Active Measures, Disinfo, Propaganda

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Just another reminder this is a global problem 

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Biff Tannen 46151]

Well that doesn't seem good.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

This hit papers in huge markets, including LA, Baltimore, Florida, NYC, Chicago and Hampton Roads/Tidewater, Va.

Edited December 30, 2018 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Prepuce of Doom 21285]

 

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Lol, I was coming to post that.

[Degenerate Gardner 4157]

Worth reading it all

Quote

 

It’s not that Facebook isn’t capable of suppressing harmful content: For years it has used artificial intelligence to block posts with nudity from spreading, and it claims to have had success blocking terrorist messaging too. (Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote a lengthy and pretty interesting post on this AI work.)

The problem, as Zuckerberg acknowledges, is that ferreting out disinformation is much harder than spotting boobs or ISIS recruitment. That’s because the whole point of propaganda—getting emotionally resonant content in front of the right audience—is not a bug in Facebook’s technology: It’s the core of its model. (It’s also the core of Trump’s model, which is what makes for such dangerous alchemy.)

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about how this mechanism has been toxic for journalism in a very particular way, by incentivizing newsrooms to feed Facebook’s algorithm. First, that meant clickbait; then, when advertisers grew tired of the churn and burn (detailed by a former Mic editor here) Facebook pushed for the fallacious “pivot to video.” Next, stung by bad PR over fake news, it cut back on showing users news, period, and instantly vaporized a lot of the revenue base for journalism. (It’s no accident that this month, Verizon revealed that its digital media division, which includes AOL, Yahoo, and Tumblr along with journalism shops like HuffPost and Engadget, was worth about half what it paid for those companies. RIP the dream of “monetizing audiences at scale.”)

 

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2018/12/trump-facebook-global-problem/

[MaybeACoordinator 8350]

Somehow I got added to this Facebook page. It's interesting -- it's a bit like RT in reverse. All the bad news in Russia, but it seems to be a one man operation, and you have to Google translate it all unless you speaksi the Russkie. 

I'm wondering if this part of our counter-attack. 

https://varlamov.ru/

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

So it begins.  

 

[Biff Tannen 46151]

34 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

So it begins.  

 

Shouldn't this fall to Twitter to fucking police this bullshit? 

[Message Board User 12405]

 

[Biff Tannen 46151]

17 hours ago, Message Board User said:

 

Could also go in the How Fox News Works thread.  Way to go olds.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Putin trying to soften/prepare the battlefield 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[yaqdum 182]

17 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

that link should be required reading by all who participate in places like this.

"Some of the most successful trolls were the ones with the longest-standing identities, said François. Some online identities, which were likely managed by multiple people or whole teams, had roots going back as long as a decade."

edit:  one thing i didn't see mentioned was how helpful innocent locals can be by replying, copying verbatim the entire message they want disseminated.

 

Edited January 28, 2019 by yaqdum

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Statement from intelligence community to American people on Russian interference: 

DEAL WITH IT

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Good read 

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Hot off the presses:

House of Commons
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Disinformation and ‘fake news’: Final Report
Eighth Report of Session 2017–19

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1791/1791.pdf

 

Summary

This is the Final Report in an inquiry on disinformation that has spanned over 18 months, covering individuals’ rights over their privacy, how their political choices might be affected and influenced by online information, and interference in political elections both in this country and across the world—carried out by malign forces intent on causing disruption and confusion.

We have used the powers of the Committee system, by ordering people to give evidence and by obtaining documents sealed in another country’s legal system.

We invited democratically-elected representatives from eight countries to join our Committee in the UK to create an ‘International Grand Committee’, the first of its kind, to promote further cross-border co-operation in tackling the spread of disinformation, and its pernicious ability to distort, to disrupt, and to destabilise. Throughout this inquiry we have benefitted from working with other parliaments. This is continuing, with further sessions planned in 2019. This has highlighted a worldwide appetite for action to address issues similar to those that we have identified in other jurisdictions.

