I'm tracking *45's number right now. He is growing by around 100 bots a minute. Appears to be a propaganda army.Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Trump can use this bot army to push HIS topics/hashtags to trending. His "war room" can use this social media effort to form narratives
Twitter a few years ago went on a bot-killing rampage; some accounts lost 100,000s of followers. Wonder if they'll do it again with Trump...
BTW this is exactly how the Russian troll army works that is controlled and based in St. Petersberg Russia
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 05-30-2017 at 07:45 PM.
JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³º¹#@th3j35t3r
#FLASH Multiple people now reporting their account followed @realdonaldtrump without them doing it. Check ur account.
Accounts that have never followed @realdonaldtrimp account are suddenly being defined by Twitter as Followers...then unchecked and then suddenly back as Followers with the end user not making any changes....
Amazing to see Trump's Twitter account bloat up today with non-tweeting bots...
Example of a anti Trump account being trolled by an apparent US troll account...actually Twitter Support should be reacting to this attack but does nothing.....
Evidently Twitter has not learned and after three years they seem to be ignoring this example..question is why?
Interesting is that one of the largest single investor is a Russian oligarch.....
Twitter bots that are fake accounts still joining as "Followers".....
Follow count is now past 31M and still climbing...
Normal account users still discovering that they are suddenly "Following Trump" when they did not click on Follow...
Whatever is behind this has not be fixed by Twitter Support....
Speaking of bots...
(These accts are tweeting a 2012 article to try to justify Trump's backchannel w/ Russia. Bad false equivalency bots).
Russian Disinformation War Turns Into Physical Harassment Against @OSCE :
http://youtu.be/h3HUC0myGck?a
How Russian social media platforms have become a vehicle for some of the most heinous cyber attacks on Ukraine
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian...ty-1496055606#
Germany Strengthens Its Cyber Defense → How It's Meeting the Russian Threat
http://buff.ly/2rFtU35
This is strange
How does that work, when elsewhere recently IIRC you have referred to 80% of OSCE SMM are Russians?
I assume that their patrols are not 100% Russian and others 100% or less non-Russian.
davidbfpo
Patrol rotations are set by the central admin and if one really checks the incidents where OSCE patrols have been threatened and or shot at...those patrols were mainly non Russian observers....
The same thing happens when the JCCC runs patrols...the joint military op Russian and UAF was suppose to be also equally split but instead of the original 17 Russian officers it has grown to 107 Russian officers many seen by UAF SBU to be GRU members...
This is interesting as it ties into these Trump bot "Followers"....
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/politi...cid=spartandhp
Something I have pointed out in a number of previous comments....Reports have zinged around the Internet this week about a sudden and mysterious surge in President Trump’s Twitter following, along with dark musings that something nefarious may be afoot.
The wildest of these claims — including the suggestion that Trump had gained up to 5 million followers in just a few days and that nearly half are “fake” — are clearly overblown, analysts say. But several researchers who study social media have also reached the conclusion that something fishy may be going on with Trump’s account.
That something fishy may involve the mass creation of “bots,” a catch-all term for accounts that are automated, meaning a single individual or a team can run hundreds or thousands at time. This is something Trump’s supporters have a history of doing well, far better than his political opponents, according to work by several researchers.
“In my expert opinion, something strange is going on,” said #Samuel C. Woolley, research director for the Computational Propaganda project at Oxford University. “It’s consistent with other strange things that have gone on before with this politician’s Twitter feed.”
First, a few facts: Trump’s Twitter following, which is one of the largest in the world, has been surging since his inauguration in January, rising this month alone from 28.6 million to more than 31 million, according to Twitter Counter, a tracking site. That’s an increase of 2.4 million in May, for an average of nearly one each second of every day, around the clock.
That would be extremely impressive for most people but less so for one of the world’s most famous men, not to mention one known to use Twitter to convey some of his bluntest and newsiest utterances. Bear in mind, for perspective, that the Twitter feed for Trump’s predecessor, @BarackObama, has more than 89 million followers, including a substantial percentage of bots, according to various reports.
