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Active Measures, Disinfo, Propaganda


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22 minutes ago, Loch Ness Monster said:

Russian trolls on Twitter pose as ex-Democrats for #WalkAway movement

https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/russian-trolls-walkaway-movement/

 

"I hated guns and God and most of all - Republicans. I loved Europe and big government programs and Barack Obama. First I #walkedaway from identity politics...Jordan Peterson helped with that. Next I learned to love this amazing country and renewed my faith in God and my Jewish heritage. Dennis Prager helped with that. Next I learned about why free market Capitalism has been the greatest force for good in human history, and why Socialism is wrong not just economically, but also ends in totalitarianism and mass slaughter."

That's not a real message is it? It sounds about as convincing as one of those "horny housewives are waiting to meet you" ads.

 

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Russian trolls on Twitter pose as ex-Democrats for #WalkAway movement
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/russian-trolls-walkaway-movement/
 
"I hated guns and God and most of all - Republicans. I loved Europe and big government programs and Barack Obama. First I #walkedaway from identity politics...Jordan Peterson helped with that. Next I learned to love this amazing country and renewed my faith in God and my Jewish heritage. Dennis Prager helped with that. Next I learned about why free market Capitalism has been the greatest force for good in human history, and why Socialism is wrong not just economically, but also ends in totalitarianism and mass slaughter."
Lawesome
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Twitter will begin removing tens of millions of suspicious accounts from users’ followers on Thursday, signaling a major new effort to restore trust on the popular but embattled platform.

The reform takes aim at a pervasive form of social media fraud. Many users have inflated their followers on Twitter or other services with automated or fake accounts, buying the appearance of social influence to bolster their political activism, business endeavors or entertainment careers.

Twitter’s decision will have an immediate impact: Beginning on Thursday, many users, including those who have bought fake followers and any others who are followed by suspicious accounts, will see their follower numbers fall. While Twitter declined to provide an exact number of affected users, the company said it would strip tens of millions of questionable accounts from users’ followers. The move would reduce the total combined follower count on Twitter by about 6 percent — a substantial drop.

An investigation by The New York Times in January demonstrated that just one small Florida company sold fake followers and other social media engagement to hundreds of thousands of users around the world, including politicians, models, actors and authors. The revelations prompted investigations in at least two states and calls in Congress for intervention by the Federal Trade Commission. In interviews this week, Twitter executives said that The Times’s reporting pushed them to look more closely at steps the company could take to clamp down on the market for fakes, which is fueled in part by the growing political and commercial value of a widely followed Twitter account.

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2 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Clearlakehorn turned out to be Mark Zuckerberg.

who knew.

Online hysteria, Zuckerberg began his statement by saying as a Jewish person he finds holocaust denial deeply offensive. He is terrible at communication but his statements don't make him a holocaust denier.

 

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7 minutes ago, F250 said:

Online hysteria, Zuckerberg began his statement by saying as a Jewish person he finds holocaust denial deeply offensive. He is terrible at communication but his statements don't make him a holocaust denier.

 

No one said he was, himself, a holocaust denier. 

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7 hours ago, F250 said:

Online hysteria, Zuckerberg began his statement by saying as a Jewish person he finds holocaust denial deeply offensive. He is terrible at communication but his statements don't make him a holocaust denier.

 

I get that and the clearlakehorn comment was an obvious joke.

The thing is Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t have to tolerate holocaust denier propaganda and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones on his platform...and he shouldn’t. 

This is where the tech companies need to start showing a little social responsibility and not try to act like they’re a hands off government entity.

 Before I get the free speech lecture, pornography isn’t tolerated on Facebook which might be less harmful than the stuff Alex Jones and the white supremacists are pushing.

 

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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5 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

This is where the tech companies need to start showing a little social responsibility and not try to act like they’re a hands off government entity.

To you censorship is being responsible but to others not censoring is the responsible choice.

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12 hours ago, TornACL said:

Was he a denier? I don't remember. Wouldn't surprise me since he was an imbecile with hate in his heart. Prime candidate. 

I don't know for sure but he posted some crazy stuff back on shaggy that denied the holocaust. He later claimed it was sarcasm but the original posts didn't suggest any sarcasm. He might have  just been off his meds at the time.

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1 hour ago, F250 said:

To you censorship is being responsible but to others not censoring is the responsible choice.

So pornography should be allowed on Facebook?  

Because it’s currently being censored by Facebook.

Look, it’s a touchy issue because it is subjective and that’s why the social media companies are going to need to step up and use their power to keep their platform from being exploited by bad actors.

