With this week’s announcement that Facebook is still experiencing ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ or whatever they are calling it, it remains important to continue analyzing the attacks we already have information about––because Facebook will not, or can not give us all of the details of what is currently happening.
This story on Medium from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab discusses trolls that had distinct behavior, which was different from the IRA tactics:
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“Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s indictment of 11 Russian military intelligence operators intensified the debate over Russian interference in the United States, but it also pointed to the existence of a separate Russian troll operation, outside the infamous Internet Research Agency troll farm.”
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We must remain aware & diligent as individuals, because we cannot rely on social networks or our government to stop these attacks––it’s good to review the different kinds of tactics that were used to suppress our vote, so that we might have a better chance of recognizing suspicious behavior.
If a man likes to steal and he’s not punished for it,will he’ll stop stealing?
Yes you may not fall on the fake news about Clinton, but most Democrats will fall on fake news about Trump and vice versa
This is an essential area for us to focus on - a number of us on the forum have been having discussions here on this subject, and I appreciate your post. The use of bots, trolls and the whole set of tools that make up computational propaganda are a profound threat to our democracy and our culture. The coordinated activity uses these tools to drive divisions in our society, which as Tim Snyder says in his book The Road to Unfreedom are the “attack surfaces” that are targeted for cyber warfare. Thanks for your post.
To your first point: If a man likes to steal and he’s not punished for it… I think it’s unlikely he’ll stop stealing. Which I am sure is what you are saying.
To your second point: I don’t know if that’s true. It doesn’t address what happened, anyhow. Left-leaning voters were influenced by Russians pretending to also be left-leaning(therefore gaining their trust). For example: they posed as Black Lives Matter groups, etc––and told them not to vote for Clinton, and to vote for 3rd party candidates, instead. They sought to divide and suppress potential Clinton voters, by creating distrust & suggesting they were doing the right thing by not voting for her.
We don’t need to worry about ‘Clinton,’ being targeted anymore, but there is reason to watch out for similar tactics of voter suppression in the future. Recent attempted hacks of Claire McCaskill’s campaign & what we know about the ‘inauthentic’ pages that were just removed from Facebook, suggest that there are bad actors who are continuing tactics we saw in 2016.
May I ask what country you are from, Geo? You are much better at writing in English than I am at any foreign language! Anyhow, whether you were born outside of the U.S., or live outside of the U.S. still, the perspective is still interesting. People from other countries, have often experienced more, or different election issues than we have, here. I have only ever lived in the U.S.(and only in CA), so my election experience is limited, to ours, tho I am following the parallel interference in Brexit.