But here’s the catch: There is a strangely large percentage of Trump’s followers — and especially his newest followers — that have only the most rudimentary account information, with no profile picture, few followers and little sign that they have ever tweeted. These are so-called “egg followers” because instead of a profile photo they traditionally carried the image of a blank egg on Twitter account pages.
And that, say some researchers, is odd.
“This is very, very obvious when you just go and click on the newer followers,” said Jonathan Albright, research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. “The quality of the new followers is pretty bad.”
SocialRank, a New York-based analytics company that works with Southwest Airlines, L’Oreal and the NFL, reported this week that as Trump’s number of followers surged from 24.1 million in February to 31 million in May, his number of “egg followers” grew sharply as well, from 5 million to 9.1 million. Of that group, more than half have never tweeted and only 4 percent have 25 or more followers; 927,000 of Trump’s egg followers opened new accounts in May, according to SocialRank’s analysis posted Tuesday.
That doesn’t necessarily make the accounts “fake,” as some reports have claimed. Most academic researchers say that determining what percentage of followers are actual individual humans can be extremely difficult — and almost impossible with an account with as many followers as Trump’s. Twitter itself has acknowledged that as much as 8.5 percent of all of its accounts are likely automated, though independent researchers say the number may be twice as high. (The company also has a team that searches for bots and, when found in violation of Twitter policies, shuts them down.)
There another possible explanation for Trump’s mysterious follower surge. Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio said that newer users often appear without profile photos#because they have not yet developed their accounts fully. The company’s most recent earnings report shows that the number of Twitter accounts overall grew by around 9 million in the first quarter of 2017, up to 328 million, meaning plenty of newcomers may be using the platform merely to browse what others are saying. (In March, Twitter abandoned the egg image for users without profile pictures, but the term "egg followers" has endured among researchers).
Alexander Taub, chief executive of SocialRank, said that both theories may be true. Trump may be drawing an unusual number of new — but real — egg followers. And he may also be benefitting from an aggressive new campaign of bot creation.
“It’s probably a combination of both,” Taub said, “but there’s something fishy.”
Here’s where a little history may help sharpen the picture. Last year, during the election campaign, several academic researchers tracked the use of Twitter bots supporting either Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. They reported that the bots supporting Trump massively outperformed the bots supporting Clinton, by a margin of 5-to-1# in the final days before the vote.
Among accounts that researchers had identified as “highly automated” — meaning likely bots — 81.9 percent carried at least some messaging supporting Trump, according to a November paper written by Woolly and two colleagues, Bence Kollyani of Corvinus University and Philip N. Howard of Oxford.
It’s that history, in part, that makes Woolley suspicious that Trump’s surge may benefit from aggressive bot development. “There’s a legacy of this.”
But even Woolley and other researchers skeptical of Trump’s total say there is no definitive way to determine who is behind making Twitter bots, nor is there any plausible way to determine their motives.
Descriptions of how to build Twitter bots are widely available on the Web, and they can even be purchased en masse from companies that specialize in developing them. Spoofing location, language, profile pictures and other information for Twitter accounts is also easy, making it hard to get clear answers, said University of Southern California researcher Emilio Ferrara.
“A 13-year-old kid with access to Google can figure out how to create a smokescreen,” Ferrara said.
Twitter needs to fight bots by ending anonymity as Facebook has done BUT Twitter also has one of their largest individual investors a Russian oligarch who sits in Twitter Hdqs Ireland....he invested over 18M USDs into Twitter several years ago when they had a sudden cash flow problem....
How Twitter Is Being Gamed to Feed Misinformation
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/t...ore-ipad-share
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-01-2017 at 11:09 AM.
Behold the non-disparagement agreements RT employees are forced to sign. Just wow. Great work by @MoscowTimes.
https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/...d-of-rt-58132#
On Cyber Coercion: Lessons from the Sony Hack that we should have Learned but didn't
By Travis Sharp at War On The Rocks: https://warontherocks.com/2017/06/on...ned-but-didnt/
Can cyber coercion succeed? In other words, can threatening or conducting a cyber operation persuade an adversary to comply with one’s demands? The answer matters now more than ever. Beliefs about cyber coercion’s effectiveness are shaping U.S. decisions about technology, doctrine, and partnerships, particularly after Russia’s interference in last year’s presidential election. Regrettably, both officials and scholars offer unconvincing assessments.