This is the Final Report in our inquiry, but it will not be the final word. We have always experienced propaganda and politically-aligned bias, which purports to be news, but this activity has taken on new forms and has been hugely magnified by information technology and the ubiquity of social media. In this environment, people are able to accept and give credence to information that reinforces their views, no matter how distorted or inaccurate, while dismissing content with which they do not agree as ‘fake news’. This has a polarising effect and reduces the common ground on which reasoned debate, based on objective facts, can take place.

Much has been said about the coarsening of public debate, but when these factors are brought to bear directly in election campaigns then the very fabric of our democracy is threatened.

This situation is unlikely to change. What does need to change is the enforcement of greater transparency in the digital sphere, to ensure that we know the source of what we are reading, who has paid for it and why the information has been sent to us. We need to understand how the big tech companies work and what happens to our data. Facebook operates by monitoring both users and non-users, tracking their activity and retaining personal data. Facebook makes its money by selling access to users’ data through its advertising tools. It further increases its value by entering into comprehensive reciprocal data-sharing arrangements with major app developers who run their businesses through the Facebook platform.

Meanwhile, among the countless innocuous postings of celebrations and holiday snaps, some malicious forces use Facebook to threaten and harass others, to publish revenge porn, to disseminate hate speech and propaganda of all kinds, and to influence elections and democratic processes—much of which Facebook, and other social media companies, are either unable or unwilling to prevent. We need to apply widely-accepted democratic principles to ensure their application in the digital age.

The big tech companies must not be allowed to expand exponentially, without constraint or proper regulatory oversight. But only governments and the law are powerful enough to contain them. The legislative tools already exist. They must now be applied to digital
activity, using tools such as privacy laws, data protection legislation, antitrust and competition law. If companies become monopolies they can be broken up, in whatever sector.

Facebook’s handling of personal data, and its use for political campaigns, are prime and legitimate areas for inspection by regulators, and it should not be able to evade all editorial responsibility for the content shared by its users across its platforms.

In a democracy, we need to experience a plurality of voices and, critically, to have the skills, experience and knowledge to gauge the veracity of those voices. While the Internet has brought many freedoms across the world and an unprecedented ability to communicate, it also carries the insidious ability to distort, to mislead and to produce hatred and instability. It functions on a scale and at a speed that is unprecedented in human history. One of the witnesses at our inquiry, Tristan Harris, from the US-based Center for Humane Technology, describes the current use of technology as “hijacking our minds and society”. We must use technology, instead, to free our minds and use regulation to restore democratic accountability. We must make sure that people stay in charge of the machines.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[ChickenSandwich 9952]

On 1/28/2019 at 1:06 PM, yaqdum said:

that link should be required reading by all who participate in places like this.

"Some of the most successful trolls were the ones with the longest-standing identities, said François. Some online identities, which were likely managed by multiple people or whole teams, had roots going back as long as a decade."

edit:  one thing i didn't see mentioned was how helpful innocent locals can be by replying, copying verbatim the entire message they want disseminated.

 

So....Hugo 

[Pancho 46267]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Biff Tannen 46151]

26 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

That article alone is enough to advocate for the complete shut down of facebook.  Fuck that platform.  It's far too easy to manipulate people.  

[Atx71 146]

On 2/18/2019 at 7:26 AM, ChickenSandwich said:

So....Hugo 

Nope. First response. 

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Anastasis 23716]

On 2/19/2019 at 4:43 PM, Biff Tannen said:

That article alone is enough to advocate for the complete shut down of facebook.  Fuck that platform.  It's far too easy to manipulate people.  

[F250 29195]

On 2/19/2019 at 4:16 PM, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

This reminds me of the time I floated the idea of the Angola Prison scam (lonely hearts club) against military members online back in the mid 90's.

Back then most people online were using either .edu or .mil email addresses. These military guys would troll IRC channels hard for college coeds with the old "ASL?" Anyways, I had just read a book about the scam in Angola and thought it would work perfectly in a digital format.

