How to Spot Professional Trolls Online

Two professors at Clemson University have been analyzing social media and propaganda tactics that professional Russian and other foreign nation trolls use to foment social discord and distrust online in Western democracies. They analyzed data and Tweets that Twitter has made public. What they conclude is that, regardless of where they are located, amateur trolls who are bigoted, narrow minded, angry and/or try to provoke liberals, conservatives and minority groups and individuals just for the fun of it “aren’t a threat to Western democracy.”

By contrast with amateur trolls, professional democracy attackers are much more subtle and effective. They start by posting or Tweeting positive, warm messages designed to build a social media following. Rolling Stone writes:

Professional trolls are good at their job. They have studied us. They understand how to harness our biases (and hashtags) for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors. The professionals know you catch more flies with honey. They don’t go to social media looking for a fight; they go looking for new best friends. And they have found them.

Disinformation operations aren’t typically fake news or outright lies. Disinformation is most often simply spin. Spin is hard to spot and easy to believe, especially if you are already inclined to do so. While the rest of the world learned how to conduct a modern disinformation campaign from the Russians, it is from the world of public relations and advertising that the IRA learned their craft. To appreciate the influence and potential of Russian disinformation, we need to view them less as Boris and Natasha and more like Don Draper.

As good marketers, professional trolls manipulate our emotions subtly. In fall 2018, for example, a Russian account we identified called @PoliteMelanie re-crafted an old urban legend, tweeting: “My cousin is studying sociology in university. Last week she and her classmates polled over 1,000 conservative Christians. ‘What would you do if you discovered that your child was a homo sapiens?’ 55% said they would disown them and force them to leave their home.” This tweet, which suggested conservative Christians are not only homophobic but also ignorant, was subtle enough to not feel overtly hateful, but was also aimed directly at multiple cultural stress points, driving a wedge at the point where religiosity and ideology meet. The tweet was also wildly successful, receiving more than 90,000 retweets and nearly 300,000 likes.

This tweet didn’t seek to anger conservative Christians or to provoke Trump supporters. She wasn’t even talking to them. Melanie’s 20,000 followers, painstakingly built, weren’t from #MAGA America (Russia has other accounts targeting them). Rather, Melanie’s audience was made up of educated, urban, left-wing Americans harboring a touch of self-righteousness. She wasn’t selling her audience a candidate or a position — she was selling an emotion. Melanie was selling disgust. The Russians know that, in political warfare, disgust is a more powerful tool than anger. Anger drives people to the polls; disgust drives countries apart. (emphasis added)

The researchers, Darren Linvill, associate professor of communication, and Patrick Warren, associate professor of economics, discussed their research with KUOW, an NPR affiliate station, in a 9 minute interview. KUOW writes:

To stop trolls from exploiting existing tensions in American society, he says people need to question why we’re seeing certain messages and the consequences of sharing them before hitting retweet.

“I think that there’s a lot that you can do,” Warren says. “If you’re mindful of the origins of the information you’re sharing, it can make a big difference.”

Linville: “..... I think it doesn’t ultimately [matter] if it’s a Russian troll or an Iranian troll or a Chinese troll, I think one needs to be careful when you’re interacting with anonymous accounts not to retweet someone just because they use the same hashtag as you did and you agree with them, but also not accuse people of being Russian trolls just because you disagree with them. I think that’s one of the biggest impacts of Russian disinformation is that we don’t trust each other anymore and it’s really dangerous and it’s a lasting impact.”

Warren: “I think it’s important to realize that when you share something on social media, you’re doing two things. You’re sharing a message, but you’re also bringing prominence to the account you’re sharing. And so the question you should be asking yourself often on social media, in addition to the obvious question that we all start with, which is: Is this real or not? The next question you should be asking yourself is, why am I seeing this? Algorithms kind of rule our lives on social media. And what these guys are trying to do is get people who shouldn’t be central to the conversation to become more central to the conversation due to their gaming of the algorithm.”

Defensive disinformation vs. offensive disinformation

Defensive disinformation is used by professional government trolls to deny and distract from information the government wants to hide, distort or deny. For example, the Saudi Arabian government ran botnet trolls on Twitter that falsely denied the Saudi government murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

By contrast, offensive disinformation which is  content specifically designed to manipulate emotions and attitudes by focusing on social stress points and playing on personal ideology. This kind of propaganda focuses on what is important to the people in the target country, not in the troll farm country. The goal is to to reinforce differences in existing attitudes and beliefs and use those differences to foment social division, distrust in institutions, e.g., the professional media, fellow citizens, and out-groups.

