Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White and Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., director of the Joint Staff, discuss operations in Syria during a news briefing at the Pentagon, April 14, 2018. DoD photo by Air Force Tech. Sgt. Vernon Young Jr.
Gizmodo: How Did the Pentagon Quantify This Bizarre Statistic on 'Russian Trolls'?
As Donald Trump’s administration, backed by France and the UK, launched a series of missile attacks on Syrian installations allegedly used in the production or deployment of chemical weapons this weekend—and the president bizarrely tweeted “Mission Accomplished!” in a worrying signal with regards to his strategic insight—the question of whether Russia would retaliate on behalf of Bashar al-Assad’s government did tend to hang over the proceedings.
So far, Russia hasn’t given any signs it intends to truly escalate the situation, possibly in part because the White House has actually not yet settled on a comprehensive strategy. But Pentagon spokesperson Dana White did trot out a bizarre statistic on “Russian trolls” on Saturday, telling reporters, “The Russian disinformation campaign has already begun. There has been a 2,000 percent increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours.”
Read more ....
Previous Post: Pentagon: Russian Trolls Increased ‘2,000 Percent’ After Syria Attack (April 14, 2018)
WNU Editor: If this report was made a week or two from now .... I would then say that with a high degree of certainty that Russian disinformation and propaganda on social platforms like Facebook did increase substantially in response to the military strike. But to make this claim just hours after the attack .... I am skeptical.
4 comments:
Uhmm real time data is widely available - and you can be sure that YouTube Google Facebook twitter etc report such increases directly and automatically to the respective authorities. More likely, the agencies have their own access to thar kind of Data... IT is well known that these organisations work and have to work closely with authorities. I'm not surprised at all.
Easy to measure and monitor. Most likely not a concise scientific number, just a rough one and I am OK with this; no need to pay big $$ for a better one. What the Heck!?
They only way this can be monitored is if a few sites are deliberately watched, and the traffic monitored. But what is the metric that is used. Monitored over a day/week/month? And this announcement is made only 12 hours after the attack but used to say over a day? Sorry. but this number appears to me to have just been thrown out. Case in point. On an unrelated Facebook account I boost posts that pertain to ebooks. On an average day my Facebook post reaches a hundred or two hundred readers. I can an easily boost it up to a few thousand within a few hours by spending 20 dollars.
This is well known. What's your point? I think you misunderstand how advanced tracking data is these days. It's not just a simple filter or cookie if that's what you're thinking :) it's correlated multidimensional data over time and causality attribution and in some cases peppered with narrow AI data analysis. Has got nothing to do with the tools you use as a typical blogger :)
Post a Comment