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Agitka No. 1: Revenge of — and on — the Killer Propaganda Bots

 

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

Some links on Disinformation stories: 

o There are 12 ways to spot a bot — at least! This will let you know if you are one yourself.

o Here's an analysis of how the Kremlin got into the story of the demo in Berkeley — some RT execs must be in a pretzel because they have traditionally, like all Stalinists, been pro anti-fa.

But now they are boosting the alt-right, they have to be against it, but but but.… This is a story that was influenced by Hamilton 68, which I discuss here. What the analysis by @RVAWonk seems to point to is that the delta of the dashboard is what's important — if you see a story shoot up within four hours by "a staggering 27,400%" why, it would just have to be a bot, as no human could have that successful a campaign, right? Well, only comparison of a list of "norms" — which sooner or later, someone will make and publicize — will prove whether this artifactoid is true.

o Bots are everywhere, and this is depressing. So big up NATO in your chat, guys, and fight the power!

 

 

o Peskov is claiming — stop me if you've heard this one before! — that the arrest of Kirill Serebrennikov, the Gogol Center director, is "not about censorship," Polygraph tells us.

 

I'd be inclined to think Peskov's prevaricating. There is one nagging thing, tho, which is a Facebook comment by a former Soviet political prisoner I know who says that once all the hipster noise dies down, people will be embarrassed to find this guy did have his hand in the till.  Perhaps this is just Russian spleen or jealousy for the modern-day political prisoner and their glory, such as it is. The problem is, the whole system of grants and subsidies and such for the arts is so messed up in Russia, that I would not blame the guy in any event.

o Sometimes it seems like you just have to "follow the networks" to see how the disinformation may come about…

 

 

o So the Hamilton 68 methodology will go on being disputed:

 

 

But actually what's more interesting about that thread is the original tweet to which that was the response:

 

 

So if a bot falls in the forest and nobody hears it, can it rightly be said to be an agent of influence engaged in an active measure? I think the whole anti-fa coverage and debate is a good place to watch this — how much people are shushed when they criticized it, and by whom/what;  whether there is accurate reporting on it and whether people are too afraid to RT it, etc.

Perhaps it's useful to point out now that McMasters wasn't fired, despite having a lot more enemies than just the Kremlin.

o Remember when I complained to Facebook in 2008 that "We Aren't 69 Million of Anything" given Zuck's creepy Betterworldist connectivist cult stuff? Well, now they say that 70 million may have been influenced by fake news that Facebook let slip in through ads purchased by a Russian company. Or maybe it was 100 million.

Hmm. While Politico may accept "the 600" without a fuss, if Facebook doesn't reveal more, it's hindering its anti-disinformation effort.

What we are told, however, is that the Russian company — the notorious "troll factory" with the bland name of Internet Research Agency — had an ad budget of only $100,000. It's hard to believe that 100 million were really influenced with that low a budget.

 Alexey Kovalev of the deza-debunking noodleremover.news is one of those Russian bloggers challenging the story, seemingly with credibility:

Of course, Internet Research is hardly a private person like McDonalds corporation — it's run by Putin's personal cook and chief bottle-washer when it comes to trolling US sites. Obviously, now that it's outed, the same folks could make a new firm called "Belochka" or one of those other delightful Russian names ("Squirrel") or make up an acronym of their wife and kids, and no one would be the wiser. Facebook, which has had huge Russian oligarch investment, is hardly going to ban all Russian ad buyers.

But still, this is a budget?

 

So there's the larger issue of what it means for Facebook to try to police ad-buying with political criteria. This is what happened to the Google algorithms, remember?

Kovalev keeps doing "whataboutism" and "your Indians" Soviet-style on this, however, which undermines his valid point:

 

 

Yes, the Kremlin will exploit our freedoms for its nefarious purposes, making us crazy deciding whether to restrict them or not. No, we are not "like" the Kremlin if we are forced to do this in places or if some behaviour seems similar — last time I checked, Bell Pottinger wasn't catering for Theresa May. And PS, the people inside the White House were armed, and shot and killed people, and among them were the future leaders of the "Donetsk People's Republic".

o There's a lot on the Facebook Russian ads thing! Like this from PBS. But while Facebook isn't revealing what the ads were, it's funny, no Internet sleuths or investigative journalists or just plain people seem to be able to tell us what those ads were, either. Facebook said in a company post that they were "divisive" about "LGBT" and "guns". That could be just about anything from anybody on Facebook. To be honest, I never, ever, in my life look over to the right-hand side of Facebook at the ads. I never click on the news links, either. I wonder how many people are like me.

So just this once, I looked over and saw an ad for a real estate site. Then I saw the news, and it was CBS and Bannon –– just like the trending site on Hamilton 68. Nee-noo! What nefarious Kremlin plot may be boosting this? I don't see anything that looks like "fake news" but obviously you'd have to watch this over many weeks to detect it.

Then there's this method of combatting deza:

 

o Look at what happened to Maks Czuperski!

 

 

Maybe we should all link to this and talk it up and tie the bots in knots.

 

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