8 ms·

The fake Twitter account of “Marina Ovsyannikova”

139 points by esquivalience 5y ago

miked85 5y ago
> Twitter, of course, is blocked in Russia – and although she could be using a VPN, there would be no point in her doing that if she was tweeting under her own name. I'm not sure I follow, if Twitter is blocked it doesn't matter what name you use.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  Think. It’s not blocked for the authorities who are monitoring twitter.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Your reply makes no sense to me and i agree with the GP
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      Ok, twitter is blocked for normal Russians. Why would she post there? Using her real name which the authorities in Russia could easily trace back to her and level increased punishment than what she is already in for?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ithkuil 5y ago
      The only logical sense that comment could make is to imply that the post is a 4d chess propaganda maneuvering by the very same people who are blocking Twitter in Russia.
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
    Read the text again. It said there would be no reason to use a VPN when posting under your real name. It also states Twitter is blocked and you can only access it using VPN. Don't you see that these two sentences makes no sense? Because one very obvious reason to use a VPN even when posting under your real name would be that this is the only way to do it. I am not saying that the account is real or fake, just saying that there is an obvious logical error in this specific part.
imwillofficial 5y ago
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, the verifiable artifact was the destruction of the twin towers. The rest was accusation and conjecture, which was quite flimsy. The current situation is quite different. There is plenty of verified evidence that Russia is attacking Ukraine. No reasonable voices are disputing the situation, and we have direct, primary, difficult to fake evidence confirming that this is what has happened. I would say that this feels more like Kuwait than the so-called war on terror, having lived through all three (although I was quite young during Kuwait.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    Kuwait may be a far better comparison. Even as a child I still remember the “bayoneting babies” story being tearfully told to congress by some nurse. All lies of course.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      Propaganda is a constant, whether a war is justified or not. The bayoneting babies thing was a lie. But the overall injustice of the invasion is widely agreed. You have a look through the propaganda to get at the truth. The same goes for the current situation. The ghost of kyiv or snake island are examples of propaganda that should be ignored. But they don't change the fact that Russia is prosecuting and illegal and unjust war against a sovereign nation.
      - olivermarks 5y ago
        'Fog of war', 'Truth is the first casualty of war'... it typically takes quite a long time for the truth to emerge about what actually occurred but 'A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on' - or in the case of Twitter be overwhelmingly promoted as 'the truth' with surrounding arguments and accusations hanging off that 'truth' within hours. The latest fiasco with Democrat Tulsi Gabbard pointing out labs should not be operating with dangerous pathogens in a hot war zone being mangled by Republican Mitt Romney as 'treason' is a current example - a misinformed online audience react furiously to something that was never said.
olivermarks 5y ago
Twitter is an incredibly malleable medium - all sorts of people will 'jump to the head of any parade' for self attention, new followers etc etc and various spooky and state actors are extremely busy promoting, trolling or undermining tweets. It's a fascinating place and it's often not hard to figure out who are trolls, bots and fake accounts, but sometimes you really have to think and look at surrounding activities.
- rconti 5y ago
  Right. The 99% of people who don't fall for it effectively have no vote in the algo. The 1% of people who do, drive it into the eyeballs of more and more people. Now, of course, you can correctly argue that all of the "valid" content is believed by more people, and therefore gets more eyeballs. But then again, me tweeting about my breakfast isn't as inherently interesting as this newsworthy woman's tweets are (would be?)
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    Adding to your comment how easy it is to buy fake followers (or more controversially state actors adding them)and therefore credibility - a lot of people still think someone with a huge twitter 'following' are therefore more credible. Brand marketers know all about this
evanlivingston 5y ago
Can someone explain what's going on here?
- renewiltord 5y ago
  It appears (from what I can tell in this article): 1. There is a real woman who got on Russian state video denouncing the war 2. She made a video ahead of time saying she was going to do it 3. She was detained 4. Someone made an account impersonating her 5. The impersonating account then spoke “as her”, continuing to say things denouncing the war. This guy is saying that it was easy to tell that it was an impersonation.