I don’t want the government to start regulating Facebook but if they don’t take the initiative and improve the quality of their platform, in the interest of public health and safety, I fear the government is going to have to step in. 

Facebook is so big and intergrated into our society, it’s almost like a privatized public utility now.  

If Facebook was the sole supplier of public drinking water, shouldn’t they be expected to keep the water clean/safe and free from harmful poisons?  Because right now they’re acting like they don’t give a shit and bad actors are making money off of poisoning the Facebook well.

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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25 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

If Facebook was the sole supplier of public drinking water, shouldn’t they be expected to keep the water clean/safe and free from harmful poisons?  Because right now they’re acting like they don’t give a shit and bad actors are making money off of poisoning the Facebook well.

You mean a government agency like the EPA?  Then, no.  We should not expect them to keep the water safe, in this current environment.

The current environment nurtures chaos and for some chaos produces opportunities.

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39 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

So pornography should be allowed on Facebook?  

Because it’s currently being censored by Facebook.

Look, it’s a touchy issue because it is subjective and that’s why the social media companies are going to need to step up and use their power to keep their platform from being exploited by bad actors.

I don’t want the government to start regulating Facebook but if they don’t take the initiative and improve the quality of their platform, in the interest of public health and safety, I fear the government is going to have to step in. 

Facebook is so big and intergrated into our society, it’s almost like a privatized public utility now.  

If Facebook was the sole supplier of public drinking water, shouldn’t they be expected to keep the water clean/safe and free from harmful poisons?  Because right now they’re acting like they don’t give a shit and bad actors are making money off of poisoning the Facebook well.

I see no problem with porn on Facebook. Twitter has it and it doesn't seem to be a problem.

A CDN is more akin to a utility, Facebook is more of a public square, a place where people gather to share information.

 

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I like discussing this stuff with you because your worldview is so much different from mine. I’m not sure if you appreciate the consequences of bad actors harnessing the power of Facebook or not and that’s interesting in itself.  

I think Facebook doesn’t allow porn because of mostly business reasons and not some ethical standard.

Facebook’s religion is to get as many people to use Facebook as possible consequences be damned.  That’s why they’re so gun shy on cracking down on disinformation. 

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This Russian Teenager Texted Strangers On Telegram. Now She Faces 10 Years In Prison For “Extremism.”

Russia’s leaders are panicked over a generation drawn to a new kind of freedom online, and law enforcement has gone on the offensive.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lesterfeder/russia-putin-world-cup-telegram

 

MOSCOW — Anna Pavlikova’s parents believed their daughter was the kind of kid who would make Russia truly great.

At 17, she read biology textbooks for fun and was hoping to study biotechnology at Russia’s most prestigious school, Moscow State University. She was devoted to animals — when a big storm struck Moscow, she rescued as many injured birds as she could find. She was breeding parakeets in her room, a family that had grown to about a dozen and would sometimes fly around the whole apartment.

Everything changed the morning of March 15, when police burst into her family’s apartment and into her bedroom, still decorated with dozens of My Little Pony drawings, and dragged her to jail. In their telling, Pavlikova wasn’t a young woman with a budding interest in politics — she was a suspected extremist, part of a group of 10 that called themselves “New Greatness” that police claim met on the messaging app Telegram to plot to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin. She has been in pretrial detention for the past three months, and the court has refused her petition to be released on house arrest.

As Russia revels in the show of openness and internationalism of the World Cup, the story of what happened to Pavlikova and her friends reveals a stark contrast. Russian leaders are trying to project an image of a country that is confident and free — with a minimal police presence, inviting to outsiders. Russian leaders’ target audience is not just foreign soccer fans, but its own young people, many of whom can’t remember a time before Putin took power in 2000.

But those who hold power in Russia are also nervous young people could become a threat, inspired by a new kind of freedom online and bridling at a political system that offers few meaningful outlets for dissent.

The country’s leaders have decided “our country doesn’t need clever active young people ... who are worried about the country and want to change it for the better,” said Pavlikova’s father, Dmitry Pavlikov.

“What they’ve done to my child — I can’t get it in my head,” he said. “The Special Services are especially for active children ... children learning to share their point of view, about elections, Russia. What happens? They are being imprisoned.”

Last fall, Pavlikova and her best friend, a 19-year-old veterinary student named Maria Dubovik, went on Telegram to make new friends. The app is wildly popular in Russia, offering encrypted messaging and the ability to create open channels that can include thousands of members.