The idea wasn't to defraud but gather information regarding military secops and hand it over as research. The idea was shot down due to the illegality.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Russian General Pitches ‘Information’ Operations as a Form of War

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/world/europe/russia-hybrid-war-gerasimov.html

MOSCOW — The chief of Russia’s armed forces endorsed on Saturday the kind of tactics used by his country to intervene abroad, repeating a philosophy of so-called hybrid war that has earned him notoriety in the West, especially among American officials who have accused Russia of election meddling in 2016.

At a conference on the future of Russian military strategy, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, said countries bring a blend of political, economic and military power to bear against adversaries.

The speech outlined what some Western analysts consider the signature strategy of Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin — and what other experts call a simple recognition of modern war and politics.

General Gerasimov said Russia’s armed forces must maintain both “classical” and “asymmetrical” potential, using jargon for the mix of combat, intelligence and propaganda tools that the Kremlin has deployed in conflicts such as Syria and Ukraine.

And he cited the Syrian civil war an example of successful Russian intervention abroad. The combination of a small expeditionary force with “information” operations had provided lessons that could be expanded to “defend and advance national interests beyond the borders of Russia,” he said.

The speech was noteworthy for echoing themes General Gerasimov laid out in an article published in 2013 in The Military-Industrial Courier, a Russian army journal, and which many now see as a foreshadowing of the country’s embrace of “hybrid war” in Ukraine, where Russia has backed separatist rebels and used soldiers in unmarked uniforms to seize Crimea.

Though definitions of the term vary, some analysts see a progression from the blend of subversion and propaganda used in Ukraine to the tactics later directed against Western nations, including the United States, where Russia’s military intelligence agency hacked into Democratic Party computers during the 2016 election. Russia denies interfering in the election.

An American interagency report on the Russian election meddling blamed the intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U. and at least formally subordinate to General Gerasimov, for hacking the Democratic National Committee servers and releasing documents to damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton and support her opponent, Donald J. Trump.

In the 2013 article, General Gerasimov wrote that there were no clear borders between war and peace in the modern world. Militaries fight in peacetime, he said, and political and economic means are deployed in war.

That article prompted some Western analysts to call the Russian approach the “Gerasimov Doctrine,” though other experts object to crediting the general or the Kremlin alone.

“The idea that the Russians have discovered some new art of war is wrong,” Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert at the Royal United Services Institute and the author of “Russian Political War,” said of the general’s latest speech. “This is basically the Russians trying to grapple with the modern world.”

Hybrid war has long been a Western military term of art, analysts say, especially in the context of counterterrorism. The phrase has been adopted in discussion of Israel’s security and the United States’ occupation of Iraq, for instance, and in 2005 it appeared in the title of an article co-authored by James N. Mattis, then an American lieutenant general and later President Trump’s secretary of defense.

When discussing a blend of military, political and information operations, Russian strategists use the terms “complex approach” or “new generation war,” according to Ivan Konovalov, a military analyst and director of the Center for Studies of Strategic Trends.

In both The Military-Industrial Courier article and the speech, General Gerasimov emphasized the importance of mixed tactics by blaming Russia’s adversaries for using them.

“The Pentagon set about developing a new principle and strategy of military action already called a ‘Trojan horse,’” he said on Saturday. “The essence is active use of protest potential in a ‘fifth column’ in the interest of destabilizing the situation, simultaneously with airstrikes on the most important objects.”

Sputnik, a Russian state news service, suggested the general’s comments were in part an analysis of the crisis in Venezuela, where Russia has accused the United States of trying to oust President Nicolás Maduro. The 2013 article expressed similar concerns, laying out ideas to counter what General Gerasimov called Western intervention in the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.

The article and speech may also have a message for rivals at home. Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst and columnist in Moscow for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, said military hard-liners often promote the idea of Russia being in a limbo between war and peace because it helps them in internal government disputes, giving them greater sway over foreign policy.

