Over the past two years and up until at least August, Russian Twitter accounts masquerading as American people, news outlets and political groups regularly appeared in the articles published in many of the United States’ most famous media outlets. This wasn’t a matter of fake news; this was “real” news made a little less so.
The Boston Globe quoted @Pamela_Moore13, who hated a Stephen Colbert joke about Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. NBC News, in the aftermath of the Pulse night club shooting, gave space to @lgbtunitedcom on the subject of the Chicago gay pride parade. Vox and HuffPost both turned to the thoughts of @Crystal1Johnson, the former on the bullet holes in an Emmett Till sign and the latter on quadruplets attending Yale together.
We know now that these were trolls working on behalf of the Russian government. Without knowing, we laughed or scowled at their jokes. We mocked or cheered their opinions. We looked at their photos and watched their videos, and few if any of us batted an eye as they covertly shaped the way we looked at our own country.
This week, Congress released a list of 2,752 accounts that Twitter identified as tied to the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm through which the Kremlin conducts international and domestic influence operations, including during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The accounts have all since been deleted, but I decided to Google more than 1,000 of them to find out just how often and in what ways they were able to embed themselves in the work of U.S. news organizations. The vast majority that I checked never made it into stories, but more than 20 did in myriad ways and in all types of organizations.
In total, I found more than 40 examples of the accounts weaseling their way into articles. Organizations that embedded or used tweets from the Russian troll farm included Mashable, The Telegraph, NBC News, ATTN:, the Washington Post, Vox, RT, Medium, Salon, Fox News, the Miami Herald, CNN, BuzzFeed, Thought Catalog, Newser, the New York Post, The Blaze, Breitbart, the Boston Globe, Vice, Circa, Complex, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Dot, The Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner and our site, HuffPost.
This was hardly an infiltration. We, the media, practically let the trolls in the front door. Thanks to the cockeyed incentives of online publishing, all they had to do was knock.
This was hardly an infiltration. We, the media, practically let the trolls in the front door. Thanks to the cockeyed incentives of online publishing, all they had to do was knock.
So, does this mean you'll stop treating unsubstantiated rumors as fact, Messir Media? Or that you'll do diligence on your sources rather than feeding more raw meat to the public?
Who is to blame: the man who sells poison under the guise of an elixir of immortality, or the fool who buys it without a second thought?
The wise answer: the fool for his naive gullibility. The CURRENT YEAR answer: LISTEN AND BELIEVE. NO VICTIM BLAMING.
If both the media and the populace took a tiny bit of time to verify that their news comes from credible sources we wouldn't have this "fake news" """epidemic""". An informed populace isn't easy to manipulate though and they gotta keep those ratings up!
Without knowing, we laughed or scowled at their jokes. We mocked or cheered their opinions. We looked at their photos and watched their videos, and few if any of us batted an eye as they covertly shaped the way we looked at our own country.
Man, it's almost as if the ubiquity of the internet has given a level playing field when it comes to propaganda.
The only countries nowadays that the US can expect to dump its influence into and not expect any in return is various third world Kebabistans. And even they are getting wise to how the internet works.
Stay mad faggots. It's what you've been doing to countries all over the globe for decades.
Over the past two years and up until at least August, Russian Twitter accounts masquerading as American people, news outlets and political groups regularly appeared in the articles published in many of the United States’ most famous media outlets. This wasn’t a matter of fake news; this was “real” news made a little less so.
The Boston Globe quoted @Pamela_Moore13, who hated a Stephen Colbert joke about Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. NBC News, in the aftermath of the Pulse night club shooting, gave space to @lgbtunitedcom on the subject of the Chicago gay pride parade. Vox and HuffPost both turned to the thoughts of @Crystal1Johnson, the former on the bullet holes in an Emmett Till sign and the latter on quadruplets attending Yale together.
We know now that these were trolls working on behalf of the Russian government. Without knowing, we laughed or scowled at their jokes. We mocked or cheered their opinions. We looked at their photos and watched their videos, and few if any of us batted an eye as they covertly shaped the way we looked at our own country.
This week, Congress released a list of 2,752 accounts that Twitter identified as tied to the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm through which the Kremlin conducts international and domestic influence operations, including during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The accounts have all since been deleted, but I decided to Google more than 1,000 of them to find out just how often and in what ways they were able to embed themselves in the work of U.S. news organizations. The vast majority that I checked never made it into stories, but more than 20 did in myriad ways and in all types of organizations.
In total, I found more than 40 examples of the accounts weaseling their way into articles. Organizations that embedded or used tweets from the Russian troll farm included Mashable, The Telegraph, NBC News, ATTN:, the Washington Post, Vox, RT, Medium, Salon, Fox News, the Miami Herald, CNN, BuzzFeed, Thought Catalog, Newser, the New York Post, The Blaze, Breitbart, the Boston Globe, Vice, Circa, Complex, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Dot, The Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner and our site, HuffPost.
This was hardly an infiltration. We, the media, practically let the trolls in the front door. Thanks to the cockeyed incentives of online publishing, all they had to do was knock.
Oh my god, the Russians are doing that? I'm so glad there are no organizations in America that would do such a thing, that would be so wrong. American is different.
