad, incomp

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Whether the costs are higher than the contribution the UK makes to those EU institutions is the more interesting question, but also to me irrelevant: I'd rather pay more and not be part of the EU superstate.

        Britain's health care system? No safety valves in foreign workers

        Given the number of non-EU foreigners working for the NHS you're just fear mongering.

        But that's common to pretty much everyone that voted 'remain'. They're all just fucking scared.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by jareth-0205 ( 525594 )

          But that's common to pretty much everyone that voted 'remain'. They're all just fucking scared.

          Yes. We are scared. We should be scared, we're so blase about how our world works, it's complex and interconnected and we benefit from that far more than we can comprehend. Unpicking 40 years of integration is a massive risky task and will - should - take a decade. But our extremist overlords that control the ruling party are so worried that they will have their prize taken from them they're rather pull out uncoordinatedly and quickly.

          My partner is Italian - we have to live every day with the uncertainty of

          • Which British political parties are talking about kicking out Italians who have been here a decade? Because I'm pretty sure there are none: they've all said anyone already here can stay indefinitely. Your "fear" isn't justified by anything real, which rather proves Cederic's point.

            As for the extremist overlords, you realise it's the EU itself that insists on a two year exit period during which partial de-integration is completely disallowed? And that it's the EU that has been responsible for the total lack

            • Which British political parties are talking about kicking out Italians who have been here a decade? Because I'm pretty sure there are none: they've all said anyone already here can stay indefinitely.

              Rees-Mogg, our prime minister-in-waiting (and if Corbyn has taught us anything it's that backbench MPs can become leaders unexpectedly), has said exactly that https://www.metro.news/rees-mo... [metro.news]

              Your "fear" isn't justified by anything real, which rather proves Cederic's point.

              That's easy to say, but the consequences for me if you are wrong are catestrophic.

              And if there isn't anything to worry about, why haven't we had a unilateral declaration? It's all tied up in "nothing's agreed until it's all agreed", which is getting more and more sketchy as time goes on. A no deal Brexit by default wi

      • Britain can trivially fork the EU regs and then carry on with rules they can tune better to how the British people want things. You're on a forum where this concept of 'forking' is common knowledge and yet you squee about vast unknown terribleness. So pitiful, it's difficult to believe you are being serious.

  • No election, no fake news and not trolling (Score:4, Informative)

    by msgmonkey ( 599753 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @04:27AM (#57512054)

    I have not posted for a few years but this one really has annoyed me enough to say something regarding these Brexit ads.

    For a start there are no new elections or referendums so it's hardly trying to influence a vote, the Guardian (left wing) newspaper would love to have a second referendum and reverse the vote and is most likely why they have flagged this up.

    I can see how not knowing who is paying for these ads may be a problem for some, but like I said there is no public vote coming up and therefore as far as a I know campaign financing rules do apply, besides I did not see the Guardian kick up a fuss when Soros donated £400,000 to reverse Brexit.

    Finally a large chunk of Conservative (the governing party) MPs themselves have said the same thing that this advert is saying so how is this fake news?

    If there was any semblance that there was democracy in the UK, it has pretty much has been laid to rest.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      "If there was any semblance that there was democracy in the UK, it has pretty much has been laid to rest."

      I was following you until this last part. Brexit was literally directly voted on by the people of the UK. I think it was a dumb idea to leave but that's very clearly democracy in action

  • The politicians are just as bad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Sunday October 21, 2018 @04:46AM (#57512088) Homepage

    I remember, the the poll booth 2 years ago, trying sum up what I had learned from what the politicians has said over the preceding weeks. I remembered a huge amount of emotional froth but little by way of solid detail or summary of what would happen. I had listened to debates between politicians who could not even agree on basic contemporary facts - that should have not been hard to ascertain. The misinformation was more than political spin: it was outright lies. I am not the only one of that opinion.

    The only agreement between the sides was 'the other side is lying'.