aldebran 5y ago
So the account is fake but the person and the incident are real? Is that the claim here or is everything fake? What is the author asking not to take at face value? I read the article and I’m still confused.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  The account is/was impersonating a real person[0]. It happens on Twitter with some regularity, people will make fake accounts for people in the news, and with a similar regularity occasionally get picked up as real by media figures who should know better. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/15/russia-tv-protest-marina-ovsyannikova-ukraine-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/15/russia-tv-prot...
  - aldebran 5y ago
    Ah! Ok. Thanks!
danso 5y ago
Note: the blog post was published today at 13:00 UTC, and at that time, noted that the account seemed to have been suspended. However, as of 15:30 UTC, someone else has taken over the "@MarinaOvsyy" handle and is even impersonating the previous impersonator's tweets. The blog post's screencap of @MarinaOvsyy: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5qPFRXwBMG7sw?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5qPFRXwBMG7sw?format=jpg&name=... A current screencap of @MarinaOvsyy; besides the obviously different account (different join date, follower count, etc). note the difference in the 2nd most recent tweet, which is an attempt to copy the 2nd latest tweet in the previous faker: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5p1kwWYAM4Y2D?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5p1kwWYAM4Y2D?format=jpg&name=...
jelliclesfarm 5y ago
Isn’t fake news detection a solved problem with NLP? Language and grammar detection was already making good progress almost a decade ago. If it works in the field of terrorism and social engineering, that it is not yet wielded for fake news seems to be reluctance on the part of social media entities. Having said that.. I am not a technical person..this is just a layman point of view.
- Yoric 5y ago
  I have no idea how NLP would spot fake news or fake personalities.
  - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
    NLP has been tested on Nigerian email scams.
    - Yoric 5y ago
      This is an extremely simple subset. But how do you make a difference between a true press release claiming that, say, an airplane was hijacked, and a fake press release claiming the same?
- moomin 5y ago
  Bit of both. The terrorism stuff doesn't work nearly as well as they'd like you to think, and knocking out obvious fakes would depress Twitter's engagement statistics.
- danso 5y ago
  How would language and grammar detection aid in fake news detection? What makes news "fake" generally involves dimensions far more complex than grammar.
  - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
    I did not say that language and grammar detection would help in fake news detection. What I meant was shouldn’t fake news detection be the next logical step after language and grammar detection. I found this(haven’t read it) : https://soe.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/GSET_2020___Detecting_Fake_News_FinalV2.pdf https://soe.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/GSET_2... (ETA: I got lost in the wilderness after page 3.)
thih9 5y ago
I wish the article was more clear about what was real and what was fake. In case anyone still isn't sure: Marina Ovsyannikova did get on Russian state video, protesting against the war in Ukraine [1]. She has been detained [2]. Afterwards someone created a fake Twitter account @MarinaOvsyy , impersonating her. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Anti-war_p... . [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath
- bagels 5y ago
  Thanks, it really wasn't clear that the accusation was limited to the twitter account after reading it. I came away with the opposite impression.
  - thih9 5y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. The part that is fake is actually relatively small. Given that, I'm surprised to see this article on the front page; perhaps it's popular partly because readers are misunderstanding it.
    - endemic 5y ago
      I thought it was perfectly clear.
- awb 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath > It was reported that Ovsyannikova pleaded guilty to flouting the law and was fined ₽30,000 or $280. https://twitter.com/jason_corcoran/status/1503766850261467136 https://twitter.com/jason_corcoran/status/150376685026146713... > A Moscow court fined Marina #Ovsyannikova, who burst onto primetime Russian news last night with an anti-war poster, 30,000 rubles. https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1503771147376209923 https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1503771147376209923 > First comments from Ovsyannikova: 14-hour interrogation, denied her access to lawyers, she’ll talk more tomorrow after some sleep. She speaks English at the end of this video. Additional reporting: https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-court-fines-woman-anti-war-protest-state-tv-2022-03-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-court-fines-woman-anti...