Promoting the idea is also consistent, he said, with using the G.R.U. to target Western countries. The message, he said, is “we don’t care what the West thinks, we are enemies.”

[triplehorn 2664]

^^^ It’s staggering to think any sitting US president openly talked about/brought into consideration partnering with Russia around our nation’s own cyber security.  It’s not staggering when you understand Donald Trump the person is a Russian stooge.

Also, regarding the story a few posts above about US Cyber Command basically launching a pre-emptive attack shutting down the indicted Russian IRA on Election Day last November, note the increased urgency of Russia’s response:

from Feb 20th, 2019  ——>

Russia must build own internet in case of foreign disruption: Putin :

“(Reuters) - Russia must prepare for possible Western attempts to deny it access to the global internet by creating its own self-sufficient 'segments' of the web, President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying on Wednesday by Russian news agencies.

"I think, they (foreign countries) will think through carefully before doing it, but there is a theoretical possibility (of Russia being cut off from the internet), and that's why we should create segments that don't depend on anyone," Tass quoted Putin as saying.

cont.”

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Thread:

 

[Yuk 1613]

 

[triplehorn 2664]

cross posting this:

VVV  

"It carries his message and it also gives him a message a lot of the time,” she said. “Trump picks up on what he sees on Fox, and I’ve got quotes from people who are very close in to the White House, people who worked in the White House, in and out of Fox, saying what you’ve got is a dysfunctional White House all of the time with no normal decision-making process, where a lot of the policy-making is the president picking up what’s on Fox.” 

“Then I describe how Fox puts on what it does on the news, which is shocking in many ways,” Mayer added. “I mean, taking stuff straight off of the most crackpot blogs. Don’t take it me, take it from the people who are quoted from Fox saying so.”

 

It been an ongoing observation that Trump's policy decisions and views mirror Putin's, like 100% concordance.  Recall the reporting from the 2016 election about 'fake news' internet news sites originating from nondescript eastern european enclaves and of course the notable Russian internet troll farm under indictment, the IRA - fake news that was seized upon and amplified by Trump and surrogates during the 2016 campaign.  

I've wondered what the real time conduit could be for communication around day to day policy making and messaging (propaganda) since the election.  Conduits certainly could be multiple, but based on Jane Mayer's reporting, it appears FoxNews could be collaboratively playing a middle-man role by funneling a near daily or weekly schedule of policy and propaganda from sites or blogs from which they are directed to pick up, i.e. these may not be random 'crackpot blogs'.

If this is the case, FoxNews could be acting on behalf of a foreign agent (or worse).  It would be tantamount to "information money laundering."  Fox locates the propaganda and foreign desired policy views, and launders or legitimizes it by amplifying to the American public and while feeding it to directly to Trump during his morning "executive time."  

[suddenly shaggy 929]

All under the direction of Bill Shine, head of news and programing at Fox and now the Deputy White House Chief of Staff. 

Apparently he was questioned by prosecutors, but NY Times has changed their policy and the private mode reading doesn't work anymore. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/us/politics/bill-shine-trump-communications.html 

[F250 29195]

On 3/3/2019 at 1:45 PM, triplehorn said:

from Feb 20th, 2019  ——>

Russia must build own internet in case of foreign disruption: Putin :

“(Reuters) - Russia must prepare for possible Western attempts to deny it access to the global internet by creating its own self-sufficient 'segments' of the web, President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying on Wednesday by Russian news agencies.

"I think, they (foreign countries) will think through carefully before doing it, but there is a theoretical possibility (of Russia being cut off from the internet), and that's why we should create segments that don't depend on anyone," Tass quoted Putin as saying.

cont.” 

This is some Space Force level of unrealistic proposals.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Just now, F250 said:

This is some Space Force level of unrealistic proposals.

Par for the course for the Russians that claim to have invisible nukes that can travel a million miles per hour.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Lovely...

