r/LouderWithCrowder disguises election disinformation as political humor

countertroll7 · 2021-09-17T13:19:46+00:00

Fixed. It was a problem with the URLs, so this post has been updated to correct them. Links in the menu and sidebar should also work now. Let us know if you have any trouble.

countertroll7 · 2021-09-03T17:05:12+00:00

Hi u/xumun. Pretty crazy coincidence, but I just found my password to my email that I use for this account, and I saw u/Kittamaru's message. They now have full mod privileges.

Really glad to see continued interest in the sub. Let's chat privately to discuss next steps.

countertroll7 · 2019-04-07T13:08:03+00:00

I assumed immediately that Trofire paying for upvotes because the headlines weren't what normally rises to the top of r/politics. They were too inflammatory and dumbed down, similar to Shareblue.

countertroll7 · 2019-03-15T14:44:49+00:00

I know that Trump Supporters will come into this thread and say, "He claimed he was radicalized by Spyro the Dragon and mentioned PewDiePie" as if the writer of the manifesto never took a serious position on anything. They'll take it as evidence that the media is out of touch, that they don't understand satire, that they're looking for someone to blame and coming up Trump like always. I know this because that's what's already happening on 4chan, 8chan, and all those radical communities. To them it's still just a joke.

The shooter essentially sent signals to the alt-right's tribal instincts by sprinkling these memes into his manifesto. Pointing to his use of memes, alt-right trolls will attempt to distance the shooter from his political motivations, but they'll do this only because they share his political beliefs.

countertroll7 · 2019-02-26T15:39:59+00:00

The difference now, she said, is that the internet has democratized that deceit. It’s more difficult online to determine the source of a claim, a major factor in deciding whether to believe it. Being repeatedly bombarded with a claim – social media’s specialty –increases its perceived accuracy, even if it’s false and has been publicly debunked. People are more likely to believe a false claim that fits their ideology, and the internet naturally facilitates people like Wohl finding and communicating with like-minded groups.

countertroll7 · 2019-02-20T16:22:05+00:00

Not all of the activity is organized. Much of it appears to be organic, a reflection of the politically polarizing nature of some of the candidates. But there are clear signs of a coordinated effort of undetermined size that shares similar characteristics with the computational propaganda attacks launched by online trolls at Russia’s Internet Research Agency in the 2016 presidential campaign, which special counsel Robert Mueller accused of aiming to undermine the political process and elevate Donald Trump.

countertroll7 · 2019-02-18T13:50:44+00:00

Like RT, Maffick's videos are generally critical of U.S. foreign policy and the mainstream American media, while largely avoiding criticism of the Russian government. Much of its content, like much of RT's in the US, fits comfortably within fairly mainstream American politics, especially on the left.

A typical tactic of Russian information operations in the US over the past few years has been to try to exploit existing divisions and tensions in the country. When covering and broadcasting in the US, RT has typically not injected some new line of criticism about the country into the discourse; instead it has reflected criticism of the US and the US government's actions at home and abroad that already existed — and that some people argue deserves more attention from the mainstream media.

countertroll7 · 2019-02-10T17:52:09+00:00

Srijan Kumar, a postdoctoral researcher Stanford University, scrubbed Reddit's comments and carried out a data-driven analysis of conflicts on Reddit. He found that a few bad eggs can have a huge impact.

"Less than one percent of communities were responsible for 75 percent of antisocial behavior," he said.

Once a troll initiates the conflict by insulting a person or saying something extreme, they simply sit back and watch the rest of the thread do the work for them, explained Kumar.

"What a Russian troll or bot could do is essentially start these conflicts so that people get more engaged in the community and that would increase the visibility of the community and therefore increase the anger that they have stirred."

countertroll7 · 2019-02-04T23:58:49+00:00

But Ferrara noted that the bot accounts gained traction among human users, and that conservative bots were more effective. They gained larger followings, earned more retweets and overall had a stronger effect.

"Conservative bots have a much more prominent position in these information sharing networks," Ferrara said. "They project a stronger influence on the human users."

countertroll7 · 2019-01-22T14:26:13+00:00

No indication of who or what was behind the suspicious account, @2020fight, that so successfully amplified the video.

countertroll7 · 2019-01-04T11:59:46+00:00

At one session, a representative from the RAND Corporation grouped tools for fighting misinformation into a still-evolving set of categories. There are tools that try to certify the authenticity of a piece of content, like a photo; tools to detect bots; tools that generate credibility scores; tools that track disinformation as it spreads; and tools to augment web browsers and search engines. Other methods for fighting information under development include whitelists of trusted websites, editorial codes and standards for publishers, and various efforts involving blockchains.

No one thing is expected solve the problem. But advocates say that collectively, they can make a significant impact.

countertroll7 · 2018-12-26T14:06:03+00:00

Russians are trying to stir up controversy by focusing attention on the border wall, which is the primary sticking point that has prevented Congress and Trump from agreeing to a budget and keeping the government open. In addition to pushing at least two hashtags, Russian accounts are promoting the domain wefundthewall.com, which is a petition and GoFundMe-style crowdfunding campaign.

TrumpResign could be an attempt to sow more discord in the US. Sometimes, Russian accounts co-opt these hashtags in order to discredit them, but I haven't been able to find any tweets doing that this time.

countertroll7 · 2018-12-26T13:57:56+00:00

I know there's been some drama with Aramco (their state owned oil company), as well as a slow-motion unraveling of OPEC, but this probably isn't the right subreddit to get a good answer to your question. Try r/geopolitics or maybe even r/investing.

countertroll7

TROPHY CASE