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Russian Trolls Used Vaccine Debate to Sow Discord, Study Find

nytimes.com

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Re: Russian Trolls Used Vaccine Debate to Sow Discord, Study Find

#11

Post by vincnetas »

mmjaa wrote: post #8
adrianN wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't follow the US election thing in much detail. Was there proof that those accounts where controlled by Russian trolls?

There is never any proof offered, only blatant assertions. And its working very well as a propaganda point too - now, any time someone questions the powers that be and the way they operate, well .. obviously that person is a Russian troll. The irony in how quickly Americans seem to have picked up this authoritarian control mechanism (propaganda==truth) seems to have been lost on a lot of people. Do they still teach O…

Current Russian government are pro at playing this "but there are no proof offered" game. Lithuania, where i live, is pretty close to armed conflict in Ukraine where Russian backed (no proofs here according to Russia) separatists are fighting (as in war) to declare independent republics from Ukraine.

Crimea (part of Ukraine) was "liberated" by "little green men"[0] and then coincidently decided to join Russian federation.

There is no secret that Russian government sponsors internet trolls to push it's agenda [1]

I agree that someone might abuse "Russian troll" card but keep in mind that Russian (government) is no saint here. Russians themselves are fine though. And please don't start with "but Americans also do this and that". Im saying here that Russian trolls are real. One use twitter, other use military uniforms without insignia. Depending on situation ;)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Ukrainian_cr... [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/...

Re: Russian Trolls Used Vaccine Debate to Sow Discord, Study Find

#12

Post by mandelbulb »

>With colleagues at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Broniatowski looked at 899 vaccine-related tweets sent from mid-2014 to late 2017.

If there were either hundreds or at least several tens of thousands tweets like that, or if all of the tweets they've screened were highly popular, then I could take that study seriously. As it is, however, this appears to be a targeted evaluation failing to qualify the significance of those tweets' impact.

Re: Russian Trolls Used Vaccine Debate to Sow Discord, Study Find

#13

Post by jaclaz »

I don't know, but if something like:

>“Don’t get #vaccines. Illuminati are behind it.”

is actually given any credibility and can actually contribute to form or shift an opinion, there is then IMHO an underlying (bigger) problem with the gullibility of the people.

Re: Russian Trolls Used Vaccine Debate to Sow Discord, Study Find

#14

Post by mugwort13 »

vincnetas wrote: post #11
mmjaa wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is never any proof offered, only blatant assertions. And its working very well as a propaganda point too - now, any time someone questions the powers that be and the way they operate, well .. obviously that person is a Russian troll. The irony in how quickly Americans seem to have picked up this authoritarian control mechanism (propaganda==truth) seems to have been lost on a lot of people. Do they still teach O…

Current Russian government are pro at playing this "but there are no proof offered" game. Lithuania, where i live, is pretty close to armed conflict in Ukraine where Russian backed (no proofs here according to Russia) separatists are fighting (as in war) to declare independent republics from Ukraine. Crimea (part of Ukraine) was "liberated" by "little green men"[0] and then coincidently decided to join Russian federa…

This doesn't alter the fact that there is indeed no proof which has been shown to the public. Show us the actual proof or stop claiming it. It is very easy to resolve.

Re: Russian Trolls Used Vaccine Debate to Sow Discord, Study Find

#17

Post by SirFatty »

adrianN wrote: post #2

Has it been conclusively shown that these are actually russian trolls or do people just repeat that factoid? I feel like a lot of things get attributed to the Russians with little more than "trust us" as proof.

I think we found another Russian troll.

Re: Russian Trolls Used Vaccine Debate to Sow Discord, Study Find

#19

Post by thiswillis »

adrianN wrote: post #6
DanBC wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is well established that this was Russian trolls. Some of the accounts were the same ones that interfered with the US election.

I didn't follow the US election thing in much detail. Was there proof that those accounts where controlled by Russian trolls?

As someone very familiar with hacking, I can say definitively that hackers and other threat actors can often very easily mask their real identities. They can also frame other people for their actions.

They only need to manipulate the metadata. The CIA admitted that they do this as well in Vault 7.

As such, any claims by journalists with arts degrees that they somehow know definitively what is happening in the cyberspace are fake.

Re: Russian Trolls Used Vaccine Debate to Sow Discord, Study Find

#20

Post by [deleted] »

thiswillis wrote: post #19
adrianN wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't follow the US election thing in much detail. Was there proof that those accounts where controlled by Russian trolls?

As someone very familiar with hacking, I can say definitively that hackers and other threat actors can often very easily mask their real identities. They can also frame other people for their actions. They only need to manipulate the metadata. The CIA admitted that they do this as well in Vault 7. As such, any claims by journalists with arts degrees that they somehow know definitively what is happening in the cybersp…

[deleted]
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