H.G. from The New York Times comment section:
“I saw this. In Detroit, a lot of folks who would normally support Hillary, were passing around inflammatory memes of BLM, the incarceration rate under Bill, and a lot of anti-Hillary invictives. It spread like wildfire on fb. Conversations sprouted about the Dems taking the black, inner city vote for granted and branched into Native American/Black eradication, Bill’s “black love child”, even anti-vax - the memes got louder and more outrageous and arguments broke out. Folks talked about writing in for Bernie or Jill Stein. I was stunned because Detroit has always been a place where the Dem message was clear; the was a black slate, union slate…issues were discussed…the church ladies voted and plenty of folks followed suit. This was totally upended.
And in the end - 70,000 less Detroiters showed up for Hill than for Obama - in a state Trump won by 10,704 votes.”
“Russia’s Internet Research Agency “launched an extended attack on the United States by using computational propaganda.” More than 30 million people shared content from the Internet Research Agency on Facebook and Instagram from 2015 to 2017.
The Internet Research Agency operated a “troll farm” based in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hometown that employed hundreds of English speakers with “a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including … supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” according to the indictment.
The Oxford report says the Russian trolls’ efforts focused on a few main objectives: pushing African-American voters to boycott the election and giving them misinformation about how to vote; getting Latino voters to distrust the U.S. government; “encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational”; and spreading false stories and conspiracy theories.
Efforts targeting African-Americans, Latinos, liberals and members of the LGBTQ community used different approaches with each group, but the overall aim was to get voters “to boycott the election, abstain from voting for Clinton, or to spread cynicism about participating in the election in general.”
“Differential messaging to each of these target groups was designed to push and pull them in different ways. What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party – and specifically, Donald Trump,” the Oxford report says.
The Russian campaign used a range of platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Vine, Gab, Meetup, Reddit, Medium, Pokemon Go and Google+, according to the reports.
New Knowledge says the “scale of their operation was unprecedented,” reaching “126 million people on Facebook, at least 20 million users on Instagram, 1.4 million users on Twitter, and uploaded over 1,000 videos to YouTube.”
The report says there was a “clear bias” toward Trump in the operations. The agency posted no pro-Clinton content on Instagram or Facebook, except for one post encouraging Muslims to attend a rally supporting her.”
“The report says the “most prolific” efforts on Facebook and Instagram focused on African-Americans as the Russians developed unwitting “human assets” to help them share their content.
Of 81 Facebook pages created by the Internet Research Agency in the Senate’s data, 30 targeted African-American audiences, amassing 1.2 million followers, the report finds. By comparison, 25 pages targeted the political right and drew 1.4 million followers. Just seven pages focused on the political left, drawing 689,045 followers.
While the right-wing pages promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the left-wing pages scorned Mrs. Clinton while promoting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. The voter suppression effort was focused particularly on Sanders supporters and African-Americans, urging them to shun Mrs. Clinton in the general election and either vote for Ms. Stein or stay home.
Whether such efforts had a significant effect is difficult to judge. Black voter turnout declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, but it is impossible to determine whether that was the result of the Russian campaign.
The New Knowledge report argues that the Internet Research Agency’s presence on Instagram has been underestimated and may have been as effective or more effective than its Facebook effort. The report says there were 187 million engagements on Instagram — users “liking” or sharing the content created in Russia — compared with 76.5 million engagements on Facebook.
The New Knowledge report finds that while “other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively with dozens.
”Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.
After the election, the report says, the Internet Research Agency put up some 70 posts on Facebook and Instagram that mocked the claims that Russia had interfered in the election.
“You’ve lost and don’t know what to do?” said one such post. “Just blame it on Russian hackers.”
“To a degree not fully appreciated, the Russian operation relentlessly targeted African-Americans.
On YouTube, the Russians played on police shootings of unarmed black men with channels with names like “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”
While most media attention has focused on Facebook pages appealing to the political right, the Russian effort aimed at black Americans was actually larger, reaching almost as many people. Of 81 Facebook pages created by the Internet Research Agency, 30 targeted African-American audiences, amassing 1.2 million followers, the report finds. By comparison, 25 pages targeted the political right and drew 1.4 million followers.
One clear Russian goal, pursued on multiple fronts, was to suppress Democratic turnout in 2016.
One strand focused, once again, on African-American voters. “These campaigns pushed a message that the best way to advance the cause of the African-American community was to boycott the election,” the Oxford report says. One bogus post declared: “HILLARY RECEIVED $20,000 DONATION FROM KKK TOWARDS HER CAMPAIGN.”
The Russian accounts urged people who had backed Bernie Sanders against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination to stay home or to vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, in the general election. The New Knowledge report also describes what it calls “malicious misdirection” and “tweets designed to create confusion about voting rules.”
All of the emphasis on Facebook has obscured the huge role of Instagram, as well as the Russian activity on many smaller platforms.
Most of the early media coverage of the Russian campaign focused on Facebook. The New Knowledge report argues that the Internet Research Agency’s presence on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has been underestimated and may have been as effective or even more effective than its Facebook effort. The report says there were 187 million engagements on Instagram — users “liking” or sharing the content created in Russia — compared with 76.5 million engagements on Facebook.
Both reports note that there was hardly a social platform, however obscure, that the Internet Research Agency did not invade: Reddit, Google+, Vine, Gab, Meetup, Pinterest, Tumblr and more. The Russian trolls even created a podcast on SoundCloud.”
Ever wonder why so many videos were circulating online showing Hillary’s past comments being against gay marriage?
Answer: Russian bots trying to suppress her vote with the LGBT community.
Hillary helped increase funding for HIV/AIDS research and medicine as First Lady. She was the first First Lady to march on a gay pride parade. As a two-time New York Senator, Hillary fought for stronger LGBT hate crime laws and gay adoption rights. As Secretary of State, Hillary passed the first-ever United Nations resolution on gay rights (declaring: “gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights”), began the Global Equity Fund, and made it so trans Americans could change the gender on their passports.
But let’s vilify the woman for evolving on gay marriage (just like Obama, Biden, and Bernie did).
If you are gay and voted against Hillary due to her being against gay marriage at one point in time (just like her male counterparts), you were fooled by Russian bots.
Furthermore, Hillary received nearly 4 million more votes than Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary.
The DNC didn’t rig the voting machines.
But that didn’t stop Russian bots from spreading the myth that the DNC stole the primary for Hillary, and that voting for Jill Stein wouldn’t be a “wasted” vote.
Russian bots manipulated Bernie supporters into thinking his nomination was stolen, therefore making it easy to convince them to either not vote or vote for Jill Stein.
Let us also remember that at the Children’s Defense Fund, Hillary investigated African American juveniles being placed in South Carolina adult prisons. Hillary also went door-to-door to expose school segregation in the south. Yet because of Bill Clinton’s 3-strikes policy (that was voted for by Bernie Sanders and supported by the black caucus at the time), Russian bots were able to manipulate African American voters against Hillary.
In 2020, please don’t be fooled by Russian bots and please vote for the Democratic nominee – no matter who he or she is. Clearly, every vote counts.
