10 ms·
Disclosing networks of state-linked information operations we’ve removed
- halkcyon 6y agoI'm surprised they're not disclosing the US ones.
- mc32 6y agoDo you mean the ones promoting this or that cause and who are normally aligned with one or the other major parties or significant pols?
- ASalazarMX 6y agoOr the Mexican ones, who even tag themselves with the #RedAMLO hashtag.
- colordrops 6y agoYes, the greater context is that there are many entities exhibiting this sort of behavior online, not just countries and not just those three countries.
- nullc 6y agoAFAIK twitter doesn't even ban US state operated psy-ops, not even ones targeting US citizens. They should require all parties posting on behalf of a state or as part of a contract for a state identify themselves...
- not_a_moth 6y agoGiven the revolving door at Twitter, or other mainstream media outlets for that matter, this isn't surprising.
- threeseed 6y agoI can't imagine US being all that significant. Biden, Trump and various members of both camps command more than enough attention through their own Twitter accounts. Likewise pushing political agendas is largely superfluous given you can just lobby politicians directly without needed public support.
- guug 6y agoYou're not considering foreign operations. If included, I bet the US would be at the forefront.
- killjoywashere 6y agoIf the US is conducting psy-ops on social media against adversaries, wouldn't they use media companies popular in that country? And, if that were Twitter, wouldn't the language barrier still make it relatively harder for Twitter (a company staffed predominantly by English-speaking employees) to investigate? Additionally, does it merit discriminating between offensive and defensive psy-ops? Might there, for example, be government-controled bots injecting wholesomememes content into the feeds of depressed government employees? Does Twitter have a different obligation in that context?
- yorwba 6y ago> wouldn't the language barrier still make it relatively harder for Twitter (a company staffed predominantly by English-speaking employees) to investigate That doesn't seem to have stopped them from banning accounts posting in Chinese. > government-controled bots injecting wholesomememes content into the feeds of depressed government employees That would still be "coordinated inauthentic behavior".
- 082349872349872 6y agoLuckily the censorship game in the US is strong, but not that strong. I read a book about propaganda written by someone who wrote it for the US in WW2, and he was able to explicitly state (a chapter or two in) that he only gave examples of axis propaganda in the book because his side's were classified, but to remember that everyone did the same things. (he did leave for a footnote that for examples of pornographic propaganda one would have to visit archives at an address in Washington DC; guess that'd be the 1950's talking)
- adrr 6y agoThere’s fake ones like the @antifa_us account that was run by a white nationalist organization. It was promoting violence against white neighborhoods and was amplified by the Trump campaign and conservative media.
- metrokoi 6y agoIt's easy and safe to disclose networks of states that have no power over you. The information operations that are not disclosed are the ones you really need to worry about.
- bosswipe 6y agoWhatabout... the US.
- KSteffensen 6y agoWouldn't disclosing any US sponsored psy-ops be illegal by US law?
- SargeZT 6y agoThe press is protected by precedent (and the first amendment in general); they can publish any material they want, no matter how classified it is. The person who gets in trouble is the one who broke the laws and gave the material to the press. The government has asked things not to be published in the past, particularly in the aeropspace sector. Sometime the press has complied, sometimes it hasn't. Hell, the organization I used to work for has at least 3 pieces of TS material on their wikipedia page. Years back I brought my concerns to the security manager and they said "the worst thing you can do with classified material is try to remove it, because you're just validating that it's classified and correct."
- raxxorrax 6y ago> The press is protected by precedent Is journalism a protected profession? In my country journalists are not, so they have the same rights/obligations as anyone. > The person who gets in trouble is the one who broke the laws and gave the material to the press. What if the information leaked contained evidence of crime? We have still people in prison for that...
- yellow_lead 6y ago>23,750 accounts that comprise the core of the network, e.g. the highly engaged core network. Approximately 150,000 accounts that were designed to boost this content, e.g. the amplifiers. That's a lot of 五毛
- justicezyx 6y agoSince "五毛” is used everywhere for netizens to verbally attack anyone who speaks positive towards CCP and Chinese government, I'd say this seems an inappropriate use of language. Instead, we probably should label this group as the “government sponsored online moderator” "网评员”. This is more revealing of what actually is happening, I.e. Chinese government hires people to influence and monitor online communities. On the other hand, there are many people who does think CCP and Chinese government is good overall, and support them. Which I do not think it's fair to label them as "五毛”. In case you find this unbelievable, I'll risk being further misinterpreted, by citing the die hard trump supporters being labeled "white supremacists", which I believe is harming the unity of this country.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y agoWhy do you think the Chinese government needs sponsored online moderators? I don't see a need for moderators if many people believe they are good and support them. It certainly seems like they use them to censor people who object to them and keep themselves in power. To suggest censoring of the phrase that calls them out is comical.
- justicezyx 6y agoI thought it's well known that the government hired moderators are for propaganda purpose, right?
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y agoExactly, my question essentially is, why do you think the CCP needs propaganda? Because if many people thought they were good and supported them they could win on merit alone, not propaganda.
