1. Comedy needs an outlet. Leftist comedy is not even comedy any more. PC crap has impacted comedy. So we have memes. 2. This shows you how out of touch the media and the left are with mainstream America. 3. If the left is going to feed out their ou touch garbage in the media the 5th Estate will feed this news or comedy, parody, passive aggressive rebellion back. Even using a leftist platform to do it. This is why free speech is so important.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...ec26a485713_story.html?utm_term=.3f94715f8e4e Russian disinformation teams targeted Robert S. Mueller III, says report prepared for Senate Craig Timberg , Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin December 17 at 10:28 PM Months after President Trump took office, Russia’s disinformation teams trained their sights on a new target: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there. The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram — which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal — claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with “radical Islamic groups.” Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday. One of the reports, written by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and network analysis firm Graphika, became public when The Washington Post obtained it and published its highlights Sunday. The other report was by social media research firm New Knowledge, Columbia University and Canfield Research. Together the reports describe the Russian campaign with sweep and detail not before available. The researchers analyzed more than 10 million posts and messages on every major social media platform to understand how the Russians used American technology to build a sprawling online disinformation machine, with each piece playing a designated role while supporting the others with links and other connections. The reports also underscore the difficulty of defeating Russian disinformation as operatives moved easily from platform to platform, making the process of detecting and deleting misleading posts impossible for any company to manage on its own. Washington Post’s Craig Timberg on 'failure' to quickly understand Russia's disinformation campaign Washington Post National Technology Reporter Craig Timberg discusses missed signals at the start of Russia's disinformation campaign. (Washington Post Live) Twitter hit political and journalistic elites. Facebook and its advertising targeting tools divided the electorate into demographic and ideological segments ripe for manipulation, with particular focus on energizing conservatives and suppressing African Americans, who traditionally are more likely to vote for Democrats. YouTube provided a free online library of more than 1,100 disinformation videos. PayPal helped raise money and move politically themed merchandise designed by the Russian teams, such as “I SUPPORT AMERICAN LAW ENFORCEMENT” T-shirts. Tumblr, Medium, Vine, Reddit and various other websites also played roles. “We hope that these reports provide clarity for the American people and policymakers alike, and make clear the sweeping scope of the operation and the long game being played,” said Renee DiResta, research director at New Knowledge. Social media researchers said the weaponization of these sites and services highlights the broadening challenge they face in combating the increasingly sophisticated tactics of Russia and other foreign malefactors online. “Some of the platforms that don’t have as much traffic, but still have highly engaged communities, are the most vulnerable to a challenge like misinformation,” said Graham Brookie, head of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “They don’t have the resources to dedicate to making their platforms more resilient.” What we know about Russia's cyber tactics Here's what we know about the Kremlin's playbook for creating division in the U.S. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) One unexpected star of the new reports Monday was Facebook’s photo-sharing subsidiary Instagram. Over the years of the disinformation campaign, Instagram generated responses on a scale beyond any of the others — with 187 million comments, likes and other user reactions, more than Twitter and Facebook combined. But it had been the least scrutinized of the major platforms before this week as lawmakers, researchers and journalists focused more heavily on Facebook, Twitter and Google. Instagram’s use by the Russian teams more than doubled in the first six months after Trump’s election, the researchers found. It also offered access to a younger demographic and provided easy likes in a simple, engaging format. “Instagram’s appeal is that’s where the kids are, and that seems to be where the Russians went,” said Philip N. Howard, head of the Oxford research group. The report anchored by New Knowledge found that the Russians posted on Instagram 116,000 times, nearly double the number of times they did on Facebook, as documented in the report. The most popular posts praised African American culture and achievement, but the Russians also targeted this community for voter suppression messages on multiple platforms, urging boycotts of the election or spreading false information on how to vote. On Monday, the NAACP called for a week-long boycott of Facebook starting Tuesday, saying the company’s business practices — and the spread of “disingenuous portrayals of the African American community” on its site — should prompt further congressional investigation. Facebook said in a statement that it has “made progress in helping prevent interference on our platforms during elections, strengthened our policies against voter suppression ahead of the 2018 midterms, and funded independent research on the impact of social media on democracy.” Tumblr pointed to a November blog post, which said the company took down Russian-related disinformation ahead of this year’s election. PayPal said it “works to combat and prevent the illicit use of our services.” Twitter said it has made “significant strides since 2016 to counter manipulation of our service.” Reddit said it is “always evaluating and evolving our approaches to detecting malicious activity and have grown our team significantly since 2016.” Medium did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The