The entire "online manipulation" research field is deeply compromised and unserious. Because there are enormous political ramifications to it. You can't just co

The entire "online manipulation" research field is deeply compromised and unserious. Because there are enormous political ramifications to it. You can't just come out with a rigorous & factual study of the "Russiagate" hoax or Julian Assange defamation campaign. That would be career suicide if it ended up anywhere but a right-wing or Russian blog. One of the most glaring flaws of the research is the lack of effort put into verifying attribution. Some suspicious accounts are pushing barely-literate propaganda in support of Country A? Case closed: it's a propaganda campaign by the government of Country A. These "studies" virtually never test whether the suspicious behavior was orchestrated by an enemy of Country A to generate bad press, that is, propaganda against Country A. This still happens even after the Vault 7 leaks revealed that the CIA actively plants "false flag" strings in Iranian, Russian, Chinese languages within CIA malware.