The ideology target

In a previous discussion here, I attacked political ideologies as a factor that significantly contributes to, or directly causes, major social and political problems. Strongly held ideological beliefs make it much easier to reject inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. The research discussed in this OP makes it clear that professional trolls intentionally reinforce and then target ideological differences to foment social distrust and discord.

For self-defense against troll manipulation, the researchers suggest asking some self-reflection questions when you are confronted with social media content from a source you are not familiar with. First ask yourself, is this true? For ideologues, belief in lies is easy when the lie fits personal ideological belief. Second, ask why am I seeing this? Trolls know how to manipulate the algorithm. Third, ask what impact on other would sharing or upvoting this have? This asks for a measure of empathy, which in a way is an opposite of self-righteous belief, which can easily be reinforced by troll lies and manipulation.

Here’s Everything The Mueller Report Says About How Russian Trolls Used Social Media

The Mueller report clearly describes how Russian trolls reached millions of people on Facebook, were quoted in major newspapers as real Americans, and even organized rallies.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/mueller-report-internet-research-agency-detailed-2016

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign provides one of the most detailed looks at how Russia’s Internet Research Agency — the infamous Kremlin-linked troll farm — tried to hijack the 2016 election and swing the vote in favor of Donald Trump.

The report, which concludes that Trump didn’t commit a crime but “also does not exonerate him [of obstruction],” gives us a clear and exhaustive look at the scope, focus, and results of the IRA’s efforts. The agency learned how to use platforms like Facebook and Twitter over the span of four years. By the end, it used analytical tools and the built-in network effect of massive social media platforms to create large artificial grassroots political organizations that were aggressively targeting both Republicans and Democrats.

The IRA was able to reach up to 126 million Americans on Facebook via a mixture of fraudulent accounts, groups, and advertisements, the report says. Twitter accounts it created were portrayed as real American voices by major news outlets. It was even able to hold real-life rallies, mobilizing hundreds of people at a time in major cities like Philadelphia and Miami. Fake online personas were able to communicate with members of the Trump campaign — who were unaware they were ever communicating with foreign nationals.

Here’s everything we know about Russian interference from the report.

It started in 2014.

According to Mueller’s report, the IRA began creating fake Facebook accounts and small groups as early as 2014.

“IRA employees operated social media accounts and group pages designed to attract U.S. audiences,” the report reads. “These groups and accounts, which addressed divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by U.S. activists."

The lines up with what we already knew about the IRA’s activity. One of its first large-scale misinformation projects was the Columbian Chemicals Plant explosion hoax in September 2014, when IRA members created a completely fake explosion at a chemical plant in Louisiana. “The perpetrators didn’t just doctor screenshots from CNN; they also created fully functional clones of the websites of Louisiana TV stations and newspapers,” the New York Times wrote about the hoax.

The IRA consolidated all of its US operations into one department called the “Translator” department, which appears to have operated like a typical digital media startup with different agents focusing on specific platforms, monitoring analytics, and even graphic designers. About a dozen people, known as “specialists,” would run an account at a time.

The IRA’s activity wasn’t confined to social media, either. IRA employees traveled to the United States on intelligence-gathering missions in 2014.

“Four IRA employees applied to the U.S. Department of State to enter the United States, while lying about the purpose of their trip and claiming to be four friends who had met at a party,” the report reads. “Ultimately, two IRA employees-Anna Bogacheva and Aleksandra Krylova-received visas and entered the United States on June 4, 2014.”

The IRA was on pretty much every platform.

At first, the IRA focused its activity on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Later, Tumblr and Instagram accounts were created. In the beginning, Russian trolls were manning only fake individual accounts. By 2015, however, they began creating larger groups and pages. Finally, they attempted to flex their network effect to hold real-life rallies.

According to Mueller’s report, the Facebook groups were particularly popular. By the time Facebook deactivated them in 2017, the Russia-controlled group "United Muslims of America" had over 300,000 followers, the "Don't Shoot Us" group had over 250,000 followers, the "Being Patriotic" Facebook group had over 200,000 followers, and the "Secured Borders" Facebook group had over 130,000 followers.

