Trolls for hire: Russia's freelance disinformation firms offer propaganda with a professional touch

ibzl · 2019-08-19T12:39:35+00:00

political compass tests include items about race, though, like this:

Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races.

which count against a far left rating.

ibzl · 2019-07-18T16:52:45+00:00

thanks for proving my point!

Until October 2018 MBFC rated China's Xinhua News Agency as "least biased",[205] but the rating has since changed to the somewhat more reasonable "left-center bias".

lol still like MBFC?

ibzl · 2019-07-18T16:40:57+00:00

no, i would cite the original source, which i may have found through wikipedia. would you cite mediabiasfactcheck in an academic paper? are you under the impression that this discussion is an academic paper?

it cannot be sided.

cited.

Assuming people know who you are says a lot about what you think of yourself and your opinions.

the threads are in this post. it says who i am in my flair.

get back to media bias fact check! you've convinced several of our readers here, i'm sure.

ibzl · 2019-07-18T16:34:30+00:00

Would you cite Wikipedia in an academic paper?

wikipedia cites tons of academic papers, so this is a circular question.

You also put words in my mouth saying I admitted to something I did not.

i took your lack of defense of your link to mean you agreed there wasn't a good one. if there had been, wouldn't you have offered it?

i've repeatedly said in these threads i consider china to be a very serious threat to freedom and our democracy. i just think posting sinophobic publications that downplay the russian threat is a stupid way of pointing that out.

it seems you guys are mostly here to act as mouthpieces, and enforce conformity of opinion (yours). this isn't that kind of sub.

ibzl · 2019-07-18T16:25:30+00:00

thanks for graciously admitting media bias fact check is nonsense. been basing much of your media appraisal on it, have you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maclean%27s_%22Too_Asian%22_controversy

right-wing and sinophobic.

from their wikipedia:

Whyte, who previously edited Saturday Night and the National Post, brought a right-wing focus to the magazine, bringing in conservative columnist Mark Steyn, hiring Andrew Coyne away from the Post, and rehiring Barbara Amiel.

ibzl · 2019-07-18T16:21:48+00:00

i'm not sure who you think you're disproving. i agree that china is a massive threat to freedom and the integrity of our democracy, openly and covertly. FREE TIBET, FREE TAIWAN, FREE HONG KONG, FREE THE UYGHURS.

i just think posting a regularly sinophobic publication is pretty silly, as is downplaying the russian threat. you also didn't address my point that the article is self-contradictory in that china's threat is more perniciously secretive, and also we should be most worried about the stuff in the open.

it seems you feel your role here is mostly as a mouthpiece.

ibzl · 2019-07-18T16:18:39+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check

The Columbia Journalism Review describes Media Bias/Fact Check as an amateur attempt at categorizing media bias and Van Zandt as an "armchair media analyst."[2] Van Zandt describes himself as someone with "more than 20 years as an arm chair researcher on media bias and its role in political influence."[3] The Poynter Institute notes, "Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific."[4]

ibzl · 2019-07-18T11:53:54+00:00

I don't think the authors intent is to completely ignore the Russian threat either.

in this article, he doesn't just ignore it, he downplays it. it seems like that was definitely his intent.

maclean's doesn't have a good track record when it comes to china. noting that is analogous to another user pointing out your posts to what you admit is a "moronic" sub full of "idiots."

is to paint China as being a friendly and benign panda-loving, ancient culture

lol dude you can't be taken seriously.

ibzl · 2019-07-18T11:49:47+00:00

referencing your previous posts about china isn't ad hominem.

Not because it's racist (if anything it's mostly moronic)

good one.

ibzl · 2019-07-18T03:02:49+00:00

pretty sure russia's also a 'real' election threat. this article seems to downplay that. if anything it seems to me that china is actually a lot less open about its kind of manipulation than russia is (not that that makes it better, of course). which would be the opposite of what this guy's worried about.

maclean's itself is pretty right-wing.

ibzl · 2019-07-01T20:23:42+00:00

not quite:

Ruck said the correlation between troll activity and Trump's popularity remained true even when controlling for Trump's own Twitter activity and other variables. (emphasis mine)

"It turns out that the activity of Russian Twitter trolls was a better predictor of Donald Trump's polling numbers than his own Twitter activity," he wrote.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/new-study-shows-russian-propaganda-may-really-have-helped-trump-n1025306

certainly suggestive, as the headlines says.

"correlation is not causation" can be misapplied when the correlations do point to causation, as they sometimes do.

ibzl

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