There were dozens of them! DOZENS!
Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
51–60 of 61 posts
Re: Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
#52IRA = Internet Research Agency for those confused by the title, i.e. the russian "troll" company.
Thanks for this. Reusing already-prominent acronyms gets really confusing although I know often it's unintentional. Many Americans won't know who the IRA were/are, but in the UK (and probably the rest of Europe) it's common knowledge and burnt in.
I think IRA is common knowledge in the US, at least it's well-known by anyone over ~40.
Re: Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
#53This is too little too late for Facebook. They are just trying to save as much face as possible now.
It remains to be seen whether these scandals will have any real effect in the long run. Facebook grew to be a behemoth, now it seems almost "too big to fail".
What would happen if it failed?
Re: Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
#54IRA = Internet Research Agency for those confused by the title, i.e. the russian "troll" company.
I find amusing the "troll" label applied to it. Trolling in my books is someone taking the piss out of someone else or a situation. We're talking about far greater reach here with devastating impacts.
There's certainly some moments that fit this label perfectly, like when Trump announced that he was going to form a joint taskforce with Russia to secure American elections from hackers.
Re: Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
#55From the provided sample content it appears to be rather harmless. Reminds me of buzz feed style posts.
Much of it seems to more be designed to sew discord between the parties than to directly influence the election. Mission accomplished I guess.
“sow discord” is an overused meme thrown around by people who choose to not form their own opinion but, instead, repeat what they read in the tabloids
Re: Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much of it seems to more be designed to sew discord between the parties than to directly influence the election. Mission accomplished I guess.
“sow discord” is an overused meme thrown around by people who choose to not form their own opinion but, instead, repeat what they read in the tabloids
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Re: Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
#57This is too little too late for Facebook. They are just trying to save as much face as possible now.
I disagree.....considering the political and "news" climate we live in today, "finding" and "shutting down" "Russian trolls" seems to me like an absolutely brilliant strategy to get the public and especially the media back on your side.
Excitement drives clicks, and Russia is the US's biggest boogey-man du jour (what happened to the pesky North Koreans and Muslims by the way, why don't we hear anything from them anymore?) that we need to government to protect us from, so this campaign should be a big winner I'd think.
Re: Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me intuitively obvious that an account with 10^4 followers has less influence than an account with 10^7 followers. (Sure, if you have 1000 accounts with 10^4 followers, it adds up...) Removing the big accounts (probably) isn't going to remove the IRA's presence on Facebook. It's going to take a big chunk out of their influence, though. (Unless they have other accounts with big followings that weren't remo…
I'd expect IRA (or whomever) to use both types of accounts. They can work together. I'd expect the 10^7 follower account to indeed have more influence, but not necessarily be able to effectively use that influence as well as the 10^4 follower account. The big follower accounts would probably tend to be more general, with more diversity among their followers. For example they might have followers spread throughout the…
That's all true. I especially like your last paragraph about the smaller accounts borrowing prestige from the big accounts.
But it seems to me that the amount of effort required to run an account does not scale with the number of followers. Sleeper accounts are essentially free, of course, but an account with 10^7 followers is not 1000 times harder to run than an account with 10^4 followers. Unless they have a lot more people devoted to the smaller accounts, they probably don't have 1000 times as many accounts with 10^4 followers.
Re: Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
#59I love how we're all falling for this Russian troll BS and not attacking Facebook's business model of micro-targeting advertising
Re: Facebook reveals Russian troll content, shuts down 135 IRA accounts
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me intuitively obvious that an account with 10^4 followers has less influence than an account with 10^7 followers. (Sure, if you have 1000 accounts with 10^4 followers, it adds up...) Removing the big accounts (probably) isn't going to remove the IRA's presence on Facebook. It's going to take a big chunk out of their influence, though. (Unless they have other accounts with big followings that weren't remo…
You know the old saw, “quantity has a quality all of its own.” I’d add that these guys could have done both. They could have high follower count identities, medium, and low. They can have highly active accounts, and “sleepers” and everything in between. It would be unwise to make too many assumptions based on limited press releases from Facebook. It’s more sensible to think about what they could have done, and then m…
You expressed my thoughts better than I could. I'm looking forward to more analysis being done on the actions of IRA - I just hope FB/Twitter/others don't sweep what was done beyond these big accounts under the rug, because we're only going to see more of this sort of "information warfare."