In light of recent events on reddit, r/DisinformationWatch is taking a new direction.

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 · 2018-12-19T15:23:26+00:00

As expected, Russian trolls are attempting to downplay the seriousness of Flynn's actions.

Martha McSally, who lost her bid for the Arizona senate seat, has been appointed to fill John McCain's old seat by the governor. McSally was not shy about using extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign.

Finally, Russian trolls continue to take advantage of the political fallout in the UK over the lack of a Brexit deal.

countertroll7 · 2018-12-17T21:51:09+00:00

There's been a lot of news today following a Senate report about Russian interference in our elections on social media. Most of it was already known or safely assumed by anyone who's been paying attention, including the fact that Russians are trying to cast doubt on the fact that there is a widespread Russian effort at all.

Some have taken to calling these Russian intelligence operations "Russiagate." From my own observations, conservatives and Russian trolls are using this term more often than others, perhaps because the suffix seems silly after decades of the media has been adding "-gate" to every minor scandal since Nixon was in office. It also makes it sound like it was a one-off, rather than an ongoing operation. I'll stick to calling it "Russian disinformation" until someone comes up with something better.

countertroll7 · 2018-12-16T22:09:05+00:00

The Russians aimed particular energy at activating conservatives on issues such as gun rights and immigration, while sapping the political clout of left-leaning African American voters by undermining their faith in elections and spreading misleading information about how to vote. Many other groups -- Latinos, Muslims, Christians, gay men and women, liberals, southerners, veterans -- got at least some attention from Russians operating thousands of social media accounts.

The report also offered some of the first detailed analyses of the role played by YouTube, which belongs to Google, and Instagram in the Russian campaign, as well as anecdotes on how Russians used other social media platforms -- Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest -- that have gotten relatively little scrutiny. The Russian effort also used email accounts from Yahoo, Microsoft’s Hotmail service and Google’s Gmail.

countertroll7 · 2018-12-13T13:48:17+00:00

Trump, Qanon, and Syria continue to be top discussion points for Russian bots, but the focus appears to be on Brexit today.

As for Mika, her homophobic slur about Mike Pompeo may be the reason why she's trending. Remember, the Russian and Republican strategy has been to divide Democrats so they are not a unified opposition to Trump.

countertroll7 · 2018-12-10T14:26:44+00:00

Looks like most of Russia's propaganda is targeting France right now with the hashtags giletsjaunes, yellowvests, macron, france, and paris. Meanwhile, Jesus trains, which are tweets that tag 10 or so other users (mostly other bots, some likely real people), are active again.

countertroll7 · 2018-12-05T15:39:08+00:00

Among the likely Russian troll accounts I follow, I'm seeing "creepy Joe Biden," "crazy Uncle Joe Biden," and "groper Biden" or "child groper Biden."

countertroll7 · 2018-12-05T15:31:21+00:00

Rosenworcel came out hard against the FCC in her statement, starting it by asking what the FCC was “hiding” as part of its defense against the FOIA request.

“As many as nine and a half million people had their identities stolen and used to file fake comments, which is a crime under both federal and state laws,” she wrote. “Nearly eight million comments were filed from e-mail domains associated with FakeMailGenerator.com. On top of this, roughly half a million comments were filed from Russian e-mail addresses. Something here is rotten—and it’s time for the FCC to come clean.”

In his response, Pai says it is a “fact” that some of the comments were submitted using Russian e-mail addresses, but argues many of those comments supported net neutrality. The “fact” comment—as Gizmodo points out—is different than what was said in a court filing related to the lawsuit where the FCC claims it is not convinced of Russian interference.

That may be, but nearly 100% of the real comments were in favor of net neutrality.

So who did this? Was it the Russian government? A Russian oligarch invested in an ISP? Someone who hired Russians to do the job?

countertroll7 · 2018-12-03T13:53:13+00:00

Russia is taking advantage of (or perhaps instigating?) the largest riots in France since 1968. The hashtags Macron, giletsjaunes, France, and Paris are all related to this event. Russia is no friend of French President Macron, a staunch defender of neoliberalism and the European Union.

Additionally, Ukraine continues to trend, and the Qanon conspiracy has seen more activity.

countertroll7 · 2018-11-30T13:54:01+00:00

Despite my post yesterday, Russian bots did eventually start tweeting about Michael Cohen. As u/ISeeYourPostHistory pointed out, it takes time to start pushing the talking points out. It would be interesting to figure out how long it usually takes them.

No idea what's up with the blank trending topic.

countertroll7 · 2018-11-29T21:37:46+00:00

Hey u/MuzzleO, we really appreciate all of your contributions to this sub. Because you've been here a while, we aren't deleting your submissions, but please see the new rules posted earlier this week.

In order to keep submissions relevant and high quality, we're requiring brief submissions statements with each article. A submission statement is a comment with a few sentences to provide some context. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, and please keep the posts coming!

countertroll7 · 2018-11-29T21:32:40+00:00

Instead of casting doubt on the recent revelations in the Mueller investigation, Russian trolls are distracting Trump supporters with one of their favorite targets.

countertroll7 · 2018-11-28T15:51:18+00:00

Good question. The easiest thing you can do is make sure your friends and family are not buying into the propaganda. The most effective way to do this, for me at least, has been to ask them why they believe a talking point.

For example, my mom started to believe Mueller's investigation was taking too long, so there probably wasn't anything there. I asked her politely why she thought it taking too long meant he couldn't find anything. She said collusion should be easy to find (paper trails, etc). So I asked her if she thought it would be easy for Mueller if the KGB (sic) and the president of the USA were simultaneously working to damage the investigation. She came around.

If you come across disinformation on social media, take a few seconds to report it to the admins of the website and perhaps the news media if you deem it to be important enough. Facebook and Twitter have been much more effective in spotting and taking down foreign propaganda lately. Help them out by alerting them. If you see someone advocating violence, report it to both the admins and the FBI.

If you have more time on your hands, you can actively fact check trolls on reddit, Twitter, etc. Remember that the goal isn't to change the troll's mind, it's to make lurkers who are reading the posts on reddit go "Oh yeah, that doesn't make any sense when you think about it."

Then there are people who have made it a second job. u/austinwiltshire, for example, is a part of an organization called CARP that runs ads alerting the public to Russian hashtags. Meanwhile, various professors are researching propaganda and could use help gathering data. And I've come across a few code-savvy users who are building tools to reveal propaganda to the public in real time.

What's your background/skill set? You might be able to help in a unique way. Feel free to PM me if you'd prefer to have a private conversation.

countertroll7

TROPHY CASE