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Russian propaganda agents actually infiltrated furry Tumblr pretty well; it seems to have been one of their more successful operations in terms of reaching a wi

by makomk 7y ago

Russian propaganda agents actually infiltrated furry Tumblr pretty well; it seems to have been one of their more successful operations in terms of reaching a wide audience. It just didn't get so much media coverage, probably because (as you'd expect for an operation targeting Tumblr and furries) the political messages they used to weren't ones that fit the existing narrative about Russian interference.

nrr 7y ago
Interesting. Would you happen to have any good sources for that? All I'm coming up with are pop culture rags that are scant on the details and don't offer up any real analysis of what went on there.
- anchpop 7y ago
  I found this [0], which is pretty scant on details. It is also scant on details but amusingly it lists the usernames they used. A few seemed somewhat political or related to race issues, including: 1) voteforwest2020 2) weproudto2black 3) aaddictedtoblackk 4) best-usa-today 5) black-to-the-bones 6) blackness-by-your-side 7) blacknproud 8) blacktolive 9) bleepthepolice 10) guns4l1fe 11) sumchckn previously known as: blondeinpolitics, blvckcommunity, classylgbthomie, hwuudoin, politixblondie 12) superblygun [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/tumblr-confirms-84-accounts-linked-to-kremlin-trolls/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/tumblr-confirms-84-account...
  - nrr 7y ago
    Yeah, I stumbled upon that as well, but it just looked like the connections to furry merely involved political issues that coincided with the causes that furries tend to care about. Even furries, still being human at the end of the day, contribute to the mainstream political discourse. My definition of "infiltrating furry Tumblr" is perhaps a fair bit stricter: Infiltration implies being accepted as a member of the community, which also implies some level of gossip around someone new or cool whom folks are excited to introduce or meet. The problem is that Tumblr killed these accounts, so there isn't any good record today of what their profiles looked like, what avatars they had, etc. I also can't seem to find anything particularly furry-centric beyond the fact that a malicious actor saw fit to target a subculture for some political trolling. I'm chalking this up to the interface of a subculture with mainstream society being compromised and not necessarily the subculture itself.

by makomk 7y ago

nrr 7y ago

Interesting. Would you happen to have any good sources for that? All I'm coming up with are pop culture rags that are scant on the details and don't offer up any real analysis of what went on there.

anchpop 7y ago
I found this [0], which is pretty scant on details. It is also scant on details but amusingly it lists the usernames they used. A few seemed somewhat political or related to race issues, including: 1) voteforwest2020 2) weproudto2black 3) aaddictedtoblackk 4) best-usa-today 5) black-to-the-bones 6) blackness-by-your-side 7) blacknproud 8) blacktolive 9) bleepthepolice 10) guns4l1fe 11) sumchckn previously known as: blondeinpolitics, blvckcommunity, classylgbthomie, hwuudoin, politixblondie 12) superblygun [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/tumblr-confirms-84-accounts-linked-to-kremlin-trolls/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/tumblr-confirms-84-account...
- nrr 7y ago
  Yeah, I stumbled upon that as well, but it just looked like the connections to furry merely involved political issues that coincided with the causes that furries tend to care about. Even furries, still being human at the end of the day, contribute to the mainstream political discourse. My definition of "infiltrating furry Tumblr" is perhaps a fair bit stricter: Infiltration implies being accepted as a member of the community, which also implies some level of gossip around someone new or cool whom folks are excited to introduce or meet. The problem is that Tumblr killed these accounts, so there isn't any good record today of what their profiles looked like, what avatars they had, etc. I also can't seem to find anything particularly furry-centric beyond the fact that a malicious actor saw fit to target a subculture for some political trolling. I'm chalking this up to the interface of a subculture with mainstream society being compromised and not necessarily the subculture itself.