m3kw9 5y ago
Account maybe fake but the contents aligns with what she is doing, at it from a misinformation perspective, not a big red flag
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  It aligns with what she is doing right now. Who knows who is behind it or what their motivations are, though.
devin 5y ago
Here is a take on the incident itself which I think is worth a look: https://twitter.com/grishchukroma/status/1503500141159985157 https://twitter.com/grishchukroma/status/1503500141159985157 In short: This woman is an editor for the Russian propaganda machine, and it's very likely this was staged/is itself more propaganda aimed at the west.
- wheybags 5y ago
  That honestly seems a little convoluted as a theory. Like a double-double-doublecross in some spy movie, IMO real life is usually more straightforward.
  - mach1ne 5y ago
    Yep. Definitely not propaganda. Doesn't serve their purposes.
  - TillE 5y ago
    Right. Most conspiracies are pretty dumb, because people are dumb. Russia's MO is basically to tell absurd lies and whine about American hypocrisy, both through official channels and unofficially online. That's it. If you were reading the comment sections of newspaper articles during the annexation of Crimea, you probably remember the flood of posts expressing bizarre pro-Russian views which were entirely inconsistent with any significant Western political alignment. This stuff is pretty easy to spot and acknowledge for what it is. Anything beyond that I would generally take as people's honest opinions.
- thejackgoode 5y ago
  Even if true, this still backfires. While this got the headlines everywhere, there is no significant pro-russian sentiment as a result, at least on the surface. So it's either an elites conflict getting from under the rug or an actual protest. As a Ukrainian, I am fine with both.
- funwares 5y ago
  This sounds like an extremely uncharitable interpretation of what (if genuine) is a very brave thing to do. For some further information: Marina Ovsyannikova has been charged with "organizing an unauthorized public event" [0]. The punishment can be a fine, community service or up to 10 days in jail. So she seems to not be charged with the new law that could land her 15 years in prison. Corroboration of the theory that it was staged? Or a sign that Russia is slowly allowing more people to speak out against the war? Or something completely different? I truly do not know what to believe these days. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60749279 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60749279
tannr 5y ago
-
- kappuchino 5y ago
  Seems you took your comment back, allright. (Before I wrote: Have a read at the https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start to be helpful and kind with your comments. Thanks.)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mmaunder 5y ago
This is the result of lazy, emotional, reactionary, populist journalism that doesn't do the work required to unearth new information, which is what real journalism is all about. Finding new relevant data is hard. Throwing up online is easy.
Mikeb85 5y ago
And hopefully this isn't a diversion to try discredit everything she really did do...
amalfra 5y ago
Social media and Twitter is general is filled with fake accounts and trends. It's almost like bombarded with fake accounts these days. This is the case at least here in India.
- WallyFunk 5y ago
  Twitter has been compromised by a Sybil attack[0] many times. They tried to stop people registering sockpuppet accounts en masse by forcing phone verification, but phone numbers are trivial to acquire with things like Twilio and other services, so it's a minor hiccup for the troll farm operators. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    I thought it was relatively easy to block off VoIP numbers.
specialist 5y ago
It's really too bad that authenticating user profiles is impossible. Therefore the socials (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok) have no agency and consequently are forced to serve as unwitting [1] accelerants for propaganda and disinformation. Because reasons. [1] Or perhaps just witless? -- More seriously, I wonder if the Freedom Speeches™ trolls also support internet voting. Darn it. I've been remiss in not branding (faith-based) electronic voting. Which I now christen Freedom Votes™. I regret the oversight.
tamaharbor 5y ago
Sounds like Twitter can be as dangerous as real war.
sAbakumoff 5y ago
I am surprised that the only punishment that Marina Ovsyannikova gets is less than $300 penalty. And then she was released. It seems increasingly plausible that this event was staged by those in power who want to stop the war.
- akho 5y ago
  She’s been fined for the video. Her TV appearance is still under investigation and will be subject to a separate court hearing.
agumonkey 5y ago
Anybody has news confirming she's still alive ?
- funwares 5y ago
  According to Meduza she's been fined 30k rubles (~€250) https://twitter.com/meduza_en/status/1503766710863728647?t=7g3mAGvXCODif8x5HzzxYA https://twitter.com/meduza_en/status/1503766710863728647?t=7...