A post from an IRA-controlled Facebook page called "Secured Borders".

MUCH MORE TO THIS STORY HERE:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/mueller-report-internet-research-agency-detailed-2016

NOW LET'S HEAR FROM TRUMPERS THAT THE REAL INTERFERENCE WAS REALLY BY THE UKRAINE!!

Climate Change in India

An New York Times article, India’s Ominous Future: Too Little Water, or Far Too Much, points out that climate change has altered the monsoon season. Now, the rains are less predictable and can be more prolonged when they arrive. That leaves large areas of the country in crippling drought or in floods. On top of that, decades of inept government policies leave millions of people mostly defenseless in the face of climate changes and hopeless levels of pollution, garbage and plastic waste.

Dry creek bed choked with litter

Foam from industrial runoff pass worshipers in the Yamuna River

Watching flood water

Collecting water for drinking and cooking

Flood in Mumbai

A resident of New Delhi washing under a broken municipal water line


Flood in Mumbai

A recent report on climate change is arguing that too little is being done. The Washington Post reports:

The world has squandered so much time mustering the action necessary to combat climate change that rapid, unprecedented cuts in greenhouse gas emissions offer the only hope of averting an ever-intensifying cascade of consequences, according to new findings from the United Nations. 

Amid that growing pressure to act, Tuesday’s U.N. report offers a grim assessment of how off-track the world remains. Global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to the United Nations’ annual “emissions gap” report, which assesses the difference between the world’s current path and the changes needed to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The sobering report comes at a critical moment, when it remains unclear whether world leaders can summon the political will to take the ambitious action scientists say is essential. So far, the answer has been no.

No doubt that climate change science deniers will trot out the usual arguments in defense of doing nothing, just like gun violence deniers trot out their arguments for less gun control after each mass slaughter of innocents. India looks to be well and truly hosed.

A Massive Data Hack: Google Cloud Server Was Unprotected

Tech-Xplore reports a massive database was left unprotected:

"The data left unprotected was actually a database, aggregating 1.2 billion users' personal information, e.g., social media accounts, email addresses and phone numbers. The incident was relayed on the Data Viper blog. 

Bloomberg quoted Troia. "There are no passwords related to this data, but having a new, fresh set of passwords isn't that exciting anymore. Having all of this social media stuff in one place is a useful weapon and investigative tool."

After all, just nabbing names, phone numbers and account URLs delivers ample information to get attackers started."

Data Viper writes:

"On October 16, 2019 Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia discovered a wide-open Elasticsearch server containing an unprecedented 4 billion user accounts spanning more than 4 terabytes of data. 

A total count of unique people across all data sets reached more than 1.2 billion people, making this one of the largest data leaks from a single source organization in history. The leaked data contained names, email addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIN and Facebook profile information. 

What makes this data leak unique is that it contains data sets that appear to originate from 2 different data enrichment companies. 

For a very low price, data enrichment companies allow you to take a single piece of information on a person (such as a name or email address), and expand (or enrich) that user profile to include hundreds of additional new data points of information. As seen with the Exactis data breach, collected information on a single person can include information such as household sizes, finances and income, political and religious preferences, and even a person’s preferred social activities. 

Each time a company chooses to “enrich” a user profile, they are also agreeing to provide what they know about the person to the enriching organization (thereby increasing the validity of the organization’s future results). Despite efforts from social media organizations like Facebook, the resulting data continues to be compounded, creating a situation with no oversight that ultimately allows all of a person’s social and personal information to be easily downloaded."

Wired magazine writes:

"For well over a decade, identity thieves, phishers, and other online scammers have created a black market of stolen and aggregated consumer data that they used to break into people's accounts, steal their money, or impersonate them. In October, dark web researcher Vinny Troia found one such trove sitting exposed and easily accessible on an unsecured server, comprising 4 terabytes of personal information—about 1.2 billion records in all. 

While the collection is impressive for its sheer volume, the data doesn't include sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers, or Social Security numbers."

One can only hope that other cloud servers, e.g., ones the Social Security Administration or the US military uses, aren't just left open like that for anyone to play with. Past performance has not been confidence-inspiring and it probably does predict future performance.

Conspiracy Theory Wars

In the coming months, American can reasonably expect that some new information will surface that supports currently debunked conspiracy theories. One is the false theory that the Ukraine, not Russia, attacked the US election in 2106.

