Thursday, May 18, 2017

Time Magazine: Russia Used Social Media To Swing The Election To President Trump

Massimo Calabresi, Time: Inside Russia’s Social Media War on America

On March 2, a disturbing report hit the desks of U.S. counterintelligence officials in Washington. For months, American spy hunters had scrambled to uncover details of Russia’s influence operation against the 2016 presidential election. In offices in both D.C. and suburban Virginia, they had created massive wall charts to track the different players in Russia’s multipronged scheme. But the report in early March was something new.

It described how Russia had already moved on from the rudimentary email hacks against politicians it had used in 2016. Now the Russians were running a more sophisticated hack on Twitter. The report said the Russians had sent expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department. Depending on the interests of the targets, the messages offered links to stories on recent sporting events or the Oscars, which had taken place the previous weekend. When clicked, the links took users to a Russian-controlled server that downloaded a program allowing Moscow’s hackers to take control of the victim’s phone or computer–and Twitter account.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: So (according to Time) by influencing a few thousand Twitter and other social media accounts .... Russia was able to overcome the impact of tens of millions of followers of social media accounts that belong to President Obama, Hillary Clinton,  and the Democrat Party .... as well as overcoming the news coverage from the main stream media (i.e. New York Times, Washington Post,L.A. Times, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, FOX , CNBC, etc.). Hmmmm .... I am sceptical .... but a lot of people have bought into this unhesitatingly.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Us middle-aged white male midwestern voters always do what the Twitter accounts tell us what to do. Most of us dont even have Twitter. Another example of how out of touch the media is with the center of the country.

aaa said...

lol anon, exactly right

Jay Farquharson said...

LMFAO



Most people in the West get their news from social media.

Cambridge Analetica has proven in 8 elections so far, that targetted use of social media, swings elections.

During the primaries and the election, the web was so full of bots, trolls and fake news that there was almost no room for cat video's and porn.

In the aftermath of the election, even wingers now make the assumption that an Anonamous poster, making an American Identity authority claim like "middle American" or "flyover American" or Bernie Bro, is probably a Russian troll.

Anonymous said...

There will always be room for cat videos and porn

Jay Farquharson said...

Yup, but all the fake news, bots and trolls really pushed it down the page in the browser.

War News Updates Editor said...

Jay,
I am not as trusting as you are with these data mining companies. Yes .... they get information and data that helps a campaign to prioritise their resources and focus attention, but they are also in competition with other companies who are doing the same thing for the other side. But do people really get their news from social media. I know that Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. and their investors are certainly pushing that discussion .... but aside from myself who does use a lot of social media to get his information, within my circle most adults that I know do not.

jimbrown said...

Why would the Russians support Trump if HRC was a sure thing? Why would they not want the candidate they already had the goods on? Are we certain that HRC did not receive a lump sum one time payment for creating her server open to any and all enemies? There are more than intel groups who would have done it, Or was it the quid pro quo for the uranium cash?

Jay Farquharson said...

Corporations spend billions of dolllars using analetics, targetted advertising via social media and the web, selling everything from cars to erection pills. The ROI certainly justifies the expenditure.

But the exact same techniques arn't supposed to work in politics, because voters are "too smart" for that.

LMFAO,

You've seen the crap people buy, the reality tv they watch, they voted for Trump,

Most people, are in many ways idiots.

And the reality is, you don't have to swing a majority in many elections, you just have to swing a minority, to vote or not vote, and many of those swung will swing two friends,........



Jay Farquharson said...

According to US Intelligence, the primary goal of Russian interference was to delegitimize the election and undermine American's faith in their Government.

Two highly polarizing cantidates, ensured that if the election was in anyway close, the US political system would be at war with itself and no POTUS would have broad based support for policies.

So they flooded the web and social media with fake Hillary stories like the Uranium deal, and with trolls and bot's to overwhelm threads, comments, etc. They took advantage of the 40 year Clinton Snipe Hunt, used Bernie Bro's to sow dissent amongst Democrats, and used a calculated program of leaks and fake news, dripping out to stay ahead of the US Media and Public's OODA loop.

Their 20 year program of funding and aiding Wingnuttia and more recently, the alt-right was just cherries on the Sunday.

As long as the race was close, the Russian's probably believed that they would get a similar result no matter which cantidate won. Gridlock in the House and Senate and a delegitimized President.

They probably assumed that either Cantidate would wind up staffing the Administration with competent Professionals, who would still have to struggle in an atmosphere of partizan backbiting and sabotage.

They probably had no clue that one Cantidate's Administration would be completely dysfuntional and inept.

US Intelligence also believes that the Russian's coordinated their actions, with the Trump campaign.

It's the Intelligence Coup of the Century, but probably wasn't meant to be.

The Gullabillie's took a Russian interference of 4 and amped it all the way up to 11, almost completely on their own.


Anonymous said...

Yep thats me. Jay outed me. Everyone, I am Putin's love child after his fling with Boris, Natasha, Rocky and Bulwinkle. What does a Canadian know about small town midwesterners in the US? About as much as a pollster predicting Hillary would win the election. Oh, that's right, she didn't lose, Putin cheated her by revealing things she actually did which was really bad for our "democracy" and all you want to do is free us from our ignorance, but I guess we are all just too stupid and inbred here to get it. Give it a break Jay.

Jay Farquharson said...

LMFAO,

Still anonamous.

https://snarkypenguin.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/love-will-keep-us-together/

LMFAO

Anonymous said...

Yep thats me. Jay outed me. Everyone, I am Putin's love child after his fling with Boris, Natasha, Rocky and Bulwinkle. What does a Canadian know about small town midwesterners in the US? About as much as a pollster predicting Hillary would win the election. Oh, that's right, she didn't lose, Putin cheated her by revealing things she actually did which was really bad for our "democracy" and all you want to do is free us from our ignorance, but I guess we are all just too stupid and inbred here to get it. Give it a break Jay.

D.Plowman said...

While Jay says a lot of things I normally don't agree with, he is right here. Targeted marketing is very effective; businesses don't spend millions/billions on it for nothing. Social media can prove to be very effective, especially when the US mainstream media paints a one-sided affair (as it did in the Election) and people resorted to getting their news elsewhere, even if a lot of that was so-called 'fake news'.

However, saying that; I do not believe Trump enjoyed as many swing votes as he did. I think the majority of people who voted for Trump had already decided to do so as soon as Trump said he was going to run for President. These die hard Trump fans didn't need convincing; I think they far outnumber the amount of people who switched as a result of social media campaigns.

Social media can be very effective, and I will say it was likely effective here in winning Trump those extra voters. I do not believe however that it WON him the election. Simply giving credit to the social media side as the major cause of a Trump win is just downright daft.

Jay Farquharson said...

The Russian campaign was not just "social media",

The 2018 Elections should be fun, 2020's gonna be hilarious now that denial ain't just a river in Egypt.