Officials believe cyber coercion can succeed. Due to classification barriers, however, they cannot explain their rationales in detail. So, they must convince the public by being either authoritatively cryptic or persuasively alarmist. U.S. intelligence officials usually go cryptic, of course, while members of Congress love going alarmist — even after leaving the Hill. Both approaches leave the informed skeptic feeling dissatisfied.
Scholars, on the other hand, believe that policymakers have overhyped everything “cyber,” including cyber coercion. Yet they too suffer from secrecy, which limits the evidence they can collect about past incidents. Lacking empirical facts, they have turned to drawing nuclear analogies and invoking higher authorities. As a result, the cyber strategy literature often feels like Herman Kahn’s internal monologue, or a new war college drinking game where everyone takes a shot when someone mentions Clausewitz or Schelling. Make no mistake: One paragraph of Arms and Influence is worth more than a lifetime subscription to the American Political Science Review. But raining down heavy Schelling is not enough to win the intellectual battle over cyber coercion. Scholars should also dissect evidence from actual cyber incidents, however imperfect, to substantiate their claims. While analysts have made progress, they need to do better.
Imposing Costs and Destabilizing Leaders
In a new academic article, I seize the middle ground between ardent officials and skeptical scholars by arguing that cyber coercion can succeed under certain conditions. I begin with the key conceptual problem: Cyber operations are secretive, but secrets cannot coerce. Or, as Dr. Strangelove put it, “The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret!” With an assist from War on the Rocks, I outline six ways an aspiring cyber coercer can sap this secrecy problem of its precious bodily fluids. I then present my main argument: Cyber operations coerce by imposing costs and destabilizing an opponent’s leadership. As costs grow and destabilization spreads, backing down eventually becomes less painful than standing tall, causing the adversary to comply with the coercer’s demands.
Cyber operations are well suited to impose costs. The interconnectedness of modern information technology enables a cyber operation to reach beyond the targeted system, including into the victim’s economy. The private sector controls 85 percent of the Internet’s critical infrastructure, offering a vulnerable pressure point for cost imposition. A victim might have to take systems offline for repairs and disrupt other activities, including security operations. Resolving the vulnerability might entail a large repair bill if the technology or human capital are scarce. The target might suffer reputational costs, too, if trade partners or consumers lose confidence.
Cyber operations also offer unique ways to destabilize leaders, in case you had not noticed that Vladimir Putin has transformed Washington into his own personal petrushka show. Cyber operations can target leaders in remarkably personal ways by disclosing embarrassing information that would invite censure if revealed. The responsibility for managing information technology is diffused throughout most organizations and governments. Powerful leaders from the Intelligence Community, military, and private sector will jockey for position when things go wrong. By destabilizing these far-flung leadership circles, cyber operations can scramble governing coalitions, potentially causing them to adopt new policies.
The 2014 Sony Incident
Cost-destabilization dynamics played a decisive role in the 2014 North Korean cyber operation against Sony. Forget everything you think you know about North Korea’s attacks on “The Interview,” a ridiculous Sony movie about assassinating Kim Jong Un. The controversy surrounding the attack neither boosted the movie’s viewership nor increased Sony’s profit. Instead, the cyber operation altered the movie’s release, caused fewer people to see it, inflicted $80 million worth of damage on Sony, and led a top studio executive to step down, all while demonstrating Kim Jong Un’s revolutionary bona fides. Each of these outcomes advanced North Korean interests at Sony’s expense. All that Pyongyang suffered in response were new U.S. sanctions carrying mostly symbolic value. While it is hard to know North Korea’s precise motives, these results suggest that its cyber coercion operation generally yielded more favorable outcomes than many people realize.
Skeptics might say North Korea only achieved these outcomes because the target was a puny non-state actor. That objection is both true and irrelevant, for two reasons. First, most scholars believe cyberspace actually favors strong states, contrary to policymakers’ fears about super-empowered non-state actors. The Sony incident supports the scholarly position. Policymakers should consider updating their beliefs and rhetoric accordingly.