139 points by esquivalience 5y ago

> Twitter, of course, is blocked in Russia – and although she could be using a VPN, there would be no point in her doing that if she was tweeting under her own name. I'm not sure I follow, if Twitter is blocked it doesn't matter what name you use.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
imwillofficial 5y ago
Think. It’s not blocked for the authorities who are monitoring twitter.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Your reply makes no sense to me and i agree with the GP
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    Ok, twitter is blocked for normal Russians. Why would she post there? Using her real name which the authorities in Russia could easily trace back to her and level increased punishment than what she is already in for?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    The only logical sense that comment could make is to imply that the post is a 4d chess propaganda maneuvering by the very same people who are blocking Twitter in Russia.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
  Read the text again. It said there would be no reason to use a VPN when posting under your real name. It also states Twitter is blocked and you can only access it using VPN. Don't you see that these two sentences makes no sense? Because one very obvious reason to use a VPN even when posting under your real name would be that this is the only way to do it. I am not saying that the account is real or fake, just saying that there is an obvious logical error in this specific part.

imwillofficial 5y ago

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, the verifiable artifact was the destruction of the twin towers. The rest was accusation and conjecture, which was quite flimsy. The current situation is quite different. There is plenty of verified evidence that Russia is attacking Ukraine. No reasonable voices are disputing the situation, and we have direct, primary, difficult to fake evidence confirming that this is what has happened. I would say that this feels more like Kuwait than the so-called war on terror, having lived through all three (although I was quite young during Kuwait.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  Kuwait may be a far better comparison. Even as a child I still remember the “bayoneting babies” story being tearfully told to congress by some nurse. All lies of course.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    Propaganda is a constant, whether a war is justified or not. The bayoneting babies thing was a lie. But the overall injustice of the invasion is widely agreed. You have a look through the propaganda to get at the truth. The same goes for the current situation. The ghost of kyiv or snake island are examples of propaganda that should be ignored. But they don't change the fact that Russia is prosecuting and illegal and unjust war against a sovereign nation.
    - olivermarks 5y ago
      'Fog of war', 'Truth is the first casualty of war'... it typically takes quite a long time for the truth to emerge about what actually occurred but 'A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on' - or in the case of Twitter be overwhelmingly promoted as 'the truth' with surrounding arguments and accusations hanging off that 'truth' within hours. The latest fiasco with Democrat Tulsi Gabbard pointing out labs should not be operating with dangerous pathogens in a hot war zone being mangled by Republican Mitt Romney as 'treason' is a current example - a misinformed online audience react furiously to something that was never said.

olivermarks 5y ago

Twitter is an incredibly malleable medium - all sorts of people will 'jump to the head of any parade' for self attention, new followers etc etc and various spooky and state actors are extremely busy promoting, trolling or undermining tweets. It's a fascinating place and it's often not hard to figure out who are trolls, bots and fake accounts, but sometimes you really have to think and look at surrounding activities.

rconti 5y ago
Right. The 99% of people who don't fall for it effectively have no vote in the algo. The 1% of people who do, drive it into the eyeballs of more and more people. Now, of course, you can correctly argue that all of the "valid" content is believed by more people, and therefore gets more eyeballs. But then again, me tweeting about my breakfast isn't as inherently interesting as this newsworthy woman's tweets are (would be?)
- olivermarks 5y ago
  Adding to your comment how easy it is to buy fake followers (or more controversially state actors adding them)and therefore credibility - a lot of people still think someone with a huge twitter 'following' are therefore more credible. Brand marketers know all about this

evanlivingston 5y ago

Can someone explain what's going on here?

renewiltord 5y ago
It appears (from what I can tell in this article): 1. There is a real woman who got on Russian state video denouncing the war 2. She made a video ahead of time saying she was going to do it 3. She was detained 4. Someone made an account impersonating her 5. The impersonating account then spoke “as her”, continuing to say things denouncing the war. This guy is saying that it was easy to tell that it was an impersonation.

aldebran 5y ago

So the account is fake but the person and the incident are real? Is that the claim here or is everything fake? What is the author asking not to take at face value? I read the article and I’m still confused.