FBI Director Wray says foreign influence campaigns targeting US have continued 'virtually unabated'

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/03/05/politics/wray-foreign-influence-campaigns/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F6qa6ZVlX2a

San Francisco (CNN) — FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday that while the US had not seen a "material impact on election infrastructure" from foreign adversaries in the recent midterm elections, foreign influence campaigns pitting Americans against each other on social media have continued "virtually unabated."

 

Wray, speaking at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco, said the FBI has been working closely with the social media companies to counter the threat, and that the cooperation had been a "great example of how the government and private sector can work together in a common defense." 

 

He said the wider cyber threats facing the United States are "unlike anything we have had in our lifetimes," citing an uptick in threats from Russia, Iran, China and North Korea. 

 

Wray also said the US is seeing more "blended" attacks, where nation-states are partnering with cyber criminal gangs to attack the US.

 

He fingered China, saying that when he became director, "The thing that most shocked me was the breath and the depth and the scale of the Chinese counterintelligence threat."

 

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Russia Boasts It Is Winning Info-Wars Against the West

http://www.juliadavisnews.com/articles-about-russian-propaganda/russia-boasts-it-is-winning-info-wars-against-the-west/

TL:DR version: Russia is aggy and Trump is their best yell leader. 

 

Russia’s English-speaking media and government representatives would have you believe they’re on the defensive, fending off the West’s attacks in the info-sphere. However, their real point of view emerges in Russian-speaking media, where the Kremlin’s mouthpieces boast of winning the info-war against the West.

The Kremlin’s reaction to Trump’s Syria strikes could be dissected to examine the modus operandi utilized by the Russian state media to conduct successful info-ops.

 

Step 1: Laying the groundwork

 

Whenever possible, the Kremlin and the Russian state media attempt to preemptively muddy the waters with respect to any potentially sensitive topic. When certain events are inevitable, the Kremlin predicts them in a way most beneficial to the regime. For example, Putin warned about possible “chemical weapons provocations by the rebels,” knowing Assad’s propensity for using them. Thus, such a warning is an evergreen fig leaf, to be used by the Kremlin as needed.

With respect to Trump’s motives, impugning them was easy. Once Trump Tweeted out his intent to conduct a series of strikes on Syria, the Russian state media asserted that Trump ordered the strikes to distract from the raid of his attorney’s office, his alleged affair with Stormy Daniels and Mueller’s investigation in general. This was a low-hanging fruit and the Kremlin plucked it with great ease – convincing not only domestic audiences, but also those in the West.

In a more general sense, the Kremlin has been laying the groundwork for its info-ops against the West for years, developing the general mistrust of the government and media. RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, admitted that RT was created as an instrument to be used by the Kremlin for its info-wars against the West, as needed.

Simonyan elaborated that it would be too late to start making weapons once the war has already started. Thus, RT was conceived, masquerading as an “alternative news” media outlet, to be used as needed. Simonyan explained: “When Russia is at war, we [RT] are on Russia’s side.”

For years, RT has been cultivating the soil: covering demonstrations and protests, interviewing whistleblowers and fringe politicians, developing trust with the audience by covering stories ignored by the mainstream media. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, RT was weaponized, spewing out blatant propaganda and outright fakes to the receptive audience that has grown to trust them over the years. The Russian media churned out hundreds of fake stories, shared on social media by Kremlin trolls, bots and – perhaps most importantly – those who genuinely believed them. Margarita Simonyan continues to boast about RT’s successes, exclaiming that “soft power” works and the Kremlin needs to continually build it up, because people in the West “are listening and taking it in.”

In the meantime, the West is lagging far behind, having been caught unprepared for the onslaught of the fake news, encompassing a wide variety of topics, from Ebola to the election. While the Congress has allocated $120 million since 2016 to combat foreign propaganda, none of it was spent to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy.

 

Step 2: Ratcheting up the pressure

 

Who wouldn’t want to get along with Russia, if the only alternative was to end up reduced to a pile of radioactive ash? That’s how the Kremlin’s mouthpieces aim to make you feel. This is not a new narrative, but a trusty saber that is being rattled as needed.