 This New York Times article suggests that fabricating evidence is what Giuliani is angling to do:

VIENNA — They were two Ukrainian oligarchs with American legal problems. One had been indicted on federal bribery charges. The other was embroiled in a vast banking scandal and was reported to be under investigation by the F.B.I. 

And they had one more thing in common: Both had been singled out by Rudolph W. Giuliani and pressed to assist in his wide-ranging hunt for information damaging to one of President Trump’s leading political rivals, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. 

That effort culminated in the July 25 phone call between the American and Ukrainian presidents that has taken Mr. Trump to the brink of impeachment and inexorably brought Mr. Giuliani’s Ukrainian shadow campaign into the light.

But interviews with the two Ukrainian oligarchs — Dmitry Firtash and Ihor Kolomoisky — as well as with several other people with knowledge of Mr. Giuliani’s dealings, point to a new dimension in his exertions on behalf of his client, Mr. Trump. Taken together, they depict a strategy clearly aimed at leveraging information from politically powerful but legally vulnerable foreign citizens.

How to assess new information: Don't ignore the old information

When the new information surfaces, one can ask by what measure should the new information by assessed? That is an excellent question. It's the key question.

The answer is to apply reasonable, logical measures of transparency and credibility to the new information in view of existing information. If the Senate investigation finds legitimate evidence of significant bad acts by Biden and/or Ukraine in the 2016 election, and is transparent about the sources and their credibility, then that evidence has to be accepted as real and given whatever reasonable probative weight it deserves.

However, one can reasonably expect that any new evidence that comes out from the Senate investigation will have to contradict existing contrary evidence. That's the point of building new conspiracy theories. If the origins or sources of the new evidence are not credible, and/or opaque or not revealed, e.g., for 'national security' reasons, then one can reasonably conclude that the GOP has now fallen so far into immorality that it is now willing to fabricate or rely on fabricated false evidence to lie to and deceive the American people for purely partisan gain.

If one wants to be fair and rational about this, these facts (not opinions) need to be kept in mind. Solid evidence already exists that shows (1) the Ukraine was not involved in the 2016 attacks on the US election, (2) Russia orchestrated the 2016 attacks on the US election, and (3) Trump[1] and his enablers, e.g., Rudy Giuliani,[2] are chronic liars who do not hesitate to lie, withhold information and emotionally manipulate to distract, deceive and confuse the American people. Those people would not hesitate to fabricate evidence to support the new conspiracy theory.

Whatever evidence the Senate comes up with has to (a) properly take existing evidence into account and render it not persuasive, and (b) be transparent in view of the mountain of lies and deceit the GOP has operated with since Trump came to power. In other words, existing evidence of lies, deceit and manipulation by Trump and the GOP means that they get no benefit of any doubt because they earned and fully deserve deep public distrust.

Footnotes:
1. The president's track record of false and misleading statements to the public is staggering. That constitutes solid evidence of his deeply immoral character. The existing herd of admitted or convicted felons the president has surrounded himself is more evidence of the president's immoral character.

2. In response to being asked what he would do if the president decided to 'throw him under the bus', Mr Giuliani responded with this retort: "I have insurance". That means that Mr. Giuliani probably has information that incriminated the president in illegal acts. What other kind of insurance would the president fear? It is hard to embarrass a man who isn't fazed by his acts and lies, e.g., sex with porn stars or the tape where he brags about sexually assaulting women. This is more evidence of the sleaze and immorality that the president and his enablers operate by. Given his behavior after prior gaffes, it is reasonable to expect Giuliani will deflect or distort his insurance comment by saying he did not mean that he had any evidence against the president.

False Conspiracy Theories On Tap

False conspiracy theories are probably going to be front and center from now until the November 2020 election. As discussed before, the GOP Senate claims it will investigate the debunked conspiracy about Joe Biden's allegedly corrupt activities in Ukraine. Unless that investigation relies on falsified information, it will probably not turn up anything new that is significant.

Other false conspiracies include (1) unsubstantiated allegations that the FBI was protecting the Clinton campaign, which (2) illegally sought dirt on Trump from foreign sources, and (3) the FBI used unsubstantiated allegations for FISA authority to spy on the Trump campaign, which (4) somehow hurt the Trump campaign, despite it being conducted in secret until several months after the November 2016 election. As far as I know, none of those narratives is true. Instead, the FBI protected Trump by not making its investigation of him public, but damaged the the Clinton campaign by making its investigation of hers public just a few weeks before the election. Those are matters of public record.