roywiggins 5y ago
The account is/was impersonating a real person[0]. It happens on Twitter with some regularity, people will make fake accounts for people in the news, and with a similar regularity occasionally get picked up as real by media figures who should know better. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/15/russia-tv-protest-marina-ovsyannikova-ukraine-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/15/russia-tv-prot...
- aldebran 5y ago
  Ah! Ok. Thanks!

danso 5y ago

Note: the blog post was published today at 13:00 UTC, and at that time, noted that the account seemed to have been suspended. However, as of 15:30 UTC, someone else has taken over the "@MarinaOvsyy" handle and is even impersonating the previous impersonator's tweets. The blog post's screencap of @MarinaOvsyy: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5qPFRXwBMG7sw?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5qPFRXwBMG7sw?format=jpg&name=... A current screencap of @MarinaOvsyy; besides the obviously different account (different join date, follower count, etc). note the difference in the 2nd most recent tweet, which is an attempt to copy the 2nd latest tweet in the previous faker: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5p1kwWYAM4Y2D?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5p1kwWYAM4Y2D?format=jpg&name=...

jelliclesfarm 5y ago

Isn’t fake news detection a solved problem with NLP? Language and grammar detection was already making good progress almost a decade ago. If it works in the field of terrorism and social engineering, that it is not yet wielded for fake news seems to be reluctance on the part of social media entities. Having said that.. I am not a technical person..this is just a layman point of view.

Yoric 5y ago
I have no idea how NLP would spot fake news or fake personalities.
- jelliclesfarm 5y ago
  NLP has been tested on Nigerian email scams.
  - Yoric 5y ago
    This is an extremely simple subset. But how do you make a difference between a true press release claiming that, say, an airplane was hijacked, and a fake press release claiming the same?
moomin 5y ago
Bit of both. The terrorism stuff doesn't work nearly as well as they'd like you to think, and knocking out obvious fakes would depress Twitter's engagement statistics.
danso 5y ago
How would language and grammar detection aid in fake news detection? What makes news "fake" generally involves dimensions far more complex than grammar.
- jelliclesfarm 5y ago
  I did not say that language and grammar detection would help in fake news detection. What I meant was shouldn’t fake news detection be the next logical step after language and grammar detection. I found this(haven’t read it) : https://soe.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/GSET_2020___Detecting_Fake_News_FinalV2.pdf https://soe.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/GSET_2... (ETA: I got lost in the wilderness after page 3.)

thih9 5y ago

I wish the article was more clear about what was real and what was fake. In case anyone still isn't sure: Marina Ovsyannikova did get on Russian state video, protesting against the war in Ukraine [1]. She has been detained [2]. Afterwards someone created a fake Twitter account @MarinaOvsyy , impersonating her. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Anti-war_p... . [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath

bagels 5y ago
Thanks, it really wasn't clear that the accusation was limited to the twitter account after reading it. I came away with the opposite impression.
- thih9 5y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. The part that is fake is actually relatively small. Given that, I'm surprised to see this article on the front page; perhaps it's popular partly because readers are misunderstanding it.
  - endemic 5y ago
    I thought it was perfectly clear.
awb 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath > It was reported that Ovsyannikova pleaded guilty to flouting the law and was fined ₽30,000 or $280. https://twitter.com/jason_corcoran/status/1503766850261467136 https://twitter.com/jason_corcoran/status/150376685026146713... > A Moscow court fined Marina #Ovsyannikova, who burst onto primetime Russian news last night with an anti-war poster, 30,000 rubles. https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1503771147376209923 https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1503771147376209923 > First comments from Ovsyannikova: 14-hour interrogation, denied her access to lawyers, she’ll talk more tomorrow after some sleep. She speaks English at the end of this video. Additional reporting: https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-court-fines-woman-anti-war-protest-state-tv-2022-03-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-court-fines-woman-anti...

m3kw9 5y ago

Account maybe fake but the contents aligns with what she is doing, at it from a misinformation perspective, not a big red flag

mynameisvlad 5y ago
It aligns with what she is doing right now. Who knows who is behind it or what their motivations are, though.