Simply put, Russia believes it should be able to get away with anything, because it is a nuclear power to be reckoned with. For example, in anticipation of the recent Syria strikes, the Kremlin and its mouthpieces poured out a series of dire warnings.  Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Zasypkin, warned that Russia would fire not only on any U.S. missiles targeting Syria, but also the units launching them. This threat was echoing the warning previously issued by Valery Gerasimov, head of Russia’s armed forces: “In case the lives of our soldiers are under threat, the armed forces of the Russian Federation will take retaliatory measures . . . against missiles and against the delivery vehicles used.”

Russian state TV posted videos, explaining what to take with you to the bomb shelter in case of a nuclear attack, as well as simulations of a “Nuclear Explosion Outside White House.”

The Kremlin wants the average Western citizens to be so exhausted by the possibility of World War III that they would pressure their governments to get along with Russia, at any cost. That is the strategy frequently discussed on Russian state television, as well as the main aim of the nuclear saber-rattling.

The Kremlin wants the average Western citizens to be so exhausted by the possibility of World War III that they would pressure their governments to get along with Russia, at any cost. That is the strategy frequently discussed on Russian state television, as well as the main aim of the nuclear saber-rattling.

 

Step 3: Taking full advantage of the situation

 

In any scenario, the Kremlin’s media tentacles reach into the public conscience and build the momentum for the actions Putin’s government has been contemplating all along. For example, the Ukrainian revolution was used as the pretext for annexing Crimea, which was quietly contemplated for years. The idea of providing S-300 or S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems to Assad has been floated in the Russian state media prior to the strikes. Russian pundits and politicians publicly relished the idea of turning Syria into another Vietnam for Americans.

Nonetheless, the strikes are now being used as the pretext for “removing moral obligations” not to supply Assad with such systems. In short, Russia is prepared to use any situation to further its prior objectives, with the media working to provide the perceived justification, while clouding the collective conscience.

When Russia’s election meddling was widely exposed – instead of shying away from the topic, the Kremlin’s state media openly boasted: “Trump is ours”!

Russian politicians and pundits are continuing to reiterate that Trump is the most pro-Russian politician in the U.S. establishment.

The Russians are already being sanctioned for election meddling and don’t have much to lose by using the situation to their advantage, thus cementing the idea of Putin’s omnipotence and Russia’s growing worldwide influence.

 

Step 4: Claiming moral superiority 

 

In every large-scale confrontation, Russia is positioning itself as the brave Soviet soldier and its opponents as the Nazis. The Kremlin is repeatedly engaging in large-scale demonstrations of Godwin’s law: invoke the Nazis and you’ve lost the argument. Undeterred by this principle, the Russians continue to resort to this tactic. Ukrainians opposing Russian aggression are labeled as the Nazis and Trump, who approved the strikes on Syria, is the new Hitler.

The Russian media, having threatened to reduce the world to piles of radioactive ash, says that silly Trump is “playing toy soldiers” and trying to start WWIII, but “wise and calm” Putin saved the world by not responding. Politicians and pundits propose a variety of retaliatory measures, including expanded information warfare operations.

 

Step 5: Declaring victory in the face of defeat

 

Russia claims to be winning, regardless of the facts on the ground. When the West imposed the sanctions for the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, the Russian media portrayed them as a measure that is good for Russia and bad for the West. Russian state media promoted T-shirts that said: “Sanctions? Don’t make my Iskanders laugh.” “Iskander” is a missile complex, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The typical message of defiance was combined with the customary nuclear saber-rattling. The Iskanders no longer seem to be laughing, as the sanctions are biting hard, but first impressions do count.

The same principle was utilized to address the Syria strikes. Trump’s decision to strike hardly pleased the Putin’ regime, but the media managed to portray the entire operation as a resounding success for Russia and Assad. State media rejoiced that the Assad regime evacuated and emptied all of the facilities targeted by strikes and described the operation as the U.S. and allies “hitting some empty barns.”