emergence of Mueller as a significant target also highlights the adaptability of the Russian campaign. He was appointed in May 2017 as special counsel to investigate allegations of Russian influence on the Trump campaign. In that role, he has indicted on criminal charges a Kremlin-linked troll farm called the Internet Research Agency and others affiliated with the disinformation campaign. A Clemson University research team, not affiliated with either of the reports released Monday, found that the Russians tweeted about Mueller more than 5,000 times, includingretweets first posted by others. Some called for his firing, while others mocked him as incompetent and still others campaigned for the end of his “entire fake investigation.” The report by New Knowledge highlighted the focus on Mueller and fired FBI director James B. Comey, who was falsely portrayed as “a dirty cop.” The Russian operatives often spread jokes to undermine the investigations into their disinformation campaign, the researchers found. One showed Democrat Hillary Clinton saying, “Everyone I don’t like is A Russian Hacker.” Another showed a woman in a car talking to a police officer, with the caption, “IT’S NOT MY FAULT OFFICER, THE RUSSIANS HACKED MY SPEEDOMETER.” At one point, shortly after the 2016 election, the Russian operatives also began to make fun of Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg for saying that social media didn’t have an impact on Trump’s victory — a claim for which he later apologized. On Capitol Hill, top Democrats said Monday that the revelations in the pair of Senate reports underscored the need to study social media and consider fresh regulation in order to stop Russia and other foreign actors from manipulating American democracy in future elections. “I think all the platforms remain keenly vulnerable, and I don’t have the confidence yet companies have invested the resources and people power necessary to deal with the scope of the problem,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In particular, Schiff described the Instagram revelations as “surprising,” contradicting the data and testimony Facebook previously provided to the committee. “If Facebook was unaware of it, it’s one problem,” he said. “If they were aware of it and didn’t share that information, that’s a completely different problem.” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the committee that asked the researchers to analyze the tech companies’ data, said the findings show “how aggressively Russia sought to divide Americans by race, religion and ideology.” Every other GOP lawmaker on the Senate Intelligence Committee declined to comment or didn’t respond. Facebook executives barely discussed the role of Instagram when they testified before Congress late last year about Russian meddling. At the time, the company said that the Russian campaign reached 126 million people on Facebook and 20 million on Instagram.
https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/ira-political-polarization/ The IRA and Political Polarization in the United States Home/The IRA and Political Polarization in the United States View Larger Image Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) launched an extended attack on the United States by using computational propaganda to misinform and polarize US voters. This report provides the first major analysis of this attack based on data provided by social media firms to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). This analysis answers several key questions about the activities of the known IRA accounts. In this analysis, we investigate how the IRA exploited the tools and platform of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube to impact US users. We identify which aspects of the IRA’s campaign strategy got the most traction on social media and the means of microtargeting US voters with particular messages. We provide an overview of our findings below: Between 2013 and 2018, the IRA’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter campaigns reached tens of millions of users in the United States. Over 30 million users, between 2015 and 2017, shared the IRA’s Facebook and Instagram posts with their friends and family, liking, reacting to, and commenting on them along the way. Peaks in advertising and organic activity often correspond to important dates in the US political calendar, crises, and international events. IRA activities focused on the US began on Twitter in 2013 but quickly evolved into a multi-platform strategy involving Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube among other platforms. The most far reaching IRA activity is in organic posting, not advertisements. Russia’s IRA activities were designed to polarize the US public and interfere in elections by: campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016, and more recently for Mexican American and Hispanic voters to distrust US institutions; encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational; and spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across the political spectrum. Surprisingly, these campaigns did not stop once Russia’s IRA was caught interfering in the 2016 election. Engagement rates increased and covered a widening range of public policy issues, national security issues, and issues pertinent to younger voters. The highest peak of IRA ad volume on Facebook is in April 2017 — the month of the Syrian missile strike, the use of the Mother of All Bombs on ISIS tunnels in eastern Afghanistan, and the release of the tax reform plan. IRA posts on Instagram and Facebook increased substantially after the election, with Instagram seeing the greatest increase in IRA activity. The IRA accounts actively engaged with disinformation and practices common to Russian “trolling”. Some posts referred to Russian troll factories that flooded online conversations with posts, others denied being Russian trolls, and some even complained about the platforms’ alleged political biases when they faced account suspension. Read the full report here. Download the appendices here. Philip N. Howard, Bharath Ganesh, Dimitra Liotsiou, John Kelly & Camille François, “The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018.” Working Paper 2018.2. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk. 46 pp.