    Now, two years later, things are not much better. We have been told of all sorts of horrible things that will happen after 29 March 2019 (Brexit day) but are well aware that these are being played up. Both sides have too much to lose if the hard lines being talked about come to be. Exaggeration of consequences and declarations of impossibility seem to be the way that political negotiations are done. The bright sunny post Brexit uplands, that we are assured (by the Brexiteers) will come to be, are equally nebulous.

    What passes as debate between politicians would bring discredit to a bunch of squabbling 4 year olds at infant school.

  • scales (Score:2)

    by Tom ( 822 )

    How many russian trolls are active at all? I've heard numbers in the double and tripple digits.

    But the Pentagon employs at least 27,000 [tagesanzeiger.ch] people for PR purposes. Some of them certainly do advertisement and recruitment, but a lot of them are active on social media and to influence journalists, all to make sure the US military appears in the right light. Budget 2009: 4.7 billion

    That begs the question who to trust at all. Certainly the mainstream media image of US politics is no more trustworthy than any troll p

  • People voted to exit (Score:3)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @05:51AM (#57512238) Journal
    They stood inline and got to vote.
    The votes got counted.
    The government then had take on what was voted for and that was passed.
    Citizens all over the UK voted to get their laws back from the EU and to fully enjoy been normal nation of laws again.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      1. We are not getting our laws back, the proposal is to do trade deals with other nations like the US who have already said they will demand changes to British law, e.g. to food standards. Plus we will likely stay pretty close to the EU rules so we can keep selling to them anyway, except with no say in them.

      2. The referendum was on the single point of EU membership. We were assured it would not affect our membership of the single market or customs union. The most prominent Leave campaigners said that repeat

  • Which is worse? The Russian trolls or the fact that people believe them? I think that people believe them is worse because no one does any independent thinking or research anymore. They take what is spoon fed to them as boiler plate. The fact that Russian trolls have been able to influence US elections is an indictment on the US educational system or lack thereof.

  • Maskirovka is creating division in your opponents by creating uncertainty, it's intent is to disrupt, to disbelieve everything, flat out lies and even present truths as lies.

    This is well worth watching

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • UK government cheating dwarfs this (Score:5, Informative)

    by divec ( 48748 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @10:21AM (#57512896) Homepage

    You have to keep pro-Brexit Facebook ads in perspective:

    • The UK government spent more than Vote Leave's entire legal spending limit [bbc.com] on a pro-Remain leaflet
    • They enlisted Obama [thejc.com] to state (incorrectly, it turns out) that the UK would be at the "back of the queue" for a trade deal
    • They enlisted the IMF [theguardian.com] to state (incorrectly, it turns out) that a Leave vote would result in a recession by 2017
    • Serious consideration is being given to a second referendum to overturn the first, which would never have happened if the result had been the other way — even if the EU continued its rapid evolution into a superstate
    • much more [dominiccummings.com]

    This level of gaming the system clearly dwarfs a few Facebook ads

  • The trolling wouldn't work.

  • This is all part of an overall strategy to destabilize NATO, with the ultimate goal being to weaken or completely destroy it, because NATO stands in the way of Putin building Soviet Union 2.0.
  • a meaningful discussion on the Internet practically impossible. They not only promote an opinion, but pose themselves as idiotic or over-aggressive opponents too.

    I think an international UN anti-trolling agreement, or at least a declaration, could be beneficial for the whole planet.
  • The Internet plays into the swarm mentality that humans have. It's just that that swarm mentality is more exposed than ever now. People just go with whatever they are brainfed and are less diverse than they think. Let's look at some of the math:. Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Republican, Democrat, BBC and A small number of popular news agencies That's a very small number of sources that humans are swarming towards. Yes there are alternatives out there.... But they ellipse the competition. Who uses the

  • Using the "T" word (Score:3, Funny)

    by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @11:33AM (#57513256)
    That is not very nice calling people Trolls....call them by their real name. Socialists, Communists, Progressives, Liberals, The Left, Anti-fa, Facists, totalitarians, Democratic Socialists.
    If none work for you try "Douche Canoes"

  • The trolling would not work.

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