Also, it is still legal to hire people, including foreigners in other countries, to get dirt on political opponents. The effort to get damaging information on Trump was originally funded by a conservative source, The Washington Free Beacon, to find potentially damaging information about Trump. The Beacon hired Fusion GPS, a company that clients hire to find dirt on political opponents. The Beacon was funded by a major donor to Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio told Fusion GPS to stop compiling a dossier of Trump dirt in May 2016 once it became clear that Trump would win the GOP nomination. All of that was legal. After that time, the DNC continued compiling a dossier on Trump. The New York Times describes the DNC involvement:

After Mr. Trump secured the nomination, Fusion GPS was hired on behalf of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the D.N.C. by their law firm, Perkins Coie, to compile research about Mr. Trump, his businesses and associates — including possible connections with Russia. It was at that point that Fusion GPS hired Mr. Steele, who has deep sourcing in Russia, to gather information. ..... Campaigns and party committees frequently pay companies to assemble what’s known in politics as opposition research — essentially damaging information about their opponents — and nothing is illegal about the practice.

Wikipedia comments on Fusion GPS:

Fusion GPS is a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C. The company conducts open-source investigations and provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as for political inquiries, such as opposition research. The "GPS" initialism is derived from "Global research, Political analysis, Strategic insight".

None of this is illegal under current law and regulations. Candidates for major offices routinely look for dirt to attack and smear their opponents with. The situation would change if (1) the Federal Election Commission ruled that accepting campaign dirt from a foreigner constitutes a "thing of value", or (2) congress passed a law making it illegal for a campaign ro accept or use dirt a foreigner provides.

Also relevant are the facts that (1) Trump himself has publicly stated that he would use dirt on an opponent if a foreigner offered it to him before the 2020 election, and (2) Trump actually tried to get the Ukraine to find dirt on Joe Biden in advance of the 2020 campaign. One source reports on Trump's public statement that he would use foreign-sourced dirt to attack an opponent:

In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, Trump said he’d consider any foreign-sourced information that would help his 2020 re-election bid.

“There is nothing wrong with listening,” Trump said. “If somebody called from a country — Norway — ‘We have information on your opponent.’ Oh. I think I’d want to hear it.” ..... But simply “listening” to information derived from foreign sources may not rise to the level of a campaign finance violation.

That makes it clear that, at least under current law, the president himself has no concern about obtaining and using dirt to attack a political opponent, regardless of its source. It is good to note that use of dirt from a foreigner to smear an opponent need to be directly used. Such information can be leaked to friendly sources who would be happy to smear the target candidate. Plausible deniability would likely protect all involved.

Unsubstantiated assertion of no FISA authority

Allegations that there was no FISA authority to investigate the Trump campaign or the investigation damaged the president's campaign are not supported by facts. Those assertion raises two questions: (1) what evidence is there to support that assertion, and (2) how could the FBI investigation have made any difference in the 2016 election outcome because it was in secret? Since the FBI investigation of Trump was not revealed to the public until March of 2017, about four months after the November 2016 election. Also, there was no evidence that Obama had wiretapped Trump, which Trump had falsely claimed.

One source writes about the origin of the investigation and authority for FISA surveillance:

The heavily redacted documents released Saturday comprise an application to, and subsequent renewals by, judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing the FBI to investigate Page, a foreign policy aide to the Trump campaign. But it's already been established by the House Intelligence Committee that the Russia investigation began after the FBI learned that another campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, had been approached by a Russian agent. The agent told Papadopoulos the Russians had incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, including emails, according to court documents.. Papadopoulos then mentioned to an Australian diplomat that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton, the Australians contacted the U.S. government, and the FBI began to take a look.

One source reports on Papadopoulos:

In July 2017, Papadopoulos was secretly arrested for lying to FBI investigators about his correspondence with foreign nationals with close ties to senior Russian government officials. His indictment was revealed to the public after he pleaded guilty in October 2017. In September 2018, Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days incarceration, 200 hours of community service and a $9,500 fine.

That is evidence that the FBI had proper FISA authority for its investigation of the Trump campaign.

Despite the evidence outlined above, it is likely that all these false conspiracy theories, and probably many others, will be tested on the public in coming months to see which ones gain traction. This election is going to be very ugly.