By the same token, when the Trump administration announced its decision to expel 60 Russian spies from the U.S., the Russian state media was quick to point out that an unidentified senior Trump administration official reportedly comforted the Russians by telling them that the number of Russian diplomatic staff in the U.S. is not being cut and 60 expelled spies could be replaced by others.

The Russian media took full advantage of the situation, mocking the move as a hollow gesture.

 

Step 6: Escalating influence operations

 

Russia’s use of bots and trolls has been extensively covered in the media. One aspect of Russia’s info-war operations includes the creation of anonymous social media accounts, purporting to “uncover” covert pro-Kremlin operators and trolls, while striving to attack those who debunk Russian propaganda, to splinter the “resistance” and to undermine pro-Ukrainian movements in the social media. Any accounts that attack anti-Kremlin individuals under the guise of “exposing them” should be taken with a pound of salt. While these underhanded tactics yield some fruit, the key to the Kremlin’s info-wars is convincing and/or recruiting real celebrities and large-scale influencers to openly run with the Russian version of the narrative.

In the past, Russian state media simply used Photoshopped images to project the idea of celebrities supporting Putin. For example, Sputnik and other Russian state media outlets published a story that quoted Rammstein singer Till Lindemann, allegedly speaking out in support of Putin and lashing out against Western sanctions. According to Sputnik, Lindemann said that Putin is more popular in Germany than Angela Merkel. Sputnik also published a Photoshopped picture of the singer in a Putin T-shirt.

Photoshop isn’t necessary, when Russia can recruit or use real influencers or celebrities. Appearing on Russian state TV show ’60 Minutes,’ RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said, in relevant part: “Regular people – among whom there are people who have more influence on public opinion than the government – they are the ones we’re trying to reach. Look at Roger Waters of Pink Floyd… Those are the people who have nowhere else to find this information, except for us [RT].” During his Barcelona concert, Waters denounced “the White Helmets” as a “fake organization,” much to the delight of the Russian state media. He later provided copies of e-mail communications to be used by RT in its programming.

After bringing up Waters, Simonyan boasted about her discussions with an unnamed top-level manager of a major international multimedia platform. She proudly claimed to have convinced this high-ranking individual [presumably, an American] to accept the Kremlin’s perspective on the annexation of Crimea. “He didn’t know anything about it, but now he understands,” Simonyan said. She emphasized the importance of spreading the Russian narrative in multiple languages, which is currently being done only by RT and Sputnik (sister companies, with Simonyan serving as the editor-in-chief of both).

As the Kremlin increases its info-war operations, another English-language “media” company is about to appear on the Western front. “USA Really” was created by Russia’s Federal News Agency, linked to the IRA troll factory operations. The stated goal of “USA Really” is to spread “information and problems that are hushed up” by the American mainstream media. It is essentially the same model that has proven to be quite effective for RT and Sputnik.

Trump’s narrative about the untrustworthy “fake news media” plays right into the hands of the Kremlin’s bullhorns. By undermining public trust in traditional news sources, Russian state media promotes itself as an “alternative” source of news. As an expression goes, “If you build it, they will come” and if you write it, they will believe – as Margarita Simonyan opined during one of her many appearances on Russian state media talk shows.

The Western audiences are so receptive to the Russian propaganda in large part due to the dismal media coverage of the Kremlin in the recent past. Many Americans are blissfully unaware that Putin’s Russia is not our friend and is hoping for our ultimate destruction.

Editor-in-chief of RT and Sputnik, Margarita Simonyan, isn’t striving to bring you the “alternative news.” She’s working hard to fill the information space with propaganda, while asserting that Americans are so dumb and uneducated, they’ll believe anything. It’s not a coincidence that RT and Sputnik have such a hard time finding anything remotely positive to report about the U.S.