- ghj 6y agoIt requires a google account to download the archive. Can someone summarize or cherry pick some examples? Just wondering what counts as manipulation and whether I would be able to tell.
- uname_amiy 6y agoHere's a report by ASPI https://www.aspi.org.au/report/retweeting-through-great-firewall https://www.aspi.org.au/report/retweeting-through-great-fire...
- YarickR2 6y agoI checked Russian archive. There's no manipulation , as far as I could check . I haven't dug through larger csv, but smaller one is all but harmless. News retweets and mild pro-Russia bias
- Animats 6y agoAw, you have to have a Google account to download the data.
- antpls 6y agoTwitter migrated data to Google last year : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18976150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18976150 That could explain it
- gtirloni 6y agoI hope they go after the Brazilian bots. The amount of disinformation is staggering.
- OctaviusGaeus 6y agoMore and more coming out about actions from China..
- littlestymaar 6y agoI wonder if Twitter also does the same for Western governments ops or only for “bad guys” like Russia, China and Turkey. In France, during the “Yellow Vests” movement, there's has been a lot of progovernment activity on Twitter from accounts which were obvious fake ones: with a photo stock profile picture and a username made of “(often vintage) French first name+ 5 or 6 random figures”. I suspect this is frequent among western countries too but I don't have evidence except for my country, if you have such stories for your country, please share.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoThere are quite a few people and organisations analysing social media accounts. They have, on occasion, exposed botnets, or networks of fake accounts that are manually run. I know of a few here in Germany, and I have no doubt that they would gleefully publish any US government networks they come across. And with the extreme polarisation in the US, there should be plenty of people or publications on either side to do the same. The fact that, as far as I can tell, these tend not to be bots but manually-run fake accounts might point to an explanation of the relative lack of such activity: it might just be too expensive. And when it comes to networks targeting other countries, every country that isn't natively English- or Spanish-speaking is relatively save because you aren't going to find hundreds of Americans speaking Russian willing to work for low wages and reliably keep quiet about it. That, of course, is in addition to the obvious reason that democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that. But I have a hunch the ever-cynical crowd here would take offence at the idea that some countries and governments sometimes don't behave in the worst possible way.
- nitrogen 6y agodemocratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that I am afraid I don't have a reference, but some years ago I read about a request for bids on persona management software on fbo.gov, so one person could run many accounts.
- littlestymaar 6y ago> democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that Democracy isn't a black and white things. Turkey is a democracy, no matter how corrupt and authoritarian Erdogan is. And democracy-wise France is arguably closer to Turkey than to the UK anyway.
- YarickR2 6y agoIs this a joke ? I've downloaded Russian archive. Tweets there are not in any way promoting any party , they are mostly retweets of regional and statewide news agencies' posts. Some do have pro-Russia bias, but nothing raging and nothing I could label as propaganda.
- yorwba 6y agoAccording to Twitter, they were "suspended for violations of our platform manipulation policy, specifically cross-posting and amplifying content in an inauthentic, coordinated manner for political ends." If you use a bot to retweet "regional and statewide news agencies' posts", that would fall under the description above.
- vance5980 6y ago1,152 Kremlin bots banned sounds really underwhelming. Though on the other hand, reliably detecting their throwaway accounts must be an impossible task.
- YarickR2 6y agoThis is crap . IDK what's in the chinese and turkish archives, but banning russian accounts for their activity in 2010 ( grep SamantaDarko , for example ) , and containing no political tweets at all ?
- 082349872349872 6y agoWere there any "я сама крымчанка дочь офицера" accounts on their list?
- YarickR2 6y agoNo, that's the point. Imagine accounts retweeting wide spectrum of moderate GOP news sites, with an occassional joke or wit.
- 082349872349872 6y agoBeing able to poke fun at oneself is one the components of my personal turing test. (but that would imply /r/totallynotrobots/ are indeed human. ERROR! ERROR! +++ATH +"(Oäç/"çä%()/ç%(/ç tape_drive_spinning.gif
- coldcode 6y agoWhat still confuses me is how do people create so many bot/fake twitter accounts when you are required to have a phone number? Throwaway phones?
- cantrevealname 6y agoA very interesting question. Maybe authoritarian governments simply ask the telephone company — traditionally being government monopolies — to issue 50,000 new telephone numbers to allow signups? Or they hire people to stand on a busy street to offer a free can of Coke to anyone willing to receive a Twitter code on their cellphone? Or perhaps Twitter doesn’t require a telephone number in those countries?
- raxxorrax 6y agoThere are countless SMS services and it is a race of blacklisting the numbers they use.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zeroxfe 6y agoIt's really easy to get blocks of phone numbers these days, especially with the proliferation of VoIP providers. You don't need to hold on to these numbers for more than a day.
- iaml 6y agoYou can literally bulk buy sims in russia if you visit certain stores and ask nicely, because there’s not much oversight and people selling sims don’t make much money, so this kind of side hustle is common.
- lowmemcpu 6y agoIt helps to report accounts to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram if you suspect them of being a politically-motivated bot.