Second, analysts tend to think about cyber coercion defensively, as something that aggressors will attempt against the United States or its allies. However, the United States could just as easily become a perpetrator as a victim. In other words, the United States could be North Korea, not Sony. From this offensive perspective, the incident usefully illustrates how to use cost-destabilization to coerce a weaker actor. Before launching any offensive operation, of course, policymakers must seriously consider the risks involved, including the damage to international norms and the disclosure of technology that enemies might reverse engineer.
Implications for Policy
The Sony incident suggests that the United States should reorient its technology investments, intelligence collection, and operational doctrine towards cost imposition and leadership destabilization, the two pathways to cyber coercion success. These policy changes will help during a defensive scenario in which the United States must deter or thwart an aggressor. However, they will also help during an offensive scenario in which the United States uses cyber coercion to compel an adversary.
Shaping domestic and global attitudes towards cyber operations will become an increasingly important political priority for the United States and other countries. To date, U.S. policymakers have emphasized building political support to prevent the United States and its allies from falling prey to cyber coercion. Yet they must also invest political capital in the scenario we cannot discuss in polite company — offensive cyber coercion — in case it becomes necessary.
A day may be coming when cyber coercion helps countries achieve laudable goals in international politics such as defending allies, preventing genocide, or halting human rights abuses. In those future situations, U.S. policymakers will have to decide whether using cyber coercion to do right justifies the risk that future adversaries use it to do wrong.
DFR Lab
✔
@DFRLab
EXCLUSIVE: The White House correspondent for known Kremlin outlet, @SputnikInt, resigned. @benimmo asked him why:
https://medium.com/dfrlab/blowing-th...-493e0bc26e99#
UNCLAS Intel report on Russia’s alleged US election hack devotes 6 pages to RT's operations & connections to Kremlin
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf#
It is interesting that during the early stages of the Russian invasion into eastern Ukraine Russian trolling bots would suddenly launch a high level of complaints against a series of proUkrainian Twitter accounts...thus getting them suspended for the standard seven days....there were a number of such waves until Twitter Support got it under control
We are now seeing the same exact exercise being conducted by proTrump bot nets......BUT strangely this time Twitter Support has seemed to have forgotten the past experience....
These bot complaints are coming for the bot net spotted being built in the last week as Trump Followers....
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-03-2017 at 03:51 AM.
EU Mythbusters
✔
@EUvsDisinfo
Pro-Kremlin outlets spread disinformation about Ukraine's visa free regime with the EU.
http://mailchi.mp/euvsdisinfo/dr70#
"Aggressive patriotism has become the psychological foundation for a whole nation..."
https://granta.com/russia-verge-nervous-breakdown/#
There is an American hacker who goes by the name of JESTER who had a reputation for hacking Russian government accounts.....
During this FBI investigation phase he has been drifting between being seen as anti Trump and then suddenly proRussian/Putin and then as suddenly back to being anti Trump.....
US twitter accounts now rate him as a solid proPutin source as he accidently revealed a Russian hacker who is seen as beig behind the DNC hack....
There is solid evidence that Russian Hostkey holds the encryption keys for Wikileaks...WHICH means all those individuals who have posted anything into Wikileaks that is classified is known to Russian Intel Services...
He is behind a sudden series of US twitter accounts being suspended by Twitter Support......
Name is changed. He follows a key hacker of the US election and Duma member. Here's Jester's boast of last night. @Russia are so so sloppy.
Here I am just letting Artem know I tracked his hacker to Rostov-on-Don, where his father is an official, and saw their meeting with Chinese.
Louise Mensch
Verifizierter Account
#
@LouiseMensch
Antwort an @ARTEM_KLYUSHIN
Говоря о региональных губернаторах, Ростов на Дону недавно устроили китайцев. #Русскийвзлом
Artem is the Russian who has organized the Russian hacking on US election and DNC....currently a Russian DUMA member....
Oh Artem and Jester. The WAY I found your hackers was by running the Lisov-hit banks in the NY malware forfeiture case. being conducted by the NY AG Schneiderman.
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-03-2017 at 12:35 PM.
White House is silent after Putin's election hack taunts: http://on.msnbc.com/2rsq8H3
Kind of eliminates that Trump lame excuse of a 400lb kid on a bed and the Chinese does it not????
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