https://www.newknowledge.com/disinforeport The Disinformation Report For years, Russia has leveraged social media to wage a propaganda war with operations that initially targeted their own citizens and sphere of influence. In 2014, they broadened those operations to include the United States and ran a multi-year campaign to manipulate and influence Americans, exploiting social and political divisions. The scale was massive — reaching 126 million people on Facebook, posting 10.4 million tweets on Twitter, uploading 1,000+ videos to YouTube, and reaching over 20 million users on Instagram. Information about the Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) activities has trickled out over the past three years, as researchers and journalists have combed the web, uncovering accounts and discovering memes. Finally, in late 2017, ahead of a series of Congressional hearings, Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet each turned over a data set containing text, images, videos, and other content that they attributed to the IRA. The analysis that follows is New Knowledge’s independent investigation of this data set as provided to the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Our report consists of two parts: a whitepaper focusing on the IRA’s tactics and messages, and a slide deckfocusing on summary statistics, infographics, and thematic presentation of memes from organic Facebook Page and Instagram account posts. There is some overlap between the two parts, but each is intended to be a standalone document addressing different facets of the operation across the full scope of the millions of pieces of content in the data set. We recognize that there is a perhaps daunting amount of material in the report; the Table of Contents will help to zero in on the issues, tactics, or topics that are of greatest interest. Election 2016 With the benefit of the full data set, our report delivers in-depth analysis of the US 2016 Election interference effort of the expansive IRA operation. We discuss Presidential candidate support and opposition, primary activities, Wikileaks data dump messaging, and the cross-platform strategies and narratives leading to Election Day. We address the prevalence of three distinct forms of voter suppression, and include context of how IRA narratives shifted immediately following the election result. DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER DOWNLOAD THE SLIDE DECK Targeted Manipulation of Black Americans Some of the most sophisticated IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities. Although they produced content targeting many political and cultural groups, the IRA created a uniquely expansive, interlinked fraudulent Black media ecosystem consisting of their own sites interwoven with authentic Black media and Black-owned small businesses to a degree not seen with other communities or groups. These efforts exploited organic American protest movements and focused on widespread, pre-existing societal issues. DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER DOWNLOAD THE SLIDE DECK Topics Covered There are many more facets contained in our report. We analyze the Internet Research Agency’s posts, videos, tweets, and memetic content on topics including: Trust in media Black culture, community, and pride Texas culture, community, and pride Southern culture, community, and pride Muslim culture, community, and pride Christian culture, community, and pride LGBT culture, community, and pride Native American culture, community and pride Latino culture, community, and pride Blue Lives Matter, pro-law enforcement content Anti-refugee, pro-immigration reform content Separatist movements and secession Meme and “red pill” culture Patriotism and Tea Party culture Liberal and feminist culture Veteran’s Issues Gun rights, 2nd Amendment advocacy American politicians and attempts to exploit intra-party discord Syria and ISIS We have also created a collection of infographics here. They appear in the report, but an interactive online presence allows for deeper exploration into the content. We hope our work results in a clearer picture of the Internet Research Agency’s targeting of the American people from 2015-2017, and that it helps inform policymakers, platforms, and the public alike. We thank the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for the opportunity to serve. To learn more about New Knowledge and our commitment to defending public discourse, contact us here. DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER DOWNLOAD THE SLIDE DECK
The New Knowledge Infographic link, (actually all the links) are super informative of the current informational warfare landscape that current exists today.
The report you are citing has been largely discredited as fake news, provided by a group of leftwing activists using dubious research methodology. Russia had little effect on the election. Voters were fed up with the establishments of both parties and their refusal to deal with out of control immigration.
As the above reference links and facts have documented we see disinformation in action with the above post as a claim to inside knowledge with self-promoted authority with no references nor facts to back up their claims. Show where, when and how any of it has been discredited in any form, manner or methodology that surpasses what has been put forth by sound investigative journalism and science based research. What the research exposes is that fake news has been projected by people who promote fake news in the manner by which the above poster has posted.
Context from an Italian observer; https://formiche.net/2021/03/memetic-warfare-in-the-trumpian-infosphere/