It should be noted that without a willing participant in the White House, the Kremlin’s info-ops would be notably less effective. Trump’s “fatal ineptitude” (a fitting expression, coined on a Russian state TV show ’60 Minutes’) is a deciding factor that fits into the pyramid of convincing lies like a missing piece of a puzzle. Trump’s continued kowtowing to the Russians puts a cherry atop a poisoned ice cream sundae of Putin’s propaganda. Without adequate countermeasures, Russian information warfare will continue to advance.

Edited March 17, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Zavala 1384]

On 2/19/2019 at 4:43 PM, Biff Tannen said:

That article alone is enough to advocate for the complete shut down of facebook.  Fuck that platform.  It's far too easy to manipulate people.  

I don't think you understand the point of LifeLog

[Grandioso 2592]

On 3/4/2019 at 12:13 PM, triplehorn said:

I've wondered what the real time conduit could be for communication around day to day policy making and messaging (propaganda) since the election.  Conduits certainly could be multiple, but based on Jane Mayer's reporting, it appears FoxNews could be collaboratively playing a middle-man role by funneling a near daily or weekly schedule of policy and propaganda from sites or blogs from which they are directed to pick up, i.e. these may not be random 'crackpot blogs'.

This is almost a certainty. Under Ailes, Fox would run with a daily TPM from the GOP and create "themes" for any given day. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

In Ukraine, Russia Tests a New Facebook Tactic in Election Tampering

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/world/europe/ukraine-russia-election-tampering-propaganda.html

Campaigning for Ukraine’s presidential election had just begun to heat up when the authorities announced they had thwarted a Russian plot to use Facebook to undermine the vote.

Unlike the 2016 interference in the United States, which centered on fake Facebook pages created by Russians in faraway St. Petersburg, the operation in Ukraine this year had a clever twist. It tried to circumvent Facebook’s new safeguards by paying Ukrainian citizens to give a Russian agent access to their personal pages.

In a video confession published by the S.B.U., Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, a man it identified as the Russian agent said that he resided in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, and that his Russian handlers had ordered him “to find people in Ukraine on Facebook who wanted to sell their accounts or temporarily rent them out.”

“As I learned,” said the man, who was not identified by name, “their goal was to use those accounts to publish political ads or to plant fake articles.”

The operation suggested that Russia’s tactics had evolved somewhat over the last three years. The change, it seems, is partly a response to security measures adopted by Facebook after the 2016 campaign in the United States when, officials say, the social media company was used to widely disseminate disinformation and inflame partisan tensions.

The question ahead of the election in Ukraine, scheduled for Sunday, is whether Facebook has evolved as well.

The vote presents Facebook with an opportunity to take what it has learned and confront Russia over what the Kremlin considers its home turf. Ukraine has long been a testing ground for all manner of so-called Russian active measures, and was among the first hit with the kind of electoral manipulation later deployed against the United States, France and other countries.

[EuroHorn 3295]

Quote

For months, Twitter has been inserting tweets from popular accounts into feeds of users who do not follow them. The practice means Twitter at times has amplified inflammatory political rhetoric, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.

Sounds exactly like the practice Hugo does to this board. Just look at all the tweets he drops into every thread...

Edited March 30, 2019 by EuroHorn

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Crazy shit

 

[GRHorn 105]

Looks like FB doing its own manipulating in foreign elections? 

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

No secret the white male dominated tech giants have some closet cryptofascists walking among them. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

No surprise here but documenting for posterity 

 

The Russians did one of the same old things they always do.

Create a White House Petition, promote it online with state ran media, get their media surrogates to promote it(posobiec, Fairbanks), then post memes about it non-stop on their conservative social media accounts.

 

Memes from two of the biggest Russian facebook personas Secured Borders and Stop all Invaders

 

Posts of russian accounts @Pamela_Moore13, @TEN_GOP, @SouthLoneStar tweets to reddit about antifa.

IRA tweets featuring JUST the Petition. 

That's not including the 10,000+ tweets they sent using the term "antifa".

These images, they are from the data files the Russians leaked in november to the press to discredit the Mueller investigation. 

It has the white house petition screen capped ready to meme right in it. 😂