Dubovik’s mother said she had the impression her daughter was primarily trying to find a boyfriend — and Dubovik did wind up dating a man she met on Telegram. But the app also allowed them to engage in what appeared to be a growing interest in politics.

Like many in Russia, Pavlikova and Dubovik grew interested in politics not because of grand concerns like democracy and free speech, but because the government began invading spaces they considered their own.

Pavlikova’s parents say she first got involved in politics collecting signatures to prevent the cutting down of trees in a local park where birds nested. Dubovik’s mother speculated her daughter might have become civically minded when a proposed road project threatened the family homestead where she planned to start a dog shelter. By the time protests began attracting many young people in Russia during the lead-up to presidential elections last March, both teens appear to have been drawn in.

According to witness statements collected by police, the teens began befriending people in large chat groups for supporters of someone named Vyacheslav Maltsev, a populist politician and well-known YouTuber.

His supporters were detained across Russia when a court declared them “extremist” just before planned protests in November to call for Putin’s resignation.

Pavlikova and Dubovik began gathering in a small chat group, called simply “New Chat,” with a number of mostly unemployed men in their twenties and early thirties who would complain that government corruption made it impossible for them to find decent jobs.

According to an official affidavit, these chats were being monitored by an older man, who is named in the document as Aleksandr Andreevich Konstantinov.

 

read more in the link at the top.

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This shit is scary, not only because we can see it happening right now, but because 34 years ago a KGB defector told us exactly how it would happen.

"They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior."

"As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore,” said Bezmenov. “A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom. When a military boot crashes his balls then he will understand. But not before that. That's the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization.” 

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1 minute ago, DixonHur said:

This shit is scary, not only because we can see it happening right now, but because 34 years ago a KGB defector told us exactly how it would happen.

"They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior."

"As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore,” said Bezmenov. “A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom. When a military boot crashes his balls then he will understand. But not before that. That's the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization.” 

Link

I think Yuri saying it’s irreversible is misleading.  

If the afflicted people are cutoff from bad information and given good information instead, their perception of the world should revert back to something closer to reality.  But it may take some time to do this, positive active measures if you will. 

Unfortunately, without some intervention from the platforms distributing disinformation and enabling bad actors, we are a long way off from fixing this problem.

The short term goal should be to prevent it from getting worse.  Sadly, our president is leading the way in infecting the population with disinformation. 

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On 7/19/2018 at 11:32 AM, F250 said:

I don't know for sure but he posted some crazy stuff back on shaggy that denied the holocaust. He later claimed it was sarcasm but the original posts didn't suggest any sarcasm. He might have  just been off his meds at the time.

He was clearly poking fun at someone who was actually Khmer Rouge denying.

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ADVISORY: Senate Intel Announces Open Hearing with Social Media Experts on Foreign Influence Operations

WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, announced the Committee will hold an open hearing on Wednesday, August 1, 2018, to examine foreign influence operations and their use of social media platforms.  The Committee will hear testimony from third-party social media experts(additional witnesses may be added). 

Hearing Details

What: “Foreign Influence on Social Media Platforms: Perspectives from Third-Party Social Media Experts”

Witnesses:

 

·         Ms. Renee DiResta, Director of Research, New Knowledge

 

·         Dr. Philip Howard, Director, Oxford Internet Institute

 

·         Ms. Laura Rosenberger, Director, Alliance for Securing Democracy at The German Marshall Fund of the United States

 

When: Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 9:30 a.m.

 

Where: Hart Senate Office Building Room 216

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On 7/19/2018 at 12:38 PM, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I like discussing this stuff with you because your worldview is so much different from mine. I’m not sure if you appreciate the consequences of bad actors harnessing the power of Facebook or not and that’s interesting in itself.  

I think Facebook doesn’t allow porn because of mostly business reasons and not some ethical standard.

Facebook’s religion is to get as many people to use Facebook as possible consequences be damned.  That’s why they’re so gun shy on cracking down on disinformation. 

I find the promotion of Democratic Socialism and specifically the confiscation of the means of production to be offensive and frankly immoral.  Can I expect Zuck to block that crap?

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No one is in charge of messaging, counter-messaging, and coordinating America’s instruments of information power. Here’s a way to change that.

Russia “is waging the most amazing information-warfare blitzkrieg in the history of information warfare,” Gen. Philip Breedlove told NATO leaders at their 2014 summit. There’s no evidence that Moscow’s efforts have since slackened—nor that the United States is institutionally equipped to develop an effective response.

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