devin 5y ago

Here is a take on the incident itself which I think is worth a look: https://twitter.com/grishchukroma/status/1503500141159985157 https://twitter.com/grishchukroma/status/1503500141159985157 In short: This woman is an editor for the Russian propaganda machine, and it's very likely this was staged/is itself more propaganda aimed at the west.

wheybags 5y ago
That honestly seems a little convoluted as a theory. Like a double-double-doublecross in some spy movie, IMO real life is usually more straightforward.
- mach1ne 5y ago
  Yep. Definitely not propaganda. Doesn't serve their purposes.
- TillE 5y ago
  Right. Most conspiracies are pretty dumb, because people are dumb. Russia's MO is basically to tell absurd lies and whine about American hypocrisy, both through official channels and unofficially online. That's it. If you were reading the comment sections of newspaper articles during the annexation of Crimea, you probably remember the flood of posts expressing bizarre pro-Russian views which were entirely inconsistent with any significant Western political alignment. This stuff is pretty easy to spot and acknowledge for what it is. Anything beyond that I would generally take as people's honest opinions.
thejackgoode 5y ago
Even if true, this still backfires. While this got the headlines everywhere, there is no significant pro-russian sentiment as a result, at least on the surface. So it's either an elites conflict getting from under the rug or an actual protest. As a Ukrainian, I am fine with both.
funwares 5y ago
This sounds like an extremely uncharitable interpretation of what (if genuine) is a very brave thing to do. For some further information: Marina Ovsyannikova has been charged with "organizing an unauthorized public event" [0]. The punishment can be a fine, community service or up to 10 days in jail. So she seems to not be charged with the new law that could land her 15 years in prison. Corroboration of the theory that it was staged? Or a sign that Russia is slowly allowing more people to speak out against the war? Or something completely different? I truly do not know what to believe these days. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60749279 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60749279

tannr 5y ago

kappuchino 5y ago
Seems you took your comment back, allright. (Before I wrote: Have a read at the https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start to be helpful and kind with your comments. Thanks.)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mmaunder 5y ago

This is the result of lazy, emotional, reactionary, populist journalism that doesn't do the work required to unearth new information, which is what real journalism is all about. Finding new relevant data is hard. Throwing up online is easy.

Mikeb85 5y ago

And hopefully this isn't a diversion to try discredit everything she really did do...

amalfra 5y ago

Social media and Twitter is general is filled with fake accounts and trends. It's almost like bombarded with fake accounts these days. This is the case at least here in India.

WallyFunk 5y ago
Twitter has been compromised by a Sybil attack[0] many times. They tried to stop people registering sockpuppet accounts en masse by forcing phone verification, but phone numbers are trivial to acquire with things like Twilio and other services, so it's a minor hiccup for the troll farm operators. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  I thought it was relatively easy to block off VoIP numbers.

specialist 5y ago

It's really too bad that authenticating user profiles is impossible. Therefore the socials (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok) have no agency and consequently are forced to serve as unwitting [1] accelerants for propaganda and disinformation. Because reasons. [1] Or perhaps just witless? -- More seriously, I wonder if the Freedom Speeches™ trolls also support internet voting. Darn it. I've been remiss in not branding (faith-based) electronic voting. Which I now christen Freedom Votes™. I regret the oversight.

tamaharbor 5y ago

Sounds like Twitter can be as dangerous as real war.

sAbakumoff 5y ago

I am surprised that the only punishment that Marina Ovsyannikova gets is less than $300 penalty. And then she was released. It seems increasingly plausible that this event was staged by those in power who want to stop the war.

akho 5y ago
She’s been fined for the video. Her TV appearance is still under investigation and will be subject to a separate court hearing.

agumonkey 5y ago

Anybody has news confirming she's still alive ?

funwares 5y ago
According to Meduza she's been fined 30k rubles (~€250) https://twitter.com/meduza_en/status/1503766710863728647?t=7g3mAGvXCODif8x5HzzxYA https://twitter.com/meduza_en/status/1503766710863728647?t=7...