Russian Bot Manipulation Isn’t Limited to the 2016 Election
Indictments continue to rain down from the ongoing investigation into Russia’s interference with the 2016 U.S. presidential election — with 13 Russians and three Russian organizations charged with conspiracy to impede the democratic process.
Of those Russian organizations involved, Internet Research Agency presents the most clear example of how the country used and manipulated the American electorate — especially supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — to swing the election in their favor. This effort primarily took place through the use of Facebook, Twitter and masses of “bot” accounts meant to approximate a groundswell of grassroots support.
But that’s not the only place where bots are influencing and driving opinion — and sowing discord — in the U.S. social media landscape. No, bots are in the middle of all of our major debates right now, and they’re trying to drive the country even further apart.
Organizing against gun restrictions
It only took a few hours after the massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida, for fake accounts to begin pushing social media messages meant to stop any potential talk about future gun restrictions in the wake of the school shooting. Soon after the event, Wired reported:
According to [Hamilton 68- a project tracking Russian bot accounts] data, the top link shared by Russia-linked accounts in the last 48 hours is a 2014 Politifact article that looks critically at a statistic cited by pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Twitter accounts tracked by the group have used the old link to try to debunk today’s stats about the frequency of school shootings.
Another top link shared by the network covers the “deranged” Instagram account of the shooter, showing images of him holding guns and knives, wearing army hats, and a screenshot of a Google search of the phrase “Allahu Akbar.”
The goal here is clear: turn the conversation to mental health issues or terrorism in order to create a “lone wolf” scenario in which gun restrictions would seem less necessary.
Stoking racism in Missouri
There are more than enough real racial issues in the United States, without bots creating their own crisis. But in Columbia, Missouri, fake social media accounts created and promoted a tweet claiming that police and the KKK marched together and beat a young black man — a tweet that caught like wildfire.
Newsweek reports:
User @Fanfan1911, [Researcher and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jarred] Prier said, was a Russian bot that utilized the #PrayForMizzou hashtag to evade Twitter algorithms meant to catch bots and to garner retweets from real users monitoring the hashtag. About 70 bots automatically retweeted the tweet, leading to thousands of related tweets within minutes, the report found. “The image and the narrative were part of a larger plot to spread fear and distrust,” Prier said. “Russians trolls were able to spread the information because of an underlying fear and an existing narrative that they were able to exploit.”
Attacking and undermining Mark Warner and the Russia investigation
Of course, the Russian bots would be most interested in undermining the investigation into Russian election influence, which is why they pushed so hard when it was disclosed that Senator Mark Warner — a Virginia Democrat at the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Trump’s Russia connections — traded text messages with a Russian contact in an attempt to contact Christopher Steele, of the infamous “Steele Memo.” The texts were benign and had already been disclosed, but that didn’t stop President Donald Trump — and hundreds of Russian bot accounts — from tweeting about it.
Mother Jones reports:
Trump wasn’t the only one promoting the story to undercut the Senate’s Russia probe. So too were a horde of Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence efforts. According to the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Hamilton 68 Dashboard, which tracks such activity, automated accounts, or bots, that amplify Russian messaging efforts, as well as the accounts of real pro-Russian users, began tweeting about “Warner” and “Mark Warner” on Thursday night. On Friday afternoon, the words remained by far the most popular trending topic among the 600 accounts the group keeps an eye on.
#Releasethememo
Why was there so much political pressure to get the GOP memo on potential problems and biases inside the FBI out into the public eye, when the Democratic version has barely been discussed? Well, besides utter hypocrisy, you can also blame the bots.
Molly K. McKew, an expert on information warfare at Politico, writes:
Online data analysts said many accounts used to promote the hashtag were recently created, with more being created and disappearing after the hashtag appeared. Thousands still had the default profile photos. CNN’s analysis found that hundreds of accounts created after the hashtag first appeared were fueling the viral trend. Cross-reference this analysis and inputs from things like the Hamilton68 dashboard, and you can see #releasethememo is carried forward by automated accounts overnight after it begins to trend. It continued to do so from its appearance until the memo was released. The volume and noise matter—and so does the targeting.
Blame-gaming the government shutdown — and potentially killing DACA to boot
Why did the Democrats have to cave on DACA and abandon the DREAMers during the last budget negotiation, even though they knew it may be their last chance at any leverage in the battle? It was “public” pressure that forced Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to push for a deal, attempting to avoid a “Schumer Shutdown.” And it was Russian bots that made the “Schumer Shutdown” talking point gain steam to start.
Offering a chart that showed that the hashtag had outpaced even #releasethememo, the Huffington Post reported:
#SchumerShutdown ― the hashtag that GOP leaders and the White House are using to accuse Democrats of causing the shutdown ― on Sunday night became the top trending hashtag being promoted by Russian bots and trolls on Twitter, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project led by former top national security officials from both parties.
Photo Credit: Ted Eytan/Flickr
My position is the Democrats and Republicans at this moment in time are not doing anything productive for the Country. They are wasting the publics time by pursuing the supposed Russian troll interference with the USA election when it would be better to change the 2 party system, stop attack ads and trolling the public, stop fighting amongst one another and stand on issues that are based in reality and really do matter to health and vitality.
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